Flounced on his knees, appearing like a round Oh no! disdain befitted not the case; That tears of laughter trickled down her face. Eudoxus felt his folly and disgrace, Looked sheepish, nettled, or wished himself away; Here's a petitioner that must for ever pray!" The falling in love with a young lady at Lausanne is undoubtedly true; but it happens that the incident took place in Gibbon's youth, when, so far from being fat or unwieldy, he was extremely slenderfor, be it observed, the illustrious historian was in reality a smallboned man, and of more than usually slight figure in his young days. He was about twenty years of age, and was dwelling in Switzerland with a Protestant pastor by his father's orders, that he might recover himself (as he ultimately did) from a tendency to Romanism which had beset him at College, when Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, the daughter of the pastor of Crassy in Burgundy, came on a visit to some relations in Lausanne. The father of the young lady, in the solitude of his village situation, had bestowed upon her a liberal education. "She surpassed," says Gibbon, "his hopes, by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connexion. In a calm retirement, the vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity; but, on my return to England, I soon found that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son. My wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided into friendship and esteem." Susan Curchod eventually married M. Necker, the minister; and they were the parents of Madame de Stael Holstein.* GIBBON AND WALPOLE QUARREL. "You will be diverted," writes Walpole to Mason, "to hear that Mr. Gibbon has quarrelled with me. He lent me his second volume in the middle of November. I returned it with a most civil panegyric. He came for more incense; I gave it, but, alas! with too much sincerity. I added, 'Mr. Gibbon, I am sorry you should have pitched on so disgusting a subject as the Constantinopolitan History. There is so much of the Arians and Eunomians, and semiPelagians; and there is such a strange contrast between Roman and Gothic manners, and so little harmony between a Consul Sabinus and a Ricimer, Duke of the palace, that though you have written the story as well as it could be written, I fear few will have the patience to read it.' He coloured: all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles; he screwed up his button-mouth, and rapping his snuff-box, said, 'It had never been put together before' -so well, he meant to add-but gulped it. Well, from that hour to this I have never seen him, though he used to call once or twice a week, nor has he sent me the third volume, as he promised. I well knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person, thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably." Walpole allows the "History" to be admirably written; "but the style is far less sedulously enamelled than the first volume, and there is flattery to the Scots, who can gobble feathers as readily as thistles." MARRYING FOR MONEY. but A poor nobleman was about to marry a rich heiress: he was asked by a friend, how long the honeymoon would last? He replied, "Don't tell me of the honeymoon; it is harvest moon with me." DEATH OF DR. HENRY, THE HISTORIAN. About 1790, Dr. Henry was living at a place of his own, in his native county of Stirling. He was about seventy-two, and had been for some time very feeble. He wrote to Sir Harry Moncrieff that he was dying, and thus invited him for the last time—“Come out here directly. I have got something to do this week; I have got to die." Sir Harry went, and found his friend plainly sinking, but * Abridged from Chambers's Book of Days. 66 resigned and cheerful. He had no children, and there was nobody with him except his wife. She and Sir Harry remained alone with him for about three days, being his last three; during a great part of which the reverend historian sat in his easy chair, and conversed, and listened to reading, and dozed. While engaged in this way, the hoofs of a horse were heard clattering in the court below. Mrs. Henry looked out, and exclaimed that it was that wearisome body," meaning a neighbouring minister, who was famous for never leaving a house after he had once got into it. "Keep him out," cried the Doctor, "don't let the cratur in here." But before they could secure his exclusion, the cratur's steps were heard on the stair, and he was at the door. The Doctor instantly winked significantly, and signed to them to sit down and be quiet, and he would pretend to be sleeping. The hint was taken; and when the. intruder entered, he found the patient asleep in his cushioned chair. Sir Harry and Mrs. Henry put their fingers to their lips, and pointing to the supposed slumberer as one not to be disturbed, shook their heads. The man sat down near the door, like one inclined to wait till the nap should be over. Once or twice he tried to speak; but was instantly repressed by another finger on the lip, and another shake of the head. So he sat on, all in perfect silence, for above a quarter of an hour, during which Sir Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cautiously through the fringes of his eyelids, to see how his visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he and Mrs. Henry, pointing to the poor Doctor, fairly waved the visitor out of the room; on which the Doctor opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh; which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet made them certain that their friend was actually off the premises. Dr. Henry died that night.