stant a spur to her husband, in the career of his ambition, as she had been to her servants in their culinary employments: an Italian author assures us, that Cromwell would never have assumed the government if it had not been at the instigations of his wife. She survived Cromwell fourteen years, and at the time of the restoration she very prudently stole out of town, and lived for the remainder of her days in obscurity; it is asserted by a respectable author that she ended her days in Switzerland. MRS. BRIDGET BENDISH. As Cromwell raised himself to so high a pinnacle of greatness, his family may truly be classed amongst the illustrious; and in speaking of the members of that family, it would be unfair not to mention that extraordinary woman his grandaughter, Bridget Ireton, who became the wife of Thomas Bendish, Esq. This female descendant resembled him more than any one of his family, both in countenance and character. On some occasions she appeared with all the gorgeous show and dignity of a Princess; at others as the lowest drudge, being as laborious as she was intelligent in the management of her salt-works. When she had completely harassed herself with work, she cared not where she slept, nor what she ate or drank. Never, in one instance, was her presence of mind known to forsake her; and she was an utter stranger to fear. Her residence was at South-Town, near Yarmouth; and sometimes, after a day of hard drudgery, she would go to the Yarmouth Assembly, where the loftiness of her manner, and superiority of her understand. ing, never failed to procure her honour and respect. On no one occasion was she ever known to break her promise; but in common conversation she never paid any regard to truth, and no one dared to repeat any news as intelligence which she told them. Her charity was ample, and was the effect of her heart's feelings as well as her hand; to exercise it she left her debts unpaid. Her piety was tinctured with enthusiasm; on particular occasions she would retire to her closet, fast, meditate, and pray, till she worked up her spirit to a degree of rapture; and then she would regulate the rule of her conduct by the first text of scripture that occurred to her, and which she looked upon as a divine revelation. She would frequently fawn, dissemble, and prevaricate, for the most low, and often sinister purposes: and she was, in short, both the jest and admiration of all her friends, and even of her servants, who, nevertheless, declared her to be one of the best of mistresses. She looked on, and revered her grandfather as a most consummate hero and dignified saint. MRS. CLAYPOLE. Or a far different character was this gentle, and truly illustrious female, the favourite daughter of Oliver Cromwell: the most remarkable incident in her life is, that when on her death-bed, she sent for her father, upbraided him with the blood he had spilt, and spoke for some time with uncommon emphasis on his cruelty to Dr. John Hewit, whom he had caused to be beheaded for collecting money for the unfortunate and fugitive King Charles II. to support him in his exile. Her remonstrances sunk deep on the mind of the usurper: his conscience took the alarm, and it is said, he never enjoyed peace from that moment. CHARACTERS OF CELEBRATED FRENCH WOMEN. ; JUDITH, SECOND WIFE OF LOUIS LE JUDITH too well knew her empire over the mind of her imbecile husband, and by her projects, aided by Duke Bernard, to whom she was criminally attached, she sowed disorder and misunderstanding amongst all those powers whom it was the interest of the King to attach to him. Her No. 106. Vol. XVII. son Charles, afterwards King Charles the Bald, was thep but six years of age. For several years her sole ambition was at work to secure the aggrandizement of her son; and while she had long been ab⚫ sent from her husband, the love of Louis increased towards her: at her return she enjoyed more power and influence than ever at court, which she abused as usual; B endangering the safety of the state, the repose of the best of husbands, and all the rights of his children by a former marriage, to satisfy her ambitious views in favour of her son Charles; and to this effect she fomented the misunderstanding between Louis and his eldest son, in order to make him declare in favour of Charles, who was crowned by his father, the monarch placing the sword by his side with his own hands, by the advice and with the approbation of all the nobles. Judith spared nothing in testifying her joy; the most splendid fêtes were given, and yet the happiness of this ambitious woman was clouded over by Louis Germanicus having seized on the states of Charles as far as the Rhine, and Louis was languishing on a bed of sickness. After the death of Louis, her children and those by the first marriage of the King, were ready to tear each other in pieces; her exorbitant demands for her son rendered her odious in the eyes of the nation, though during the life of Louis she never lost that hold she had of his affections. ANTOINETTE DE PONS, MARCHION ESS OF GUERCHEVILLE. To this beautiful female who subdued the heart of the