miration. If it could be shown, therefore, that the youngest son of Queen Hortense could claim more illustrious paternity than that of Louis Bonaparte, it might really family, and assist in securing the dynasty prove a gain of prestige to the new imperial upon the throne. So, at least, thinks M. Bernard-Derosne, and, probably, not a few and his anxious mother nursed him night and day, not allowing him to leave her arms. When, after long suffering, he died in her lap, she almost lost her reason, and, in a paroxysm of grief, exhausted her very soul in wild and piercing shrieks, continued for days. To calm her, the attendants had to give the dead boy back to her arms, when at last the ultra-Bonapartists with him. They abhor long pent-up tears found way, and the flow- M. Schoelcher for writing, " M. Louis Napoing grief restored her to herself. The em- leon Bonaparte n'a pas une goutte du sang peror, too, wept bitterly when he heard of Napoléon dans ses veines; il est le fils de l'amiral hollandais Verhuel;" but they cothe death of little Charles Napoleon; but Hortense's husband showed little emotion. quet with the softer insinuation of illegiti“He aimed at becoming completely a Dutch-macy of the author of the "Misérables." man among the Dutch," says M. Bernard-poleonic idea through Europe, in the person A description of the wanderings of the Na Derosne. The birth of the third son of Queen Hortense is mentioned in a somewhat mysterious manner by the author. We are informed that for a long time previous the King of Holland had ceased all intercourse with his consort, and it is more than hinted at that he looked upon the new increase of his family with greater suspicion than ever, startled by the songs chanted under his window at Brus sels: "Le Roi de Hollande Fait de faux Louis." the whole of the latter half of M. Bernardof Queen Hortense and her youngest son, fills Derosne's book. No new facts whatever are given, and the whole is the merest paste-andscissors work, enlivened only by a little sparkling antipathy against Orleanists, Legitimists, and all other French "ists," except Bonapartists. Poor Louis Philippe is severely handled for not permitting Queen Hortense to reside in France when she made the personal request in 1831; and, more than that, for refusing the modest demand of Louis Napoleon to enter the French army. Whether a similar demand on the part of any of the Orleans princes, or of the Duke de Bordeaux, Though anxious to prove the legitimacy of would have great chances of success at the the eldest son of Hortense, the biographer present moment, M. Bernard-Derosne does has not the same solicitude in regard to the not say. But while the biographer of Queen third child, Louis Napoleon, the present Em- Hortense is full of virtuous indignation for peror of the French. The imagination of what he deems extreme proceedings of harshM. Bernard-Derosne discovers strongly pro- ness and tyranny on the part of the Citizen nounced " Napoleonic features" in young King, he has not one word of praise for his Prince Louis, and a striking resemblance to merciful act in sparing the life of Louis Nathe most characteristic mental traits of the poleon, justly forfeited by the attempt of inemperor. Consequently, Bourrienne is no surrection at Strasbourg in 1836. Singular more appealed to for his negative testimony; enough, this important phase in the career of but it is signalled as a comprehensive fact Queen Hortense's son is not alluded to even that Louis Napoleon was " born at the Tui- in a single word by M. Bernard-Derosne. To leries, the residence of the emperor," some read his book one must come to the concluten or eleven months after the final separa- sion that the whole story of the march upon tion of his parents. Were the pure Napole- the Barracks of Strasbourg, the presentation onic enthusiasm of Hortense's biographer not of the wooden eagle, the non-recognition of visible on every page of his book, one might the "Napoleonic features" by the soldiers, be inclined to take him for a capped enemy and the final Donnybrook scuffle, is a mere in thus endorsing the sneer of Victor Hugo fable, invented by the enemies of the imperial about the present emperor. The latter, in cause. The biographer is not aware that Napoleon le Petit," speaks of him as "the Louis Napoleon ever left his mother at her son of Hortense Beauharnais, married by peaceful abode at Arenenberg; where she at Napoleon to Louis, King of Holland." The last closed her eyes, in October, 1837," et alla insinuation, meant as a slur upon the name rejoindre dans un monde meilleur Napoléon et of the ruler of France, seems to have been Joséphine." That the husband, too, might taken up by some very exalted Bonapartists be found" dans un monde meilleur," is evias a homage to Napoleon III. Legitimate dently not expected by the author. Queen birth, as is well known, is not valued very Hortense's last words were for her son. highly by the modern Gauls, among whom " Happy son," M. Bernard-Derosne cries. Alexander Dumas's dogma, that all great" to have such a mother! thrice happy men were bastards, has gained extensive ad- mother to have such a son!" From The North British Review. Pet Marjorie: A Story of Child Life Fifty Years ago. Edinburgh, 1858. ONE November afternoon in 1810-the year in which Waverley was resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in India-three men evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like schoolboys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet. The three friends sought the bield of the low wall old Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout west wind. one grip. At George Street they parted, one to We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath, "And at the touch of wrong, without a strife, Slipped in a moment out of life." There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth. The second was William Clerk,--the Darsie Latimer of Redgauntlet; "a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he might have been,-a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldin, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best of all the humors, called good. The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakspeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, not even Shakspeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this hair. The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses.' Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost common, in look and figure his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness, were his eyes, deep set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in, as if Had any one watched him closely before they could be dangerous; a man to care noth- and after the parting, what a change he ing for at first glance, but somehow, to give would see! The bright, broad laugh, the a second and not-forgetting look at. The shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliathird was the biggest of the three, and though ment House and of the world; and next step, lame, nimble and all rough and alive with moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if power; had you met him anywhere else, you seeing things that were invisible; his shut would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, co come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle,' ," innocent, so sad; he was now all within as as he says of himself, with the swing and stride before he was all without; hence his brooding and the eye of a man of the hills-a large, look. As the snow blattered in his face, he sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his muttered, "How it raves and drifts! Onbroad and somewhat stooping shoulders, was ding o' snaw-ay, that's the word-on-ding set that head which, with Shakspeare's and.” He was now at his own door, "Castle Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the world. Street, No. 39." He opened the door and went straight to his den, that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote "Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, and St. Ronan's Well," besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where | her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come the great magician sat so often and so long, yer ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. I and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky and that back green where faithful Camp lies.