Of Paoli himself little remains to be said. He survived more than ten years the period of his last retirement, enjoyed even to the last the full possession of his faculties, and continued to take a deep interest in the political events which were passing around him. His pension had been raised by the English Government to 2,000l. a year. There are those living (1855) who yet remember his house in the Edgeware Road, and the cheerful society of the venerable man. The MS. memorandum of one who visited him in 1803, speaks of his vivacity of gesture and the variety of expression of his countenance, his frank address and polished manners, and his eloquent communicativeness respecting his own career, in terms recalling the description of Boswell forty years before. He died on February 5, 1807, and was buried in Old Saint Pancras Churchyard, then the ordinary place of sepulture of distinguished Roman Catholics: his friends raised him a monument in Westminster Abbey, among the memorials of the great men of the island which adopted him, and which he loved next to his own.

If this slight sketch of him contains little but panegyric, it is not for want of authority for depreciation; he was the object of hostile criticism enough from writers of the

and had made himself hated on account of injustice in the distribution. I was told, also, that he had seduced a girl, and hesitated about paying the high rate of compensation demanded by the family. The injured parties resolved on his death. As he was driving in his carriage one day from his villa to Ajaccio, they surrounded it, and cried to him, "Nephew of Carl' Andrea Pozzo-di-borgo, step out!" He came out and confronted them boldly. They effected their purpose in cold blood, in full day and on the highroad, as if it had been an act of justice against a malefactor. Their shots did not kill him on the spot. The murderers placed him in the carriage, and told the coachman to drive back, that the nephew of Carl' Andrea might die in his bed. Then they fled into the "macchie," where, after some time they were killed in a conflict with gendarmes.'-Gregorovius, Corsica, ii. 164.

French party, both in his life and since; but we must adopt Herr Klose's defence:

:

Scarcely anything is said of Paoli in my present publication which is not to his honour: but this arises simply from the circumstance, that I have found in him and his actions scarcely anything which was not praiseworthy and even his weaknesses -and weaknesses he must have had-have escaped my careful inquiries, unless we are to regard as his weak side the ease with which he allowed himself to be led away, more than once, by an active imagination and zealous patriotism, into deceitful hopes, and through those hopes into some inconsistencies of conduct.'

And so his country has judged of him :—

The remembrance of Paoli, says Gregorovius, is sacred among the people. Napoleon fills the heart of the Corsican with pride, for he was his brother; but if you mention Paoli to him, his eye lights up like that of a son to whom one names an honourable departed father. It is impossible that any man can be more thoroughly reverenced and loved after his death than Pasquale Paoli: and if posthumous fame is a second life, then does this greatest man of Corsica and of Italy in the eighteenth century live a thousandfold in the heart of every Corsican, from the aged man who knew him to the child on whose soul his great example is impressed. There is no greater name than that of Father of his country. Flattery has often abused it and made it ridiculous in the land of the Corsicans I felt that it might be a truth.

There remains but little personal memorial of him except his letters, of which many have been preserved, and one or two indifferent pictures. Monuments to their great men were little appreciated among the Corsicans of the old time; they preferred that their deeds should be preserved by the singularly tenacious memory of the people. Paoli himself largely shared in this feeling. When the Legislature under the British Government applied for his bust to place in their hall of meeting, he

consented, not only with reluctance, but with a sort of haughtiness, reminding them of his own fixed principle, that such honours, if they must needs be paid at all, should be paid after death only ;-a principle which received full illustration when the same bust was dragged round the hall in contumely by Gentili's republicans. But the French fashion has prevailed in recent times, and the people of his native canton of Rostino have erected to him (1854) a bronze statue, in the new Place of his romantic little metropolis Corte. It is not ill imagined. The General stands in the sort of half-military costume which he wore, with broad-skirted coat, and bottes à revers, in act as if about to address an assembly. The execution, it must be confessed, falls somewhat short of the conception, and the hero has rather the air of a 'bourgeois endimanché.' But it is the pride of that secluded district, far and near; and among the many sturdy, wild-looking mountain figures which you may observe around it, indolently gazing for hours, you will find scarce a man who will not recount to you, with more or less of detail, the main outlines of the life of the great Generale e Gobernatore della Corsica, who expelled the Genoese and the French, raised his country to independence, led its sons to battle as a chosen champion, governed and judged it as a chosen sovereign, and left the savings of his poverty to educate its children.

K

130

VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GÖTHE.*

ON August 28, 1849, and the following days, Germany celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of her greatest writer. All the literary capitals of that land of literature vied with each other in inventing ceremonial observances for the national jubilee. In accordance with the prevailing musical tendencies of the people, operatic representations formed the leading features of the several festivals. The dramatic chefs d'œuvre of the poet were produced with every accompaniment which modern skill in music and decoration could supply; his lyricssolemn, festive, and satirical-were performed in the most brilliant manner by mixed choruses of professionals and amateurs: Schumann, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and the other living or recent composers of Germany, furnished their sweetest strains for the great occasion. All the literary and philosophical celebrities of the day contributed their quota of odes, speeches, and sentiments. The veteran Alexander von Humboldt officiated as Coryphæus at Berlin, and led the way in an address full of his own brilliant generalisations, of which the most characteristic specimen that we can find is a comparison

* Most of this essay appeared originally in the Edinburgh Review in the form of a critique on some works produced, by the Göthe Jubilee of 1849 Since then Mr. Lewes's masterly life of that author has appeared, and has had a great effect in forming and modifying English opinion respecting him. But after reflection, I have ventured on republishing my own views notwithstanding.

of the lives of men of genius to the appearance of those everlasting lights of celestial space of which the greater orbs are sometimes dispersed like sporadic existences in the measureless ocean, sometimes united in brilliant groups. Nor were the proper attractions wanting for the inferior orders of the cultivated world. There were triumphal arches, fountains, scenic decorations, transparencies of Göthe surrounded by every attribute of allegory -Göthe as 'Dichterkind' on a griffin, Göthe as 'Dichterjüngling' on a Pegasus-dinners, polkas, illuminations, and fireworks.

Yet it seems that the celebration, everywhere alike, was regarded as a failure. No corresponding inspiration was kindled in the audiences by the laborious enthusiasm of the stage-managers. The multitude listened, dull, spiritless, and uninterested; or, at best, they applauded the music, and gazed on the show, as they might on any other occasion; but without any notice of the peculiar significance of the day. The Fates themselves appeared to take a pleasure in mocking the solemnity. It was marred everywhere by cross accidents. At Berlin the contractor for the banquet miscalculated the number of his guests, and the assembled votaries had to endure four mortal hours of a dinner which was little better than nominal, the intervals between the speeches not being duly enlivened by courses of more substantial diet. At Weimar, so long the poet's residence, his own family refused to take any part in the business; owing, it was said, to some quarrel with the municipality about the property in his relics. At Frankfort, his birthplace, the burghers were insolvent, and out of humour; the populace savage and sore from the recent chastisement of their neighbour radicals of Baden by the Prussian bayonets. They voted the whole affair a piece of aristocratic impertinence; and when the managers got up a