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wild journey, were not yet ended, nor was his every day course of life without severe privation.

were water at all, it would be found. I took up the gun to proceed in that direction, while he went in search of the horses, which we feared might have been devoured by the lion. I ascended the rugged height to the spot where waWe have been tempted beyond all due ter once was, but found it as dry as the sandy bounds by this fascinating narrative, which plain beneath. I stood a few minutes, stretching combines beauty and interest of every sort, my languid eye to see if there were any ap-divine and human. One more isolated picpearance of the horses, but saw nothing; turn-ture, and we have done, sincerely hoping ing to descend, I happened to cough, and was that tens and hundreds of thousands may exinstantly surrounded by almost a hundred ba-perience the same delight and instruction boons, some of gigantic size. They grunted, from the perusal of this narrative, that it has grinned, and sprang from stone to stone, protruding their mouths, and drawing back the skin of afforded to ourselves. By a happy sugges their foreheads, threatening an instant attack. tion, the singing of hymns, which Moffat I kept parrying them with my gun, which was had composed or translated into the native loaded; but I knew their character and disposition language, was adopted, and it charmed the too well to fire, for if I had wounded one of natives. A distant chief, of mild and highly them, I should have been skinned in five min-interesting character, named Mosheu, had, utes. The ascent was very laborious, but I

would have given any thing to be at the bottom at different times, visited, the station, and of the hill again. Some came so near as even had brought his family to be instructed; to touch my hat while passing projecting rocks. and while out on a tour, Moffat visited his It was some time before I reached the plain, village, where this animated scene occurwhen they appeared to hold a noisy council, red: either about what they had done, or intended doing. Levelling my piece at two that seemed The moment I entered the village, the huethe most fierce, as I was about to touch the trigand-cry was raised, and old and young, mother ger, the thought occurred, I have escaped, let and children, came running together as if it were me be thankful; therefore I left them uninjured, to see some great prodigy. . . I took perhaps with the gratification of having given my Testament and a hymn-book, and with such me a fright. singers as I had, gave out a hymn, read a chapJantye soon appeared with the horses. My ter, and prayed; then taking the text, "God so looks, more expressive than words, convincing loved the world," etc., discoursed to them for him that there was no water, we saddled the about an hour. Great order and profound sipoor animals, which, though they had picked up lence were maintained. The scene (so well de a little grass, looked miserable beyond descrip- picted in the vignette in the title-page) was in tion. We now directed our course towards Witte the centre of the village, composed of Bechuana water, where we could scarcely hope to arrive and Coranna houses and cattle-folds. Some of before afternoon, even if we reached it at all, for these contained the cattle, sheep, and goats, we were soon obliged to dismount, and drive our while other herds were strolling about. At a horses slowly and silently over the glowing plain, distance a party were approaching riding on where the delusive mirage tantalized our feel- oxen. A few strangers drew near with their ings with exhibitions of the loveliest pictures, of spears and shields, who, on being beckoned to, lakes and pools studded with lovely islets, and instantly laid them down. The native dogs towering trees moving in the breeze on their could not understand the strange looking being banks. In some might be seen the bustle of a on the front of the wagon, holding forth to a mercantile harbor, with jetties, coves, and mov- gazing throng, and they would occasionally ing rafts and oars; in others, lakes so lovely, as break the silence with their bark, for which, if they had just come from the hand of the Di- however, they suffered the penalty of a stone or vine artist, a transcript of Eden's sweetest views, stick hurled at their heads. Two milk maids, but all the result of highly rarefied air, or the who had tied their cows to posts, stood the whole reflected heat of the sun's rays on the sultry time with their milking vessels in their hands, plain. Sometimes, when the horses and my as if afraid of losing a single sentence. The companion were some hundred yards in advance, earnest attention manifested exceeded any thing they appeared as if lifted from the earth, or mov-I had ever before witnessed, and the counteing like dark living pillars in the air. Many a nances of some indicated strong mental excitetime did we seek old ant hills, excavated by the When I had concluded, my hearant-eater, into which to thrust our heads, iners divided into companies, to talk the subject order to have something solid between our fe- over; but others, more inquisitive, plied me with vered brains and the piercing rays of the sun. questions. While thus engaged, my attention There was no shadow of a great rock, the shrubs was arrested by a simple-looking young man at apless, barren, and blighted, as if by some blast a short distance, rather oddly attired. of fire. Nothing animate was to be seen or The person referred to was holding forth with beard, except the shrill chirping of a beetle, re- great animation to a number of people, who sembling the cricket, the noise of which seemed were all attention. On approaching, I found, to to increase with the intensity of the heat. Not my surprise, that he was preaching my sermon a cloud had been seen since we left our homes. over again, with uncommon precision, and with great solemnity, imitating as nearly as he could The hardships of the missionary, on this the gestures of the original. A greater contrast

ment.

