having dominion over men of the first order of intellect in her time, had been, for a short period only, a mistress of the regent; and throughout a long career, a woman of wit, of remarkable powers of conversation, wonderful vivacity, and extraordinary agremens, considering that for a considerable period of that prolonged career she had been stone blind. In her old age and blindness she went to operas, plays, balls, and public entertainments. When she was obliged to give these up, she had parties and conversaziones at her own house, gave suppers twice a week, had all new works read to her, and approached eternity making epigrams, songs, and jeux d'esprit, corresponding with Voltaire, and laughing at the superstitious mummeries of religious rites and ceremonies. Madame du Deffand was born in 1697; she died in 1780, retaining to the last her vivacity, conversational power, love of literary society, and repugnance to religion and its ministers. Madame du Deffand has been immortalized in memoir notoriety by the Baron Grimm and Horace Walpole. The hotel in Paris of the Marquise du Deffand, about the middle of the last century, was the head-quarters of the fashionable infidel philosophy, the political gallantry, and sprightly literature of the day. Her salons were the resort of wits, wags, savants, and literati. In 1754, this patroness of literature à la mode, renowned no less for her hospitality, her influence over men in power, her gallantry, and the grace and elegance of her manners and appearance, was totally deprived of sight. She continued, however, the role of a bel esprit, received intellectual celebrities of all nations at her salons as heretofore, and corresponded with distinguished people, with some in very impassioned language-Horace Walpole, especially, among the number-for a great many years subsequent to her blindness, from 1766 to 1780. In 1769 Walpole thus describes Madame du Deffand: "She makes songs, sings them, remembers all that ever were made; and having lived from the most agreeable to the most reasoning age, has all that was amiable in the last, all that is sensible in this, without the vanity of the former, or the pedant impertinence of the latter. I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects, and never knew her in the wrong. She humbles the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for every body. Affectionate as Madame de Sevigné, she has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me if I was to continue here."* In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong; but judgment on every subject is as just as possible, in every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all love and hatred; passionate for all her friends to enthusiasm; still anxious to be loved-I don't mean by lovers; and a vehement enemy, but open. As she can have no amusement but conversation, the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, * Memoirs of Horace Walpole, by Warburton, vol. ii., p. 316. VOL. II-Y and put her into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers when they can eat nobody's of higher rank, wink to one another, and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more parts, and venture to hate her because she is not rich."* MADAME GEOFFRIN. An able writer in the "Quarterly Review" for May, 1811, describes the intellectual qualities of Madame Geoffrin in the following terms: "This lady seems to have united the lightness of the French character with the solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet judicious and acute; sometimes profound, and sometimes superficial. She had a wit, playful, abundant, well toned; an admirable conception of the ridiculous, and great skill in exposing it; a turn for satire, which she indulged not always in the best-natured manner, yet with irresistible effect; powers of expression varied, appropriate, flowing from the source, and curious without research; a refined taste for letters, and a judgment both for men and books in a high degree enlightened and accurate. As her parts had been happily thrown together by nature, they were no less happy in the circumstances which attended their progress and development. They were refined, not by a course of solitary study, but by desultory reading, and chiefly by living intercourse with the brightest geniuses of her age. Thus trained, they acquired a pliability or movement which gave to all their exertions a bewitching air of freedom and negligence, and made even their faults seem only the exuberances or flowerings-off of a mind capable of higher excellencies, but unambitious to attain them. There was noth ing to alarm or overpower. On whatever topic she touched, whether trivial or severe, it was alike en badinant; but in the midst of this sportiveness, her genius poured itself forth in a thousand delightful fancies, and scattered new graces and ornaments on every object within its sphere. In its wanderings from the trifles of the day to grave questions of morals or philosophy, it carelessly struck out, and as carelessly abandoned, the most profound truths; and while it aimed only to amuse, suddenly astonished and electrified by rapid traits of illumination, which opened the depths of physical subjects, and roused the researches of more systematic reasoners. To these qualifications were added an independence in forming opinions, and a boldness in avowing them, which wore at least the resemblance of honesty; a perfect knowledge of the world, and that facility of manners which, in the commerce of society, supplies the place of benevolence." Horace Walpole thus speaks of Madame Geoffrin: "Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with." * Memoirs of Horace Walpole, by Warburton, vol. ii., p. 278. No. XXIII. EDWARD RUSHTON, OF LIVERPOOL. The memory of this illustrious man of humble rank and fortune is indebted to a correspondent of Lady Blessington for a well-written notice of his merits, and some eulogistic lines not devoid of truth and poetry. This communication is signed "Thomas Noble," and dated the 2d of December, 1844. RUSHTON'S MEMORY. "The man to whom these lines are a sincere tribute, united, in a perfection of which there are few examples, those distinguishing characteristics of a reasoning, sensitive being, fortitude and affection. His mind and his heart were equally capacious; the former, endowed with activity and energy of thought, was comprehensive of every moral and political truth; the latter, excited by the purest benevolence, was ardent in domestic love; open, liberal, and independent in social intercourse; boundless in