religion of its protectress, applied to the chancellor to obtain possession of Miss Seymour as guardian. Mrs. Fitzherbert, now more than ever devoted to the child, and sharing in this affection with the Prince himself, exerted every means to retain the custody of it; and after all others had failed, had at last recourse to Lady Hertford, with whom she was formerly intimately acquainted. She requested her to intercede with Lord Hertford, as head of her house, to come to her aid, and demanding for himself the guardianship of the child to give it up to her upon certain conditions as to its education.

This long negotiation, in which the Prince was the principal instrument, led him at last to those confidential relations which ultimately gave to Lady Hertford an ascendancy over him superior to that possessed by Mrs. Fitzherbert herself, and from a friend converted her into a successful rival."

The mortifications which Mrs. Fitzherbert was compelled to undergo during the ensuing two or three years seriously affected her health, and redounded greatly to the discredit of the Prince who permitted them. We are not told the exact date of their separation ; but it was owing to a slight put upon Mrs. Fitzherbert at a dinner given by the Prince to Louis XVIII., when, for the first time, the guests were arranged to sit according to their rank

"When assured of this novel arrangement, she asked the Prince, who had invited her with the rest of the company, where she was to sit. He said, You know, madame, you have no place.' 'None, sir,' she replied, but such as you choose to give me.' Upon this she informed the royal family that she would not go."

This was the end. As Mr. Langdale has not given us a biography of Mrs. Fitzherbert, we have no means of satisfying the curiosity of our readers as to the details of her subsequent life. She continued, however, on the most intimate terms with the royal family, and especially the Duke of York, and he and the Queen procured for her an annuity of £6,000 a-year, secured on the Pavilion at Brighton, as she had no legal claim on the Prince for a single shilling, and her jointure was burdened with debts incurred on his behalf. The correspondence between herself and the Duke of York was burned previously to the death of the latter; though, as she herself says, had she

been of a mercenary turn of mind, she could have obtained almost any price for it as "she could have given the best private and public history of all the transactions of the country, from the close of the American war down to the death of the Duke of York, either from her communication with the duke, or her own connections with the opposite party, through the prince and his friends.'

Mrs. Fitzherbert appears to have possessed a real attachment for the Prince. She did not forget him, even when he had, as she supposed, forgotten her. Shortly before his death, she wrote him a letter of a tender and affectionate character, to which she never received any an

swer.

'Nothing (she said) had so cut her up,' to use her own expression, as not having received one word in reply to that last letter. There is reason however to suppose that George the Fourth was not wholly indifferent to her memory. He is said to have seized her letter with eagerness, and placed it immediately under his pillow, and to have desired that a particular picture should be hung round his neck and deposited with him in the grave. This was supposed by the Duke of Wellington to be the portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert."

After his death she seems to have lived principally at Brighton, where she was treated with marked kindness and distinction by William the Fourth who expressed his deep sense of the forbearance she had exercised offered to create her a duchess-insisted on her wearing mourning for the King, and took care that she should mix on the most familiar terms with his own family. At the small Sunday dinner parties at the Pavilion she was generally one of the guests. In 1833, an arrangement was come to between Mrs. Fitzherbert and the executors of the late King, to destroy all the correspondence which had passed between them, and all papers except such as Mrs. Fitzherbert might wish to preserve. These were five in number-namely, 1. The mortgage on the Palace at Brighton. 2. The certificate of the marriage, dated December 21, 1785. 3. Letter from the late King relating to the marriage, signed George the Fourth. 4. Will written by the late King, George IV. 5. Memorandum

written by Mrs. Fitzherbert, attached to a letter written by the clergyman who performed the marriage cere

mony.

These papers were deposited at Coutts', and Mr. Langdale has been unable to obtain access to them. We do not altogether see what good could have been gained by producing them. The world is pretty well satisfied about the real nature of Mrs. Fitzherbert's connexion-and we think the Hon. author has unnecessarily swollen his book by correspondence with the executor on this subject. Mrs. Fitzherbert died at Brighton in the month of March, 1837, in the 81st year of her age.

