The Press.
London, England, 1855-03-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

not so handsome in her youth as either of
her two sisters. At this time the 47th regi-
ment was quartered in the town, and two of
the officers Captain Murray and Captain
Farmer—fell in love with her. The young
lady of fourteen preferred the former ; but
fathers have flinty hearts, and Farmer was
the parental favourite. Upon this followed the
usual romantic distress. " Tears, prayers, and
" entreaties," were all in vain. Buck Power
was steeped in debt, and Captain Farmer
bribed him with liberal proposals, being, ac-
cording to the narrative before us, a man of
good fortune. The sequel was inevitable :
The unfortunate girl was compelled to yield to the com-
mands of her inexorable parents ; and, at fourteen and a
half, she was united to a man who inspirel her with no-
thing but feelings of terror and detestation.

Dramatic propriety demanded that she
should loathe this gentleman, and that he
should be a man of violent temper, subject to
paroxysms of rage and jealousy. After living
with him only a few weeks, she made up her
mind that he was insane, and determined to
run away from him—a resolution which she at
once carried into effect. Hero, it must be re-
membered, there is a discrepancy between
Lady Blessington's statement and that of her
niece, Miss Power. Lady Blessington in-
formed Mr. Madden that when she left her
husband she went to reside with her father,
who was now a ruined man ; Miss Power, on
the contrary, says that her father refused to
receive her, and that at last " she fled from
" the roof of her husband to return no more,"
but to what refuge the young wife of fourteen
and a half fled does not appear. A Mr. John
Sheehy supplies a third version. This gentle-
man delares that he has a perfect recollection
of the circumstances, and bears testimony to
the fact that she returned home, where she
was very unhappily circumstanced, being con-
sidered an interloper; adding, rather myste-
riously, that there was a visitor at the house, a
Captain Jenkins, who had been disposed to
pay his addresses to her sister, but was pre-
vented by other stronger impressions made on
him by one then wholly unconscious of her
influence. Mr. Madden observes that this
supposition was erroneous, without favouring
us with a scintilla of evidence in disproof of
it ; and then proceeds to give a minute account
of Captain Jenkins' movements, stating,
amongst the rest, that " in 1809 he was domi-
" ciled in Dublin, and Mrs. Farmer was also
" then residing in Dublin." It would have been
more discreet in Mr. Madden to have allowed
Mr. Sheehy to tell the story in his own way.
" Affrighted justice "—to make use of our
biographer's phrase—demands that we should
now look at the other side of the picture.
' Hitherto we have heard only the statements
of Lady Blessington and her niece ; and it is
fitting we should glance at the testimony of
the brother of Captain Farmer, who contradicts
them in nearly every essential particular. This
gentleman asserts that the young lady's alleged
repugnance to the union is pure fable ; that
the marriage was a love-match ; that Captain
Farmer had no means whatever beyond his
commission, and that he not only made no
settlement, but that Mr. Power promised his
daughter a fortune of 1,0001., a shilling of
which was never paid ; that, relying upon this
fortune, the young couple got into debt, which
compelled Farmer to sell out; that he after-
wards got a commission in the East. India
Company's service, and, his wife refusing to
go out with him, ho divided the surplus with
her, amounting to 5001. each ; that up to this
time Farmer never showed any symptoms of
insanity ; but that the misconduct of his wife.
coupled with the effects of a coup de soleil, led
him afterwards into excesses, which ended in
his death.
Leaving these conflicting accounts to the
judgment of the reader, we proceed with the
biography, as it is unfolded by Mr. Madden.
In the previously published notices of Lady
Blessington's life, there was an hiatus, after
her flight from Captain Farmer, of nine years.
This hiatus Mr. Madden fills with the following
information .

In 1807 iihe was living at Cahir, in Tipperary, separated
from her husband ; in 181,9 she was sojourning in Dublin ;
a little later she was residing in Hampshire ; in 1816 we
find her established in Manchestensguare, London; and
at the oommencement of 1818 on the point of marriage
with an Irish nobleman.

