from the danger of future loss, and placed under the faithful protection of the Press. No nation can boast a nobler descent than ours, or one whose annals are adorned by brighter examples of public and private virtue; but the first step in our remembrance of our forefathers' deeds should be that of piously and gratefully preserving them from the casualties of time, the chances of neglect, and the injuries inflicted on them by the ignorant or the designing, by stupidity, neglecting what it cannot understand,-or by artful and malicious cunning, which has too often destroyed for the purpose of concealing its frauds, and obliterated that which would have detected its wilful misinterpretations or indolent mistakes. It should be, if possible, placed out of the power of the future historian to say, what is recorded of one of his predecessors- "I have written my history, and your documents come too late." S. URBAN. E PLURIBUS UNUM. GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.-Who was G. L. Author of "The World to Come?"-Cabinet of Louis XVI.-Cardinal York's Sale-Old Sense of "Christen"-St. John Jeffereyes, esq.-Swynfen Jervis, esq. EXTRACTS FROM THE PORTFOLIO OF A MAN OF THE WORLD-Stockholm- Restoration of St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell (with a Plate) Anecdotes of Julian Clement, the Court accoucheur, temp. Louis XIV.... Newly discovered Autograph of Shakspere (with a Fac-Simile) Notes on Battle Fields, No. III.—The Battle of Stratton Heights, in 1643 Tiles at Great Bedwyn representing Knights in Combat Diaries and Correspondence of James Earl of Malmesbury, Vols. III. and IV. De Foix, by Mrs. Bray, 51; Sermons, by Archdeacon Manning, 52; Macray's Manual of British Historians, 53; Player's Sketches of Saffron Walden, 55; Mrs. Loudon's Lady's Country Companion, 56; Hunter's The Maniac, &c. ib.; Æolus, ib.; Hunt's Life of Rev. E. Pearson, 57; Faber's Poems, ib. ; Bushe's View of the Evidence of Christianity, ib. ; Power LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. University of Oxford, 58; University of Cambridge--Royal Asiatic Society-- Royal Geographical Society-Museum of Economic Geology, 59; London ARCHITECTURE.-Oxford Architectural Society. ANTIQUARIAN RESEARCHES.-British Archæological Society..... HISTORICAL CHRONICLE. - Parliamentary Proceedings, 68; Foreign Promotions and Preferments, 71; Births and Marriages. OBITUARY ; with Memoirs of the Marquess of Downshire; the Earl of Aber- gavenny; Lord Carbery; Lord Harris; Very Rev. Sir Herbert Oakeley; David Ker, Esq.; Admiral James Carpenter; Lieut. Gen. Northey Hopkins; Major-Gen. G. J. Reeves; Rear-Admiral Poulden; Rear-Adm. Ñ. D. Cochrane; Capt. Edward Blanckley; Lieut.-Col. James Anderson; William Kemble, Esq.; John Edwardes Lyall, Esq.; Henry Boys, Esq.; John Merritt, Esq.; John Walker, Esq.; Mr. Thomas Hood; Lady Stepney; Regina Maria Roche; Mr. Michael Nugent; Professor Henderson; Thomas 104 Registrar-General's Returns of Mortality in the Metropolis, 103; Markets- MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. In our present Number we have the pleasure to publish the first of a Series of original papers, entitled "Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of the World," from the perusal of which we are sure that our readers will derive great gratification. A tract, entitled " The World to Come," has been repeatedly printed in modern cheap stereotyped editions, of a collection called, "The Select Works of John Bunyan," though a very cursory perusal is sufficient to shew that it is the production of a later and more polished writer. A copy of this tract, under the following title, is in the possession of the present writer, who will feel obliged if any of our numerous readers" will furnish him with a clue to the name of the author, which lies concealed under the initials, G. L.-"The World to Come, or the Glories of Heaven and the Terrors of Hell, livelily displayed under the Similitude of a Vision. By G. L. Sunderland, Printed by R. Wetherald, for H. Creighton. 1771." 12mo.