Concerning the precise character of Mrs. Fitzherbert's beauty we have little authentic information. A portrait is prefixed to Mr. Langdale's volume which represents her with a profusion of short thick ringlets-an aquiline nose, and an oval face-a beautifully curved mouth, and eyes. of melancholy softness. Her figure is described by one of the above mentioned pamphleteers as inclining to fulness, and from the late period to which she retained her charms, it is not an improbable conjecture that the prince's celebrated definition of his own taste in such matters may have sprung from recollections of the beautiful widow. Of her manners and disposition we know more they were eminently engaging and amiable. It is recorded of her that when taken as a child to view Louis the Fifteenth dining at Versailles, she burst into a fit of laughter, on seeing him disjoint a chicken with his fingers; and that the king was so pleased with her appearance, that he sent her a dish of sugar plums by the Duke de Soubise. She seems in her late life to have won golden opinions from everybody except the baffled rogue Nathaniel Jefferys. The king listened to her intercession in favour of the Prince, at a period when great coolness existed between them, and received him with so much kindness that he returned from court in the highest spirits without in the least knowing to whom he was indebted. The Princess Caroline always spoke highly of Mrs. Fitzherbert. "She always says, that is the prince's true wife; she is an excellent woman; it is a great pity he ever broke with her.” The

same authority pronounced his connexion with Lady Hertford merely platonic-as she was too formal, for the prince. The princess Charlotte was deeply attached to her mother's rival on one occasion she threw her arms round Mrs. Fitzher bert's neck, and besought her to in tercede with her father "that he would receive her with greater marks of his affection," but when Mrs. Fitzherbert once ventured to remonstrate with him, she got but a rough answer, "That is your opinion,madam.” The Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Horatio Seymour, the Dukes of York and Clarence, and other members of the royal family were her warmest friends and she seems never at any period to have given offence to any one by undue elation or assumption. In reading the scanty memoirs which this volume contains, we cannot help all along fancying that her mind was for ever haunted by the apprehension of coming misfortune-and that she was inclined to consider her elevation in thel ight of a calamity. Sometimes, when compelled to be subservient to the caprices of her proud and coldhearted rival, she would often reflect on her early reluctance to contract an engagement for which thousands of her sex would sigh, and repeat without ceasing those soberly sorrowful lines

"Yet Vane can tell what ills from beauty spring;

And Sedley cursed the form that pleased a King."

The only author of any repute who has spoken with harshness of Mrs. Fitzherbert is Dr. Croly, in his "Life and Reign of George IV." He seems to consider her a designing woman, who took advantage of the Prince's youth and temperament. We can only regard this as the hasty opinion of a writer more zealous in the defence of morality than in the search for truth. Had the doctor made those inquiries which he is in a position to make with success, he would have discovered many facts which separate Mrs. Fitzherbert from the ordinary class of royal mistresses. But he adopted a vulgar prejudice, and has been unintentionally the propagator of a vulgar calumny. It is no small merit in Mr. Langdale to

have collected and put upon record such a statement of facts as will silence at all events such detractors as these. Persons there may be still who will refuse to see in her anything different from the King's other favourites, on the score of propriety; but we think no one will henceforward accuse her of a calculating and mercenary spirit which could trifle with genuine passion.

There are certain general reflections to which this volume will give rise, more than usually important under existing circumstances. How far

is it expedient to retain these restrictions upon the marriages of the royal family? What advantages do they confer on us? What impropriety

can there be in a Duke or Princess marrying an English subject? Six out of the eleven sovereigns immediately preceding the Hanoverian dynasty were sprung from such marriages; and George I. himself married the daughter of such a marriage.

It cannot be said that a more genuinely English policy has governed the conduct of our sovereigns since their more intimate connexions have been sought from a single continental country. The monarchy becomes more isolated in every generation, and the great English race is ruled by a small junto of German families. Were the younger branches of the Royal House permitted to intermarry with our nobility, the throne would become nationalised, and would rest on much wider and deeper foundations than it does at present. We are not now about to discuss the propriety of removing these restrictions. But we think it is a fair subject for consideration. Public opinion is so powerful and vigilant, and new blood is so much required, that we fancy the advantage would be considerably greater than the danger; but we admit it is a difficult question, and one on which we should not like hastily to pronounce a decided opinion.