SATURDAY,

Putting together the scattered hints which
are sown broad-cast through this most un-
skilful biography, we find that Captain Jen-
kins was residing in Dublin in 1809, when
Mrs. Farmer was " sojourning " there, and
that he had " an establishment at Sidmanton,
" in Hampshire. for three or four years pre-
" viously to 1814;" we also find that the gen-
tleman had a large income for several years,
but that, having expended a great deal of
money, he became at last involved in em-
barrassments. There would be no difficulty
in composing a piquant dish of scandal out of
Mr. Madden's broken scraps ; but our business
is to exhibit the book as it is, not to connect
its links, or supply its lacuna.
Mr. Madden knows nothing, of affects to
know nothing, or professes to maititain a dis-
creet silence—let him take his choice of
these three escapes from responsibility—
respecting Lady Blessington's life iu the in-
terval between her desertion of Captain
Farmer, who died iu 1817, and her marriage
with Lord Blessiugton in 1818. Yet he fur-
nishes us with the following hints towards the
means of filling up this gap in her history,
which he makes unnecessarily conspicuous by
circumstantial and repeated allusions.
In the latter part of 1815 Lord Blessington
gave a dinner party in Dublin, at which some
half-dozen gentlemen, including Captain
Jenkins, and one or two ladies, were present.
The purpose for which Mr. Madden introduces
this incident must be gathered from the con-
cluding sentence :
Captain Jenkins left the company at an early hour to
proceed that evening to England, and parted with his
friends not without apparent emotion.

We next learn that in the latter part of
1815 Mrs. Farmer made London her place
of residence, and " had a house taken for
" her iu Manchester•square in 1816." Here
Lord Blessington was a frequent visitor, but,
being a man .of the strictest morals, he
was always accompanied by a mutual friend.
In September, 1816, Lurd Blessington went to
his estate in Ireland, and invited some friends
on a visit ; and here, again, we find Captain
Jenkins, who by this time seems to have quite
recovered from his emotion :

Amongst the guests, I was informed by tenant farmers
on the estate, who have a recollection of these circum-
stances, were Mr. Corry, Major and Mrs. Purvis, Colonel
Stewart of Killymoon, Mrs. Farmer, and also Captain
Jenkins.

The italics are Mr. Madden's ; but why he
confers that distinction on Major Purvis, and
denies it to Mrs. Purvis, who in all probability
was better entitled to it, must be left to the
reader's sagacity. From this period we hear
uo more of Captain Jenkins. He vanishes
from the scene just before the marriage with
Lord Blessington, which took place in
February, 1818.
It is unnecessary to observe that a person
entirely ignorant of Lady Blessington's ante-
cedents could not follow these incidents with-
out perceiving the role assigned to Captain
Jenkins. How, then, has Mr. Madden dis-
charged the function he undertook? After
hinting at the leading circumstances, and
leaving no doubt whatever concerning that
passage in the biography which he affects
out of tenderness to pass over, he has the
coolness to add, " This work is not intended
" to be a biography of Lady Blessington, but
" to present a faithful account of her literary
" life and correspondence." Why, if Mr.
Madden had explored in detail the whole
narrative of Lady Blessington's relations with
Captain Jenkins, he could not have heaped
such obloquy upon her memory as he has
effectually done by the intimations conveyed
in these fragmentary allusions. Here we have
Captain Jenkins originally prevented from
prosecuting his addresses to Miss Ellen Power,
by the superior attractions of Mrs. Farmer,
who had just left her husband. Not long
afterwards we find Mrs. Farmer residing in
Dublin, where, we are informed in the same
sentence, Captain Jenkins was also residing ;
next we are told that Mrs. Farmer removed to
Hampshire, where we are apprised at the
same time that Captain Jenkins had an
" establishment ;" then we find Captain
Jenkins dining with Lord Blessington in
Dublin, and leaving the company in great
emotion ; subsequently he is on a visit with

