I. SAINT-SIMON'S PARALLEL OF THREE KINGS, Edinburgh Review, II. FINA'S AUNT. Part II., III. WINTER SPORTS AND PLEASURES, IV. VISITED ON THE CHILDREN. Part VII., V. LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, VI. "ABOUT BEING WELL-INFORMED," VII. ON SHAKING HANDS, VIII. THE DEATH OF ANAXAGORAS, 195 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. I love the fine Echinoderms of azure, green, and grey, "How brightly the year goes out!" they said; That handled roughly fling their arms impul "The glow of the sunset lingers long, "How sadly the year came in!" they said. The sun-kissed clouds grew pale and grey, Oh, hearts! that beat in a million breasts, Is it just the same as it used to be? There is no cloud in the darkened west, All The Year Round. BEFORE THE DAYBREAK. BEFORE the daybreak shines a star Before the daybreak sings a bird That stills her song ere morning light: Too loud for her is the day's stir, The woodland's thousand-tongued delight. Ah! great the honor is, to shine But I would be that paler star, And I would be that lonelier bird; To shine with hope, while hope's afar, And sing of love, when love's unheard. Spectator. F. W. B. sively away: Then bring me here the microscope and let From The Edinburgh Review. SAINT-SIMON'S PARALLEL OF THREE KINGS.* tinued the practice with undiminished assiduity throughout his active life, the "Memoirs," as we now possess them in a NOT often does it happen that the vast voluminous manuscript completely tranocean of literature casts upon our shores scribed by his own hand, were the proa pearl of great price amongst the weeds duction of his later years.* He had and rubbish of the times. But this vol- withdrawn in 1723 from the court, being ume claims a conspicuous place in the then only forty-eight years of age. The classical literature of France and of Eu- sudden death of the Duke of Orleans by rope. It is a work of the eighteenth a stroke of apoplexy in that year severed we might almost say, from its style, of the last tie which bound him to his conthe seventeenth-century, the most splen- temporaries. Thenceforth he lived altodid period in the history of French let-gether in the past - he lived over again ters; but its existence was till lately un- those years from 1691 to 1723, to which known to the world, for it lay buried in his pen was destined to give an immortal the accumulated masses of the Saint-Si- shape and coloring. And he survived mon manuscripts, still jealously guarded and preserved in the Foreign Archives of Paris. So little was the real character and value of this "Parallel" understood that it is referred to by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis, in the excellent essay which was crowned by the French Academy in 1855, as the production of Duke Claude de Saint-Si his retirement thirty-two years. These years were spent in his country-seat at La Ferté, and during the whole of this period, down to his death at the age of eighty in 1755, the habit of writing continued to be the chief occupation and amusement of his existence. There is not another example in literary history of so voluminous mon, the father of the illustrious author an author, writing with no prospect of of the "Memoirs," and not of his son, gain or of fame - nec lucri nec famæ spe which was impossible, because it refers adlectatus - uncertain whether he would to events long subsequent to the death ever be read at all, certain that, if read by of the first duke. M. Faugère has been posterity, a century at least must pass engaged for the last eight years in a care- before the results of his prodigious and ful examination of the Saint-Simon manu- indefatigable labors could be known to scripts, consisting, no doubt, in great part, the world. But literature is no ungrateful of the journals, notes, and materials from mistress. The treasures of the past which which the "Memoirs" were transcribed. are placed in her keeping are repaid with He proposes to publish in six volumes a selection of the most valuable portion of these documents, and in the forefront of his work he has placed the biographical essay now before us, which has been hailed by the most competent judges as a masterpiece of this great author, bearing on almost every page the stamp of the full maturity of his genius. Saint-Simon was seventy-two years of age when he resolved in 1746 to write this parallel of the three great Bourbon kings, Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV. Although he began to keep a journal of the events of his time in 1694, when he was only nineteen years old, and con interest. The modesty or the indifference of this silent writer who cast his bread upon the waters has been recompensed after many days by a higher rank than that of his ducal honors, and he will live forever amongst the greatest annalists of