WHATEVER difference of opinion may exist as to the conduct and results of our military operations during the two years that have just passed by, it will be generally admitted that they have had the effect of raising doubts in the public mind as to the soundness of the system under which the national army is formed and organised. Into a consideration of the grounds upon which these doubts are based it is not our intention to enter. It is sufficient for our present purpose that they prevail widely, and have assumed practical shape in a multiplicity of projects of changes in the manner of recruiting, educating, and officering the army. Some of these plans have already been put into at least partial operation, with the infelicitous haste to do something, under the pressure of popular clamour that has been too often exemplified in the course of the war. Others, which would probably be forced upon the government in like immaturity were another campaign to be undertaken, will perhaps in the contingency of a peace be laid aside; yet it can scarcely be expected by the most credulous believer in

We

things as they are, that subjects so important in their own nature, and so well adapted to the uses of the grievance-monger, will be forgotten by the parliament or the people. wish it were in our power to feel equally certain that they will be dealt with in a temperate, informed, and above all in a national spirit. fortunately, however, in this age,

Un

excellent as we must believe it to be, moderation is sublimed into apathy or recklessness, learning expands into the possession of the Universal Secret, and nationality is transcended by general philanthropy. One day, every child knows that it was under the cold shade of the aristocracy the army dwindled away last winter, and that the remedy--the effectual and only remedy-is to choose generals out of the ranks. The next, it is enough to pronounce the single word routine, in order to explain to the meanest capacity why every third man in a host of some thirty thousand died of hunger, cold, fatigue and exposure within the short period of six months. The cause of. the evil being thus discovered after

so short a search, it can of course be removed with equal facility-a cure will speedily be effected by the use of the simple formula, confusion to order.' It needs but to abolish the system, and to obliterate experience, and all will be right again. "They manage these things better in France,' is commonly the word of power which is to evoke those reforms. Everything will be accomplished if we will only adopt the conscription, the system of military schools, the Legion of Honour. These few changes from ancient ways may, it is true, involve the elimination of the essential elements of the Saxon character from our nature; but they will be effectual. We may enter upon a career of conquest as brilliant as that of the great Napoleon, if we will but forego our stupid prejudices in favour of the liberty of industry, if we will forget our dislike to despotic institutions, if we will learn to think upon la gloire et la patrie in the French tongue. How easy it is to set down these few remedial measures! and who will doubt that it would be as easy to carry them out in practice? The way to do it is plain as road to parish church, when viewed through the columns of certain eminent journals, or from the elevation of hundreds of platforms. It is true, the adoption of the new model has not seemed quite so simple a matter in the eyes of those whose official duty it would be to introduce it; but they have manifestly admitted a doubt of the perspicacity of their own vision, and got them glass eyes, through which they seem to see, like Lear's scurvy politician. They have not chosen generals out of the ranks; but they have promoted a few serjeants, and probably embittered the future lives of most of them. They have not proposed to cast the net of military service over various ranks of the population by a conscription; but they have tried to coax a better class of men into it, by offering encreased pay to balance as it were the degradation of the common soldier's condition. They have not established doubles of the Polytechnique or the School of St. Cyr; but they have raised a barrier of crabbed learning in front of young aspirants to commissions, which they cannot get over without the aid of crammers and grinders. They have not incorpo

rated a Legion of Honour into our system, but they have forged a pinchbeck cross in counterfeit presentment of it.