MA

Mrs. Farmer at Lord Blessington's, in the
country ; and, finally, the drama is wound up
by the disappearance of Captain Jenkins, and
the marriage of the lady. Could any revela-
tions of Blanchester-square, or Grosvenor-
street, be more explicit ?
We have stated nothing that is not to be
foßnd in flume volumes, built up as an elabo-
rate memorial of the unhappy lady who is the
subject of them, tenfold more unhappy in her
biographer than even in her experiences,
sorrowful and deceptive as they were. Who is
to blame for the disgrace henceforth in-
separably associated with her name ? The
writer of this book, who has thus brought her
up out of the grave before the tribunal of
public opinion, and demanded a judment upon
her life.

But we must hasten to the close.

Lady Blessington, transported from Man-
chester-square to St. James's-square, was
"launched into fashionable life," and took the
lead, in Mr. Madden's lan.guaise, of all "49.spasiun
" competitors in society.' Here she formed au
acquaintance with a young Frenchman of
" remarkable symmetry of form, and eomeli
" ness of face "—Count Alfred D'Orsay. This
was in 1822 ; and, immediately afterwards,
accompanied by Mr. Charles Mathews, a
gentleman who has since acquired celebrity
in other circles, the Blessiugtons went abroad.
En route they were joined by Count D'Orsay.
In the following June, Lord Blessington made
a codicil to his will setting forth that General
D'Orsay, the father of the Count, had con-
sented to the union of his son with a daughter
of his lordship, it being left optional to the
Count to select which of his lordship's daughters
he preferred. In the following August, Lord
Blessington executed another will and testa-
ment, in which he reduced a provision he had
previously made for Lady Blessington from
3,0001. to 2,0001. a year, appointed Count
D'Orsa) one of his executors, and fixed the
sums and estates Count D'Orsay was to receive
upon his marriage with one of his lordship's
daughters.

This singular transaction cannot be made
clear without a little explanation. The short-
ness of the acquaintance that existed between
the parties before this bequest to Count
D'Orsay of an overwhelming interest in his lord-
ship's property is the first element in the case
that will strike the reader. The young ladies,
one of whom was thus disposed of, were at this
time severally eleven and twelve years old, and
the intended husband had never seen either of
them. Lord Blessington, to some extent, pro
tected them against the immediate outrage,
by stating that they should be under guardian
ship till they were sixteen, at which age he
considered them marriageable. This safe-
guard, however, was afterwards abandoned,
and Count D'Orsay was married to Lady
Harriet Gardiner in 1827, when that young
lady was little more than fifteen years old.
Lady Harriet was sent for from Italy to be
married to a gentleman she had never seen—
probably had never heard of before. Mr.
Patmore, in his recent book upon his friends
and acquaintances, says that Count D'Orsay
made the " fatal mistake" of marrying one
beautiful woman while he was madly in love
with another, whom he could not marry ; and
adds, that he separated from his wife " almost
" at the church-door." Mr. Madden quotes,
and adopts, this statement.
The history of these revolting proceedings
is completed by following the biography to its
conclusion. Two years afterwards Lord
Blessington dies. In the following year Lady
Blessington returns to England, and takes up
her residence at Seymour-place, where, in
1832, Mr. Madden tells us, the Count and
Countess d'Orsay were residing with her,
oblivious of the fact that in another page he
endorses Mr. Patmore's statement of their
separation immediately after their marriage.
In 1849 Lady Blessington removed to Gore-
house, where Count D'Orsay, who had long
before formally parted from his wife, was, as
all the world knows, permanently domiciliated.
Any commentary upon this affair would be
a waste of space that may he more usefully
devoted to other matters. It carries its own
moral, as it was certainly attended by its
special punishment. But the reader will be

THE PRESS.