-It is an ingenious and well-written allegory, from the pen of some one familiar with the Pilgrim's Progress, to which he thus alludes in his Address to the Reader." Since the way to Heaven has been so taking under the similitude of a Dream, why should not the journey's end be as acceptable under the similitude of a Vision? Nay, why should it not be more acceptable, since the end is preferable to the means, and Heaven. to the way that brings us thither. The Pilgrim met with many difficulties, but here they are all over. All storms and tempests here are hush'd in silence and serenity." Mr. W. H. CLARKE having inquired where the cabinet, entitled, "A cabinet formed of ebony, ivory, tortoise-shell and silver, presented by King James II. of England, to Louis XIV. of France," represented in Mr. Charles James Richardson's" Studies from Old English Mansions, their Furniture, Gold, and Silver Plate, &c." 1842, is preserved, and what is its height, breadth, depth, and proportions, that gentle man has informed us that it was in the collection of old furniture formed by the late J. Thompson, esq. at Frognall Priory, Hampstead, and it still remains there. The dimensions are, width at base line, 2 feet 3 inc., whole height, 3 ft. 8 inc., height of one column, 1 ft. inc., width of centre between columns, 1 ft. 24 inc. The cabinet, a most splendid work of art, is inclosed in a case. Mr. CLARKE also asks, was there a sale and catalogue of the effects of Cardinal York, printed at Rome after his death? and could a copy be readily procured now? In Ashmole's Diary, 1645, Sept. 14, he records, "I christened Mr. Fox's son at Oxford, 4 p. m." A similar entry occurs under July 12, 1661, and again under May, 1663. From these passages, the writer of a memoir prefixed to the catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum concludes, that Ashmole occasionally officiated as a clergyman. The fact is, that he merely figured as sponsor. Compare Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs, p. 112. "A little before she and I and Dr. Stewart, clerk of the closet to Charles I. christened a daughter of Mr. Waters;" and again, I christened the eldest daughter of my brother Harrison, with Lord Grandison and Sir Edmund Turner, 255. J. F. M. 66 In June, p. 650, Major-General Freemantle's mother is said to have been Albinia, daughter of Sir John Jeffereyes, of Blarney Castle, co. Cork, Bart." This is an error, for the father was not a Baronet, nor has the title ever been in the family, but his name being St. John was mistaken for Sir John. His grandson, who now represents the family, is called after him, St. John, and is a particular friend of mine. At page 665, line 6, 2nd column, Sir Gore Ouseley is named Sir George, obviously by inadvertence. S. P. W. begs to make a remark or two by way of correction, on the notice (p. 447 of April) of the death of the late Swynfen Jervis, esq. His eldest son, Swynfen Stevens Jervis, is not a barrister. He is the possessor of the family estates and the mansion, Darlaston Hall, which were bequeathed to him in his minority, by John Jervis, esq. his second cousin, the former possessor: and in the last Parliament represented the borough of Bridport. Mr. Jervis's 2nd son, Jervis John Jervis, is a Chancery barrister and member of Lincoln's Inn; but there is also another and somewhat senior barrister at the common law bar, John Jervis, esq. one of Her Majesty's counsel, and M.P. for Chester, whose father, the late Thomas Jervis, esq. second cousin to Mr. Swynfen Jervis, was counsel to the Admiralty, M.P. for Great Yarmouth, and afterwards Chief Justice of Chester, THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of the World. 1813.-STOCKHOLM. I HAVE at last seen Mad. de Stael, and certainly she is far from fascinating in her appearance. The utmost stretch of imagination could not make her into a Corinne. Large and coarse, and so ill dressed, or rather undressed. She was tormenting poor of the Foreign Office, all the evening about news from Russia, in a manner that, in a less celebrated person, would have been amazingly ill-bred. I looked with more interest at her daughter, still quite a child-very pretty-blonde, to speak civilly, but, in plain English, red-haired; very expressive countenance and gentle manner. Melancholy it seemed to me to see her and her brother in what is their fatherland, where the father is so passed over by the mother that, except her title of Baronne de Stael Holstein, one would doubt that there had ever been such a person. Thursday. I have seen Mad. de Stael again, and I will try to write down, as nearly as I can recollect it, her conversation, though it must lose so much by being in my English instead of her French. Old S**** was there, and said he had known M. Neckar, and had seen her at Paris. "Ah! dear Paris," she exclaimed, "when shall I see you again?" "You did not find Vienna equal to it," said P. "though it is so French in its court style ?" "But that aping of French manners suits the nation so ill. The grace of French repartee is so impossible to a foreigner, and the German enthusiasm is so like the great unwieldy matchlocks one sees in old