The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-02-07 00:00:00

MR. GLADSTONE.

The Daily News says there is a considerable body o I
high Church Tories who would be glad to resort to his
leadership. Notoriously negociations were opened, and
though they to a large extent failed, owing to Lord
Derby's unwillingness to abandon Mr. Disraeli, is is quite
clear that Mr. Gladstone is on the look out for the means
of organising an opposition party, and that, in his opinion,
he readiest mode of securing, at least, a tail, is to attack
the government right and left.

A ROMANCER REBUKED.—The president of an agriculd
feral dinner at which Paley was present, lectured the
company on the discovery of a new kind of oilcake, which
not only fattened the boast, but laid the fat on whatever
parts the owner wanted. The company were engaged itt
various efforts to explain how such a convenient result
could be obtained and arrive at a solution of the enigma of
the self arranging oilcake, when Paley cut the knot by a
very simple observation, which did not lose in effect
from the broad Yorkshire in which it was conveyed :
" It's a loie, Mr. President, and that's the solution of it."
Panes Gossir.—A trial of considerable literary interest
has just been decided in the Imperial Court of Paris. The
point at issue was a question of copyright in the celebrated
work, the " Memoirs of the Duke do Saint Simon upon the
Court of Louis XIV. and the Regency." The history of
this remarkable work is singular. It was written, as its
name implies, by the Duke de Saint Simon, one of the
courtiers of Louis XIV. St. Simon took great care to
o keep his work secret during his life, and at his
death left it to his cousin. This was in 1755. The
government of the day, hearing a short time afterwards
that these memoirs existed, and fearing lest they might
see the day, issued a warrant, in virtue of which the
manuscript was seized by the State, and placed in its
archives. From time to time some of the contents oozed
out. Various people we:f' allowed to look at them, and
Horace Walpole is said, 5m,-2gst others, to have beeo
favoured with a glance. Still tfry. remained unpublished.
When the revolution came, there s,:fmed no longer
any necessity for keeping this imprisoned won,: in confine-
ment. Accordingly, portions of it were brought to
_light,
and passed through the press. Nobody seems to hay:
been hardy enough to bring out the entire memoirs. Mere
extracts, accordingly, wore all that passed through the
press, and these were so altered and mutilated that they'
could scarcely be regarded as specimens of St. Simon's
work. It was not until the revolution had passed away'
—Napoleon after it—the Monarchy restored—that the
Memoirs appeared in anything like a complete form, Itt
1829, however, the Government, which still held them in
its clutches, permitted them to be published. They
appeared in a number of interminable volumes—for the
work is of immense length—and at once created a strong
excitement. The whole edition was very shortly
disposed of. People talked of nothing else but the
astonishing revelations afforded by St. Simon of the Court
of Louis XIV. They found in the courtier's pages fresh
arguments against monarchy ; and, indeed, nothing can be
more powerfully convincing on this point than the picture
given in these memoirs. They show into what a frightful
condition the imbecility, vanity, ignorance, and despotisni
of Louis X[V. had driven France. Louis XIV. has the
traditional reputation of a great king. fie is written up
in histories!and school hooks as a "grand monarch." He
is represented as a patron of arts, literature, learning ; a
discriminating judge of all that was great and good; a
king whose re4;ti sheds glory upon Prance that is ime
perishable, and the lustre of which has no equal in any age
or country. Voltaire, not much inclined generally to fall
in love with buried kings, exhausts all his eloquence In
describing the great age of Louis, Qtiatorze. People have
only to open St. Simon to see how utterly false are the
estimates which have been formed of the personal merits
of
.Louis XIV, Ia the memoirs we see him a poor, weak,
pi:ofligacy had been common town-talk; not moving
vain-glorious wretch, tied to the apron-strings of a woman
whose
a step without her guidance and her counsel, and who, by
his incredible obstinacy and absurd concei`, brought the
country to absolute ruin, and stood in danger of being vio-
lently thrust trom his throne by the strong arm of popular
discontent. No Royal imposter has ever been so completely
unmasked as Louis XIV. by St. Simon. Fifty years hence
I will verdure to say the grande monarque will have com-
pletely fallen from hispedestal, even as our own debauched
and brutal George IV. has been stripped of his title of the
first gentleman of Europe. Bat this assertion has led me
away. It seems, then, that as these memoirs were not
published in a complete form until 1829, the copyright of
them belongs to the descendant of Saint Simon—that is to
say, to the present duke. M. Barber, a Paris publisher,
imagined that this descendant of the original
could not hold copywright in a work published and written
so long ago. He, therefore, brought out last year two
editious of the memoirs exceedingly cheap. Messrs.
at the
Hochette, the other publishers had, writer
same time,
concluded arrangements with the present Duke of St.
Simon for a new collected edition of the memoirs. They
accordingly brought an action against M. Barber, after
warning him not to issue his edition. The court has
decided than the copyright of the memoirs belongs to the
present duke, and that, accordingly, only the publisher
authorised by him has the right to bring out the work.
M. Barber has then been adjudged. to pay to pay 20,000
francs damages to the duke, and 50,000 francs to Messrs
Hochette and Co. The verdict has excited some surprise,
M. Barber means, it said, to apneal.