curious to hear what explanation, defence, or
palliation is set up by Mr. Madden :
Within a period of three months from the time of the
death of his only son, Lord Blessington signed a documeat
purporting to be a codicil to a former will, making a dis-
position of his property and a disposal of the happiness of
one or other of his then two living daughters, au arrange-
ment at once imprudent, unnatural, and wanting in all the
consideration that ought to have been expected at the hand
of a father for the children of a second wife. Partial in-
sanity might explain the anomalies that present themselves
in the course taken by Lord Blessington in regard to
those children ; and my firm conviction, the result
of my own observation, is that at the period in question,
when this will was made, Lord Blessington could not be
said to be in a state of perfect sanity of mind ; but, on the
contrary, was labouring under a particular kind of insanity,
manifested by an infatuation and infirmity of mind in his
conduct with respect to his family affairs, though quite
sane on every other subject, which unfitted him to dispose
of his children at that juncture, and had assumed a more
decided appearance of monomania after that disposal was
made.
This ravelled passage is an excellent speci-
men of that peculiar mode of reasoning which
may be said to make a question turn on its
own axis, by referring the cause of an event to
the event itself. The looseness of Mr.
Madden's definition of insanity renders his
opinion valueless ; and the convenient use
made of the plea of insanity on another occa-
sion renders it doubly suspicious in reference
to Lord Blessington. When Mrs. Farmer
leaves her husband, the excuse is that her
husband is insane; and when Count D'Orsay
marries a child of fifteen, the explanation is
found in the insanity of Lord Blessington.
Yet this is the nobleman whom Mr. Landor
describes, upon hearing of his death, as that
" disinterested, upright, and kind-hearted
" man, than whom none was ever dearer
" or more delightful to his friends;" and of
whose kindness and generosity to his tenantry
Mr. Madden himself speaks in terms of un-
limited eulogy.
It does not occur to Mr. Madden that there
were other parties to this deplorable transac-
tion besides Lord Blessington. He throws
the whole of the responsibility upon the
father who thus, obviously acting under an
influence exerted upon him from some
quarter, gave away his daughter to a man she
had never seen ; and he has not a word of
censure for those who aided and abetted in
the sacrifice of a child, and the gift of
large estates to a comparative stranger. Does
Mr. Madden think that General D'Orsay
was wholly exempt from blame ? Does he hold
that Count Alfred D'Orsay, the Cupidon
dichainii of the book, was quite innocent and
spotless, a victim to be pitied rather than an
accomplice to be condemed? Surely, if it was
proper to tell the story, and to pronounce an
opinion upon it at all, there should have been
a more equitable distribution of the biogra-
pher's horror on the occasion. If Lord
Blessington was not in a proper state of mind
to dispose of his daughter and his estates,
what is to be said of his son-in-law, who took
advantage of his insanity, who accepted a
fortune which he squandered, and a wife
whom he abandoned, and subsequently testified
his sense of benefits received by a career from
the contemplation of which all sound hearts
must shrink with feelings of unspeakable
aversion?
Mr. Madden's efforts to raise an interest
about Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington
• fail not only from the nature of the materials
with which he has to deal, but from his
extremely injudicious way of treating them.
He betrays the secrets he desires to hide, and
his indiscreet panegyrics upon his hero and
heroine provoke a severity of censure which a
more prudent friend would have carefully
avoided. His attempts to elevate Gore-house
into a sort of Hotel R,' ambouillet expose alike
its owner and her guests to ridicule. Gore-
house had a particular character, which Mr.
Madden, instead of keeping out of sight, has
indelibly stamped with permanent publicity.
He gives us a roll of the visitors, and shows
us the amusements of the interior, from which
we gather that the salons were frequented by
gentlemen who were never accompanied by
any of the ladies of their families, and that the
jousts of the evening were sometimes marked
' by practical jokes not very creditable to the
tastes or feelings of the actors in them. It is
only fair, however, to bear in recollection that
the lively celebrities of Gore-houso had no

