question having been discussed in the Assembly, Mirabeau obtained a vote in favour of the Princesses, who were consequently allowed to depart. On this occasion La Marck observes, in writing to M. de Mercy 'The determination of Mesdames to start has proved, that if the King followed their example he would probably have the same success. He should only announce positively before hand that he means to go out of Paris, fix the day of his departure, and persist with energy in his resolution, Il faudrait bien qu'on le laissât faire.' Yet, as it turned out a few days afterwards, a mere excursion of the Court to St. Cloud caused a riot in Paris; and indeed in the very same letter he speaks of M. de Lafayette's resolution to keep his prisoner'—for the King was the hostage of the monarchy held by the mob of the capital, and the dread of his escape was the constant bugbear of every club in the city. Such was the state of affairs, with no definite plan and no prospect of a more vigorous course of action, when the man, who was the centre of these intrigues, was struck in mid career by the abrupt summons of a mortal disease. In the last week, during which Mirabeau attended the sittings of the National Assembly, a question was under discussion relating to mines and the rights of mineral proprietors in France, which was of the utmost personal importance to Count de la Marck. The Assembly seemed disposed to prohibit grants of mining leases. Mirabeau said to his friend-If I do not defend sound principles in this matter, there will be an end of mining in France, and you will lose one of the chief parts of your fortune. If I do defend them, I shall crush our antagonists.' He spoke with effect on the 21st of March on this subject, his speech having been prepared by Pellene, one of his secretaries. The question was to come on again on the 27th, and, though already ill, he set to work again to produce the harangue that was to gain the victory. 'On the morning of that day,' says M. de la Marck, he came to my house before nine o'clock. His countenance was haggard, and he looked like a man on the eve of a serious illness. He got worse, and even at one time lost his consciousness. I did all I could to prevent him from going to the Assembly, but without success. He continually answered, "My friend, those fellows will ruin you if I don't go: I will go; you shall not keep me.' Feeling himself too weak to walk, he remembered I had some old Tokay, which he had drunk of several times. He rang and himself ordered some of it to be brought him. He took a couple of glasses, and got into his carriage. I wished to accompany him, but he insisted I should not go that day to the Assembly. He begged me to wait at home till he came back to me. I was obliged to yield. About three o'clock he returned. As he came into my room, he flung himself upon a sofa and said-Your cause cause is gained, and I am a dead man!-I cannot express what I felt at the moment, struck with terror as I was by the state of Mirabeau. In a few minutes I gave him my arm-led him to the carriage, got in with him, and drove to his house, which he never left more till he was carried to the grave.'-iii. 93. The disease, which had on several former occasions threatened the life of Mirabeau and preyed upon his shattered constitution, now declared itself with extreme violence. From the first Cabanis, who attended him, entertained no hope, and Mirabeau himself seemed, from the expressions he made use of to his friends, to be fully prepared for the worst. M. de la Marck was constantly with him, and it was on the fourth day of his illness and the third before his death that he confided to him the whole collection of his papers, at that time of such momentous importance to the chief persons in the state. On the 2nd of April, 1791, at half-past eight in the morning, after a long and painful struggle, Mirabeau expired, at the age of forty-two. His loss was mourned by the people, whom he had so often misled, as a national calamity, and it was said that upwards of 200,000 persons escorted his remains to the Pantheon. Certain it is that of all the adventurers whom the earlier months of the Revolution had thrown before the world, Mirabeau alone at that moment seemed qualified to stride onwards in its rapid and terrible course. He had the good fortune to die before his popularity with the Assembly had undergone the test of ministerial power. He left, therefore, to both parties a sense of his vast abilities, augmented by the vague hopes which are apt to be excited by a career of unfulfilled renown. To the popular party it seemed, in the anarchy which speedily ensued, that nothing was wanting to the cause of liberty but that daring leader; to the Court, that the Revolution might still have been arrested by the counsels of such a convert. The character of Mirabeau, judged by his public acts, assisted by the strong light thrown on his private motives in this publication, justifies, in our opinion, no such favourable inference on either side. In the clubs and assemblies of the people there is ample evidence that he was playing a game widely distinct from his genuine opinions or his secret desires: in his relations with the Court he was met at every turn by the distrust which his own virulent language in public could not fail to inspire. But the real incentive was neither patriotism nor loyalty; it centered altogether in his own personal interests, and his conduct was turned either to the right or to the left by the merest caprice or by the basest impulses of resentment. With such objects and such means of action, we can discover no evidence in support of the still not uncommon notion, that if the the life of Mirabeau had been prolonged it would have fared otherwise with the French Revolution, and that even the monarchy might by his hands have been saved. We can discover no ground for supposing that his efficiency, the confidence of his employers, or the conjuncture of events would ever have become greater or more opportune than they had been during the last twelve months of his life. He might have prevented some disastrous mistakes, such as the flight to Varennes and the return of the Royal Family; but it was already beyond his reach to arrest the ravages of the monster he himself had invoked upon his country. In these respects the Correspondence now before us changes none of those conceptions of the man which we have on former occasions expressed: it leaves him in possession of the doubtful honour of genius fruitful only in destruction, and of dishonesty marking even his better actions as if they were crimes. On one point