PEGASUS, QUIET IN HARNESS. BY A. D. GODLEY. OFT when the Bard would revel In wild poetic throes, He cannot quit the level Of ordinary prose: The Muses thus forsake him When most they ought to come, No sense of pathos clutches His pensive eye bedim- Is all that interests him! Yet when the Poet chances Are plainly quite de trop,— The Muse, that idle truant, When most you want her to, Nor heeding Space nor Time, Far from his casual portal Each to his several home. Ye, who inherit ages, Yet cannot as you should Extract from History's pages The proper mental mood, See how for sager claimants The methods they pursue Monopolise the payments Which else had gone to you! These by a due reflection Their sentiments control, Guide in the right direction The tempests of their soul; Whate'er in all creation The scene they're gazing at, Experience a sensation Appropriate to that: When to the spots they're taken Or if by native talents Still you can trust the balance Which regulates their mind, Scenes that on land or ocean To History belong Arouse their wild emotion And sweep them into song! Who'd be the slave of Passion? Will serve as substitute! SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF VOLTAIRE. Ar a period when the manners and morals of Society (reverently spelt with a capital) are attracting an extraordinary attention, and numbers of persons are enormously enjoying themselves in the always satisfactory employment of castigating other people's vices Compound for sins they are inclined to it seems natural to contrast the social life of this age with the most brilliant the world ever saw-social France before the Revolution. In the ten years between 1745 and 1755, when Madame de Pompadour was in the first dazzling lustre of her beauty and her power, and Voltaire reached the zenith of his fame, not as genius but as courtier, as the friend, not of stricken humanity but of King and of Mistress, Society attained to a height of wit, luxury, and extravagance, of polish and depravity, of slavish devotion to pleasure, which will never be exceeded or even equalled, but to which the Society of our own time does bear, in many points, a startling likeness. The first requisite for the man or woman of fashion in old France was to be a courtier. The Court at once dominated and ruined the kingdom. It did not at all suffice for the social aspirant to come to Versailles once a year, make his bow to majesty, and retire to his estates and his duty. He first closed his conscience and then his château, gaily abandoned the house which had been the home and the pride of his forefathers, instituted a middleman to collect his dues and his rents, and arrived at Versailles. As the expenses of life there were enormous, he was for ever sending back to the steward for fresh supplies of money. You cannot make the people pay, because they have nothing to pay with? But you must! The trees on my lord's estates fell like ninepins before his insistent demands for cash. The little black bread, and not enough of that,' the bestial misery and degradation of the poor on his lands, soon turned from facts into dreams in his memory. He was not necessarily heartless or even unkindly; but he was very far off. And, of course, he must be like other people, and keep up his name and position, if he was to live as his compeers did; while as to abandoning the Court and returning to the country where God and Nature had put him-why, no one does it. The argument has quite a modern ring; but it was a much sounder one then than it ever can be now. If my lord had sons there was not the smallest hope of advancement for any one of them unless they frequented Versailles. The perfectly unblushing jobbery of the eighteenth century stands revealed in that amazing publication of the Revolution, the 'Livre Rouge,' wherein one perceives how Louis XV. used the public money and filled public offices. A thousand a year to this man-as keeper of the royal wardrobe, shall we say? What's in a name after all? He had pleased majesty with his mots, or the mistress wanted him to marry her niece. If one's boy was a genius even, what hope for him unless he toadied the Pompadour and licked the dust from the royal shoes? A Voltaire himself had declared that three words with the King's mistress were better than all talent and learning. The nobles were right after all. To be a man or a woman of fashion then was but to make a career-to be decently ambitious for one's heir. It had some excuse. Behold, then, all Society at Court, with that Court the pivot of the social world, not of France only, but of Europe. Picture it with its thousands daily coming and going in the lavish and brilliant dress of the period, wholly abandoned to amusement, gambling, play-acting, sleighing, hunting, or busy with intrigues of the backstairs and clever frauds to cheat one's dearest friend of his post or his mistress; picture it as the golden cage of talent, the arbitrator of manners and morals, its head the Pompadour, its figurehead the King, and in the background a silent Queen, and hosts of idle servants, who, never being paid, recouped themselves by stealing. As the Court was absolutely ruled by one woman, Society was absolutely ruled by women too. The fine lady of that day had on paper no rights, and in practice a transcendent power. She governed France from her boudoir, and lost it India, China, and Canada. She filled the posts in the army with her lovers and cousins, and brought it from being the fear of the nations to be their laughing-stock and their contempt. She was supreme where she had no business, and where lay her métier and her duty her place knew her not. She neglected her children to interfere in |