"Robert Verney. Knows ye parties. Abt. my house, heard deft, tell a man yt Mary Butcher is a witch, and bewitcht my wife.

"Said she was a witch. She came over ye hedge, her foot light, and over ye pond.

"Knows ye words were mentioned by Mary Butcher. She was named in ye conversation.

"Cross-exam. Deft, a cooper.

"Tho. Butcher. There goes ye old witch yt bewitched my wife. Damn her, I will have ye blood of her.

Serjt. Urbyn, pro def.

"Geo. Fellows. Heard Robt. Verney swear at Hadland.

Verdict pro quer. da l'."*

In 1786, the statutes of England and Scotland against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil spirits, were repealed; but it does not appear that Lord Hardwicke took any active part in aiding or procuring these measures.

However great had been Lord Hardwicke's skill as an advocate, and however large the reputation which he earned as the first common law judge of the land, yet, it is in his capacity of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain-his advancement to which office took place on the decease of Lord Talbot, the great seal having been delivered on the 21st of February, 1737-that Lord Hardwicke is principally known to the world; and it is to the mode in which he discharged the functions of that exalted station that he owes, in the main, the celebrity which he has obtained.

The advancement of Lord Hardwicke to the chancellorship led him to occupy a more prominent and elevated position in the political world, and the first occurrence in which he was engaged were the unhappy differences which at that time existed in the royal family. It was also very soon after Lord Hardwicke's advancement to his new office that the misunderstanding took place in regard to a non-application on the part of the poet Thomson, which led to the bard of the "Seasons" losing a lucrative sinecure. Upon this subject Mr. Harris makes the following observations, unfortunately too civilised for the age we live in :—

Probably no class of men in this country are less liberally requited, according to their labours, than literary men of real merit ; and of these, perhaps, poets fare the worst of all. Their minds and time, nay, health, and even life itself, they devote to their fellow creatures, and to their true interests, the promotion of their intellectual, and moral, and social good. For this they despise the allurements of wealth and luxury, which ordinary professions, and even business avocations of a lower grade, would be pretty certain to bring them. They taste in reality the poverty and privation they so forcibly describe, and which they so feelingly contribute to guard others against. Owing to a barbarous conventional rule in this civilised age, they are in a great measure excluded from society, or at any rate are allowed no recognised place or station in it, who are at once its highest benefactors, and its greatest ornaments. By their limited means, they are but too often precluded from participating in those pleasures they so contribute to enhance in others; and by the constant effort of mind and unremitting exertion which they undergo, they become debilitated and frail, both in person and intellect.

These men surely then are those who both stand most in need of, and are best entitled to, the bounty of the state. They are at once its most deserving members, and those to whom it owes the most. There are few with whose services it could so hardly dispense and there are none whose efforts are so entirely devoted to the public weal, and to whom therefore a grant by the state, of the nature of that for a time given to Thomson, is in fact not a mere idle pension, but well-earned pay.

So late as the year 1759, a case occurred at Wingrove, in Hertfordshire.

As the nation advances yet further in its career of civilisation, it may be hoped that the truth of what I have propounded will not only be acknowledged, but acted upon; and it cannot be doubted that the encouragement to men of mind thus afforded, will be fully responded to by them.

On the 22nd of May, 1740, Mr. Philip Yorke, the eldest son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, married Miss Jemima Campbell, only daughter of John, Earl of Breadalbane, and grand-daughter of the Duke of Kent. The extract which follows, from a letter by Horace Walpole to Mr. Conway, shows the feelings entertained of the prosperous career of the chancellor and his family at this period :

66

Harry, what luck the Chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man; but then in accidents; he is made Chief Justice and peer when Talbot is made Chancellor and peer: Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the seals at an age when others are scarce made solicitors; then marries his son into one of the first families of Britain, obtains a patent for a marquisate, and eight thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent's death; the Duke dies in a fortnight, and leaves them all! People talk of fortune's wheel, that is always rolling, troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled along with it."*`

Upon the fall of the Walpole administration and the reconciliation of the king with the Prince of Wales, Lord Hardwicke was retained as chancellor by the new ministry. His difficulties in freeing himself from the trammels of party were very great, but they afford a truly noble and grand moral spectacle. The high and eminent position of the lord chancellor involved him more or less in all the great events of his time. Upon the landing of Prince Charles Edward, in 1745, the assiduity of the chancellor was unbounded. As the most active, able, and leading member of the coronal of regency, he was incessantly occupied in concerting measures to check the rebellion, and after the defeat of the Pretender the very important, painful, and onerous task devolved upon him, of presiding in the first judicial assembly of this mighty nation, on the trials in cases of life and death, of persons of the first rank and quality.

