Menzies

“ He professed penitence for his vacillation, and charged his brother-in-law to publish his declaration to that effect. Menzies was a man of much ability and learning, a zealous controversialist, and a most fervent preacher, but his pliability injured his influence and reputation. ”

“ John Menzies, then, was an honest fisherman of this same famous old town of Blackhive, celebrated from time immemorial for the finest smoked haddies that ever delighted the eye, or tickled the palate of gourmand or epicure.
John Menzies (pronounced Maingees) lived with his wife, “as,” he himself more than once remarked, “every decent man should.” ”

“ Menzies was there, and a truly kind-hearted old man he is. I was to have returned in time to spend the evening at Bentham’s, but owing to the stormy weather I did not reach my lodgings till it was too late. On Friday (a snowy day) I was out rather late; went to Bentham’s, where I spent the whole morning, dined with him and Mrs. Bentham, three in all!—they have no children, and live in the most cosy and quiet way you could imagine—and spent the whole evening with him in labeling plants which he selected for me from his duplicates. ”

“ George Menzies was born in the parish of Arbuthnot, Kincardineshire, on the 21st January 1797. His father was an agricultural labourer. On completing his education at a country school, he became, in his fourteenth year, apprentice to a gardener. He prosecuted his vocation in different districts; acted some time as clerk to the contractors of the Forth and Clyde Canal; laboured as a weaver in several towns in the counties of Forfar and Kincardine ”

“ This Southwark jury accordingly began to be suspected of Jacobite proclivities by the Whigs, and their ripeness of judgment to be doubted by ‘my lords.’ In Westminster Hall, the jury went more in accordance with what were held to be loyal principles. Mr. Menzies was tried there on May 11th. It was shown218 that he was with the rebels, from Perth to Preston; but no overt act could be proved against him. Menzies, undoubtedly, tried to escape from the Jacobites who held him, and he was so holden probably, because he had openly spoken in favour of King George. He certainly never was in action. ”

“ It was, then, for this reason chiefly, that Menzies did not get a little excited over the new discovery, too; for he was bound to admit that, in spite of the lupine expression about the mouth, there was some excuse this time for his friend’s enthusiasm. The girl was pretty, an almost perfect blonde, with daintily shaped hands, and dressed as only a young Paris beauty can dress, who has money and leisure at her command.
Yes, there was excuse; and yet it was the height of folly. Girls mean expenditure in one way or another, and just now neither he nor O’Hara had anything to spend. ”

“ Menzies observed, taking another seat. “Of course I congratulate you, but are you sure she is the sort of girl you will always care about or who will always care about you. You haven’t known her very long, and most women cost a deuced lot of money, especially French ones. Don’t take the irrevocable steps before contemplating them well first.”
“I have,” O’Hara retorted, “so it’s no use sermonising. I have made up my mind to marry Gabrielle, and nothing on earth will deter me.”
“Do you know her people, or anything about them?” Menzies ventured. ”

“ Jaap nor the big skipper was anxious to quarrel with a controversialist who had such abundant stores of hospitality at her command. Moreover, Kate Menzies was in the habit of speaking her mind; was it not better, for the sake of peace and quietness, to yield a little? This cousin of hers from the Highlands could parade some book-learning it is true; and he had plenty of cut-and-dried theories that sounded plausible enough; and his apparent knowledge of the working of American institutions was sufficiently good for an argument—so long as one could not get at the real facts ”

“ He ultimately became proprietor and editor of the Woodstock Herald newspaper. After a short illness, he died at Woodstock, Canada West, on the 4th March 1847, in his fifty-first year.
Menzies was possessed of good talents and indomitable energy. He wrote respectable verses, though not marked by any decided originality. In 1822, he published, at Forfar, a small volume of poems, entitled, "Poetical Trifles," of which a second and enlarged edition appeared five years afterwards. The whole of his poems, with an account of his life, in a duodecimo volume, were published at Montrose in 1854. ”

“ Ronald said to Sergeant Menzies; "but what is it? These hills extend twenty or thirty miles either way, at the very least—twice as far, for anything I know. They contain scores of kraals—I don't suppose I am far out when I say hundreds. We have burnt three or four, have marched a mile or two into the woods, have killed, perhaps, a hundred Kaffirs at the outside, and have lost in killed and wounded about fifty of our own men. I suppose, altogether, there are fifteen or twenty thousand Kaffirs there. ”

“ Through such perilous ways we shall see the infatuated woman following and aiding him in his extravagant and guilty designs. Receiving the law instead of giving it, she strives to promote the passion of another by devoting to his service all her coquetry as well as greatness of soul, her penetration and intrepidity, her attractive sweetness and indomitable energy. She undertakes to mislead Condé, to rob France of the conqueror of Rocroy and of Lens, and to give him to Spain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A life of frivolity and vice had not extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex. The French Ambassador, Barillon, who had come to the palace to inquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole heart to him. “I have,” she said, “a thing of great moment to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without [117] being reconciled to the Church. ”

“ No longer timid, no longer awkward, in presence of danger the daughter of Marshal de Brézé became the amazon and almost the heroine. She held reviews, councils of war, negotiated, and issued orders. Scarcely had she reached Bordeaux, her entry into which was quite an ovation, than she besieged the Parliament chamber to procure the registration of her requests and protestations against the unjust detention of her husband. ”

