pupil of the Jesuits, and had learned from those masters of the art of sophistry that subtle mode of reasoning which they now employed for the destruction of their teachers.*

In 1764, was published the edict for the expulsion of the Jesuits, and with them was swept away the last barrier to the propagation of the new doctrines; and infidelity, no longer lurking shamefaced in holes and corners, flaunted itself boldly and publicly, even in the church itself. The princes of the church left the laity far behind in their vices and hideous debaucheries; the abbés were mere hangers-on at the houses of noble courtesans-panders to the rich, boon companions in every dissolute excess, ministers of religion in form, sceptics and even atheists in heart, scoffing in society at the very doctrines they preached. Religion became a byword and a jest, a subject for puns and epigrams, and the wit applauded loudest was that which contained the largest amount of blasphemy.

The whole fabric of society, from the cottage to the court, from the alley to the altar, was rotting, crumbling. There was no cohesion anywhere; love, faith, honour, religion, all were swallowed up in a gulf of seething corruption. King, priest, noble, lady, author, and artist, bourgeois, ruffian-all mingled together in the demon revel of this hellish carnival, with the thunderclouds above their heads, the earthquake beneath their feet, and Satan as master of the revels.

There is little more of interest to be told of the life of La Pompadour. The"fight" went on fiercely as ever, now with the Jesuitsa severe one, involving as it did, excommunication-now with the ministers, now with the people. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, so unfavourable in many respects to the interests of France, and the hasty conclusion of which was ascribed to her influence, rendered her name odious throughout the country. But with the attempt upon the King's life by Damiens, the contriving of which was ascribed by turns to every party in the state, not excluding the Dauphin himself— came her severest trial of strength. She was ordered to quit the palace; had even commenced preparations for doing so, but her empire was to be relinquished only with life; she clung to her position, and weathered the storm.

The family compact, the Austrian alliance, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, all of which events she largely influenced, raised her for a time into popularity. But with the news of the terrible defeat of Rosbach this transient gleam of national favour died out for ever. It mattered but little now; "the fight" was nearly over-the grisly victor of all flesh had his dart ready poised, and the brilliant La Pompadour, succumbing to a painful disease that had been wearing her

Jay, the principal of the Jesuits' College, had predicted of Voltaire that he would one day become the leader of Deism in France.

away for years, lay upon her deathbed. But little of that brilliance and beauty which had enslaved all hearts was left in those bloodless lips, those worn, cadaverous features. Rouge and rose-coloured silk garments but made them look the more ghastly. Since some time the Church had received her back into its bosom; she was a sister of a religious body, and regularly performed all the rites of a good Catholic. As her confessor, after administering extreme unction, was leaving the chamber, she cried to him, "Stay a moment, and I will go with you." Those were her last words. She expired with her hand in the King's. Her death took place in 1764. She was forty-two years old. She was carried to the grave by the Capuchin brothers; her funeral little better than a pauper's. It was a wet day, and as Louis saw the melancholy cortège pass along, he cynically remarked, "Madame la Marquise will have bad weather for her journey to-day!" Not one tear did he shed for the woman who had been his constant companion during so many years of his life.

It has been said that Pompadour possessed but little talent; no genuine love of art and literature, and left but little or no trace upon her age. But so harsh a judgment is untenable after a dispassionate review of her life. To estimate the moral character and to estimate the effects produced by celebrated individuals upon their age and nation should be separate tasks. But they too frequently coalesce in an author's mind to the destruction of impartiality. That she was immoral, that she was unscrupulously ambitious, and that by her extravagance and bad councils she worked incalculable evils upon France is indisputable. But in our judgment of this woman and of her acts we must cast aside our nineteenth century code of morality, and try her by that of her own age-that is to say, in true British fashion, by her peers. What that age was I have endeavoured to show; and did I dare to illustrate its corruption by stories out of the lives of its men and women, Jeanne Antoinette d'Etioles would show quite advantageously beside hundreds of her contemporaries. Moral corruption she imbibed at her mother's breast. "C'est un morceau pour un roi!" was the exclamation constantly in Madame Poisson's mouth when speaking of her daughter. She was educated, she was accomplished, she was trained in every elegance of life and manner to fit her for the reigning Sultanaship of the royal harem. Had the girl been born a saint she could not have resisted the infection of such a training. Neither was the position of king's mistress regarded by far better mothers than Madame Poisson as a degradation, but rather as an honour, for which the highest ladies in the land contested. And there is reason to believe Madame d'Etioles was faithful to her one dereliction from morality—a praise that could scarcely be extended to one of her contemporaries; it is, at all events, quite certain that her conduct was not marked by that indiscriminate licentiousness which was the

general attribute of the court ladies of her age. The darkest moral taint upon her memory is the Parc aux Cerfs, the revolting and unnatural vices of which have justly excited the shuddering abhorrence of posterity.