The suppression of the rebellion was, however, only followed by new dissensions in the royal family, by a dissolution of parliament, and by the temporary departure of the king for Hanover; till the hopes of the opposition, the distractions in the royal family, and the apprehensions of the chancellor and his colleagues, were alike put an end to by the death of Frederick Prince of Wales on the 26th of March, 1751. The Regency Bill, the abrogation of the Julian style, the Forfeited Estates' Bill, the Clandestine Marriage Bill, and the Naturalisation of the Jews, were among the chief public acts of the ensuing three years, and when in 1754 the Duke of Newcastle took office as prime minister, the Lord Chancellor was created Earl of Hardwicke, a fair and due reward for his long and great services rendered to his country in so many ways.

On the calamitous death of Mr. Pelham, the arduous task of reconstructing the government devolved on the Earl of Hardwicke, and for a short interval the chancellor was the only responsible and acting minister of the crown. The new ministry was not destined, however, to hold out long against the inflexible and uncompromising hostility of Mr. Pitt to the Duke of Newcastle, and when, on the 11th of November, 1756, his grace resigned his place in the administration, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke also came to the resolution of giving up the great seal and retiring altogether from official life. The retirement of such a man as Lord

*Correspondence of Horace Walpole.

Chancellor Hardwicke from the high judicial and political dignity which for nearly twenty years he had filled with such distinguished eminence, was an event which formed an era, not only in his own life, but also in the history of his country. His loss appears, indeed, to have been almost universally regretted.

"Never," says Lord Mahon, "has the office of chancellor been more uprightly, more learnedly, and more ably filled."

It was so difficult to find a successor to Lord Hardwicke, that the great seal was placed in commission, and was left so during the whole of George II.'s reign. A flattering testimony to the merits of both father and son was also paid by the new ministry, in promoting Mr. Charles Yorke to the office of solicitor-general.

The favour with which Lord Hardwicke was regarded by George III., when Prince of Wales, was openly manifested on the young king's accession to the throne, by his requesting the veteran judge again to occupy the high official station in which he had so long and so ably presided. But Lord Hardwicke was at this period not only in the decline of life, but he had also experienced a long and severe illness, combined with several family afflictions,-the last of which was the death of Lady Hardwicke, which took place on the 19th of September, 1761, at Wimpole,— and he finally retired from the duties and cares of public life, on the breaking up of the administration the following year. He had held office under the crown for an uninterrupted period of above forty-two years, from his first appointment as solicitor-general in the month of March, 1720, which he filled for about four years. More than eight years he had been attorney-general; for three years and a half he was Chief Justice of England; for nearly twenty years, Lord High Chancellor; and during the last six years he had assisted at council deliberations, though without any particular place in the cabinet. He served three successive sovereigns; and his influence, both in the ministry and in the House of Lords, those who at once regretted and endeavoured to underrate it, acknowledge to have been almost paramount. He relinquished office at last, not only voluntarily, but against the wishes both of his king and his colleagues; and in the face of renewed offers for his return to power.

Notwithstanding, however, this expressed intention to prefer an honourable and peaceful retirement as most suitable to his years, Lord Hardwicke in reality continued to act more or less as a public man to the last. He took an active part in the debate on peace, and in the affair of Wilkes, and his last energies were given to the ministerial troubles of 1763. The same year he was attacked with illness, and he lingered till the 6th of March, 1764, when this great and good man breathed his last, at his house in Grosvenor Square; "at a time," says the writer of the memoir of him in the Annual Register, "when the situation of public affairs rendered his death a loss, as unseasonable, as it would at any time have been important. And his name will be remembered by posterity with the same reverence which attends the most celebrated civil characters in the annals of this country." Lord Mansfield said," If you wish to employ your abilities in writing the life of a truly great and wonderful man in our profession, take the life of Lord Hardwicke for your object; he was, indeed, a wonderful character, he became ChiefJustice of England and Chancellor, from his own abilities and virtues." And for such a man, Mr. Harris's able biography is a more fitting and more appropriate monument than marble or brass.

MARIA LOUISA AND CARLO LUDOVICO.*

BY L. MARIOTTI, AUTHOR OF " ITALY PAST AND PRESENT."

MARIA Louisa, Leopoldina, Carolina, Imperial Princess, Arch-duchess of Austria, Duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guasttala, was born at Schönbrunn, on the 13th of December, 1791. She was the eldest daughter of Francis II., afterwards Emperor of Germany,-and of the second of his four wives, Maria Theresa, of Naples.

The princess was brought up under all the fostering cares which environ the young nurslings of that fruitful pepinière of Schönbrunn. She was taught to speak French and Italian, to read Latin, to paint in oil-colours, to play on the piano, and to hate the French and Napoleon.

The habitual play of the princess, and of her brothers and sisters, consisted in drawing up in battle array a band of little wax or wooden dolls, which were made to represent the French army, with a dark demon-like figure at their head-the accursed Corsican-and their devoted ranks were made to bear the brunt of the youngsters' popguns.