It would be absurd to deny that these measures have been to a great extent very honestly designed to remedy acknowledged evils; but it would also, we think, be difficult to maintain that they have not been put into execution hastily, or that they have not been conceived under the influence of popular clamour, rather than in a cool and philosophic apprehension of the nature of an army, and of the quality of the materials out of which a British army must be composed. It was too, as it seems to us, very unreasonably put out of sight by the public, that war is an art which like every other art can only be learned by actual practice; and that this must vary according to circumstances. There are rules and principles of navigation and architecture more certain and definite than those of strategy; but no one would expect theoretical learning, or even skill in handing, reefing, and steering such a piece of rigwork as may be seen in the grounds of the royal naval school, to enable a man to handle a ship in a gale of wind. Neither

would the most extensive acquaintance with plans and models be thought sufficient to qualify an architectural student to undertake the construction of a public building; nor would it be expected that a skilful practical architect, transported suddenly from among the bricks of Holland, would at first make any great figure as a builder of log houses in the sandy wilds of Australia. So even though Mr. Joseph Hume had never lived, and ever so much money had been spent in recruiting and drilling the army, we have no doubt it would have required a campaign or two to render it handy in the field and selfreliant in camp or cantonments. And useful as recollections of the actual warfare of the Peninsula and of India must unquestionably have been in the Crimea, some time was as certainly required to revive and to modify their details so as to secure to the particular service the benefits of the general experience. An apprenticeship is necessary in every craft; skill and success are seldom reached without passing through a probation

of blundering and misfortune. But while these truths may be fairly appealed to, in partial extenuation of the faults exposed in the Crimean campaigns, they also contain a lesson against presumptuously rushing out of one fault into its opposite; and when applied to illustrate the actual state of our army, they teach the necessity for many changes if we wish to make any serious attempt to square our system with them. The making of an accomplished officer and gentleman' is a work of time and training, to effect which an apprenticeship is required as much as it is for the making of a hardy, self-reliant soldier. It is no more possible to discover by an examination in mathematics, languages, and history whether the germs of the qualities of a commander in any grade be in a youth's mind, than it is to train his body to military exercises by book learning.

We must not, however, be misunderstood as though we undervalued learning and intellectual developement in the military profession. Nay we are, on the contrary, very far from thinking that a brutal, unlettered sworder is in his right place in any rank in the army; agreeing, as we do fully, with old Munro,* that "reading and discourse doth as much or rather more to the furtherance of a perfect souldier than a few years' practice without reading." To us it has always seemed a very idle task to discuss the question so commonly disputed, as to the danger of an excessive literary education of men whose lives must be passed for the greater part in bodily labour.

The danger in truth lies in not educating them sufficiently in the practice of their handicraft; for if that be attended to, an excess in literary education will be simply impossible. Train a farm labourer, a gardener, a carpenter, or a sailor perfectly in his respective art, and such a creature of habit is man-it will be a case of rare exception in which any amount

of learning he can ever acquire will lead him away from the pursuit whereby his faculties were first developed, and in which he knows he is skilful. And if this truth applies to men of other crafts, it is much more forcibly applicable to the soldier, for the laudable profession of arms' holds out many attractions to the adventurous mind of youth, and cannot be thoroughly learned without training the grown man in modes of life and imbuing him with tastes in a great measure incompatible with other callings. He is no true soldier who having served a few years, or a campaign or two, longs to retire in the prime of life; such a deserter, it may be taken as certain, has not been thoroughly educated in the military profession, though he may be perfect in drill, or even able to set a squadron in the field. The well-trained cavalier will discern but one path of duty, but one goal of honour before him, and whatever advances he may make in learning, or philosophy, or religion, the effect of mental development will be to stimulate his military ambition, or to teach patience under the discouragements of a military life, or to supply consolation in its reverses. This standard of military education is tersely described, as having been attained in those armies with which Bonaparte achieved wonders, by the pithy saying that every private sentinel carried a Marshal's baton in his knapsack. We need not stop to prove that it has not been reached in our own system of late days, and we will assume as admitted, that to set it up ought to be the object of any changes that may be made with a view to improving the character of our soldiers of all ranks. These positions will not be contested, however diverse may be the opinions entertained as to the specific reforms that should be adopted, and as to the amount of benefit that can be fairly expected to attend upon any practicable alterations in existing arrangements.

VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXX.

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