round at Miss Bessy, who stood a little behind his chair. 'Don't grieve,' he said, 'I am going on first,' but she only sobbed the more. Good-by, my dear ones,' he continued; good-by, Bexley; I shall wait for you all, as I know I am being waited for. Fear ?' he went on, for Miss Bessy sobbed out something that sounded like the word, 'fear, when I am going to God!-when I saw Jesus-Jesus' " Bexley fairly broke down with a great burst, and the tears were rolling silently over Maria's cheeks. George wheeled round to the window and stood there with his back to them. Presently Bexley mastered himself and resumed: Margery had come forward then and taken her apron from before her eyes. "It was the last word he spoke, Jesus.' His voice ceased, his hands fell, and the eyelids dropped. There was no struggle; nothing but a long gentle breath; and he died with the smile upon his lips." "He had cause to smile," interjected Margery, the words coming from her in jerks." If ever a man has gone to his rest in heaven it is Mr. Godolphin. He had more than his share of sorrow in this world, and God has took him to a better." Every feeling in George's heart echoed to the words, every pulsé beat in wild sorrow for the death of his good brother, every sting that remorse could bring pricked him with the consciousness of his own share in it. He thrust his burning face beyond the window into the cool night; he raised his eyes to the blue canopy of heaven, serene and fair in the moonlight, almost as if he saw in imagination the redeemed soul winging its flight thither. He pressed his hands upon his throbbing breast to still its emotion; but for the greatest exercise of self-control he would have burst into sobs, as Bexley had done; and i it may be that he; he, careless George Godolphin; breathed forthi a yearning cry to Heaven to be pardoned his share of the past. If Thomas, in his changed condition, could look down upon him, now, with his loving eyes, his ever-forgiving spirit, he would know how bitter and genuine, how full of anguish, were these regrets! George leaned his head on the side of the window to subdue his emotion, to gather the outward calmness that man likes not to have ruffled before the world; he listened to the strokes of the passing-bell, ringing out so sharply in the still night air: and every separate stroke was laden with its weight of pain. " 1 03 bus BY SIR NATHANIEL, bene og wit Ir ever, says Voltaire, there was any one happy on earth, it was Fleury." He was considered one of the most amiable and sociable of men till seventy-three, and at that usual age of retirement, came to be respected as one of the wisest." From 1726 to 1742, adds the historian,* everything throve in his hands, and till almost a nonagenarian his mind continued clear, discerning, and fit for business.now deal oda zez We are told that Fleury's conduct in his diocese, as Bishop of Fréjus, had been so benevolent, regular, and exemplary, as to attract universal love and respect; and that he was pointed out by public opinion, not less than by some Court cabals, to the dying Grand Monarque, as the preceptor for his infant great-grandson and successor, Lewis the Fifteenth. M During the Regency,-to follow Earl Stanhope's narrative, Fleury "behaved with so much prudence and circumspection, as not to offend either Orleans or Dubois : he never thrust himself into any State or Court ¦ intrigues, and only zealously discharged the duties of his trust. Gradually he gained an absolute control over the mind of his pupil, and when Bourbon came to the helm, was desired always to assist at the conferences of the Monarch and the Minister. Nor was his, ascendancy weakened by his pupil's marriage for the young Queen, of timid and shrinking temper, and zealous only in her devotions, took no great part in politics. Fleury would probably have found no difficulty in removing the Duke of Bourbon at an earlier period, but thought it better to let circumstances work for him, and be carried down the propitious current of events. Time and I against any two others,' was a favourite saying of the crafty Mazaring dow "Fleury, therefore, allowed the attack to come from the opposite quarter. Bourbon contrived to draw the young Queen to his party, and made a joint application to his Majesty, that he might transact business without the intervention of Fleury. On learning this cabal, Fleury, sure of his ground, but affecting great meekness, took leave of the King by letter, and retired to his country house at Issy. There he remained for one day in apparent disgrace. But it was only for one day. Louis, in the utmost concern at his loss, gave positive orders to Bourbon to invite him back to Court, which the Minister did accordingly, with many expressions of friendship and of wonder at his sudden retirement.† Yet in June, 1726, he was again combining an attack upon this valued friend, when Fleury discovered and crushed him, and obtained, without difficulty, his dismissal from office and banishment to Chantilly."