could scarcely be conceived than the fantastic to appreciate those tunes which are distinfigure I have described, and the solemnity of his guished for melody and softness. . . . . The language, his subject being eternity, while he company at length dispersed; and awaking in evidently felt what he spoke. Not wishing to the morning, after a brief repose, I was not a disturb him, I allowed him to finish the recital, little surprised to hear the old tune in every and seeing him soon after, told him that he could corner of the village. The maids milking the do what I was sure I could not, that was, preach | cows, and the boys tending the calves, were humagain the same sermon verbatim. He did not ming their alphabet over again. appear vain of his superior memory. "When sheu and his people made very pleasing advances I hear any thing great," he said, touching his in Christian knowledge, and so eager were they forehead with his finger, "it remains there." to benefit by the instructions of the missionaries, This young man died in the faith shortly after, that, at a considerable sacrifice of time and before an opportunity was afforded him of mak-comfort, they made frequent journeys to the Kuing a public profession.

Mo

ruman. It was an interesting spectacle to see In the evening, after the cows were milked, forty or fifty men, women, and children, coming and the herds had laid themselves down in the over the plain, all mounted on oxen, and bringfolds to chew the cud, a congregation for the ing with them a number of milch cows, that they third time, stood before my wagon. The bright might not be too burdensome either to the missilvery moon, holding her way through a cloud- sionaries or the people. Their object was to obless starry sky, and shining on many a sable tain instruction; and they would remain at Moface. made the scene peculiarly solemn and im- tito and the Kuruman for more than two months pressive, while the deepest attention was paid at a time, diligently attending to all the opportuto the subject, which was the importance of re-nities afforded; and Andries, the brother of Moligion illustrated by Scripture characters. After sheu, being the more talented individual, was the service, they lingered about the wagon, soon after appointed schoolmaster, and under making many inquiries, and repeating over and his humble and devoted labors they made wonover again what they had heard. The derful progress. What they valued for themfollowing day, Monday, was no less busy, for selves they were anxious to secure to their though the wind was very high, so as to prevent children; and Mosheu left his daughter to the a public service in the morning, I was engaged | care of Mrs. Moffat, for education, while Andries addressing different parties at their own dwell-committed his son to that of Mr. Lemue, at Moings, and teaching them to read. . . . . When another deeply interesting evening service had closed, the people seemed resolved to get all out of me they could. All would learn to read there and then. A few remaining spelling-books were sought out, and the two or three young people I had with me were each inclosed within a circle of scholars all eager to learn. Some were compelled to be content with only shouting out the names of the letters, which were rather too small to be seen by the whole circle, with only the light of the moon. While this rather noisy exercise was going on, some of the principal men with whom I was conversing, thought they would also try their skill in this new art.

tito, both of whom made most satisfactory progress, not only in reading and writing, but the daughter in needlework, and in general domestic employments.

MADAMÉ DE SEVIGNE.

From the Edinburgh Review.

Madame de Sévigné and her Contemporaries.
Two vols. 8vo. London: 1842.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE, in her combined and inseparable character as writer and woman, enjoys the singular and delightful reputation of having united, beyond all others of her class, the rare with the fami

"Oh, teach us the A B C with music," every one cried, giving me no time to tell them it was too late. I found they had made this discovery through one of my boys. There were presently a dozen or more surrounding me, and resistance was out of the question. Dragged and pushed, I entered one of the largest native houses, which liar, and the lively with the correct. The was instantly crowded. The tune of "Auld moment her name is mentioned, we think lang syne" was pitched to A B C, each succeed- of the mother who loved her daughter; of ing round was joined by succeeding voices, till the most charming of letter-writers; of the every tongue was vocal, and every countenance ornament of an age of license, who incurred beamed with heart-felt satisfaction. The longer they sang the more freedom was felt, and "Auld none of its ill-repute; of the female who lang syne" was echoed to the farthest corner of has become one of the classics of her lanthe village. The strains which infuse pleasura-guage, without effort and without intenble emotions into the sons of the North, were no tion.