fickle Henry IV. of France, another once equally lovely in person, was obliged to yield, and give up for ever her once infatuated lover. Brought up at the polite and effeminate court of Henry III. Antoinette was possessed of that elegance and courtly ease which marks the wellborn woman in every station, and which low-born wealth, with all the aids of finery and show, attempts to ape in vain. || rious court; it is not, however, likely that she could view the conquest she had made over the heart of Henry with indifference. However, her triumph did not so far be wilder her understanding as to cause her defeat. The King continued to vanquish his enemies, but made no decided conquest over the mind and principles of the Marchioness. This caused him to descend to proposals of marriage, but Madame de Guercheville had rectitude and judgment sufficient to point out to him the absurdity of such a step, nor was she more moved by these proposals than by any others which he had employed to overthrow her scruples. The passion of Henry fancied there could be no impropriety in elevating the widow of a real gentleman to the throne; but this did not accord with the ideas of a woman of such a character as the Marchioness; and her refusals were accompanied with so much firmness that the King, at length, was compelled to acknowledge the inutility of his pursuits. || Antoinette had contracted the etiquette of court politeness, without imbibing any of|| its defects; it was no wonder then that she triumphed over the Countess de Guiche, who had scarce appeared twice at court. Young, lovely, and accustomed to admiration, the virtue of Antoinette had yet triumphed over every seduction of a luxu Henry, touched with so much merit, now sought only to procure for Antoinette a husband worthy of such a treasure, and accordingly married her to Charles Duplessis, Seigneur de Liancourt, afterwards Governor of Paris; and told his bride, that since he had found her indeed a lady of honour, she should be appointed to be that of the Queen on the day of his marriage. He did not forget his promise, and Madame de Guercheville was named first lady of honour to Mary de Medicis. She went in that quality to receive the Queen at Marseilles, and followed that Princess to Lyons. She served for many years as a model and example to the whole court, where she was cited as a rare proof of what personal virtue is able to withstand against the most insidious and attractive temptations. She died universally regretted after twelve years of widowhood. HISTORICAL AND SELECT ANECDOTES. ANECDOTE OF M. DE LA FEUILLADE, GRAND MARSHAL OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV. BEING very plainly clad, the Grand Marshal, dispatched from the King on affairs of the utmost importance, stopped at Lyons to deliver a packet from his Majesty to the Archbishop, who taking the bearer for only an ordinary person, asked him whether there was any thing new at Paris?" Green pease, my Lord," replied the Marshal," are uncommonly forward this year."-" You mistake my meaning, friend," said the Archbishop; "what were the people saying when you left Paris?""My Lord," answered the Marshal, “they were saying vespers."-The prelate then fell into a violent passion, saying, "How dare you, friend, speak thus to a person of my quality? Who, and what are you, that you dare be thus insolent? What are people pleased to call you?"—" Why, my Lord," replied the Marshal with great sangfroid, "some are pleased to call me friend, others Monsieur, and the King calls me cousin!" QUI PRO QUO. WHEN the Marquis de Vallevoir was Governor of Sisteron, the double meaning of his name had once nearly cost him his life for as he was walking on the ramparts of the town, a new soldier, who was then on duty, not knowing him, saluted him, as usual, with Qui va là, who goes there? To which the Governor answered, Vallevoir. But the centinel imagining he meant to make a jest of him by saying, Va le voir, go and see, immediately discharged his musket, and gave the General a very severe wound under the ribs, which, for some time, caused his life to be despaired of. ANECDOTE OF DR. TOBIAS SMOLLET. DR. SMOLLET had a high respect for the intuitive discernment and discrimination of the fair. He often said, that after meu had been throwing up heaps of rubbish, involving a subject in more dense obscurity, a lady with one sweep of her vivacious unprejudiced mind, clears off the obstruction, and brings the moles of erudition into cloudless day. The Doctor, who detested all incroachments on civil or religious liberty, once nearly lost all temper with a zealot of his national church, extolling Calvin and John Knox, as though the uncharitable violence with which they propagated their tenets had been highly meri. torious. The well-meaning, but mistaken minister, maintained that as the armies of earthly potentates are in duty bound to employ all means to vanquish their enemies, so must they that fight the good fight of faith call forth every engine of power to || discomfit the unbelieving. A lady who saw the disputants growing too warm, closed the debate