his own country, amongst the keenest observers of human nature. A recent critic, commenting on some observations of our own, has remarked that Saint-Simon is one of the authors who are more talked about than read. We cannot verify the truth of this assertion, but in our judgment the "Memoirs" of Saint-Simon are obtained a copy of the journal of that one of the few modern works which pos- sedulous courtier, which he covered with sess, like the ancient classics or like notes in the earlier years of his retire * The mode in which Saint-Simon composed his "Memoirs," and the date at which they were written, are discussed at considerable length in an article published by ourselves in No. 243 of this journal in January, 1864, to which we may refer our readers. It is therefore * Ecrits Inédits de Saint-Simon publiés sur les manuscrits conservés au Dépôt des Affaires Etran-needless to revert to this subject. The "Parallel" was géres. Par M. P. FAUGERE. Tome Premier: Paral- undoubtedly written after the "Memoirs" were comlèle des trois premiers Rois Bourbons. Paris: 1880. pleted. ment. These notes and other materials were transferred into the "Memoirs," which were completed between the years 1740 and 1746. This fact is proved by Shakespeare, an inexhaustible interest. If one has nothing else to read or to do, they are always attractive and interesting. Life itself would be duller without their company. Every page is alive. Every the insertion of numerous references to personage comes before one in his proper habit. A man well read in Saint-Simon knows the court of Louis XIV. better than he knows the court of Victoria. We guess at the characters and motives of our contemporaries; we judge, and think we know, the characters and motives which are stamped on the page of history. No doubt the passionate style in which Saint-Simon wrote is the main secret of his attractive power. M. de Sainte-Beuve called him the Rubens of the court of Louis XIV., from the strength and color he threw upon the canvas. We have heard an equally great authority describe him as the Rembrandt of history, because out of his vast irregular sentences, rising as they proceed in force and passion a turbid cloud of words, wholly unlike the order and purity of French composition flashes forth at last an expression or an epithet which illuminates the whole passage and brands it on the memory. It took more than a century for the French to comprehend such a occurrences of that late period - for instance, the death of Philip V. of Spain, which took place in 1746. The introduction to the "Memoirs" is dated 1743, and the whole manuscript was written off clean by Saint-Simon himself, without additions, insertions, or corrections. Having then completed this extraordinary labor, he appears to have thought that the time was come to execute a long-cherished design of writing an exact historical comparison of the characters and reigns of Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV., dictated mainly by a romantic desire to vindicate the fame of Louis XIII., which had, and has, doubtless been eclipsed by that of his father and his son. I will not deny that impatience of the injustice commonly done to Louis XIII., between his father and his son, has ever inspired me with the desire to set it right, both by conviction and by feeling. That feeling is gratitude. My father owed to that prince all his fortune, I therefore all I am. All I have reminds me style, which is to the established tradi- of his benefits. I wait in vain that some one Simon never failed to make a pilgrimage | related to him by his own father, but this tions of French prose what Gothic architecture is to Greek. When Madame du Deffand was first allowed to have these manuscripts read to her, she told Horace Walpole that they were vastly amusing, but mal écrits: just as Swift said of Bishop Burnet (who is the nearest approach we possess to Saint-Simon) that he had "an ill style." But now the victory is complete. In a form essentially different from his own, Bossuet himself has found a rival where he never suspected it. Saint-Simon ranks with the finest French writers, and this volume may be ranked amongst the chefs d'œuvre of his pen. We have said that he was seventy-two when he wrote it. It is now ascertained with tolerable certainty that after the death of Dangeau in 1720 Saint-Simon else, who lived by his favors, and more capable than myself, should be sufficiently mindful of them to rescue his benefactor from this intolerable oppression. No one in all these years has attempted it. At last indignation at so much ingratitude and ignorance drives me to take up the pen, but with the most scrupulous observance of truth, which alone gives a value and inspires belief. Louis XIII. had been dead one hundred and three years when these lines were written. But