notion that there was a literary photographer
in the room catching their gestures and jotting
down their pranks, and that when Count
D'Orsay was making a butt of poor old M.
Julien for the entertainment of his friends, ho
little suspected that he was sitting for his por-
trait to Mr. Madden. A hundred things that
are only foolish and absurd in the freedom of
an intimate circle, have a very different air
when they are written out in a narrative and
transferred to print. But exactly in propor-
tion as we are able on these grounds to ex-
tenuate the private folly, we bud additional
reasons for condemning the act that violates
in the face of the public the implied confi-
dence of the drawing-room. There were many
persons who, upon principle, resisted the
fascinations of Gore-house ; and they may
now congratulate themselves upon a resolu-
tion which has saved them from being impaled
alive in this book. English society has long
since protested against the practice of making
books out of the hospitalities of private
houses, and the unguarded conversations of
people of eminence. It shut its doors against
Mr. Willis on his second visit to this country,
because he published a journal of his expe-
riences amongst us. But how can we lay
claim to any delicacy or dignity in such
matters after the publication of these volumes?
The Americans may triumphantly retort upon
us that we have no right to blame them
for printing our private correspondence and
exposing our domestic habits, since we have
here set them the example of doing it our-
selves.

The correspondence published by Mr. Mad-
den is of prodigious extent, and has been
collected from an infinite variety of sources.
Most of the writers are still living. The mass
of this correspondence is a heap of rubbish, so
far as the public is concerned :—notes and
scraps of notes, about the most trivial things ;
bits of verse, bad jokes, epigrams and conun-
drums ; and letters, passing to and fro amongst
the members of a coterie, full of the most pre-
posterous flattery—the whole bearing much
the same relation to the wit and genius of the
writers, as the glass beads and brass buttons
with which the Indian decks his person bear
to the fine arts. There are, of course, seine
exceptions—such as the letters of Mr.llickens ;
but they only serve to reflect the greater dis-
credit upon the rest. Intermixed with this
correspondence are short memoirs by Mr.
Madden, which, in their shallowness and egre-
gious errors of statement, closely resemble the
sketches of English authors we sometimes
meet with in the journals of the United States.
Mr. Madden draws characters in the style of a
sign-painter; and a few cuts borrowed from the
Illustrated News would have made his gallery
of portraits coin plete.
We have hitherto seen only the fashionable
and profligate aspect of this work ; but it has
another, and a still more curious one. There is
no subject upon which the writer manifests
more anxiety than the religious condition of
mind of Lady Blessington and Count D'Orsay.
This might have been expected to be the very
last topic likely to find a place in such a bio-
grahy ; but Mr. Madden is a zealous member
of the Roman Catholic Church, and considered
it his duty on one occasion to remind Lady
Blessington of the faith in which she was
born, and to point out the necessity of recon-
ciling herself to its duties. How far his re-
monstrances had any effect may be inferred
from what follows :

But no serious idea of abandoning the mode of life she
led had been entertained by her. Yet she had a great fear
of death, and sometimes spoke of a vague determination,
whenever she should be released from the chief cares of her
career—the toils and anxieties of authorship, the turmoils
of her life in salons and intellectual circles—thatshe would
turn to religion, and make amends for her long neglect of
its duties, by an old age of retirement from society, and the
withdrawal of her thoughts and affections from the vanities
of the world.
But the proposed time never came. This,
however, is not the worst part of the case.
Lady Blessington, according to her biographer,
believed in a religion she did not follow, and
affected a religion she did not believe. This
" startling avowal," as it is described, we find
thus expressed in her own words :
Lady Blessington said, very calmly and more deliberately
than usual, " The doctrines of the Protestant Church never
appeared to me better than those of the Catholic Church.
I was educated in the doctrines of that Chun& When