‡ From which period dates the "justly famous administration of Fleury" -signalised by historians as a new era of peace and prosperity to France. * Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. iii. † Hor. Walpole to Lord Townshend, Dec. 24, 1725, and Duclos, Mém., vol. iii. p. 364. History of England, by Lord Mahon, vol. ii. p. 100 sq. Third edit. There is a passage in Mr. Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great, in which the reader's attention is called to the year 1726, wherein Cardinal Fleury began his long supremacy in the state; "an aged reverend gentleman, of sly, delicately cunning ways, and disliking war, as George I. did, unless when forced on him: now and henceforth, no mediating power more anxious than France to have the ship in trim.” Ten years later, the same historian has to show us France, after nibbling for several centuries, in the act of swallowing Lorraine whole. "Cunning Fleury has swallowed it whole. That was what he meant in picking this quarrel!" said Teutschland, mournfully. Fleury was very pacific, candid in aspect to the Sea-Powers and others; and did not crow afflictively, did not say what he had meant." It is of the Silesian question, vexed by and vexing all the Powers in 1741, that Macaulay is treating when he remarks of the Cardinal, that the voice of Fleury had always been for peace; that he had a conscience; and that now, in extreme old age, he was unwilling, after a life which, when his situation was considered, must be pronounced singularly pure, to carry the fresh stain of a great crime before the tribunal of his God." Three Cardinals have reigned in France, observes M. Arsène Houssaye, →Richelieu, Mazarin, Fleury. Three Churchmen, three Statesmen. With less of genius than the two former, Fleury had the art of proving sufficient unto the day and the demands thereof; and without resorting to the axe, like Richelieu, or to intrigue, like Mazarin, he continued their work of isolating the crown by lowering the noblesse. Cardinal Fleury, says this critic, was afraid of what he called a ministère historique. He had no contempt for future celebrity, but it was not at all to his mind to be written about by his contemporaries. He liked silence, and would often repeat an apophthegm of the "Imitation," namely, "Ama nesciri." -In his horror of noise, he would have no governmental authorities round about him but simple commis. He dreaded innovators, and said that every new idea contains within itself a tempest" failing to see that the tempest forms the fertilising torrent." It was his belief that Law had been the ruin of France, "Law, qui avait été le torrent fécond éparpillant des parcelles d'or là où l'or n'était jamais venu." But the historian avows his sympathies to be due to a Minister who consciously and designedly laboured for the people only; who read the Gospels more frequently than Machiavel, and who said with l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre that your true soldiers are they who cultivate the soil. “But if he was right in his relation to the people, he was wrong in his relation to power; for by dint of removing to a distance from the throne all those men who, by genius, character, or boldness, created public opinion in France, public opinion was turned against him, and ceased to accept his mot d'ordre from Versailles."§ TRA 2 One of Sir Bulwer Lytton's travelled heroes is introduced to a man in a clerical garb, and of a benevolent and prepossessing countenance, as the Bishop of Fréjus, who receives him "with an air very uncommon to his countrymen," viz. with an ease that seemed to result from real good nature, rather than artificial grace. Fleury had at this time just left his bishopric, which he was supposed to hate with a genuine hatred, signing himself in a letter to Cardinal Quirini, "Fleuri, évêque de Fréjus par l'indignation divine.” "The king does not like him much," a fair politician is made to say; "but he is a good man on the whole, though jesuitical." In Fleury's interview with Devereux, the good bishop takes especial pains to keep clear of French politics. He asks him, however, two or three questions about the state of parties in England-about finance and the national debt-about Ormond and Oxford; and appears to give the closest attention to the young Englishman's replies. The fair politician aforesaid, Madame de Balzac, breaks out, during this colloquy, into occasional sarcasms against the Jesuits, which have nothing to do with the subjects in question, and at which he smiles once or twice.“ Ahls ma chère cousine," said he, "you flatter me by showing that you like mes not as the politician, but the private relation-not as the Bishop of Fréjus, but as André de Fleuri."