a century had not extinguished the ardent feelings of gratitude and affection cherished in the house of Saint-Simon, and, we must add, revived even in our time in the house of Luynes, for the late Duke de Luynes erected a statue in solid silver, in the hall at Dampierre, to the memory of the benefactor of his race. For fifty years Saintto the tomb of the king at St. Denis on May 14, the anniversary of his death; and an ever-burning lamp hung for more than a century before the king's bust in the chapel of La Ferté. He was the patron of the family; and it is not wonderful that Saint-Simon, in whom all the traditions of his race were sacred and unchangeable, should have held his own literary life to be incomplete until he had endeavored to vindicate the character and the reign of his father's royal friend, even at the risk of exaggeration, since he was prompted by these feelings to draw a picture of Louis XIII. which might pass for that of a hero and a saint. The parallel is in fact a panegyric even more than an apology. It must be read as such. But, without sharing the enthusiasm of the writer, we think that he raises considerably the character of Louis XIII., whose fate it has been to be overshadowed by his predecessor and by his successor, and above all by his own minister, Riche lieu.* We are not insensible to the defects of this work. It is full of repetitions, which are sometimes tedious; it is full of those prejudices which were rooted and ingrained in the mind of Saint-Simon. If he delights to raise Louis XIII. to the light, it is partly because by the effect of contrast he throws the latter years of Louis XIV. into darker shades of gloom and horror. The plan of the work is not happy. In speaking of Henry IV. he writes from tradition; in speaking of Louis XIII. he writes from anecdotes • The character of Louis XIII. by Nicolas Goulas, who was not in his service but in that of his brother, is perhaps more just, though less highly colored than that of Saint-Simon. "I must show you," he says, "the King Louis XIII. as a very different man from the ordinary descriptions of him, and from what he was supposed to be, for he had fine qualities, a great heart, a great mind, a perfect intelligence of war; he was capable of counsel, jealous of his authority, a good judge of the strong and the weak in mankind, fearing God, loving justice, ardent for the glory of his country and his reign, but harsh to his kinsfolk and severe to all. He lived in dread of his brother and the queen his mother; but his chief defect was a distrust of himself, for, imagining that he would make mistakes if he stood alone at the heim, he made the most deplorable mistake of all in surrendering it entirely to those whom he called to office under him. (Mémoires de Goulas, vol. i., p. 16.) must have been before he was eighteen, scarcely more than a boy; in speaking of Louis XIV., each scene rises before his eyes, for he had witnessed it. He had often described those scenes before. Every incident was familiar to him; yet the story gained by repetition. Nowhere is the close of the great tragedy, the death of the king, related with such power as in these pages. Saint Simon had a natural gift of eloquence and an unequalled original faculty of description - a touch did it, and every touch told. But he was not a finished artist. With all his gifts and all his industry, he was too much a grand seigneur to correct what he wrote. He knew that his sketches were loose and sometimes incoherent - but what of that? He was not an author. He wrote under an irrepressible impulse to write - more for himself than for other people. We question whether he had any clear idea of the future fate of his manuscripts a perilous inheritance: was it worth while to polish and revise them? Perhaps they would have lost something of their rugged grandeur if he had attempted the task. We like them more with the fierce irregularity of an earlier age, than if the varnish of the eighteenth century had been smeared over them. The chronology of the Bourbon kings of France is in itself curious, and may suggest reflections to our readers. There were but five of them, from the extinction of the house of Valois in 1589 to the French Revolution, which began exactly two centuries later. From the birth of Henry of Navarre in 1553 to the death of Louis XVI. in 1794, a period of no less than two hundred and forty-one years elapsed. These sovereigns succeeded each other by direct lineal descent, but Louis XV. was the great grandson, and Louis XVI. the grandson, of their respective predecessors. During the same period, no less than ten sovereigns reigned in England, besides the Commonwealth. Within this era, and within the lives of these five men, the entire history of the old Bourbon monarchy is comprised. The parallel written by Saint |