Meanwhile, the French and the Corsican managed to thrive in despite of all that dire execution. The king-slayers were twice at the gates. Austria had twice lost all; had nothing to give; the hungry lions were roaring for more prey. Austria gave up her flesh and blood. Maria Louisa was doomed!

The poor young princess! She who had been reared in so salutary a dread of male animals! It was the story of "Beauty and the Beast" acted over again. "Will he bite? Will he tear me to pieces?" She, the daughter of the Cæsars-wedded to the Corsican ;-to bear imps to the arch-devil!

The

The language at her father's court was now strangely changed. brigand-chief had become a leader of heroes. They made wondrous discoveries about his ancient pedigree. Napoleon had become a standing toast with the aulic council. Her imperial father himself addressed him as "Monsieur mon frère." The devil was not so dark, after all, as he was painted. There was a dash of the Alexander-breed in his composition, and had not Alexander chosen him a bride amongst the daughters of his prostrate enemy?

Maria Louisa listened and grew wise. The mild creature never had an idea, never a wish of her own: she never knew how to show any reluctance to other people's demands. She had been taught to hate, and she hated -she was now bidden to love, and she married-" Behold thine handmaid!" she said, and the Ogre led her to her nuptial apartment.

Maria Louisa was then (1810) in the bloom of youth; her stature was above the middle size-queenly in her countenance and bearing. Her complexion was fresh and fair; she had hazel hair, Austrian eyes and lips -features much admired by some, though the eyes, drawn down obliquely

We do not hold ourselves responsible for the opinions, somewhat strongly asserted by M. Mariotti; neither can we vouch for his statements; but we think it right that an Italian should be heard on a subject like the present, espe cially when we believe him to be accurate, and know him to be conscientious.Ed. N. M. M.

towards the nose, bear a close resemblance to those of a pig, and the pursed-up lips wear an unpleasant expression of haughtiness. Her hand and foot often served as models to the artist, and Canova, who was summoned to Paris for the purpose, made as much of them as he could in his statue "La Concordia," which is to be seen in the hall of the ducal palace at Colorno.

It is just possible that Maria Louisa brought herself to endure her hus band during four years. About Napoleon's tenderness for her, from his wedding to his dying day, we have been entertained to satiety. He called her Ma petite vie! And as a man who valued the sex from their prolific capacities, he was most probably amused by a naïveté so closely bordering upon silliness.

In 1813, and the following year, he thought he could propitiate his treacherous ally of Austria, by placing his empress at the head of the regency which was to rule in his absence. Her task was, however, less difficult than might be supposed. The yea and nay, by which she was to answer all questions were invariably prompted by the nod of Cambacères. It is amusing to see her helplessness in circumstances of the least difficulty, and the ingenuousness with which she had recourse to her private secretary, acknowledging that she had not the least idea. Why should she? If great warriors and statesmen choose to trust their nursery toys and little geese with arduous cares of empire, why, they must take the consequences.

Her illness and pusillanimity hastened the catastrophe of 1814. She ran away to Rambouillet, March 19th, taking along with her her reluctant infant, and an escort of 2500 men, the élite of the garrison of Paris.

From this moment, Maria Louisa considered herself as virtually divorced from her husband. Napoleon was once more the arch-fiend and ogre of her childhood. His solicitations that she would join him beyond the Loire were disregarded. Her father placed her in the keeping of a horde of Cossacks; in her interview with him, she declared herself ready to desert the cause of the conquered, and exchanged her imperial diadem for the independent possession of an Italian principality.

From the first instant of her departure from Paris--and there are courtiers who have registered every word that fell from her lips-there is no symptom of regret or rejoicing on her part. Her French servants and advisers were removed from her side. She travelled across Switzerland and the Tyrol, and came back-a prodigal child-miraculously restored.

*There is an anecdote relating to this period which we cannot refrain from quoting, although it may be familiar to many of our readers. On the first surmises of the defection of Austria, Napoleon, who was not always careful in the choice of his terms, expressed his indignation towards his father-in-law, by saying to the empress, "Votre père est un ganache." Ganache, a word more fit for the barrack-room than the court, comes as near as possible to the English blockhead. Maria Louisa, who had studied French all her life-time, had, however, to run to the Duchess of Montebello, her grande-maitresse, for a definition of that singular word. The good widow of Marshal Lannes, in the greatest embarrassment, replied, "Ganache-to be sure-it means a worthy and clever fellow." Maria Louisa treasured up the word, and "made a note" of it. During her regency, being pressed to answer some puzzling question before her imperial council, “Let us consult the arch-chancellor," said she, "who is le plus grand ganache de tous !"

Feb.-VOL. LXXXII. NO. CCCXXVI.

R