help of a craftsman, whose services are sought for painting-in the subordinate parts, and working out his rude beginnings. In the first rank of art, at this day, are others who, like the Count D'Orsay, have been unprepared, excepting by the possession of taste and genius, for the practice of art, and whose merits are in no way obscured by the assistance which they also freely seek in the manipulation of their works; and it is no less easy to detect, in the pictures of the count, the precise amount of mechanical aid which he has received from another hand, than the graces of character and feeling that are superadded by his own. I have seen a rough model, executed entirely by himself, of such extraordinary power and simplicity of design, that I begged him to have it moulded, and not to proceed to the details of the work until he could place this first model side by side with the cast in clay, to be worked up. He took my advice, and his equestrian statue of the first Napoleon may fairly justify my opinion.

"For art he had a heartfelt sympathy, a searching eye, and a critical taste, fostered by habitual intercourse with some of our first artists.

"I cheerfully place at your disposal one letter of his, especially valued by me, of the 21st of February, 1850, and another very remarkable letter, written from Paris soon after the elevation of the Prince NAPOLEON LOUIS to the Presidency of the French Republic.

"I have the honor to remain, dear sir, your very faithful servant,

"RICHARD J. LANE."

LETTERS FROM COUNT D'ORSAY TO RICHARD J. LANE, ESQ.

"I rejoice to read your opinions of the prince. I well remember the circumstance you mention,* and his visits to you when you did my two lithographs of him.† . .

The last election was even more wonderful than the first, for then he had the whole army with him. Rely upon it, he will do more for France than any sovereign has done for the last two centuries, if only they give him time."+

* I reminded him that, on the morning of the day of the first election of the president, he came to my house before church time, and diverted me from graver duties, to listen to his confident anticipations of the result of that memorable day. "Think," said he, "what is the ordinary November weather in Paris; and here is a beautiful day. I have watched the mercury in my garden. I have seen where is the wind, and I tell you, that on Paris is what they will call the sun of Austerlitz. To-morrow you shall hear that while we are now talking, they vote for him with almost one mind, and that he has the absolute majority."-R. J. L. † October, 1839.

D'Orsay's efforts to gain over public opinion in England for Louis Napoleon were as unceasing as his endeavors to inspire private friends with favorable sentiments in relation to the prince and his pretensions. I have a letter of his now before me, dated the 18th of June, 1846, addressed to a literary man of great eminence, connected with one of the leading London newspapers, earnestly entreating of him to use his influence with some of the principal writers in the London journals, and editors of them, to get them to abstain from writing against Louis Napoleon. "Do you think," he says, "you could prevent to write these atrocious, false nonsenses against Prince Napoleon? The fact is, that

"Paris, 21st February, 1850.

"MY DEAR LANE,-I can not really express to you the extent of my sorrow about your dear and good family. You know that my heart is quite open to sympathy with the sorrows of others. But judge, therefore, how it must be, when so great a calamity strikes a family like yours, which family I always considered one of the best I ever had the good fortune to know. What a trial for dear Mrs. Lane, after so many cares, losing a son like yours, just at the moment that he was to derive the benefit of the good education you gave him. Poor Miss Power is very much affected, I assure you. There is no consolation to offer. The only one that I can imagine is to think continually of the person lost, and to make one's self more miserable by thinking. It is, morally speaking, a homeopathic treatment, and the only one which can give some relief. You can not form an idea of the soulagement that I found in occupying myself in the country (at Chambourcy) in building the monument which I have erected to dear Lady Blessington's memory. I made it so solid and so fine, that I felt all the time that death was the reality, and life only the dream of all around me. When I hear any one making projects for the future, I laugh, feeling as I do now, that we may to-morrow, without five minutes' notice, have to follow those we regret. I am prepared for that, with a satisfactory resignation. I am sure that you have those feelings. Give my most affectionate regards to your dear family, and believe me always, far or near, your sincere friend, D'ORSAY."

No. IX.

COUNT D'ORSAY'S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.

The Count Marcellus, who was French chargé d'affaires at the court of London during the ministry of Chateaubriand, in his work "Politique de la Restauration en 1822 et 1823" (Paris, 1853), makes mention of a ball he gave in London, at the period of the invasion of Spain by the Legitimists, when the London mob had made an attack on the hotel of the French minister. The ball, he says, was attended by the Duke of Wellington-various representatives of the Congress of Verona-all the world of fashion were there— and, "lastly, D'Orsay brought in his train the ordinary circle of dandies who made his escort."

