active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

“ The King’s name was a tower of strength; and when the nation, in the course of the miserable years from 1610 to 1661, saw the extinction of nobility, religion, law, and almost of civilised society, it caught the first sound that told it it still had a King, as an echo from the past assuring it of its future. It forgot Louis the Thirteenth, the Regency, and the Fronde, and only remembered that its monarch was the grandson of Henry the Fourth, when it witnessed in his reign the culmination of the French monarchy, and the splendid intellectual development with which it was simultaneous. ”

“ How thoroughly did the banished woman then realise the woes of exile—how hard it is to climb and descend the stranger’s stair, experience the hollowness of his promise, and the arrogance of his commiseration. And, finally, as though fated to drain her cup of bitterness to the last drop, to learn that she, her long-loved bosom friend and royal mistress, who owed her, at the very least, a silent fidelity, had openly ranged herself on the side of fortune and Richelieu! ”

“ What a delightful entertainment must it be to the fair sex whom their native modesty, and the tenderness of men towards them exempt from public business, to pass their hours in imitating fruits and flowers, and transplanting all the beauties of nature into their own dress, or raising a new creation in their closets and apartments! How pleasing is the amusement of walking among the shades and groves planted by themselves, in surveying heroes slain by the needle, or little Cupids which they have brought into the world without pain! ”

“ Marie-Louise of Savoy, whom her Camerara-mayor met for the first time on board her galley in the harbour of Villefranche, at the moment when the tearful eyes of the young princess were casting a last glance at the lovely Italian land, was that admirable queen whose life in default of mental courage became worn out by the corroding of adversity, and whose popular name has remained as a symbol in Spain of every royal and domestic virtue. ”

“ NEEDLEWORK ON BOOKS.
“And often did she look
On that which in her hand she bore,
In velvet bound and broider’d o’er—
Her breviary book.”
Marmion.
“Books are ours,
Within whose silent chambers treasure lies
Preserved from age to age—
These hoards of truth we can unlock at will.”
Wordsworth.
Deep indeed are our obligations for those treasures which “we can unlock at will:” treasures of far more value than gold or gems, for they oftentimes bestow that which gold cannot purchase—even forgetfulness of sorrow and pain. Happy are those who have a taste for reading and leisure to indulge it. ”

“ One can scarcely resist a smile on seeing historians for the most part taking no account of it, as a thing too frivolous, and consigning it altogether to private life, as though that which agitates the soul so powerfully were not the principle of that which blazes forth exteriorly! No, the empire of beauty knows no limitation, and in no instance did it show itself more potent than over those great hearts of which Alexander the Great, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Henry IV. of France were the owners. We may well place Condé amongst such illustrious company. ”

“ A soul which incredulity had frozen into apathy became fervent before its Creator. Anne de Gonzagua did not fear to let her repentance be seen; she desired that the publicity of her penitence might obliterate, if it were possible, the scandal of her past life. Her conscience became tender, even scrupulous. “Plus elle était clairvoyante,” says Bossuet; “plus elle était tourmentée.” Henceforward she devoted herself wholly to charity and prayer. She became as humble as she had hitherto been proud. She cherished a life of seclusion as much as she had once loved mundane notoriety. ”

“ It seems almost impossible to have lived amidst the stupendous magnificence of Egypt in days of yore, without the mind assimilating itself in some degree to the greatness with which it was surrounded. The vast deserts, the stupendous mountains, the river Nile—the single and solitary river which in itself sufficed the needs of a mighty empire—these majestic monuments of nature seemed as emblems to which the people should fashion, as they did fashion, their pyramids, their tombs, their sphynxes, their mighty reservoirs, and their colossal statues. ”

“ We have already shown that before her liaison with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had been a stranger to politics. Occupied solely with innocent gallantry and the homage of the most refined society of the day, she allowed herself in all else to be led by her father and her elder brother. But no sooner was La Rochefoucauld master of her heart, than she gave herself wholly up to him, and became a mere instrument in his hands. Having been by him inspired with ambition, she made it a point of honour, and doubtless a secret happiness, to share his destiny. ”