310

married I got into the habit of accompanying my husband
to his church, and I continued to go there from the force
of habit and for convenience, but never from conviction of
its doctrines being better than those of the Catholic
Church."
Count d'Orsay informed Mr. Madden that
Lady Blessington never ceased to be a Catholic
" in her heart ;" and it appears from the fol-
lowing anecdote that he was himself a Catholic
of the same esoteric school. Mr. Madden,
visiting him a few weeks before his death,
turned his attention charitably to the subject :
I said, among the many objects which caught my attention
in the room, I was very glad to see a crucifix placed over the
head of his bed ; men living in the world as he had done were
so much in the habit of forgetting all early religious feelings.
D'Orsay seemed hurt at the observation. I then plainly
said to him, " The fact is, I imagined, or rather I sup-
posed, you had followed Lady Blessington's example, if
not in giving up your min religion, in seeming to conform
to another more in vogue in England." l)'Orsay rose up
with considerable energy, and stood erect and firm, with
obvious exertion, for a few seconds, looking like himself
again, and, pointing to the head of the bed, he said, " Do
you see those two swords ?" pointing to two small swords
which were hung over the crucifix crosswise : " do you see
that sword to the right ? With that sword I fought in de-
fence of my religion. I had only joined my regiment a few
days, when an officer at the mess•table used disgusting and
impious language in speaking of the Blessed Virgin. I
called on him to desist ; he repeated the foul language he
had used ; I threw a plate of spinach across the table in
his face; a challenge ensued; we fought that evening on the
rampert of the town; and I have kept that sword ever
since."
This story will produce different effects upon
different persons, according to their notions
of the qualities that enter into the religious
character, and the manifestations which they
are disposed to accept as evidences of religious
conviction. To us it is the most melancholy
and pitiable passage in the whole book.
Of the literary pretensions of this work
it is scarcely necessary to speak. It possesses
the merit of carrying the art of book-
making to the last practicable extremity. The
particulars it contains concerning the life of
Lady Blessington might be presented in
twenty pages ; but we have here something
like 1,500, swelled out by extracts from news-
papers, magazines, diaries, and travels, and
extraneous accounts of gods, men, and co-
lumns, introduced apparently for no other
purpose than to increase the bulk of the pub-
lication. The narrative is involved and inco-
herent. The story goes up and down, and
there is neither sequence in the relation nor
accuracy iu the facts. The same things are
not only often repeated, and repeated out of
place, but repeated differently. The writer
does not always seem to be quite sure of his
own statements, and sometimes contradicts
them without setting them right. The work
abounds in blunders. Some of them may pro-
bably be referred to the printer, such as a
reference in the text to a note that has no
existence; but the bulk of them must be laid
to the account of the author himself. In one
place we are told that the " bridegroom of
" Captain Farmer was a Captain Hardinge ;" in
another, that Captain Jenkins was married to
the Baroness Calabrella, which he could not
have been, unless he had undergone the pro-
cess of disinterment ; and in a third we are
informed that Sir Robert Peel pronounced a
noble eulogy on his illustrious friend the Duke
of Wellington, the deceased being mistaken
for the survivor, and the panegyric delivered
by the Duko being transferred to the states-
man. Slipshod writing and inaccuracies of
detail, however, are venial faults in compa-
rison with those graver demerits which we
have felt it our duty to point nut as a warning
and example to future writers of contemporary
memoirs—a class of works always dangerous,
and sometimes pernicious.

Metnoires (le M. Dupin. Paris : H. Plon.
WE never admired M. Dupin in any of the
characters in which it has been his lot to
ftgure on the public stage. People say, to be
sure, that as an advocate none of his time
possessed such vast and varied stores of
legal lore ; but it has always seemed to us,
from all that we have heard and read, that his
reputation at the bar was based, not ou learn-
ing, but on the vehement claptrap advocacy
of political offenders at a timo when political
passions raged fiercely. Certain it is, that it
is not in the defence of Marshal Ney ; of the
Wee Englishman, Wilson, liutchinvon, and

THE PRESS.