This is the earliest mention I have seen in any published work of D'Orsay's sojourn in London previously to the return of Lady Blessington from the Continent in 1831. At the time of his visit to England, his brother-in-law, the Duke de Grammont (then Duc de Guiche), who, during his exile from France, had served in the English army (in the tenth dragoons), was sojourning in London, and D'Orsay's visit on that occasion was to his sister and her husband. At the period of Count D'Orsay's second visit to London, some months

is the ame damnée de Guizot and Louis Philippe, and the articles upon France are a great deal more than ridiculous."-R. R. M.

after the French Revolution of 1830, the Marshal Sebastiani (who had married a sister of the present Duc de Grammont) was embassador at the court of St. James's, and his being there was one of the inducements which had led D'Orsay to take up his abode in London at that time.

No. X.

THE DUKE DE GRAMMONT.

The titles to nobility of the house of Grammont go as far back as the 865, the period at which this family, originally from Arragon, made, at the year time of the election of the King Sancho Garcia Eneco, its first appearance in the public affairs of the kingdom of Navarre, under the title of Ricos Hombres De Natura, or first grand barons, equivalent in these days to the title of grandee of Spain of the first class.

The family of Grammont are allied by marriage to the royal blood of Arragon, of Navarre, to the ancient counts of Foix, of Bearn, and to the Orleans family. It belongs to the small number of the houses of sovereigns which form a part of the French nobility, and exercised its right of sovereignty in its principality of Bidache and Barnache, in Lower Navarre, until the year 1789.* Comte Philibert de Grammont, of notoriety in England in the time of Charles the Second, was one of the latest celebrities of this distinguished family; he died in 1707, aged eighty-six.

Count Anthony Hamilton, the brother-in-law of Chevalier de Grammont, and the writer of the count's Memoirs, was born in Ireland about 1646, and died at St. Germaine-en-Laye in 1720, aged seventy-four. Count Hamilton was specially qualified for the task imposed on him by his brother-in-law. He was to Grammont what Boswell was to Johnson.

No. XI.

ANTOINE GENEVIEVE HERACLIUS AGENOR DE GRAMMONT, PRESENT
DUC DE GRAMMONT, PRINCE DE BIDACHE, &c., &c.

The Duke de Grammont, born in 1789, married, July 23, 1818, Anne Quintina Albertini Ida, née Comtesse D'Orsay, and had issue,

1. Antoine Alfred Agenor Grammont, Duc de Guiche, born August 14, 1819, an elève de l'Ecole Polytechnique, and officer of artillery, married Emma Mary, daughter of W. A. MacKinnon, Esq., M.P.

2. Antoine Philibert Leon Count de Grammont, Duc de Lesparre, born July 1, 1820 (an elève of the Ecole Militaire de St. Cyr, and an officer of cavalry), married, June 4, 1844, Marie, daughter of Vicomte de Ségur.

3. Antoine Alfred Onerius Theophile de Grammont, Comte de Grammont, born June 2, 1823 (an officer of infantry), married, November 21, 1848, Louisa de Choiseul Praslin.

Annuaire Biographique, ed. 1843, p. 63.

4. Antonia Armandine Agiae de Grammont, born October 5, 1826, married, November 26, 1850, Theodore, Duke de Prat.

5. Antonia Gabrielle Leontine de Grammont, born March 2, 1829.* The Duke de Grammont had two sisters:

1. Armandine Sophie Leonice Corisande de Grammont, married, in 1806, Viscount Ossuldon, present Earl of Tankerville.

2. Aglae Angelique Gabrielle de Grammont, married, firstly, at St. Petersburgh, General Demidoff, a Corsican by birth, and a connection of Napoleon Bonaparte; and, secondly, the Marshal Count Sebastiani, a native of Corsica. and connected likewise with the Bonaparte family.

The family De Grammont is now divided into two branches.†

No. XII.

MARSHAL COUNT SEBASTIANI.