—Lord Cockburn's Memorials. THEORIZING. Dr. Robertson was a perfect master of conversation, and very desirous to lead it, and to make dissertations and raise theories that sometimes provoked the laugh against him. Once, when he had taken a jaunt into England with some of Henry Dundas's (Lord Melville's) family, he (Dundas) and Mr. Baron Cockburn and Robert Sinclair were on horseback, and seeing a gallows on a neighbouring hillock, they rode round to have a nearer view of the felon on the gibbet. When they met at the inn, Robertson immediately began a dissertation on the character of nations, and how much the English, like the Romans, were hardened by their cruel diversions of cock-fighting, bull-baiting, boxing, &c.; for had they not o served three Englishmen on horseback do what, as Scotchmen, orhere Dundas compassionately interrupted him, and said, "What! did you not know, Principal, that it was Cockburn and Sinclair and me?" This put an end to theories, &c., for that day. UNCOMPLIMENTARY GUESS. John Home, the author of "Douglas," was a very singular person. When he was travelling in England with Dr. Carlyle and some other friends, on reaching Warwick, the party put up at an inn, where Home, having thrown off his boots, would not put them on again, but pranced about the room in a truly poetical style. At this moment, he turned short upon the boot-catch (boots), who had brought in clean boots; and finding the fellow staring at him with seeming admiration,-" And am not I a pretty fellow?" said Home. "Ay," said he, "sir," with half a smile. "And who do you take me for?" said Home. "If you binna Jamy Dunlop, the Scotch pedlar, I dinna ken whar ye are; but your ways are very like his." Home, on reaching Birmingham, was so wearied with the details of its manufactures, that he said, "It seemed there as if God had created man only for making buttons." A CHILD OF NATURE. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of the well-known novelist, married four wives, by all of whom he had issue. The number of his children, and their unusual difference in age-a difference amounting, between the eldest and youngest, to more than forty years-gave him unusual opportunities of making experiments in Education, and watching their results. His family were brought up almost entirely at home, and with the greatest parental care. He was fond of mechanical pursuits, and new projects of all kinds. Among his numerous schemes was an attempt to educate his eldest son on the plan laid down in Rousseau's Emile. He dressed him in jacket and trousers, with arms and legs bare, and allowed him to run about wherever he pleased, and to do nothing but what was agreeable to himself. In a few years he found that the scheme had succeeded completely, so far as related to the body: the youth's health, strength, and agility were conspicuous; but the state of his mind induced some perplexity. He had all the virtues that are found in the hut of the savage; he was quick, fearless, generous; but he knew not what it was to obey. It was impossible to induce him to do anything that he did not please, or prevent him from doing anything that he did please. Under the former head, learning, even of the lowest description, was never included. În fine, this child of nature grew up perfectly ungovernable, and never could or would apply to anything; so that there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his own inclination of going to sea! This experience is detailed in Practical Education, a work written principally by Miss Edgeworth, but partly by her father it is a valuable result for those engaged in domestic teaching. Mr. Edgeworth and his family, at Edgeworth-town, Longford, were involved in the troubles of the Irish Rebellion, in 1758, and were obliged to make a precipitate retreat from their house, and leave it in the hands of the rebels; but it was spared from being pillaged, through one of the invaders, to whom Mr. Edgeworth had previously done some service. The return of the family home, when the troubles were over, is thus described by Miss Edgeworth "When we came near Edgeworth-town, we saw many wellknown faces at the cabin-doors, looking out to welcome us. One. man, who was digging in his field by the road-side, when he looked up as our horses passed, and saw my father, let fall his spade, and clasped his hands; his face, as the morning sun shone upon it, was the strongest picture of joy I ever saw. The village was a melancholy spectacle; windows shattered and doors broken. But though the mischief done was great, there had been little pillage. Within our gates, we found all property safe: literally, 'not a twig touched, nor a leaf harmed.' Within the house, everything was as we had left it. A map that we had been consulting was still open on the library-table, with pencils and slips of paper, containing the first lessons in arithmetic in which some of the young people (Mr. Edgeworth's children by his second and third wife) had been engaged the morning we had been driven from home: a pansy, in a glass of water, which one of the children had been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had passed seemed like an incoherent dream." A FEMALE ADMINISTRATION. Mrs. Piozzi, in one of her Letters, relates the following Johnsonian pleasantry :-While there was much talk about the town concerning mal-administrations, some of the Streatham coterie, in a quibbling humour, professed themselves weary of Male-administration, as they pronounced it emphatically, and proposing a Fe-male one, called on Dr. Johnson to arrange it-"Well then," said he, 66 we will have Carter for Archbishop of Canterbury. |