Ambition was her ruling passion; to retain her power there was no depth of degradation into which she would not have plunged, perhaps no crime she would have left uncommitted. But she had no innate love of vice, and to crime she only resorted in a last extremity. Few, if any, deliberate and gratuitous acts of evil mark her life; the various charges that are brought against her are enormously exaggerated, being utterly at variance with the general tone of her character and known facts that indicate an opposite disposition. Had her temper been of that vindictiveness with which it is accredited she would scarcely have interceded with the King to permit the return of Voltaire, at whose hands she had received such ingratitude and bitter contempt. Neither was she deficient in generosity; the exiled House of Stuart found in her a warm and sympathising friend to the last; upon the occasion of the birth of Louis (afterwards the Sixteenth of that name) she urged upon the King, in place of fêtes and fireworks, to distribute food among the poor of Paris during one month, and to endow 600 poor girls with 600 livres each; and in 1759 she sent her own plate and some of her treasures to the mint for public use. To literary men and artists she was a most munificent patroness; many an one whose works have become the delight of posterity might have languished and died in obscurity and neglect had it not been for the fostering care of Pompadour; and under a King utterly indifferent to intellectual pursuits men of letters and art rose to a more independent position than they could claim under the ostentatious patronage of Louis the Fourteenth.

It has been said that her patronage of art and letters, far from being the result of an innate love of them, was but the desire to raise a nobility of genius to counterbalance the nobility of birth, behind which former she sheltered her own plebeian origin. Such a scheme might have been mingled in her mind with more disinterested and spontaneous motives; but to deny all genuine love of intellectual pursuits to one who proved herself to be so exquisite an adept in several would be to yield to an unjust prejudice. To enter into all the intricacies of diplomacy, and to even attempt to guide the state affairs of so great a nation as France during so critical a period of her history, argued a power of mind that but few women have possessed. But did it argue no genius to sustain during nineteen years her empire over the cold-hearted, fickle Louis, to amuse his morbid melancholy by an ever-changing variety of brilliant amusements? Surely great inventive faculties were required for such a task.

Even hostile historians admit that during her régime it was less

the age of Louis the Fifteenth than that of Pompadour--that the taste which reigned in design, in fashions, in manners, in poesy, in every art of her time, carries her seal, and yet in the very same page they will assert that she left little or no trace upon her age! To her taste and talent France owes the first impetus which has since made her pre-eminent in art manufactures. In the streets of Paris are yet to be traced her designs, and in the magnificent establishment at Sèvres, still unsurpassed, if not unrivalled, she has left one of the most splendid monuments that her country can boast.

I have no desire to gloze over the faults of this woman, or to elevate her into a heroine much wronged by posterity; neither am I prepared to receive as veracious all the abominable tales told against her by the scandalous chronicles published during and after the Revolution, of which the sole purpose was to blacken and degrade monarchy and all its belongings with the most unblushing mendacities. My only object is to present her as she was-one who, after making all allowance for her vicious life and for all the bitter evils she brought upon France, was not an utterly redeemless demon of iniquity, but a guilty, erring woman-one who, however morally destitute she might be, still possessed brilliant talents, which were frequently employed for the good of art, literature, and her country.

A Pigeon at Hurlingham.

WELL! here I am, and precious hot I find it;

I wish I were a Fantail, not to mind it!
Ten to the foot's too warm for any sinner.
I'd quite as soon be in a pie for dinner.
In fact it would be cooler to be baked,
For they've the decency to cook us naked,
And leave our feet outside; but here, I tell ye,
My toes are cramped and trodden to a jelly.
So this is Hurlingham! accursed place!

The fell destroyer of our harmless race;
Centre of fashion, haunt of lords and ladies,
A whited sepulchre, a dazzling Hades.
From Monday here we're massacred till Saturday,
But murdered worse than ever on the latter day;
For then conspire the "Upper Ten" to vex us,
"Omnis ætatis, utriusque sexus,"

With jealous hearts, intent to shed the blood,
Which, like their own, dates backwards to the Flood.

As for a pretext, they can find a reason.

For killing us each day throughout the season.

Some people talk as if the sport were quite meant
To give the birds some innocent excitement;
And say a little shooting to us Rocks is
Just the delight that hunting is to foxes.

(Poor beasts! how can they possibly avoid it?
They'd be surprised to hear" how they enjoyed it.)
One says that killing pigeons is as good

As murdering barndoor pheasants in a wood:
Granted! But please to prove that shooting's pleasant
When looked at from the aspect of the pheasant!
They all insist that death attends the shot

(Some think, precedes a trifle, and some not);