prints, when it is opposed to the light sharpshooters (tirailleurs) of Parisian ease. "And their theatre," said P. "how did you endure all their monstrosities, their contempt of unities, and domestic tragedies?" "Oh! if you were to see and hear them acted you would forget their absurdities, you would never observe their want of unity. The music is beautiful, in the first place. And you know I am by duty and principle and early recollection a fanatic for German music. It comes to me with the freshness of youth the recollection of those Gluckist battles that you, and few others now living perhaps, remember in my mother's salon. Connected with my father, German music became to me a sort of passion. Hallowed by his approval, and recalling to me the ecstacy of first awaking intellect, German music must always be a passion in me. Dimmed as those early days have since been by all the tears and sorrows of succeeding events, seen as they now are through the twilight of long years of grief and change and misfortune, that bright sunrise of my thoughts has still the irrecoverable fragrance of the early dawn, a force, a life, that even meridian splendour can never equal." "Still," said P. "I should have thought your early associations with real French perfection of theatric performances must be as strong. Phedra now, for instance,-how could you endure, in comparison, the guttural oppression of their recitation in Charles le Moor doing highwayman sentiment ?" "I did not compare it; what could be compared to -Ah! cruel, tu m'as trop entendue?' ' and she recited the whole speech. P. was in tears of admiration. To me it was almost disgusting. If Phedra was like what Mde. de Stael then appeared, a great, fat, rather elderly woman, very much uncovered, with violent clasping of hands and throwing about of arms, and such contortions of face, with tears which came at her call-if Phedra was at all like her, it was no wonder Hyppolitus did not much fancy her. "What," repeated she, "can compare to this?" "We do venture to compare and to give the superiority to Shakspere," said F. of the embassy; "we venture to think Lear more interesting to an English audience than the heroine of an old Greek fable can be to Parisians." "There is the triumph of French genius," said P. "it can not only rival but surpass the antique: they had national, family, hereditary interest in these stories; ours is only in the situation and the harmony of the versification, so beautiful when recited as you have just heard it, so superior to the devils and murders of the German stage." the "Our history," said Mde. de Stael, "remains to be tried for the stage. Why should not our chronicles afford themes like Shakspere's historical pieces, or like the Spanish Cid, to some future Corneille, to burst upon world like Goethe's Faust? The compact of Dr. Faustus and the devil is an old German tradition, sung in ballads and told by the fire-side-Göethe, with the intuition of genius, seized on it, poured into that meagre framework all the flood of his poetic powers, decked the skeleton of tradition in all the trappings of theatric ornament, and bade it live and move. He took the well-known old wife's tale and made it a philosophic drama. He changed the merry jesting servant-devil into a sneering tyrant demon, whose irony is sublime; it is of a being not superior to but beyond this world. Goethe has been censured for impiety in this drama; but even your strict divines in England not only allow, but admire Milton, and surely Mephistophiles is a much more moral and religious character than Milton's Satan, a hero with whose fallen greatness we sympathise, and to whom the enterprise of deceiving a poor weak woman like Eve, and making her eat what was not good for her, appears a very pitiful enterprise. But in Mephistophiles there is nothing grand, nothing human. Satan speaks as a dethroned monarch; we can enter into his feelings. Mephistophiles has no sympathy, and excites none. He undertakes to make a fool of a learned Doctor, he does it as a jest, and throughout the whole story of Margaret, the most perfect and most touching of human compositions, he preserves this preternatural inhumanity." 66 Margaret, then, you allow to be superior to Racine's Phedra ?" said I, maliciously, for she had evidently given this panegyric on Göethe in the excitement of the moment. She smiled very good-humouredly, but P. looked quite discomfited. "I do not know this Margaret," said he, peevishly, for like a true Frenchman he knows no language but his own,-"I do not know this Margaret--what is there so very interesting about her ?" |