“ Now the religion of the clan, the ideas of which determine the character of later Semitic systems, may be briefly described as follows. Each clan has its own god, perhaps he was originally an animal, at any rate he is the father or ancestor of the clan, he is of the same blood with them, he belongs to them and to no other clan. So far the assertion that the Semites are naturally monotheists is true; but the same is true of all totemistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a community with such a divine head, and the worship of that god is the only one possible to him. ”

“ The Cardinal replied that he could not promise himself any repose in France, for there, he said, the female politicians were more to be dreaded than the male; and he complained bitterly of the torments he had undergone at the hands of certain political women of the Fronde—notably the Duchess de Longueville, the Duchess de Chevreuse, and the Princess Palatine, each of whom, he asserted, was capable of upsetting three kingdoms.
“You are very lucky here in Spain,” he added. “You have, as everywhere else, two kinds of women—coquettes in abundance, and a very few simple-minded domestic women. ”

“ She could dispose almost at will of the Houses of Rohan and Lorraine, particularly of the Duke de Guise and the Duke d’Elbeuf, like herself just returned from Flanders. She reckoned upon the Vendômes, upon the Duke d’Epernon, upon La Vieuville, her old companions in exile in England; upon the ill-treated Bouillons, upon La Rochefoucauld, whose disposition and pretensions were so well known to her; upon Lord Montagu, who had been her slave, and at that moment possessed the entire confidence of Anne of Austria; upon La Châtre, the friend of the Vendômes, and Colonel-General of the Swiss Guards ”

“ We have a trio, among others”—and he again named the three fair factionists above mentioned—“who [xii] threw us all daily into more confusion than was ever known in Babel.”
“Thank heaven!” replied Don Louis, somewhat ungallantly, “our women are of the disposition seemingly so well known to you. Provided that they can finger the cash, whether of their husbands or their lovers, they are satisfied; and I am very glad to say that they do not meddle with politics, for if they did they would assuredly embroil everything in Spain as they do in France.” ”

“ His individual inclination was to come to an understanding with the Queen and even with Mazarin, as he had very clearly shown. He had continually returned to it; but after so many lying words and odious plots, the execution of which alone was wanting, he thought he would be in a better position to treat solidly with the Court at the head of a powerful and victorious army, than in the midst of wretched intrigues, unworthy of his character, in which he momentarily staked his honour and his life. He never permitted the idea of raising himself above royalty to enter into his mind ”

“ There was nothing left, therefore, but to grant the latter a recall which, smarting with a humiliation so unforeseen to his overweening arrogance, he demanded in accents of rage and despair. However, in order to salve his amour-propre, the Abbé d’Estrées continued to discharge the functions of the embassy, as though his uncle’s absence were only temporary; but that state of things did not suit either of the two factions which for more than twelve months past divided the French household of the King of [176] Spain, surpassing each other in vituperation and calumny. ”

“ As for his friend, Marshal de Bezons, whose hasty retreat upon the banks of the Segra excited the indignation of the Spanish court, he lost his command. She even denounced the Duke of Orleans to his royal uncle, and the erring nephew had very great difficulty in escaping a scandalous trial. He was forced, therefore, to renounce his ambitious hopes with regard to Spain, if ever he had seriously nourished them. Such an exposure, rendered his return to the Peninsula impossible. His faction was speedily dispersed. ”

“ On the arrest of her husband she had been confided to the care of a man of capacity—Lenet, from whose “Memoirs” we have already cited. He at first conducted her and her son in safety from Chantilly to Montrond, a stronghold of the Condés, but fearing to be besieged in it, straightway to Bordeaux. The Parliament of Guienne had had a deadly quarrel with Mazarin for imposing upon them Epernon, a governor they detested, and whom the Cardinal was bent upon allying by marriage with his own family. ”

“ In the stirring careers of certain among these remarkable personages, it will be seen that the mainspring of their political zeal was either the fierce excitement of an overmastering passion, an irresistible proclivity to gallantry, or an absorbing ambition, rather than any patriotic motive. This may go far to explain the singular sagacity, finesse, and energy displayed in their devotion to what otherwise appears alike mischievous and chimerical by those three high-born and splendidly-gifted women who figured so conspicuously in the civil war of the Fronde ”

“ To negotiate the second with Torcy, she sent D’Aubigny secretly to France, and the latter, after some overtures, gave her hopes of entire success. Transported with delight, she gave herself up to all the illusions of what the future had in store for her of happiness. She was not, therefore, destined to descend either in rank or honours after quitting the Court of Madrid. Here she had ruled beneath the shadow of a phantom King; there she would command directly and in person. In Spain, she had only been a subordinate; in France she would have no superior, and would be more mistress of herself. ”

“ Among so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose name ought not to be effaced from, nor placed lowest on the list, although a humble—we were going to say, a humiliated, disdained, and sacrificed wife; a martyr to conjugal faith, but who, perhaps, can scarcely be called a “political” woman.
Mademoiselle de Brézé, as already intimated, had entered into the Condé family through the detestable influence of authority and politics. The Duke d’Enghien, therefore, unhappily held his wife in aversion ”

“ If in Arab thought itself a god like Allah was rising to definite personal character and to a position of great superiority over the old gods, then the inner movement was in the same direction as the influence of older religions from without, and the time was ripe for a new faith. It was not to be expected that a people like the Arabs should accept a religion which had its origin in another country, or which threatened like Christianity to bring to an end the old tribal system; a new growth from within was needed, and this was ready to appear. ”