The marshal was a native of Corsica, of an ancient family, connected with the Bonapartes. He entered the French army at an early age, and took a distinguished part in the Italian campaigns and Peninsular war. He married a sister of the present Duc de Grammont-the widow of an eminent Corsican in the service of Russia-General Demidoff. In the Peninsular war, Marshal Sebastiani distinguished himself particularly in the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses connected with the possession of property.

66

'In Spain he was notorious for ransacking convents with merciless avarice, and for mutilating or destroying the airy tracery in the time-honored halls of the Alhambra. The glorious building was converted by Sebastiani into stables for his horses and barracks for his debauched dragoons." He was the unfortunate father of the ill-fated Duchess de Praslin.

"Infelicis patris-infelix proles."

The marshal died at Paris in July, 1851, in his eightieth year. The Comtesse de Sebastiani had died in 1842. The funeral rites of the marshal were performed with extraordinary pomp at the Church of the Invalids, and were attended by the president of the republic, the marshals of France, all the principal generals, the corps diplomatique, and a great number of the principal inhabitants of Paris.

"When the solemn service was proceeding in the church, one of the wax Almanach de Gotha, Paris, 1854, p. 114.

↑ La branche cadette est représentée par :

Antoine Eugène Amable Stanislaus Agénor de Grammont, Comte de Grammont D'Aster, ou Comte Agénor de Grammont, pair de France, fils d'Antoine Louis Raymond Geneviève de Grammont, Comte de Grammont D'Aster et d'Amable de Catelan décédés.

Les sœurs sont :

Antoinette Claire Amélie Gabrielle Corisande de Grammont D'Aster, mariée à Roger Gabéléon, Comte de Salmour en Piémont.

Thérèse de Grammont D'Aster, mariée au Marquis D'Aversand de Toulouse. Antoinette Marie Madeleine Amable Amédée de Grammont, mariée au Comte Gravier de Vergennes.-Ann. Biog. Gentleman's Magazine, November, 1851, p. 537.

tapers placed round the catafalque fell against the black cloth drapery, and in a moment the whole of the decorations were in a blaze. Great fears were entertained for the building, and more immediately for the military trophies suspended in it; but eventually only a few of the latter were destroyed.*

No. XIII.

LORD MOUNTJOY AND LORD EDWARd fitzgerald.

An imaginary conversation by Walter Savage Landor, between Lord Mountjoy and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, addressed to the Rev. Julius Hare, Trinity College, Cambridge, by the author. Post-mark of letter inclosing a copy of it to Lady Blessington, Firenza, February 12th, 1829.

There are two notes of Mr. Landor appended to this conversation, in which the character of the son and heir of Lord Mountjoy (the late Earl of Blessington) are spoken of in very complimentary terms. In the second note the recent death of the earl is referred to, and the fact mentioned that the "Imaginary Conversation" of Lord Mountjoy with Lord E. Fitzgerald had been only completed when the news had arrived of the sudden death of Lord Blessington.

[Lord Mountjoy, the stanch and early friend of the Irish Roman Catholics, was slain by the people in rebellion in 1798. Lord E. Fitzgerald perished at the hands of authority in the same rebellion, he the head and front of its offending.]

LORD EDWARD. "My dear Mountjoy, I wish I could entertain the flattering hope that you have granted me admittance to you as much from your old friendship as from your invariable politeness."

MOUNTJOY. "Such a wish is itself a proof to me that I was in the wrong, if I did not."

LORD EDWARD. "Neither my knowledge of your easy temper, nor of your warm and generous heart, gave me all that assurance which I now receive from the pressure of your hand; a diversity in politics, I need not tell you, has made several of my earliest friends and nearest relations turn their backs upon me."

MOUNTJOY. "I hope I shall never turn mine on a good soldier, friend or enemy."

LORD EDWARD. "I will be sworn for you; if the last spark of honor and chivalry is to be extinguished on the earth, it will be in the breast of Mountjoy."

MOUNTJOY. "Lord Edward, let us leave off compliments, which, while they were in use, were used principally to display some grace in the person, or to conceal obliquity in the mind."

LORD EDWARD. "Faith! if that is the good of them, you have the best right of any man to vote them out of fashion: now to the business of my visit. The people, you have long been aware, my lord, are highly exasperated against * Gentleman's Magazine, November, 1851, p. 538.