Bruce, accused of having caused the escape
of Lavalette; of Camillo'', who attempted to
assassinate the Duke of Wellington; of the
generals of Napoleon, who conspired. against
the Government; and of the journalists who
wrote sedition, that we must look for any
wonderful display of legal knowledge ; yet
it was such cases that made him famous.
As a politician we hold that nothing can be
said in his favour; for in our eyes ad
an
who
plays a part in poli should possess
principle, and he notoriously never had any—
witness the scandalous manner in which
under Louis Philippe he was by turns in
almost every political party, from extreme
democracy to extreme Conservatism—witness
the infamy with which, after the Revolution
of 1848, he hurried to the Hotel de Ville to
proclaim himself a republican—witness his
cringing to the Republic in the heyday of its
strength, and his insolent abandonment of it
when it fell into distress—witness his disgust-
ing crouching at the feet of Louis Napoleon,
after the coup ditat of December. We hold,
too, that in politics a man should think much
of the general weal, and but little of his own;
but everybody who knows anything of the
public men of France knows that M. Dupin,
throughout his career, has never had any
other object in view than to fill his pockets
from those of the pablic. It was to put money
in his purse that he was the Attorney-Gcneral
to the revolutionists under the elder Bourbons ;
it was to get the place of Procureur-General
of the Court of Cessation, with its 30,000
francs a year, that he declared for the Govern-
ment of Louis Philippe ; it was to keep that
place that he always contrived to stand well
with his barricade Majesty, though he was
often on very bad terms indeed with his
Ministers ; it was to be permitted to retain it
that he bent low to the republican gentry in
1848 ; and it was with a howl of despair that
he found himself forced to resign it after the
coup d gat. As President of the Chamber of
Deputies his partiality was gross, and his
bearing undignified; and, as President of the
Republican Assemblies, it may safely be said
that by his rudeness, insolence, and violence,he
did more than any other individual to bring
the parliamentary form of government into
contempt. He has always flattered himself that
he possessed great oratorical powers; but his
style of speaking at the bar was coarse as that
of the Old Bayley, and in the tribune he ap-
peared more an advocate than an orator.
He has long enjoyed the reputation of a wit;
but his wit, which is unquestionable, is of
the malignant kind, and has deeply wounded
many a worthy man. In manner he affects
rusticity, but he is as vain as a peacock, and
as supple as a reed.
Such is the worthy M. Dupin, who, in com-
pliance with the prevailing fashion of the day
in France, has just given to the public the
first volume of the memoirs of his eventful
life. There are certainly few persons in
,France who have seen so much of public affairs
:as he has done during the last forty years,
from, and including, the downfal of Napoleon
to .the re-establishment of the Empire by
another Napoleon. He has been, in fact, a
close spectator of, or an actor in, all the great
and mighty events that have agitated or con
vulsed his country. It might have been ex-
pected, therefore, that his memoirs would
have been a valuable contribution to modern
history. But the first volume of them, which
is all that has yet appeared, is nothing of the
kind. It consists of what he calls " souvenirs
" of the bar," and professes to give an account
of the more important cases in which he was
engaged as an advocate ; but the details of
each case are for the most part very bald and
scanty, and are of such a dry, technical cha-
racter that they can only be interesting to, or,
in fact, understood by, professional lawyers.
But, as this way of treating his subjects
would not have been sufficient to swell out his
volume to the 560 pages and more on which his
publisher insisted, the good gentleman has
made copious quotations from his speeches,
from newspaper articles about him, from par-
liamentary and official papers, from books and
pamphlets, from private letters and accounts,
and from all sorts of documents imaginable,
printed and written.
A book thus concocted has no right to expeet

