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father, still, comparatively, so young; or she must die unabsolved, and consign herself to eternal tortures.

She had turned her face from them, and lay with it pressed against the pillow, knowing that not many hours of life were left to her. Father Pierre, for the hundredth time, was exhorting her to obedience for the good of her soul; and one of his brethren held in his hand a deed which they had caused to be prepared, bestowing all her property upon the Catholic Church. The only thing wanting was her signature.

"It has been the end and aim for which I have toiled," she cried, in a tone of anguish, suddenly turning towards Father Pierre. "For that I gave up all dreams of happiness in my own existence. I am dying now, a disappointed, worn-out woman, yet scarcely more than a girl in years; and this one source of consolation, which has served to support me through all, to whisper comfort to my aching heart by night and day, you would remove from me."

"Recollect that the duration of eternity cannot be computed by time, my daughter," remarked the priest. "Are you so lost in compassion for your own soul that you persist in condemning it to perdition for ever?" "Have mercy upon me!" she moaned; "have mercy upon me!" "Have mercy upon yourself, my daughter. I tell you that the last sacraments cannot be accorded you until the sin you were guilty of in marrying a heretic shall be expiated. And that can only be done by bequeathing such of his worldly substance as remains at your disposal to the true Church, that it may be spent in saying masses for your soul."

She turned her aching head from side to side-she pressed her thin hands upon her troubled brow, on which the dews of death were gathering-she dwelt on the conflicting thoughts that were turning her brain to madness, and making a hell of what ought to have been a peaceful dying bed-and then she threw her arms beseechingly out to the holy fathers, imploring of them any words that might bring her calmness.

Can the result be doubted? A weak, terrified woman, contesting with three wily men, and completely in their power-men, moreover, who, to her perverted mind, were endowed with attributes from on high? Before morning the deeds were signed by Mrs. Chandos, and the coveted religious sacraments were administered to her. The priests had obtained their wishes, the money was theirs, and Dr. Leicester and his family were left to poverty.

it.

Do not think the account of this death-bed an idle tale, you who read Still less deem it has been drawn from any scenes which may have gone forth latterly to the public in England. It took place in France last year, just as I have related it here to you.

"Say that you forgive me, mother, ere I go," she whispered-for now that their ends were answered, the priests graciously withdrew the prohibition to exclude her relatives from her-"I had no alternative. Yet, oh, believe me!-tell it to my dear father-it has taken away all the tranquillity that would otherwise have been mine in dying." Mrs. Leicester leaned over and blessed her.

"Tell Edith," she gasped, "to be patient and hard-working, that she may qualify herself for a governess, as I did. And Heaven grant that she may some time have it her power to do for you as I would have done. To her the same impediment can never arise, for she will live and die a Protestant."

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COLERIDGE THE TABLE-TALKER.

It is not every great man whom you would infallibly find to be such, by means of a five minutes' gossip with him under a gateway, during a shower of rain. There have been gems of purest ray serene, and all that sort of thing, which have emitted a very dreary lustre at the dinner-table of patronising big-wiggery, or in the salons of blue-stockingism. There have been gentlemen, and possibly gentlewomen, of genius, invited to packed assemblies for the express purpose of being pumped; who, when the handle was applied, no matter how vigorously, by successive relays of volunteers, have given out no one drop of the anticipated living water; and who, in the wickedness or the crass obduracy of their hearts, have ignored the fact of the pumping process altogether, and though eating a good supper themselves, have, to all conversational intents and purposes, sent the exhausted pump-handlers empty away. It would be malicious to assume, as a general rule, that they have done this out of malice prepense. Perhaps to will was present with them, but the power was wanting; for in this world of ours, velle and posse are highly irregular verbs, and the potential mood not always easy of conjugation. Taciturnity is certainly no proof of genius-witness the memorable story of Coleridge's silent fellow-guest, whose mouth was opened only at the advent of the apple-dumplings, they being the jockeys for him; but neither is it a disproof. Some fine spirits who can present novel ideas in kaleidoscopic variety upon paper, not only aweing you by their profundity, but dazzling you by their tropical splendour-the sole wand of their enchantment being the pen of a ready writer-are notorious for their inability, positive or comparative (and in either case superlative), to put two ideas together by word of mouth; failing even to find a door of utterance in what Mr. Alfred Cole calls "that eternal refuge for the destitute of small talk”the weather.