less potent among these children of the South. The sight of a name so attractive, in the Those who had retired to their evening slum-title-page of the volumes before us, has bers, supposing that we were holding a night made us renew an intercourse, never enservice, came; "for music," it is said, "charms the savage breast." It certainly does, particutirely broken, with her own. We have lived larly the natives of Southern Africa, who, how. over again with her and her friends from ever degraded they may have become, still re- her first letter to her last, including the tain that refinement of taste, which enables them new matter in the latest Paris editions.

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We have seen her writing in her cabinet, | Herbert of Cherbury, the Earls of Holland dancing at court, being the life of the com- and Ossory, the Dukes of Buckingham, pany in her parlor, nursing her old uncle Shrewsbury, and St. Simon, and others who the Abbé; bantering Mademoiselle du Ples- flourished before and after her day? There sis; lecturing and then jesting with her is, it is true, a sprinkling of extracts from son; devouring the romances of Calpre- Madame de Sévigné's letters through the nede, and responding to the wit of Pascal greater part of the volumes; but even these and La Fontaine ; walking in her own green naturally fail us in many of the sketches, alleys by moonlight, enchanting cardinals, and of whole letters we have but two or politicians, philosophers, beauties, poets, de- three; whereas, what the public looked for, votees, haymakers; ready to die with was a regular and satisfactory account both laughter' fifty times a-day; and idolizing of her writings and her life, a selection of her daughter for ever. specimens of her letters, and some talk It is somewhat extraordinary, that of all about her friends; in short, about all of the admirers of a woman so interesting, not whom she talks herself; not excepting Nione has yet been found in these islands to non, of whom there is here scarcely a word; give any reasonably good account of her- and assuredly not omitting such a friend any regular and comprehensive informa- as Corbinelli, whose name we do not retion respecting her life and writings. The member seeing in the book. There is very notices in the biographical dictionaries little even about her son the Marquis, and are meagre to the last degree; and not a syllable respecting her startling 'con'sketches of greater pretension have sel- temporaries,' Brinvilliers and La Voisin ; dom consisted of more than loose and brief while, on the other hand, we have a long memorandums, picked out of others, their account of the King and Queen of Spain, predecessors. The name which report has and a history of the very foreign transacassigned to the compiler of the volumes tions of Stradella the musician. It is much before us, induced us to entertain sanguine as if, in the print above-mentioned, Molière hopes that something more satisfactory was and his friends had been thrust into the about to be done for the queen of letter-background, and the chief part of the comwriting; and undoubtedly the portrait which has been given of her, is, on the whole, the best hitherto to be met with. But still it is a limited, hasty, and unfinished portrait, forming but one in a gallery of others; many of which have little to do with her, and some, scarcely any connection even with her times. Now, in a work entitled 'Madame de Sévigné and her Contemporaries,' we had a right to expect a picture with the foreground occupied by herself and her friends, and the rest of the group at greater or less distances, in proportion to their reference to the main figure; something analogous to an interesting French print, which exhibits Molière reading one of his plays to an assembly of wits, at the house of Ninon de l'Enclos. The great comic writer is on his legs-the prominent object-acting as well as reading his play, in a lively and salient attitude, full of French expression; near him sits the lady of the house, as the gatherer together of the party; and round both, in characteristic pos- Proceeding to sketch out, from our own tures, but all listening to the reader, sit acquaintance with her, what we conceive Rochefoucauld, La Fontaine, Corneille, and to be a better mode of supplying some acone or two more. But in a picture of Ma- count of Madame de Sévigné and her writdame de Sévigné, and those whom an asso-ings, we shall, in the order of time, speak ciation of ideas would draw round her, what of her ancestors and other kindred, her have we to do with Cardinal Richelieu, and friends and her daily habits, and give a few Père Joseph, and Boisrobert? What with specimens of the best of her letters; and the man in the 'Iron Mask,' with Lord we shall do all this with as hearty a relish