only it improves the aspect of his character by the apparent warmth and sincerity of several of his personal attachments, and especially of that for Count de la Marck himself: but even in their connexion we trace not a little of the selfishness and the unfair practices of his habitual course. He has left behind him the reputation of unrivalled eloquence, of daring worthy of a nobler cause, of a judicious sagacity in the discussion of many of the chief political questions of the day, and even of a desire to quench the conflagration he had kindled. But it was too late; the evil was beyond the control of any mortal power; and had he lived, he would have lived only to perish, like all his political confederates, in the fierce anarchy which avenged the monarchy upon the authors of the revolution, Upon quitting the tempestuous atmosphere of France in October, 1791, Mirabeau's amiable correspondent (who had previously dropped, and never resumed, the title of Count de la Marck) entered the military service of the Emperor; and during the long years of revolutionary confiscation his only income was his pay as a general officer. On the fall of Napoleon Prince Augustus re-acquired a great part of his fortune, and, settling at Brussels, continued to live there in the exercise of most graceful hospitality until 1833, when he died at the age of eighty. ART. V. ART. V.-1. Sir Thomas Browne's Works, including his Life and 3. The Antiquities of Norfolk; a Lecture delivered at the Norwich Museum. By the Rev. R. Hart, B.A. 1844. 4. The Vocabulary of East Anglia. By Rev. Robert Forby, Rector of Fincham. 2 vols. 1830. 5. Suffolk Words and Phrases. By Edward Moor, F.R.S. 1823. 6. Notices and Illustrations of the Costume, Processions, Pageantry, &c., formerly displayed by the Corporation. Norwich. 1850. TO the minds of most men the word Norfolk is suggestive merely of turkeys, partridges, and the four-course shift of husbandry; while to the ladies it conjures up visions of crapes, bombazines, lustres-all the endless combinations of cotton, wool, and silk. With those ideas there is an end of Norfolk to the world at large. This corner of Old England has no landscape of renowned beauty or grandeur to attract the tourist-though in the wild, the curious, and even the romantic it may be richer than is suspected. It has not the thinnest vein of subterranean wealth resembling that which converts a sweet little Welsh valley, or a breezy Scotch upland, into a seeming Pandemonium. It is not enriched on the fiendish condition of having to breathe an atmosphere of diluted soot and coal-dust as a finecertain on the continuance of its prosperity, but is for weeks and months illumined by sunshine to which the white-lights of the Opera are but as shadows. Nor has it been made the scene of any remarkably glorious demonstration,' which would bring it prominently before the national eye in newspaper columns. It is a quiet, homely, regular-living province, decidedly open to the reproach of being some modicum of years behind-hand. It is little visited, except for straightforward business purposes. A few summer immigrants come from the adjoining inland counties, for the sake of Yarmouth jetty and its sandy beach. The musical festival brings down some outlandish amateurs, who, while in the fine old city of Norwich, doubtless fancy themselves at the oxara xovos; and who would find their impression remarkably confirmed if they had the courage to penetrate as far as the unfrequented line of coast-to Winterton, Horsey, Salthouse, or Snettisham. An excursion thither is a most complete and exhilarating escape from the cut-and-dried wellbehaved people whom Eōthen describes as 'the sitters in pews.' Should any stranger wish really to explore the sister provinces once once so dear to Sir Thomas Browne, he cannot get on without some knowledge of their language, and therefore we have placed on our list two glossaries, both careful and also spirited worksfor even glossaries may show life. Moor's was put together with great zeal and good-will, under the vivid impressions of a return home after twenty-years' absence in India. Forby, on the contrary, passed all his days within the boundaries of East Anglia; yet his Vocabulary, unluckily but a fragment, is enlivened with a heartiness that is no less delightful. The reverend author committed the imprudence of taking a warm-bath, to which he was unaccustomed, without the presence of an attendant; fainting, as supposed, he was found drowned. His friend and pupil, Mr. Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth, has prefaced the posthumous work with a pleasing memoir. ་ Browne had made a slight beginning in his 'Tract viii.-Of Languages, and particularly of the Saxon Tongue.' In the course of it he observes:-'It were not impossible to make an original reduction of many words of no general reception in England, but of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle countries; which to effect, the Danish language, new and more ancient, may prove of good advantage.' But he uses some local terms passim, as snast, the burnt portion of the wick of a candle (iii. 178). Forby is only to be blamed for having spoken of his subject in an unduly apologetic tone. If, as he truly asserts, after much prolix and elaborate criticism by the annotators on the old poets, and especially Shakspeare, a difficulty often remained as it was found, which an East Anglian clown would have solved at first sight or hearing' he should have seen no need to anticipate a cold reception-as if, 'being merely oral, and existing among the unlettered rustics of a particular district, provincial language were of little concern to general readers, of still less to persons of refined education, and much below the notice of philologists.' But the truth is, that Englishmen, instead of being proud of their county vernacular, as they ought, are mostly ashamed of it. An Italian, although he may use a perfect bocca Romana in polite society, would on no account forget his home dialect, whether it be the vocalic Venetian, the harsh and aspirated Tuscan, or the Neapolitan mish-mash of transplanted roots.' Dialectic Italian is not thought low and vulgar; it has its dictionaries, its standard works, and the patronage of the upper classes; but an educated Englishman, instead of being proud to converse with his rustic neighbours in their own idiom, would have it thought that he was born nowhere. If, in the warmth of debate, a phrase, or tone, indicative of his native spot escapes his lips, he blushes like a school-girl; as if he had uttered naughty words, and not the very 6 language |