When some strong-minded and hale-lunged female complained to Goldsmith that really he made but an indifferent figure in conversation, Oliver for once had the power to acquit himself with éclat in the retort courteous: "Madam," quoth he, "I have but ninepence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds." Nor, with all our admiration for the great bear of Lichfield, can we help sympathising with honest Noll, when he rebuked Boswell and the Boswellian clique for the exclusiveness of their hero-worship, and for making conversation a monarchy when it ought to be a republic. Monopoly is opposed to sound and healthy policy in these social economics. The Protectionists are in this instance, at least, heretical; the Free-traders are the catholic communion. The natural tendency of things, however, is to the former-to the monopoly system, in deference to the superiority of some one master-mind; and the province of such legislation as the subject admits, is to provide checks and counteracting forces against the undue development of restrictive duties. Among the Greeks, every symposium, as Mr. de Quincey somewhere observes, had its set of rules, and vigorous they were; had its own symposiarch to govern it, and a tyrant he was-elected democratically, he became, when once installed, an autocrat not less despotic than the King of Persia. Thus, recurring to Johnson, the anti-social effect of his con

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versational autocracy may be illustrated by the disgust which poor sensitive Goldy" felt, when interrupted in a tolerably successful speech by the cry of a German guest, who had noticed Herr Samuel's preliminary symptoms, "Stop! stop! Toctor Shonson's going to shpeak!" Gentle and holy George Herbert gives good counsel, and profitable for all times, when he says:

If thou be master-gunner, spend not all

That thou canst speak, at once; but husband it,
And give men turns of speech: do not forestall
By lavishness thine own, and other's wit,

As if thou madest thy will. A civil guest
Will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.*

Of the last line, the better-known verses of Swift are little more than a paraphrase or amplification :

Conversation is but carving:

Give no more to every guest
Than he's able to digest;

Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time

And that you may have your due,

Let your neighbours carve for you.

There should be no first fiddle, it has been pithily said, at a private concert. Nothing can be more offensive than the pas seul of a pretentious twaddler, who mounts the table "crammed like a Cambridge wrangler or a Norfolk turkey," in some particular subject, and figures away like one who has taken out his license for the evening, and means to enjoy the full benefit of the act. Hanging is too good for him, and smoking him for a bore is what he cannot appreciate. There are despots of this kind who seem to claim the right of monologue as indefeasibly theirs de jure as well as de facto, and who echo in effect the command of Augustus to Cinna:

Observe exactement la loi que je t'impose :

Prête, sans me troubler, l'oreille à mon discours;
D'aucun mot, d'aucun cri, n'en interromps le cours.†

And yet they will congratulate you, at parting, on the pleasant evening you have had together, and on the charming tone of the conversation. Chateaubriand tells us, that when he had his first interview with Napoleon, every sentence was the property of the consul; nevertheless, "Fontanes and Madame Bacciochi spoke to me of the satisfaction the consul had felt with my conversation! I had not opened my lips; so this meant to say that Bonaparte was pleased with himself" -a pleasure, by the way, not unknown to Chateaubriand himself, honest gentleman. And we should be sorry to deny, that where genius is the oracle, the pleasure is two-edged; the boon is not like the Irishman's reciprocity, all in one direction, but blesseth him that takes as well as him that giveslistener as well as speaker. Even genius, however, as we have implied, may assume too much, and swell its prerogative to a degree that shall make the faithful commons of its realm exclaim with one accord, “This

*The Church Porch."

† Corneille: "Cinna," Acte V., Scène I.
"Mémoires d'outre-tombe." A D. 1803.

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power of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."

When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war.