by observing:-" It is very true, reverend Sir, that the military servants of temporal monarchs ought to hazard their own lives, and slay their opponents in defence of royalty; but permit me to ask, do they not in thousands unsheath the sword because no mere mortal can single-handed encounter a host? The Lord of hosts, with a single fiat, can annihilate his presumptuous foes; and to me it seems arrogance, not piety, to suppose the Omnipotent requires our feeble aid." Dr. Smollet valued these few words as deciding the controversy regarding liberty or constraint of conscience with more luminous conviction than volumes of polemic divinity. ANECDOTE OF OLIVER CROMWELL. THAT tyranny and cruelty can jest over their victims, the following anecdote of the usurper Cromwell is a sufficient proof. A gentleman one day waited on this hypocritical fanatic to beg a lock of King Charles's hair for an honourable lady.—“Ah! no, Sir," said Cromwell, shedding at the same time a few crocodile's tears, "that must not be; for I have sworn to him, when he was living, that not a hair of his head should perish!" INTERESTING DISCOVERY OF A LOST CHILD. THOUGH the heinous crime of childstealing has been most horribly prevalent during the latter end of the last century and the commencement of the present, yet the following anecdote is sufficient to prove that it was not unknown (although it was not pronounced as it ought to be, felony deserving of death) even in the year 1739. When Madame de Cambis, the wife of the French Ambassador at that period, was, on the death of her husband, preparing to return to her native country, she had the good fortune to reclaim a child that had been stolen from a President de Parliament. About two months before, the parents had sent over a description of their lost child; and one day as Madame de Cambis's woman was crossing the hall of their house she saw a beggar woman at the door with so lovely a child that the waiting-maid would carry it up to the Ambassadress. || duced a clock. Encouraged by his success he proceeded in various attempts, and in time produced an automaton which played on a flute. ANECDOTE OF HANDEL. The moment that lady beheld it she saw it answered exactly to the description of the President's child; and though it was all in rags, she remarked it had on its head a black velvet cap curiously embroidered, and which she knew to be French work. HANDEL had received a present of a On examining the child more closely, dozen of excellent champaigne; the quanshe also discovered a mark on its per- tity was too small to present before his son which had been designated in the de- || friends, he therefore reserved the delicious scription. The interesting little creature nectar for a private sip. Some time after, was between four and five years of age, a party of friends were dining with him; and Madame de Cambis, deeply affected, he longed for a glass of his champaign, asked her if the beggar woman was her but could not think of a device for leaving mother?"Yes," said the child; but I the company. Of a sudden he assumed a had another mamma once."-On this she musing attitude, and, striking his forehead retained the child, and its parents dispatch- with his finger, he cried out, "I have got ed one of their family to England, who one tought! I have got one tought!" (meanknew it was the same child that had been ing thought). The company, imagining lost. that he had gone to commit to paper some divine harmonious idea, saw him depart with silent admiration. He returned to his friends, and very soon he had a second, third, and fourth tought. A wag suspect ORIGIN OF THE UNCOMMON GENIUS OF VAUCANSON FOR MECHANICS. WHEN very young this extraordinary genius used frequently to attend his mothering the frequency of St. Cecilia's calls, folto confession, and while she was weeping with penitence, the poor child was weeping with weariness. In this state he was struck with the motion of the pendulum of a clock in the hall. His curiosity was roused; he approached the clockcase and examined the mechanism. He projected a similar machine, and by degrees his genius pro lowed Ilandel to an adjoining room, saw him enter a closet, embrace his loved champaigu, and swallow, repeatedly, doses of the divine liquor. The discovery communicated infinite mirth to the company, and Handel's tought became very soon proverbial. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF EMINENT PAINTERS. GEORGE ROMNEY (CONTINUED). the line of his profession. Romney loved Ir was at Christmas, 1775, that Rom-honour more than gold; his fancy was ney took possession of his house in Caven-creative, but he was ignorant of anatomy, dish-square; he was in the prime of life, and therefore, perhaps, could not draw the his health much improved, and his art human form with truth in all its various perfected by his foreign studies. A ner- attitudes: he had painted faces so incesvous irritability, however, so common in santly that to paint a new one was his chief men of extraordinary genius, continually delight. Hence the portraits he produced depressed him, and damped his happy were innumerable; and it was his favourite prospects: he trembled at the idea of not || object to paint a series of them from the finding sufficient business to support him; countenance of the philanthropic Howard. but his friends were all anxious in their He was also singularly happy in the likeendeavours to procure him full employment. nesses he took of the great historian GibThe late Duke of Richmond was one of the bon; and his portrait of him is infinitely first sitters to him after his return from better than that taken by Sir Joshua ReyItaly, and his Grace ever after shewed the nolds, because the spirit and intelligence of kindest solicitude to promote the artist in Gibbon's mind shines through the coun tenance which nature had given him, and which, taken in the mass, exhibited nothing of that brilliant genius of one of the first historians in the world. Lord Thurlow used sportively to say, "Reynolds and Romney divide the town; I am of the Romney faction." His Lordship was painted by both these eminent artists, when Chancellor, at full length, and both painters did him equal justice. But Lord Thurlow had a great personal regard for Romney; he was always desirous of encouraging painting, and expressed a strong desire that Romney would execute a picture for him of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, from Virgil; but Romney, despairing of pleasing his patron, never began the picture. This did not lessen his Lordship's esteem for the artist of whom he purchased those four sweet pictures of Serena, from Mr. Hayley's charming poem, The Triumphs of Temper. In the autumn of 1784, Romney paid this elegant author, and the painter's best biographer, a visit at Eartham; where he charmed every one by displaying the versatility of his talents, and shewing his skill in sculpture as well as in painting. Mr. Hayley had formed a rustic grotto as an entrance to a sequestered walk; and it was his wish to render it a sort of modest mausoleum to the memory of his friend Thornton. Romney was charmed with the idea, and modelled a little figure of Afflicted Friendship, in the form of a reclining female, to rest on a sepulchral vase. The figure was elegant, and its expression powerfully pathetic; but to use the words of Mr. Hayley, "it perished in that destructive neglect by which my overbusied friend was too apt to injure, and demolish, a multitude of his various projected works." The business of painting portraits so increased, that he could scarce find a few minutes of leisure, except when the decline of day prevented his distinguishing his colours. Romney united in his character much timid reserve with an enterprising ardor; he had much ambition, but wanted that mild wisdom and conciliating manner which raised Reynolds to his high and well merited dignity: the hasty disposition of Romney would have rendered him distracted in such a situation; the more he || reflected on his own disposition, the more he found it better for him to set bounds to his passion to popularity; but he often lamented the fetters of his profession, and without reflecting on long continued habit, and how firmly she holds her sway over human pursuits, he pleased himself with the idea of one day shaking off his shackles. His mind was never enslaved by the gold he gained, he threw money away as rapidly as he acquired it. His pleasure was real and infinite in painting a new face, exclusive of pecuniary consideration, and his heart was so sympathetic that if he had made a resolution not to take another fresh portrait, yet a lover requesting that of his beloved, a mother that of her darling child, would melt, in a moment, his resolves. In 1786 the late Alderman Boydell opened an high occupation to the painters of this country, by the important project of the Shakespeare Gallery. The professional and patriotic enthusiasm of Romney kindled at the idea, and in the most liberal manner he immediately offered to devote his powers to a project which must interest ever lover of the arts in England. In one of Romney's autumnal visits to Eartham, Mr. Hayley exhorted him to study and paint some very striking scene from the life of the Czar Peter the Great, and to send it as a present to the Empress Catharine. The idea pleased the painter, but that of painting from Shakespeare was much more alluring to his imagination; for no one had a more keen perception of the powers of that wonderful poet than Romney. Mr. Pitt sat to him in July, 1783; and such was the speed and popularity of Romney's pencil, that he painted at the rate of a portrait a day. In executing some of his fancy pictures he had the advantage of studying the features and mental character of a lady on whom nature had lavished singular beauty and talents, and she became the favourite model of Romney, for whom the lady, in return, felt the most filial affection and esteem. This was the once highly celebrated Lady Hamilton: her features could exhibit every feeling of nature, and the progression of every sentiment with the most bewitching expression. Romney took delight in the command she exhibited over her flexible features, and |