* In a subsequent chapter, Devereux has ample time for conversation with the Bishop that was, Cardinal and Prime Minister that should be, and gives a deliberate estimate of his powers. To this effect: That he certainly had in him very little of the great man, and indeed presented a most striking instance of this truth, "that in that game of honours which is played at courts, we obtain sue cess less by our talents than our tempers." After some cursory conver sation on works of fiction and on literature in general, and the various characters of the literati of the day, Fleury is described by his interlocutor as artfully gliding into a discussion on statistics and politics, which affords the latter a sudden, but thorough, insight into the depths of his policy. “I saw that, while he affected to be indifferent to the difficulties and puzzles of state, he lost no opportunity of gaining every particle of information respecting them; and that he made conversation, in which he was skilled, a vehicle for acquiring that knowledge which he had not the force of mind to create from his own intellect, or to work out from the written labours of others. If this made him a superficial statesman, it made him a prompt one; and there was never so lucky a minister with so little trouble to himself."+ When he died, at the beginning of 1743, in the ninetieth year of his age, Fleury left the character of having governed France during a period of seventeen years with the most upright disinterestedness and unblemished integrity; though better calculated to superintend the regulations of peace than to direct the operations of war; for by his attention to the recovery o of the finances, he had exposed himself to the censure of suffering the marine to fall into decay, and of repressing the military ardour of the nation.‡ * Devereux, book iv. ch. iv. † At his death appeared the following punning epigram: "He flowered without fruit, and faded without regret."-Ibid., chi/vi. Coxe, Hist. of House of Austria, vol. iii. ch. civ. 66 •། It a Fleury's administration has been spoken of as pretty nearly corresponding with that of Walpole in its duration and its policy; though there was difference enough in the character and motives of the two leaders. commenced properly, as a sole ministry, on the summary dismissal of the Duke of Bourbon from power, when that grandee could not b be induced to abide within the "reasonable limits" marked out for him by Fleury. "He would have all or none; and the latter portion accordingly became. his share, and the former the share of the Cardinal." The period of Fleury's death has been taken as a point at which to separate the reign of Lewis the Fifteenth into two great, divisions.* And though, as matter of convenience, there may be no objection to this arrangement, which divides the time equally the first half, at a broad view, appearing peaceful, the second warlike, yet were it a mistake to suppose that "the loss of this statesman turned the current of things, or again, that the extension even of his long life, from the nonagenarian to the centenarian stage, would have averted much of what followed. For it is clear that the death of Fleury was no such signal for changes as the fall of Wolsey or the disgrace of Clarendon, All the elements of political, and social, and religious disorganisation had developed themselves, and were at work during his lifetime. He saw his country plunged into wars; he saw his king plunged into debauchery; he saw the people plunged into infidelity. Versailles in 1740 differed only in degree from Versailles in 1760. Madame de Pompadour was at least as respectable as Madame du Mailly. The Parisian coteries were in full operation. The worst of Voltaire's poems had appeared; and a more infamous writer even than he, the physician La Mettrie, was thriving and publishing in the heart of Paris. 19 fou enw nolq eidt szoqque of very ei si trils The Cardinal saw all this, and could only suppose that when all reverence for heavenly things, and all respect for earthly things, were thus lost, the end of the world was drawing nigh.' The only troubles which had not yet arisen were those of finance. In Fleury's time the court had been but venially extravagant, and the wars had not toyét been paid for. The good old ecclesiastic had removed all the most oppressive imposts, he le left a rich revenue without a burthensome tax, one-sixth of which paid all state debts, and died poor. A noble character for ca Minister of France in the eighteenth century. "A v bodes move & M. Arsène Houssaye reckons it among the striking contrasts of the eighteenth century, that the first Ministers after Cardinal Fleury' was Madame de Pompadour. In the case of the Cardinal, he says, a blind religion protected the throne against the parliaments in that of the from blade to ear and to full corn Marquise, philosophy was o in the ear, fated to be a trouble to clergy and parliament in turn. The Cardinal was close-fisted as an intendant; the Marquise showed herself prodigal as a mistress, saying that money ought to flow from the throne in full stream and high tide, like a generous river to permeate the State. The Cardinal had been hostile to Austria and well-disposed towards aid to minsa gilt of " See English Review, III, 104, Art. "The Court of Louis XV." See the Cardinal's own words, quoted from Rauchon's MS. by Schlosser, c. ii. § The Fall of the Jesuits. Engl. Rev.: + |