some feeling of humiliation, that I have witnessed the advantage conferred on our neighbours by the preference of their language in our foreign diplomacy.

The least civilised nation of Europe confessedly possesses the ablest diplomatists, though rarely, indeed, natives of Russia. They speak all languages. "To Tλndos ouvexon, ὅτι ἤκουον εἰς ἕκαστος τῇ ιδια διαλέκτω λαλούντων αυτῶν. They can assume the garb and personate the character of every people, “make themselves all things to all men," and, balancing in the impassive scale of policy any case of interest, alternately wield the imperious wand of a Papilius, or affect the blandishments of a Talleyrand, or seductions of a Marlborough, whom Lord Chesterfield represents as not less successful in negotiation than in the field. But never do we find a Muscovite politician moved by a libe. ral impulse, or enticed by a generous feeling, to deflect, in the slightest degree, from the traced course of his ambition. In truth, our own foreign agents fall under the same selfish censure in continental, or, at least, French opinion, however, we may think, unjustly; but the hate and thirst for revenge of vanquished France can only be satiated or quenched in the retaliated defeat and blood of her victor, "Longe, longe absit illa dies!" The declaration of Chatham, unworthy, both in truth and policy, of a great statesman, "that France was our natural enemy," now nearly extinct in use, and, I trust, in feeling, with all educated Britons, has changed its direction, and is retorted on ourselves by those who were its objects. That England is the born foe of France is proclaimed and echoed by almost every pen and tongue. Most deeply do I lament and deprecate this national estrangement. Rivals, not enemies, let us be, and competitors for the amelioration, not the destruction, of human life. "Verum hæc nobis certamina ex honesto maneant," I love to repeat with Tacitus. (Annal. iii. 55.)

The

Milton wrote his dispatches in Latin; for Cromwell would acknowledge no modern superiority. danger of misconception, or misrepresentation, is also to be feared, and not always discoverable by our GENT. MAG. VOL. XXII.

ministers. Walpole, we are told by his son, was wholly ignorant of French, as our first George had to regret, and Canning's knowledge of it was very slight, nor was the two Pitts' acquaintance with it much superior. Fox's vaunted scholarship was also found deficient, on trial, by Napoleon (Gent. Mag. for November 1839, p. 493), though far above that of the Pelhams,* (Newcastle and his brother,) so that, like our Eastern dragomans, the interpreters might designedly or unconsciously pervert the minister's intentions. Very lately, our envoy to Brazil, in his first audience with the young sovereign of that region, addressed him in French, just as Mr. Roscoe, in his preface to the life of Lorenzo de Medici, remarks, as a singularity, that Tenhove, a Dutchman, wrote his "Mémoires de la Maison de Medici," (1773—1775, 8 tomes, 8vo.) an Italian house, in French. Similarly our diplomatist, an Englishman, addressed the Portuguese emperor in the language of a third country. (Relative to Tenhove's, or rather TenHoven's, work, see Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 403.) I find, however, that last year the correspondence between Lord Aberdeen and the Prussian Mi. nister, Baron Bülow, on the commercial international charges, (Zolwerein) was carried on in their respective tongues, though not without the German's complaint at this departure from rule, which had originated with Lord Aberdeen. I hope he will continue it.

The Emperor Charles V. always spoke Italian to foreign ministers; it was then, Voltaire asserts, as the French now is, the language of diplomacy. Charles XII. of Sweden, with the spirit of Crom well, would not condescend to em. ploy any other tongue than Latin but our Elizabeth was proud of her

It was to the memory of Henry Pelham, who died in 1754, and not to Lord North, as stated in the Gent. Mag. for August 1840, p. 147, that Garrick addressed the ode there quoted, and commencing,

"Let others hail the rising sun,

I how to him whose course is run." See Boswell's Life of Johnson, Croker's edition, 1831, vol. i. p. 256. 2 L

