smart Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had been taken in.

The following winter, I went into a café newly established in the Rue Poissonière, and was agreeably surprised to see Sophie, the pseudo-princess, sitting behind the counter in magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome—exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him—was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter—the little serf whispered to me as she passed, that I was 'a traitor, a barbarian,' and insisted on treating me to my coffee and my petit verre, free, gratis, for nothing.

MEMOIRS OF LORD JEFFREY.

Return to Table of Contents

In the crisis of the French Revolution, British society was paralysed with conservative alarms, and all tendency to liberal opinions, or even to an advocacy of the most simple and needful reforms, was met with a ruthless intolerance. In Scotland, there was not a public meeting for five-and-twenty years. In that night of unreflecting Toryism, a small band of men, chiefly connected with the law in Edinburgh, stood out in a profession of Whiggism, to the forfeiture of all chance of government patronage, and even of much of the confidence and esteem of society. Three or four young barristers were particularly prominent, all men of uncommon talents. The chief was Francis Jeffrey, who died in 1850, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, after having passed through a most brilliant career as a practising lawyer and judge, and one still more brilliant, as the conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated Edinburgh Review. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now become the biographer of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable knot of men in many respects, but we think in none more than a heroic probity towards their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant character, as was testified by their being permitted to triumph harmlessly in 1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes which were ultimately patronised by the great majority of the nation. They all throve professionally, but purely by the force of their talents and high character. As there was not any precisely equivalent group of men at any other bar in the United Kingdom, we think Scotland is entitled to take some credit to herself for her Jeffreys, her Cranstons, her Murrays, and her Cockburns: at least, she will not soon forget their names.

Lord Jeffrey—his judicial designation in advanced life—was of respectable, but not exalted parentage. After a careful education at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, he entered at the bar in 1793, when not yet much more than twenty years of age. His father, being himself a Tory, desired the young lawyer to be so too, seeing that it would be favourable to his prospects; but he could not yield in this point to paternal counsel. The consequence was, that this able man practised for ten years without gaining more than L. 100 per annum. All this time, he cultivated his mind diligently, and was silently training himself for that literary career which he subsequently entered upon. His talents were at that time known only to a few intimates: there were peculiarities about him, which prevented him from being generally appreciated up to his deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then, in his anxiety to get rid of the Scottish accent, he had contracted an elocution intended to be English, but which struck every one as most affected and offensive. His manners were marked by levity, and his conversation to many seemed flippant. His literary musings also acted unfavourably on the solicitors, the leading patrons of young counsellors. Reduced by dearth of business almost to despair, he had at one time serious thoughts of flinging himself upon the London press for a subsistence. The first smile of fortune beamed upon him in 1802, when the Edinburgh Review was started—a work of which he quickly assumed the management. That it brought him income and literary renown, we gather from Lord Cockburn's pages; but we do not readily find it explained how. While more declaredly a literary man than ever, he now advanced rapidly at the bar, and quickly became a man of wealth and professional dignity. We suspect that, after all that is said of the effect of literary pursuits on business prospects, the one success was a consequence in great measure of the other.

The value of this work rests, in our opinion, on the illustration which it presents of the possibility of a man of sound though unpopular opinions passing through life, not merely without suffering greatly from the wrath of society, but in the enjoyment of some of its highest honours. After reading this book, one could almost suppose it to be a delusion that the world judges hardly of any man's speculative opinions, while his life remains pure, and his heart manifestly is alive to all the social charities. The heroic consistency of Jeffrey is the more remarkable, when it now appears that he was a gentle and rather timid man, keenly alive to the sympathies of friends and neighbours—indeed, of womanish character altogether. As is well known, his time arrived at last, when, on the coming of the Whigs into power in 1830, he was raised to the dignified situation of Lord Advocate for Scotland, and was called upon to take the lead, officially, in making those political changes which he had all along advocated. It is curious, however, and somewhat startling, to learn how little gratification he professed to feel in what appeared so great a triumph. While his rivals looked with envy on his exaltation, and mobs deemed it little enough that he should be entirely at their beck in requital for the support they gave him, Mr Jeffrey was sighing for the quiet of private life, groaning at his banishment from a happy country-home, and not a little disturbed by the troubled aspect of public affairs. Mr Macaulay has somewhere remarked on the general mistake as to the 'sweets of office.' We are assured by Lord Cockburn, that Jeffrey would have avoided the advocateship if he could. He accepted it only from a feeling of duty to his party. He writes to a female relation of the 'good reason I have for being sincerely sick and sorry at an elevation for which so many people are envying, and thinking me the luckiest and most elevated of mortals for having attained.' And this subject is still further illustrated by an account he gives of the conduct of honest Lord Althorpe during the short interval in May 1832, when the Whigs were out. 'Lord Althorpe,' he says, 'has gone through all this with his characteristic cheerfulness and courage. The day after the resignation, he spent in a great sale-garden, choosing and buying flowers, and came home with five great packages in his carriage, devoting the evening to studying where they should be planted in his garden at Althorpe, and writing directions and drawing plans for their arrangement. And when they came to summon him to a council on the Duke's giving in, he was found in a closet with a groom, busy oiling the locks of his fowlingpieces, and