“ In such a school—borne along the brimming tide of pleasure by the soft breeze of homage—did Madame di Bracciano’s political intelligence rapidly ripen: and if by a glittering gaiety, ease of manner, and a species of decorous gallantry, her life appeared to continue the traditions of Anne of Austria’s time, the restrained firmness of her opinions, her reverence for absolute authority, her settled resolve to owe nothing to any one save to her own Great King, combined to link her fast to the new school of power and respect founded by Louis XIV. in the plenitude of his sway. ”

“ It was once the fashion for people who either were or fancied themselves to be in love to prove the sincerity of their passion by the fortitude with which they could bear those extremes of heat and cold from which unsophisticated nature would shrink. These “penitents of love,” for so the fraternity—and a pretty numerous one it was—was called, would clothe themselves in the dog-days in the thickest mantles lined throughout with the warmest fur: when the winds howled, the hail beat, and snow invested the earth with a freezing mantle, they wore the thinnest and most fragile garments. ”

“ Let us beware of hastily applying to Madame de Longueville that maxim of her cynical lover: “Women often think they still love him whom they no longer really love. The opportunity of an intrigue, the mental emotion to which gallantry gives birth, natural inclination to the pleasure of being beloved, and the pain of refusing the lover, together persuade them that they cherish a genuine passion when it is nothing more than mere coquetry.” ”

“ Long trains of wounded and dying young men began to be carried in; the groans and blood were horrible to hear and see; and the women of all ranks and ages were frantic with sympathy and grief. De Retz and terror had so chilled the Duke d’Orleans into inaction that he would have let Condé perish, had not Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who was at that time smitten with Condé, wrung indignantly from her father, by dint of tears and entreaties, an order to open the gates to the outnumbered Prince. ”

“ John Taylor.
Needlework is an art so attractive in itself; it is capable of such infinite variety, and is such a beguiler of lonely, as of social hours, and offers such scope to the indulgence of fancy, and the display of taste; it is withal—in its lighter branches—accompanied with so little bodily exertion, not deranging the most recherché dress, nor incommoding the most elaborate and exquisite costume, that we cannot wonder that it has been practised with ardour even by those the farthest removed from any necessity for its exercise. ”

“ But one cannot, with impunity, trifle with love. That tragic adventure of the eldest of the Châtillons perishing, in the flower of his youth, by the hand of the eldest of the Guises was quickly echoed by song and romance through every salon, and cast a gloom upon the destiny of Madame de Longueville, and gave her, at an early period, a fame at once aristocratic and popular, which prepared her wonderfully to play a great part in that other tragi-comedy, heroic and gallant, called the Fronde. ”

“ Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction astonishes, devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than that of their own interest, no other deity than success, and which the uncontrollable current of human affairs not unfrequently brings rapidly to the surface. Cradled in revolutions, he had seen the Commonwealth pass away, the Stuarts fall, the House of Orange proclaimed. He had taken part in intrigues, plots, apostacies, defections: doubt alone survived every other political instinct of his heart. ”

“ Beautiful and good, the blessing of Heaven attending him, and throwing a beam of light on his fair brow, the pure and holy child appears like a seraph administering at that altar to which he had been consecrated a babe, and at which his ministry was sanctioned even by the voice of the Most High himself, when in the solemn stillness of midnight he breathed his wishes into the heart of the child, and made him, infant as he was, the medium of his communications to one grown hoary in the service of the altar. ”

“ As has been already said, Madame de Longueville did not love her husband. Not only was he greatly her senior, but there was nothing about him that responded to the ideal which that illustrious disciple of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had formed for herself, and which she pursued in vain through guilty illusions, until that which she sought and found at its very source—no longer in the school of Corneille and of Mademoiselle de Scuderi, but in that of her Saviour, in the Carmelite convent and at Port Royal. Never was woman less prone to gallantry by nature than Anne de Bourbon ”

“ In reproaching Madame de Maintenon for preferring the King’s ease to that of his honour, she launches shafts against her which, though tipped with elegance, are none the less sharp-pointed, sometimes in the shape of studied reproaches, but more frequently still with the spontaneous overflowings of a towering wrath. The writer then reveals herself from beneath the guise of the woman of the world, and it is clearly seen that in that encompassed life the heart has for a moment triumphed over the intelligence. ”