* am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap.” He sat down in his large green morocco el- Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding o' snaw!" bow-chair, drew himself close to his table, and said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, "Onglowered and gloomed at his writing appara-ding-that's odd-that is the very word.” tus, "a very handsome old box, richly carved," Hoot, awa! look here," and he displayed lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink- the corner of his plaid made to hold lambs— bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole (the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two in such order, that it might have come from breadths sewed together, and uncut at one the silversmith's window half an hour before." end, making a poke or cul de sac). "Tak' He took out his paper, then starting up an-yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivgrily, said, "Go spin, you jade, go spin.' ance, and so the Pet was first well happit up, No, d- it, it wont do,and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,-Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth. "My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff, Employs ower aft my hand, sir.' death eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this excel lent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable." Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy, little wife, who took it all with great composure! There the two remained for three or more hours, making the the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having house ring with their laughter; you can fancy made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be-" Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up "Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven ; He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that *This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke and was buried in a fine moonlight night in the little garden behind the house in Castle Street. My down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedlewife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears um Twoddle-um made him roar with laughabout the grave as her father himself smoothed the ter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beturf above Camp, with the saddest face she had ever yond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupid seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized, on account of the death of a dear old friend.'"-Lockhart's "Life of Scott." † Applied to a pump when it is dry, and its valve has lost its "fang;" from the German fangen, to hold. ness. Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement over Gil Morrice or the Baron of Smailholm; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in King John, till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating"For I am sick, and capable of fears, There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him-fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley Coleridge :blessed vision, happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I thought of thee with many fears, Of what might be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Oppressed with wrong, and therefore, fall of Lord of thy house and hospitality; fears; A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; "If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim, Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious—” Or drawing herself up" to the height of her great argument " "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout. Here I and sorrow sit." Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature 1 ever met with, and her repeating of Shakspeare overpowers me as nothing else does." Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper and thanks still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie-before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old water-mark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within, as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life; they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile and speaking feature. And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest, O vain and causeless melancholy ! Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, flock." And we can imagine Scott, when holding his Even so this happy creature of herself We But we will let her disclose herself. nced hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair; indeed you could as easily fabricate the one as the other. There was an old servant-Jeanie Robertson-who was forty years in her grandfathcr's family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in the letters, and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages never exceeded £3 a year, and, when she left service, she had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella-a beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I mention this " (writes her surviving sister)" for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old-when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on 66 This before, and old Jeanie remembered they might | What could that have been out of the Sardocome too near a dangerous mill-lade. She nic Dean? what other child of that age would called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded have used beloved" as she does. power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She perilled her all upon it; and it may have been as well—we know, indeed that it was far better-for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her earthly life. Love was, indeed, "her Lord and King; "and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King, himself is Love. her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella to'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie rushed in between crying out, Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you like, and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!' Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch" (catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made ye, ma bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next replies Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded, "Of what are you made?" "DIRT" was the answer uniformly given. Wull ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder. 66 Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six. The spelling unaltered, and there are "no commoes." Here are bits from her Diary at Breahead: "The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey (Craigie) and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith-the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and walked to Crakyhall (Craigiehall) hand in hand in Innocent and matitation (meditation) sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking. 66 "I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing sweetly-the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face." Here is a confession: "I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons. I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she "My DEAR ISA,-I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of putting it to never whiped me but said Marjory go into Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaint- another room and think what a great crime ance praises me dreadfully. I repeated some- you are committing letting your temper git thing out of Dean Swift, and she said I was the better of you. But I went so sulkily that fit for the stage, and you may think I was the Devil got the better of me but she never primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsaybirsay is a word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature." What a peppery little pen we wield! never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never never does it. . . . Isabella has given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write." |