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The conversational autocrat of America, Margaret Fuller, discovered in an eloquent table-talker's eye a beam that might have honoured the trees of her native aboriginal forests-big enough and solid enough to settle that little mote of hers in an "almighty smash." She complained to Emerson, "The worst of hearing Carlyle is, that you cannot interrupt him. I understand the habit and power of haranguing have increased very much upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility."* It makes one laugh maliciously to contemplate this process of retribution. But the more immediate object of our present "exposition" is one whom Mr. Carlyle himself has lately weighed and found wanting in the scales of conversational power-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-"de monologue," as De Staël used to call him. A monopolist he was by common assent, and ex animo consent, except in few and transitory cases. Charles Lamb mentions that Irving once came back to ask me if I could ever get a word in with Coleridge. 'No,' said I, 'I never want.' 'Why, perhaps it is better not,' said the parson, and went away, determined how to behave in future."+ Until recently the right of monopoly, on account of his oracular infallibility, has been almost universally conceded to him. But the note of reaction has sounded; the flowing tide is threatened with an ebb; the Latter-day Pamphleteer has indicated, in his own significant way, that the Highgate hero-worship was wasted on Coleridgean moonshine, and that it is full time for stalwart iconoclasts to use their axes and hammers upon the curious carved work of this latter-day sham, We, who love from laziness or other cause-the comfortable old canon, "In medio tutissimus ibis," and who often detect ourselves quoting good Sir Roger's wise saw, that much may be said on both sides of the question-who eschew superlatives, and presume to translate semper in extremis by "always in hot water"-propose indulging ourselves with a brief retrospect of the position enjoyed by Coleridge, and the peculiar attraction exercised over satellites, small and great, by this bright particular star.

As devout Mussulmans regard Mecca, even so did bands of young England, twenty years ago and more, regard Highgate Hill, and the house of Mr. Gillman, or Killman, as Elia perversely misread the worthy doctor's name. Here the sage uttered his philosophic responses to clients of every order. He was altered, indeed, from days "when he was young -ah! woful when: ah! for the change 'twixt now and then!" His conversation was in another key from that of the time when Hazlitt first knew, and De Quincey first admired and aided him; when, like the Reverend Doctor Brown, so cleverly etched by Mackworth Praed,

His talk was like a stream, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slipped from politics to puns;
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;

* Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Vol. iii.

+ Letters, Conversations, &c., of S. T. Coleridge, 1835.

March.-VOL. XCIV. NO. CCCLXXV.

Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep

For dressing eels or shoeing horses.

It was now pent up in narrower channels; wide enough, however, and diversified enough to excite pilgrims of every caste to hasten thither and seek to quench their thirst. Those who had known him of old, and a new generation to whom his new theories promised an El Dorado of spiritual wealth, met together and worshipped under the same roof. Lamb, "the frolic and the gentle," came in grateful remembrance of evenings at the "Cat and Salutation," and went away grieving over the wreck of ancient hopes. Wordsworth came, to renew his much-prized fellowship with that

*

Noticeable man with large grey eyes,

with whom he had so often and so happily walked in friendly guise, or lay upon the moss by brook or tree. Southey came, to talk about old friends and old scenes-Bristol and the Cottles, Keswick and the Lakers, from old Bishop Watson to poor Hartley, or Job, as his uncle called for him, for his impatience. Talfourd came, "a lawyer prosperous and young-hearted." Edward Irving came, and sat at this Gamaliel's feet, and gathered seed to fructify in next Sunday's sermons. John Sterling came, and measured every mellifluous cadence of the old man eloquent. And Carlyle came, and came, and came; and, by his own showing, went empty away. So he says now; but did he think so then? Perhaps he did; and perhaps others shared in the conviction: but none could, for all that, resist the spell of the wizard, attracting them again and again within the circle of his enchanted ground. The effect was like that wrought upon the melancholy mild-eyed Lotos-eaters in Tennyson's fragment, when they found

How sweet it was, hearing the downward stream,
With half shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream.

For, stimulating as was Coleridge's talk, it was something of an opiate withal, and partook of his own sluggish physique. His was a mighty intellect, says Leigh Hunt, put upon a sensual body: two affirmatives in him made a negative; he was very metaphysical and very corporeal-so in mooting everything, he said (so to speak) nothing. Opium confirmed this constitutional predisposition, and confirmed the habit of reverie. Tasso, in Goethe's play, is assured by that well-meaning but officious and priggish gentleman, Messer Antonio, that

In one of his letters he speaks of Coleridge at Highgate as "playing at leaving off laud-m; I think," he adds, "his essentials not touched; he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up another day; and his face, when he repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory; an archangel a little damaged." See Talfourd's "Final Memorials." The allusion to "playing at leaving off" the fatal drug, reminds us of De Quincey's remark, that it would seem that although Coleridge came to Gillman's for no other purpose than to leave off laudanum, he did entice G. to commence opium-eating. "This is droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed him; and lo! he corrupts Gillman." See the review of "Gillman's Coleridge," in Blackwood, January, 1845.

+ Autobiography. Vol. ii.

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