S4TURDAY,

the honour of a detailed notice from the hands
of a critic, and it shall not receive one. But
we will notice one matter. It is that M.
Dupin seems very anxious to relieve himself
of the responsibility which has long weighed
on him of having advised poor Marshal Ney
badly in his famous trial, and equally anxious
to fix upon the Duke of Wellington the charge
of a want of magnanimity and generosity in
not preserving the life of Ney. On the first
point M. Dupin appears to us to fail com-
pletely. It is certain that he made Ney refuse
to be tried by a court-martial composed of his
brother generals, by which he was almost cer-
tain to be acquitted, and accept a trial before
the Chamber of Peers, by which he was quite
certain to be condemned. On the second
point we altogether differ from M. Dupin. In
a military point of view Ney most un-
doubtedly deserved his fate, for he was guilty
of desertion to the enemy and of treason ; and
Wellington, as a good soldier, could not con-
scientiously protect so great a military crimi-
nal. He, besides, had no right whatsoever to
interfere between the French Government
and one of its own subjects. Apropos of Wel-
lington, M. Dupin, in noticing the trial of his
precious client, the assassin Cantillon, has the.
bad taste not only to sneer at the duke, but to
turn the attempt to murder him into ridicule!
Vain as we knew M. Dupin to be, we could
hardly have believed him capable of making
such a grotesque exhibition of vanity as he
has done in this book. He actually thinks it
worth while to inform the world that when he
was a law student at Paris he lived in three
different places—the Place St. Andre des Arts,
Rue Hautefeuille, and Rue Payee St. Andre!
He gravely quotes eulogiums on himself, some
of them very extravagant, from newspapers,
and biographical sketches written by his
friends and flatterers. He records dinners
given to him, and presents made to him ; and
he cites with complacency these sublime lines
from a poem in his honour
A cote de cypres funebres,
II cusillit d'immortels lauriers
En vengeant ceux non morns celebres
De grands et malheureux guerriers;
but, unfortunately, he neglects to explain
what on earth they mean.
We have looked twice through the book in
the hope of finding something worthy of trans-
lating ; but the only passage we have hit
upon likely to interest our readers is the fol-
lowing ; and that it will be seen is apropos des
boats, having about as much to do with the
subject matter of the book as with a treatiso
on astronomy :
In the year MO, when I was President of the
Assembly, I paid a visit to the porcelain manufactory at
Sevres.
My attention was particularly drawn to a magnificent
portrait of Prince Albert, which was executed by order of
King Louis Philippe, together with one of Queen
Victoria, and they were both to be presented to her
Majesty. The portrait of the Queen was sent. I asked
why that of Prince Albert was still there? I was told that
as it was being baked it became slightly cracked, and that
it had been determined on recommencing it ; but that the
Revolution of 1848 had stopped the operation. 1 asked
where the crack was, for it did not appear either in the
face or the bands, which were of perfect beauty. I had to
look very close in order to perceive it in the black coat in
which the Prince was represented in truth, it was carry-
ing love of art very far indeed, when such a slight accident,
scarcely visible even quite close, was considered sufficient
to prevent the delivery of an admimblrexecuted work.
This susceptibility, however, oould not be blamed on the
part of the manufactory. But as it was not possible to
hope that the portrait could be recommenced, I wrote to
the King and asked him if, supposing I were able to ob-
tain the delivery of it, he would not wish to receive it in
order to oomplete his present.
The reply soon came; it expressed the pleasure the
King would feel on receiving the portrait. " I always
thought as you think," he wrote, " that the little defect in
the baking of the portrait of Prince Albert was not worth
noticing. But poor Brogniart was so anxious to have it
recommenced, in order not to send to England a defective
piece, that I gave way, and contented to its being recom-
menced. I have since greatly regretted having done so.
If, however, it be possible to cause it to be restored to me—
which would be just, for it is my property—it would cause
me much satisfaction, and I should have great pleasure in
presenting it to the Queen of England, who I believe de-
sires it greatly."
I thereupon asked the President of the Republic (Louis
Napoleon) for it, and he gave it up to me in the must
gracious manner. The King, by a letter of the 27th of
March, expressed the pleasure which he felt st receiving
it, and " anthmised me to thank the President in his
name." This I did.
The portrait arrived safely, and figured at the Exhibition
of London. In the month of June, 1851, I had the honour
to be presented to the Queen and Priam Alberti and I gave
them the history et the pestrett,