devotion to the freedom and welfare of mankind, his soul had an elasticity of temperament which not bodily infirmity, nor misfortune, nor even affliction could subdue. "It was this, his elasticity of soul, that has imparted to his poetic composition an unabating vigor of expression. With indignation against the oppressions of mankind, the perverters of intellect, the subjugators of reason, the violators of humble affection, and plunderers of industry, he who, 'midst clouds of utter night,' well knew what mournful moments wait the blind, poured forth from his luminous and contemplative mind eloquent streams of reproof, of commiseration, of hope to the wretched, and of freedom to the enslaved. "I knew him for little more than three years, but it required only to know him once to esteem him forever. The generous liberality of his opinions proved in an instant the extent as well as the strength of the principles on which they were founded. "For my own part, I felt immediately convinced that he had taken his stand with Truth, and that he had the tenacity of mind ever to abide by her. I was not deceived: what he was one day, that he was continually; and had he lived, my esteem for him could not have increased. In his death, what an example of sincerity, energy, and independence have not I, and all who knew him, to deplore? THOMAS NOBLE." "Is there a spot to thee, O Freedom, known, Is there a spot uncursed by martial fame, Where mighty heroes would be paltry things, Is there a spot hypocrisy hath ne'er Profaned, nor made a mart of-one place where The pure, the faithful, and the humble too? Is there a spot where man's unclouded mind, Oh! in that spot let Freedom's vot❜ries place 'Gainst its firm shaft let Independence stand Oft from its chord a dirge and daring sound Perhaps it may not be irrelevant to this subject to place before the readers of the preceding notice an account of a single act of the remarkable man who is the subject of it, very worthy of attention and admiration. A very remarkable letter of Edward Rushton, of Liverpool, addressed to Washington, was published in 1797. The writer was then laboring under blindness. He was embarrassed, and nearly indigent in his circumstances— a liberal in politics, an admirer of Washington, and an enthusiastic advocate of the American Revolution. Washington was then at the height of his glory-President of the United States, and Commander-in-chief of the American army. Rushton, being a plain, honest, simple-minded sort of man, could not understand the anomaly of a liberator on a grand scale being a holder, a buyer, and a seller of slaves-a man interested in the robbery of the rights of other people. So Edward Rushton wrote to George Washington a letter in his plain, straightforward way of setting forth his views, and a nobler letter is not to be found in the English language. It is painful to learn that the illustrious American Republican had the littleness of mind to send back the bold but respectful letter of the poor blind Republican of England without deigning to write one word in reply to it. Yet Washington must have been aware of the character of his unsought-for correspondent-that he was a man who had suffered in some degree for his devotion to Republican principles-that he had lost his sight in consequence of his humanity in attending to sick slaves during the prevalence of a pestilential malady on board a crowded slave-ship-that he was a consistent philanthropist, and a good hater of injustice of all kinds. The following extracts from his letter are well deserving of reproduction at the expiration of half a century, and perhaps those who read them will be disposed to think less enthusiastically of the magnanimity of George Washington. "It is not to the Commander-in-chief of the American forces, nor to the President of the United States, that I have aught to address: my business is with George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia; a man who, notwithstanding his hatred of oppression, and his ardent love of liberty, holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow-beings in a state of slavery. Yes, you who conquered under the banners of Freedom, you who are now the first magistrate of a free people, are, strange to relate, a slave-holder. That a Liverpool merchant should endeavor to enrich himself by such a business is not a matter of surprise; but that you, an enlightened man, strongly enamored of freedom-you who, if the British forces had succeeded in the Eastern States, would have retired with a few congenial spirits to the rude fastnesses of the Western wildernesses, there to have enjoyed that blessing without which a paradise would be worthless, and with which the most savage region is not without its charms-that you, I say, should continue to be a slave-holder, a proprietor of human flesh and blood, creates in many of your British friends both astonishment and regret. It has been said by some of your apologists that your feelings are inimical to slavery, and that you are induced to acquiesce in it at present merely from motives of policy. THE ONLY TRUE POLICY IS JUSTICE; AND HE WHO REGARDS THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN ACT RATHER THAN THE JUSTICE OF IT, GIVES NO VERY EXALTED PROOF OF THE GREATNESS OF HIS CHARACTER. . . . . . . Of all the slave-holders under heaven, those of the United States appear to me most reprehensible; for man is never so truly odious as when he inflicts on others that which he himself abominates. The hypocritical courtesan who preaches chastity, yet lives by the violation of it, is not more truly disgusting than one of your slave-holding gentry bellowing in favor of democracy." Rushton died in 1814. He was a man of great virtue, a patriot on a large scale, a philanthropist in the true sense of the term, a practical Christian; his life was spent in advocating justice at home and abroad, and doing works of mercy and kindness to his fellow-men. I have dwelt so much on the consistency of the philanthropy of Rushton, because it is so rarely encountered of a perfectly unsectarian character. The lives of Clarkson, Buxton, Sturge, Rushton, and Romilly afford striking exceptions to this rule. There are, however, in the variable atmosphere of the mind, influences which seem to excite the pity of men for one class only of unfortunates, or at one period for a particular train of calamities or peculiar description of suffering; and at another time, and in the case of persons in misfortune of some particular community, which seem to stifle every emotion of sensibility. If we love justice and liberty |