In

acquirements, and desirous of displaying them. Many of her repartees are on record, such as, on the introduction of Bodin, author of the work "De Republica," "C'est plutot Badin;" because, in his book, he recommended the exclusion of females from the crown, as in the Salic law. Elizabeth generally conversed with the ambassadors of southern Europe in their own, and with those of the north in the Latin, language. Her prompt retort in 1597 on the Polish envoy of Sigismund III. appears demonstrative of the mastery she possessed of the Roman idiom, which, however, she must have pronounced somewhat differently from the present English mode, to have made herself intelligible. Erasmus had contributed to reform the vicious pronunciation of Greek and Latin in various parts of the continent, and, with Lilly and Colet, corrected many similar defects in our universities; but the sound of our vowels has continued unchanged; and strangers consequently, as I have had frequent occasion to witness, do not understand our oral Latin. deed, it was for some time my own case; for I recollect having attended the performance of Terence's Phormio by the Westminster scholars, when, from my foreign education, I could scarcely follow the speakers. "Domine, non intelligo Anglice," responded Scaliger to the Latin address of an English student and can words, I may ask, be more dissimilar than the "Explana mihi" of old Demipho, directed to Phormio, (Act ii. sc. 3, 33,) in an English, or continental mouth? Roger Ascham, who had travelled, and must have experienced the necessity of assimilation, may have equally impressed it on his pupil Elizabeth, as probably did Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard, in his instructions, on her predecessor Mary. George Buchanan, too, a long and early resident in other countries, may be supposed to have taught James the accent he had himself acquired, and thus enabled the royal scholar to be understood. Milton and Johnson, we find, differed on the expediency of adopting the more general European pronunciation; but the great poet, when abroad, saw that it was indispensable, as Latin was then so much more the

:

medium of communication than a century and a half afterwards, when Johnson published his life of Milton. "Let travellers be perfect Latinists, not only for pen, but for speech. The Latin tongue cements all the learned world, as it were, into one nation. Without it travellers are for some time such silly mutes that it rests with the companies charity to think that they have some reason," says a contemporary of Milton, quoted in this Magazine for August 1840, page 121. It was in Latin that Johnson conversed with the learned Jesuit Boscowich, because, said Arthur Murphy,* " he

*This gentleman, it is known, on terminating his collegiate course at St. Omer, was placed in a commercial house of this city. The establishment was that of my great-uncle, Mr. Harrold, which, however, Murphy soon abandoned for the more congenial pursuits of the law and letters, but without the slightest ground of personal dissatisfaction with his master, who was a most amiable and highly connected gentleman. Several of his nearest relatives have long enjoyed the most important administrative offices in Catholic Germany, particularly in Bavaria, where the recognised antiquity of the Harrold family entitled them to the first distinctions at court. And here, as an associated occasion offers, I wish to rectify an error in the Gent. Mag. for December, 1842, p. 588, where a nephew of Mr. Harrold, my maternal uncle, Captain O'Bryen, is stated to have held the reins of the Great Frederick's horse, and nearly taken him prisoner, after the defeat of Kolin, the

8th of June, 1757. But, on more exact recollection, I find that it was at the battle of Künersdorf, the 12th of August memorable act, when repelled and se1759, my relative was so near achieving a verely wounded by Captain Prittwitz and his devoted followers. Frederick's imminent danger, at that moment, is of graphic recital in Archenholz's history of the war. Pressed in his flight by a thousand of his pursuing enemy, the King cried out," Prittwitz, ich bin verloren,' Prittwitz, I am lost. "Nein, Ihro Majestat! das soll nicht geschehen, so lange noch ein Athem in uns ist." No, your Majesty that shall not happen so long as the breath is in us; was the heart-inspired reply of this intrepid officer, (Dieser helden müthige officier,") who could only oppose one hundred hussars to tenfold that number of the assailing foe; but he succeeded in effecting the mo

did not understand the pronunciation of the French." (Boswell, vol. iii. p. 293.) But assuredly his Latin utterance must have been fully as strange to the accomplished Italian, who, in contradiction to my countryman's further statement, spoke, as he avowedly wrote, the language with classic elegance. So the fact has been affirmed to me by those who had enjoyed his acquaintance. The subject vividly reminds me of the contrasted impression once made on my organ at Edinburgh, in the celebration of divine service, with all the sweetness of an Italian accent, by a clergyman edu. cated at Rome, and the same ecclesiastic's delivery of a sermon, immediately after, in his native idiom. It was a transition from the beautiful church-hymn, the "Adeste Fideles," as sung in Venice, to the harsh intonations of a Highlander's pibroch, however inspiriting to the martial Scot -from, I may say, the charm of Paganini's violin to the rugged bagpipe, or the touching simplicity of the final lines of the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, compared with the croaking of Aristophanes' " Frogs," (Act 1, sc. v.) and the grating portals of the infernal regions, in our own great poet's epic. Such, too, it has been remarked, was the variance between the deep-toned brogue of the brigaded Irish officers in speaking English, and the exquisite