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position given up to a view of the courts of France and England. We need not dwell upon the contradictions between the 'advertisement' and the 'introduction' respecting the chief authorities consulted; or such as those in the opinions expressed about Louis the Fourteenth, who is at one time represented as 'the greatest monarch that had appeared in France previous to the times of Napoleon and Louis-Philippe,' and at another as a man whose talents were below mediocrity.' The work, in a word, is one of the jobbing, book-making expedients of the day, with a dishonest titlepage; and yet there are sketches and passages in it so good, and indicative of a power to do so much better, that we speak of it thus with regret. It should have been called by some other name. At present it reminds us too much of the famous ode on Doctor Pococke, in which there was something about 'one Pococke' towards the middle of the composition.

of her genius as the warmest of her admir- [ est adherents of Henry IV.; and, indeed, ers, without thinking it necessary to blind the whole united stock may be said to have ourselves to any weaknesses that may have been distinguished equally for worth, spirit, accompanied it. With all her good-nature, the charming woman' had a sharp eye to a defect herself; and we have too great a respect for the truth that was in her, not to let her honestly suffer in its behalf, whenever that first cause of all that is great and good demands it.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Baroness de Chantal and Bourbilly, afterwards Marchioness de Sévigné, was born, in all probability, in Burgundy, in the old ancestral château of Bourbilly, between Semur and Epoisses, on the 5th of February, 1627. Her father, Celse Benigne de Rabutin, Baron as abovementioned, was of the elder branch of his name, and cousin to the famous Count Bussy-Rabutin; her mother, Marie de Coulanges, daughter of a secretary-of-state, was also of a family whose name afterwards became celebrated for wit; and her paternal grandmother, Jeanne François Fremyot, afterwards known by the title of the Blessed Mother of Chantal, was a saint. The nuns of the Order of the Visitation, which she founded by the help of St. Francis de Sales, beatified her, with the subsequent approbation of Benedict XIV.; and she was canonized by Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) in 1767. There was a relationship-between the families of Rabutin and De Sales ;-names which it would be still stranger than it is to see in conjunction, had not the good St. Francis been the liveliest and most tolerant of his class. We notice these matters, because it is interesting to discover links between people of celebrity; and because it would be but a sorry philosophy which should deny the probable effects produced in the minds and dispositions of a distinguished race by intermixtures of blood and associations of ideas. Madame de Sévigné's father, for instance, gave a rough foretaste of her wit and sincerity, by a raillery amounting to the brusque, sometimes to the insolent. He wrote the following congratulatory epistle to a minister of finance, whom the King (Louis XIII.) had transformed into a marshal :

and ability, till it took a twist of intrigue and worldliness in the solitary instance of the scapegrace Bussy. We may discern, in the wit and integrity of Madame de Sévigné-in her natural piety, in her cordial partisanship, and at the same time in that tact for universality which distinguished her in spite of it a portion of what was best in all her kindred, not excepting a spice of the satire, but without the malignity, of her supercilious cousin. She was truly the flower of the family tree; and laughed at the top of it with a brilliancy as well as a softness, compared with which Bussy was but a thorn.

The little heiress was only a few months old when the Baron de Chantal died, bravely fighting against the English in their descent on the Isle of Rhé. It was one of the figments of Gregorio Leti, that he received his death-wound from the hand of Cromwell. The Baron's widow survived her husband only five years; and it seems to have been expected that the devout grandmother, Madame de Chantal the elder, would have been anxious to take the orphan under her care. But whether it was that the mother had chosen to keep the child too exclusively under her own, or that the future saint was too much occupied in the concerns of the other world and the formation of religious houses, (of which she founded no less than eighty-seven ;) the old lady contented herself with recommending her to the consideration of an Archbishop, and left her in the hands of her maternal relations. They did their part nobly by her. She was brought up with her fellow-wit and correspondent, Philippe-Emmanuel de Coulanges; and her uncle Christophe, Abbé de Livry, became her second father, in the strictest and most enduring sense of the word. took care that she should acquire graces at court, as well as encouragements to learning from his friends; saw her married, and helped to settle her children; extricated her affairs from disorder, and taught her to surpass himself in knowledge of business; in fine, spent a good remainder of his life with her, sometimes at his own house and sometimes at hers; and when he died, repaid the tenderness with which she had Meaning that his new fortune had been rewarded his care, by leaving her all his owing to his quality, to his position near property. The Abbé, with some little irrithe royal person, and to his having a black table particularities, and a love of extrabeard like his master. Both the Chantals comfort and his bottle, appears to have been, and the Fremyots, a race remarkable for as she was fond of calling him, bien bon, a their integrity, had been amongst the warm-right good creature; and posterity is to be

'My Lord,

'Birth; black beard; intimacy.