“ At her shrine worship all the nations of the earth. The savage who bores his nose or tattooes his tawny skin is impelled by the same power which robes the courtly Eastern in flowing garments; and the dark-hued beauty who smears herself with blubber is influenced by the selfsame motive which causes the fair-haired daughter of England to tint her delicate cheek with the mimic rose.
And it is not merely in the shape and form of garments that this deity exercises her tyrannic sway, transforming “men into monsters,” and women likewise—if it were possible: her vagaries are infinite and unaccountable ”

“ When the fiercest of English wars is shaking every heart in the kingdom, there would be wailing and misery in every house if it were reported that four hundred officers had been killed in a year. Yet these young desperadoes were all of officer’s rank, and the quarrel in which they fell was probably either dishonourable or contemptible. Men fought and killed each other for a word or a look, or a fashion of dress, or the mere sake of killing. Where morality is loosened to the extent of a disregard of life, we may be sure the general behaviour in other respects is equally to be deplored. ”

“ Fashion in those days was not quite the chameleon-hued creature that she is at present; nor were the fabrics on which her fancy was displayed quite so light and airy: their gold was gold—not silk covered with gilded silver; and consequently the raiment of those days, inwrought with slips of gold beaten thin and cut into spangles or strips, and sewed on in various patterns, sometimes intermingled with precious stones, would carry its own intrinsic value with it. ”

“ The great master has not given us a bust-portrait of Madame des Ursins, but a full-length likeness, with that lavish excess of colour flung upon the canvas which imparts more life than truth, more of relief than perspective to the majority of his pictures. ”

“ He made the Queen believe that Madame de Chevreuse sought to rule her with a rod of iron; that she had changed her mask, but not her character; that she was ever the same impulsive and restless person, who, with all her talent and devotedness, had never worked aught but mischief around her, and was only instrumental in ruining others as well as herself. By degrees, underhand and hidden as it might be, war between the Duchess and the Cardinal declared itself unmistakably. The commencement and progress of this curious struggle for supremacy has been admirably depicted by La Rochefoucauld ”

“ Left in Guienne, without any great or engrossing occupation, with a vacant mind, discontented both with others and herself, Madame de Longueville was no longer the brilliant Bellona of Stenay, but her pride and dignity, which she could not lose, never failed to sustain her. She therefore resolved to remain even unto the end faithful to that brother whose heart was sought to be steeled against her by the whispers of calumny: to remain in Bordeaux as long as possible, without recoiling from any means which necessity might prescribe. ”

“ La Rochefoucauld, the historian of that party, has made us tolerably familiar with the men who composed it. They were a band of eccentric and mischievous spirits, bold of heart, ready of hand, and of boundless fidelity to one another. Professing to hold the most outrageous maxims, incessantly invoking Brutus and old Rome, and intermingling gallant with political intrigues, they suffered themselves to be hurried beyond the bounds of reason through a Quixotic idea of always pleasing the ladies. ”

“ Who can see with patience the monstrous, fantastical inventions which the people of our times [Pg 196] have invented to deform, rather than adorn, their persons? Who can behold without indignation their long pointed shoes; their caps with feathers; their hair twisted and hanging down like tails; the foreheads of young men, as well as women, formed into a kind of furrows with ivory-headed pins; their bellies so cruelly squeezed with cords, that they suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs suffered for religion? ”

“ Her ambition, moreover, could not have had a more brilliant and legitimate aim than that of associating herself in the glorious task of France become the instructress of Spain; and Madame des Ursins, who joined to her own the aspirations of the other sex, entered upon her new mission with a zeal, an ardour, and an activity more than virile.
Into what profound decadence Spain had then fallen is well known to any reader of modern history, and the history of modern Europe contains no more terrible lesson. ”

“ The accommodations provided for the king and privileged members of his court on this occasion were more than magnificent; a vast and splendid edifice that seemed to be endued with the magnificence, and to rise almost with the celerity of that prepared by the slaves of the lamp, where the richest tapestry and silk embroidery—the costliest produce of the most accomplished artisans, were almost unnoticed amid the gold and jewellery by which they were surrounded—where all that art could produce, or riches devise had been lavished—all this has been often described. ”