then

narch's escape. My uncle was under the command of Laudon, the Aus

The

trian general, who turned, in so striking a manner, the fortune of the day, and Frederick's anticipated-his actually announced-victory, into a total rout. bold and almost accomplished attempt, though my uncle's name is not on historical record, was of long traditional recollection among the Irish officers in the Imperial service, as his brother-in-law, the late Mr. Pierce Nagle of Annakissy in this county, who, at a later period, fought under the same standard, often assured me. But see "Geschichte des Siebenjährigen Krieges, von J. W. von Archenholz, Erster Theil, p. 259, Berlin,

1830," and Frederick's own "Histoire de la Guerre de Sept Ans," in his collected works, Amsterdam, 1790. The Nagle family, into which my uncle married in 1774, had also given a wife to the poet Spenser's son, or grandson, and a mother to Edmund Burke.

"Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher."

polish of their foreign accents acquired in high military intercourse abroad.

Nor, amongst the important results to France of the prevalence of her idiom, should we overlook the many writers of first eminence, who, by adopting it, have, though of foreign birth, been generally classed with her authors, and thus shed the bright radiance of their names on her science or letters. Proud may France, or any country, be of the associated glories of Lagrange, of Cuvier, of Malte-Brun, and of Humboldt, or of Hamilton, my countryman, and Rousseau, with the old chroniclers Froissard, Monstrelet, Comines, &c. who were all aliens, though Mr. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, page 445) calls the last a Frenchman. Among foreigners by birth, yet not by language, we must also number Berthollet, who, by the happy application of science to the pursuits of industry, saved or gained for the chosen soil, whose precincts he had never entered until his four-and-twentieth year, an annual sum of forty millions of francs. Such was the ascertained fruit of the improved processes introduced by him into the manufacture of dyeing or bleaching matter, as well as of glass and soap. Of this last article, so essential to cleanliness and health, and which, in extent of use, may be almost considered a criterion of comparative civilization, the quantity consumed in consequence of the increased supply has doubled, as every one in recollection of the former and present appearance of all classes in France must be convinced of. Professor Liebig, in his "Letters on Chymistry," (letter iii.) states, that France formerly imported soda, the element of soap, from Spain at the cost of about a million sterling; but Le Blanc discovered how to make it from common salt, doubtless a great advantage to France; and the further facility of purchase from Berthollet's ameliorations, has produced the present strikingly advanced To no native chymist has France been national neatness of personal habits. more indebted, and, though not so eloquent, or rather fluent, as Fourcroy, he too could enliven his course of lectures with various anecdotes. One in particular, during the memorable expedition to Egypt, whither he accompanied Bonaparte, under whose

auspices he co-operated with Monge in founding and enriching the Grand Cairo Institute, as I heard it in glowing recital from his own lips, and may be pardoned for thus dwelling in fond retrospect on the merits of an honoured friend and teacher, I shall briefly repeat. Ordered by his renowned commander to try the nerves of, and impress with admiration of European superiority, a native chief, the Sheik El Berkey, he condensed, in accumulated action, the most potent elements of chymical combination, including the terrific fulminating powder of his own invention; but the impassive Musulman stood unmoved, and betrayed not an excited muscle ;—“Impavidum ferient ruinæ," as Berthollet added; and the truly astonished witness of this test of firmness was Bonaparte himself, at the barbarian's unsubdued apathy on the occasion. The fact I find also reported by Bourrienne in his Mémoires, tome ii. p. 178.

Thus to France we see ascribed this eminent man, who did not even owe his education to the country; nor did the eloquent and conscientious Joseph Le Mâitre; nor, again, did Lagrange, or B. Constant, with so many more Savoyards and Swiss; nor, we may add, the musical composers of whom she is most proud, Gossec and Grétry, without including Lulli, the boast of the preceding age. It is similarly, though with better right, as subjects of Rome, that the great city claimed the fame of Terence, of Apuleius, and of Claudian, natives of Africa, or of the Senecas, of Lucan, of Quintilian, Columella, &c. fruits of Spain, with numerous others of alien origin. England, on equal grounds, might enlist among her writers Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, &c. born under our sway, or,

