The Press.
London, England, 1858-03-13 00:00:00

yittraturt.

The Descendants of the Stuarts. An Unchro-
nicled Page iu England's History. By
William Townend. Loudon : Lon ;mans.
WHAT is the secret of that romantic interest
which has for ever clung around the House of
Stuart? Other banished races have struggled
and fallen, and sank into insignificance or
contempt. But the Stuarts were never con-
temptible, and will never while the English
nation endures fail to awaken in many an
English heart emotions of sympathy and affec-
tion. Something, no doubt, is attributable to
the rare fidelity and highminded devotion of
their adherents, which we cannot believe to
have been wasted on wholly unworthy objects
—something to the fact that the rise, decline,
and fall of the Stuart dynasty are all embraced
within that period of modern history when the
sentiment of loyalty was at its height—and
that in the lingering attachment to the royal
exiles we witness the last protest against the
materialism of the eighteenth century. But
the two most powerful elements in influencing
our estimate of the Stuarts are to be found in
the personal characteristics of themselves and
their successors. The Stuarts possessed just
those qualities which help to make misfortune
interesting, and the Guelphs possessed just
those qualities which render prosperity odious.
On the one hand were personal beauty and
courage, dignified courtesy of demeanour, and
elegant and accomplished minds ; on the
other were physical grossness, unkingly seclu-
sion, awkwardness and dulnt ,s. The Stuarts
were more dangerous bl)vereig.ls than the Bour-
bons, and George I. a inure meficial substi-
tute than Napoleon; yet the English people
would have exchanged George for James with
much more alacrity than France displayed in
the exchange of Napoleon for Luis. The rea-
son is that both Napoleon and James were
kings, and, with all their faults, possessed
those qualities which appeal to the popular
imagination.
For these reasons Mr. Townend's volume is
sure of a welcome from the public, though it
is perhaps too purely genealogical to become
widely popular. Its pages are not filled with
those hairbreadth escapes and thrilling adven-
tures which we are wont to associate with the
family whose history it relates ; nor are we
entertained by any profusion of anecdote and
intrigue with which the career of the Stuarts
is rife. One perplexing passage in the life of
" James III." we had long wished to see un-
ravelled. We mean his life at Paris during
the first days of the Regency. Frequent allu-
sions to this period are to be found in Boling-
broke, and piquant glimpses of petticoat
influence flit across his pages, and are lost
again in darkness. " The little house in the
Bois de Boulogne " ! Mrs. Olivia Trant,
Margery Fielding, and Fanny Oglethorpe,
whose fair, false smiles may have changed the
fate of these kingdoms! What and who were
they ? Stat nominis umbra. But •we know
that the Regent himself, not unaccompanied
of Abbe, was a constant visitor to these ladies,
and that James himself was not deficient in
the hereditary wit of his race. St. John, also,
in the zenith of his great powers, would be
there, we may he sure, to mingle business with
Burgundy, and teach the ladies how, if they
played their cards well, they might yet be
the ornaments of Whitehall.
Oh the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife.
Could Mr. Townend have restored us such
scenes as these his volume would not only
have earned a place in the front rank of litera-
ture, but have formed a valuable contribution
to the secret history of the eighteenth century.
But these things are not in Mr. Townend's
way. His work is careful and useful, and we
are very glad it has been executed. He pos-
sesses many qualifications for the task. He is
Impartial, he is a good Protestant, and in poli-
tics inclines to be liberal. His testimony,
therefore, to the merits of the Stuart kings is,
to say the least of it, unprejudiced ; and we
shall presently present our readers with some
specimens of his reasoning on this subject.
But liis styte ls heavy, and his whole work