CHANTAL.'

He

congratulated, that her faculties were allowed to expand under his honest and rearonable indulgence, instead of being cramped, and formalized, and made insincere, by the half-witted training of the convent.

a natural flow of wit, and a face and shape which, if not perfectly handsome, were allowed by every body to produce a most agreeable impression. Her cousin Bussy Rabutin has drawn a portrait of her when a young woman; and though he did it half in malice and resentment, like the half-vagabond he was, he could not but make the same concession. He afterwards withdrew the worst part of his words, and heaped her with panegyric; and from a comparison of his different accounts we probably obtain a truer idea of her manners and personal appearance, than has been furnished either by the wholesale eulogist or the artist. It is, indeed, corroborated by herself in her letters. She was somewhat tall for a woman; had a good shape, a pleasing voice, a fine complexion, brilliant eyes, and a profusion of light hair; but her eyes, though brilliant, were small, and, together with the eyelashes, were of different tints; her lips, though well-colored, were too flat; and the end of her nose too 'square.' The jawbone, according to Bussy, had the same fault. IIe says that she had more shape than grace, yet danced well; and she had a taste for singing. He makes the coxcombical objection to her at that time of life, that she was too playful for a woman of quality;' as if the liveliest genius and the staidest conventionalities could be reasonably expected to go together; or as if she could have written her unique letters, had she resembled every body else. Let us call to mind the playfulness of those letters, which have charmed all the world;-let us add the most cordial manners, a face full of expression, in which the blood came and went, and a general sensibility, which, if too quick perhaps to shed tears, was no less ready to die with laughter' at every sally of pleasantry-and we shall see before us the not beautiful but still engaging and ever-lively creature, in whose countenance, if it contained nothing else, the power to write those letters must have been visible; for, though people do not always seem what they are, it is seldom they do not look what they can do.

Young ladies at that time were taught little more than to read, write, dance, and embroider, with greater or less attention to books of religion. If the training was conventual, religion was predominant, (unless it was rivalled by comfit and flower-making, great pastimes of the good nuns ;) and in the devout case, the danger was, either that the pupil would be frightened into bigotry, or, what happened oftener, would be tired into a passion for pleasure and the world, and only stocked with a sufficient portion of fear and superstition to return to the bigotry in old age, when the passion was burnt out. When the education was more domestic, profane literature had its turnthe poetry of Maynard and Malherbe, and the absurd but exalting romances of Gomberville, Scudery, and Calprenede. Sometimes a little Latin was added; and other tendencies to literature were caught from abbés and confessors. In all cases, somebody was in the habit of reading aloud while the ladies worked; and a turn for politics and court-gossip was given by the wars of the Fronde, and by the allusions to the heroes and heroines of the reigning gallantries, in the ideal personages of the romances. The particulars of Madame de Sévigné's education have not transpired; but as she was brought up at home, and we hear something of her male teachers, and nothing of her female, (whom, nevertheless, she could not have been without,) the probability is that she tasted something of all the different kinds of nurture, and helped herself with her own cleverness to the rest. She would hear of the example and reputation of her saintly grandmother, if she was not much with her; her other religious acquaintances rendered her an admirer of the worth and talents of the devotees of Port-Royal; her political ones interested her in behalf of the Frondeurs; but, above all, she had the wholesome run of her good uncle's books, and the society of his friends, Chapelain, Me- The good uncle, the Abbé de Coulanges, nage, and other professors of polite litera- doubtless thought he had made a happy ture; the effect of which is to fuse particu- match of it, and joined like with like, when, lar knowledge into general, and to distil at the age of eighteen, his charming niece from it the spirit of a wise humanity. She married a man of as joyous a character as seems to have been not unacquainted with Latin and Spanish; and both Chapelain and Menage were great lovers of Italian, which became part of her favorite reading.

To these fortunate accidents of birth and breeding were joined health, animal spirits,

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herself, and of one of the first houses in Brittany. The Marquis de Sévigné, or Sevigny, (the old spelling,) was related to the Duguesclins and the Rohans, and also to Cardinal de Retz. But joyousness, unfortunately, was the sum-total of his character.

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