from identity of language, the subsequent authors of America, if that circumstance could authorize the pretension. And, in other paths of distinction, is not Napoleon himself far more Italian than French, even should we, as I think we must, notwithstanding the contradictory evidence of his marriage registry, place his birth in August 1769, rather than in February 1768, as attested by his own signature on his union with Josephine, that is, a few weeks after the annexation of Corsica to France, instead of preceding that event by sixteen months? (See Gent. Mag. for December 1839, p. 589.) "Sa tournure, son esprit, son langage sont empreints d'une nature étrangère,' as reported of him by Madame de Stäel, who had studied him well in her "Considerations sur la Révolution Française," tome ii. p. 198. Neither the blood nor soil of France formed a principle of his being; while both were essentially Italian, as Jersey and the Isle of Man are English, which a native of the Mauritius or the Ionian islands, immediately on the incorporation of these localities, would hardly be considered. But these analogies, though in my apprehension not inapplicable, would carry me much too far were I to overpass the precincts of studious and trench on the sphere of active life. Besides, I have already a good deal transgresseal my forethought limits, pretty much as we find gentlemen generally do in their building estimates. The subject, however, demands a few additions, beginning with a comparative view of our own obligations to foreign learned or ingenious and scientific men.

Abbey church, whose length, unbalanced by adequate towers or spire, is too long to be viewed to advantage directly from the North.

To the Inhabitants of St. Margaret's, Westminster.

GENTLEMEN,-Permit me to call your attention to the fact, that efforts are still being made to effect the destruction of your venerable parish church, and to remove it from the site

it has occupied for 790 years. Imuch fear a committee of the House of Commons was prevailed upon yesterday, the 4th July, to recommend this scheme of church desecration.

I have, in my works on Church Building and on Westminster Improvement, and by other means, endeavoured to expose the shallow pretexts of the destructionists; and, as 1 have brought over some of the most influential persons to my views, I flattered myself that my efforts had been successful, when, to my astonishment, a letter appeared a short time since in The Builder, announcing "the pleasing intelligence"-the pleasing intelligence!"that St. Margaret's Church was immediately to be pulled down and rebuilt on another site, both which, and funds for the purpose, had been obtained."

Let me epitomise the reasons against this measure which I have given elscwhere at length: "That persons greatly err who would regulate Gothic architecture on Greek principles;" "that Gothic architecture does not exhibit itself naked and bare;" "that it delights in bold, striking, and picturesque irregularities veiling itself with walls and screens and towers;" "therefore appears best as an accumulation of buildings;" "therefore, the Abbey church and St. Margaret's gain by juxta-position," "while the grandeur of the ancient edifice is increased by comparison with the more modern structure which stands beside it;""that, when the new palace of legislature is completed, St. Margaret's will be absolutely necessary to effect a harmonious union between that and the Abbey;" "that St. Edward did not think the position of St. Margaret's would injure the effect of his darling Abbey church;" "that its removal would involve the destruction of another of history's landmarks, a document of stone which cannot lie, attesting the antiquity of your parish;' that, instead of your venerable temple, founded by St. Edward, rebuilt by Edward I., and again by Edward IV., you would probably get a mere brick and plaster apology, on a par with those vulgar modern churches which are the laughing-stock of ecclesiologists." But is mere taste, or rather the want of it, fit to be put in

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competition with the desecration of a spot on which your ancestors worshipped for nearly eight centuries? Or are ye on these matters below that nation of savages who, when urged to emigrate, replied, "But what shall we

do with the bones of our forefathers?"

Inhabitants of Westminster, rouse yourselves to resist the architectural barbarians. Your ancestors rose en masse, and successfully resisted the Protector Somerset and his myrmidons, when they attempted the destruction of St. Margaret's. The present most excellent Dean and your gifted Rector are utterly opposed to the project of removal; put yourselves under their legitimate guidance. "Remove not St. Margaret's, restore it to its pristine beauty as left to you by the illustrious Edward," and you will never more hear the senseless cry of removing St. Margaret's to obtain a better view of the Abbey church. Perhaps the best of all methods to unite St. Margaret's with the Minster would be the erection of a tomb-house, or cloister, for the reception of those mural monuments which disfigure the interior of the Abbey church, the expense of which the accession of new monuments would probably defray. As an architectural antiquary I have now done my duty, let the guardians of the fabric do theirs. Park-street, July 5. WM. BARDwell.