Buchanan is the person naturally hinted at in the way in which Mr. Burton writes in as the author of the contents of the casket, the passages which we have just been quothaving been the first to draw public attentioning, do not occupy themselves with the kind to them. But if we suppose him morally capa- of antiquarian details, primæval, architectble of such an act, it is pretty clear that it did ural, legal, of any sort indeed, which take not come within his intellectual capacity, extensive as that was. The little domesticities up so large a space in his earlier volumes. in the letters would not suit the majestic march We suspect that this completeness has some of his pen. In the Detection, to which he connexion with Mr. Burton's position as a appended the documents, he shows that, had he Scottish historian. We do not find it, we prepared these himself, he would certainly have do not expect it in historians of England or overdrawn them. In fact, in that philippic the France. We are not sure that we should great scholar and poet shows that, although he think it in place if we did find it. Yet, may have known politics on a large scale, he once accepting the choice which Mr. Burwas not versed in the intricacies of the human ton has made between the two possible ways heart. Everything is with him utterly and pal- of treating his whole subject, they seem, in bably vile and degrading, without any redeeming or mitigating element. his history, perfectly in place. Has not this something to do with the peculiar position of Scotland? Scotland in this re

Mr. Burton had himself just before said, in spect like Ireland, though in most points so a most remarkable passage: —

unlike is not quite a nation, and yet is something more than a province. A counSuppose it to have been settled in conclave try in this sort of position awakens a pecuthat such a set of letters were to be forged, liar sort of patriotism, one far more extenwho was there with the genius to accomplish sive and far more susceptible than the patthe feat? Nowhere else, perhaps, has the con- riotism of either nations or provinces. We flict of the three passions, love, jealousy, and have no doubt that we have sometime or hatred, been so powerfully stamped in utterance. other quoted the remark, but it is quite Somewhat impoverished though it may be in worth quoting twice, that an Englishman the echo of a foreign medium, we have here the reality of that which the masters of fiction have never stops to think that he is not a Scotchtried in all ages, with more or less success, to man, while the Scotchman always bears imitate. They have striven to strip great about with him the distinct remembrance events of broad, vulgar, offensive qualities, and that he is not an Englishman. Does not to excite sensations which approach to sympa- this ever-conscious feeling of nationality thy with human imperfections. And, indeed, lead a man who studies the history of his these letters stir from their very foundation the country at all to study it in a more complete sensations which tragic genius endeavours to way, to look at it in all its aspects, to make it arouse. We cannot, in reading them, help a his business to find out all that he can touch of sympathy, or it may be compassion, about everything that concerns it? Of towards the gifted being driven in upon the torrent of relentless passions, even though the course this may be done under the guidance end to which she drifts is the breaking of the of mere provincial prejudice. But, if it is highest laws, human and divine. A touch of done in an impartial and enlightened way, tenderness towards those illustrious persons as in the case of Mr. Burton, it produces who show their participation in the frailty of our the happiest results. We have tried Mr. common nature by imperfections as transcend- Burton on the points on which we should ent as their capacities, is one of the mysterious naturally try any Scottish writer. In the qualities of the human heart, and here it has matter of King Edward, we get out of him room for indulgence. In fact it is the shade as much as we have any right to expect; that gives impressiveness to the picture. Within the matter of Queen Mary, we have all her beauty and wit, her political ability and her countless fascinations, Mary, Queen of Scots, would not have occupied nearly the half of her present place in the interest of mankind had the episode of Bothwell not belonged to her story.

These are the kind of things which we confess that we hardly expected from the early parts of Mr. Burton's book, highly praiseworthy as they are in their own way. But perhaps the remarkable thing is, after all, what we have called the completeness of his book. As a rule, men who can write

simply to read and admire. But these are, after all, only two points out of many. The variety of subjects dealt with in Mr. Burton's book is really amazing. It is an odd change of subject to pass from Queen Mary to the Druids. But Mr. Burton's remarks in his first volume on the way in which people use the words Druid and Druidism as a mere shelter for ignorance, are just as good in their way as his remarks on the Casket Letters, and they display exactly the same power of thoroughly appreciating evidence: -

-

of mystery- - how to account for the perverse ingenuity which framed such a baseless system, and for the marvellous credulity that accepted it as solid truth.

To all inquiries as to the religion from which the inhabitants of North Britain were converted when they became Christians, there has generally been an easy answer, Of course it was from Druidism. That term has been used in history much in the same way as the names of general but undefined causes have been used in physics - to bring out a complete result without the trouble of inquiry. It is thus that we have had the theories of antipathies and affinities, animal spirits, the sensorium, says Mr. Burton, "in what sort of tongue phlogiston, and the like; and thus too have the Carthagenians [why this unusual spellbeen frequently employed such terms as elec-ing ?], the rivals of Rome herself, distric currents and magnetic influences.

In such a book as this, if we point out a few slips, we feel sure that the author will simply take them as hints for its still further improvement. "We do not know,"

coursed" (i. 197). We need not go to the Ponulus. The name Hannibal alone, the heathen form of John, shows that they spoke something very like Hebrew. We will not dispute about Picts, but we are distinctly surprised at Mr. Burton's giving the least ear to the notion that they were TeuThursday is not from Thor, a

tonic. 66

It is appropriate to all these solvents of difficulties, which have passed current from time immemorial, and are accepted without examination, that there are no strict boundaries to their sphere of application. Whenever the difficulty arises, the solvent is at hand without a question whether its application has limits which have been passed. What is said of old about the Druids is applicable to the Celts, as distinguish-word which means Thunder and was the ed from the Germans. Those who have gone name of the thundering god"" (i. 233). into the causes of Druidism attribute its vast Thunder, Dunresdog, Donnerstag, is from power and mysterious influence to the special Thunder itself. The form Thor is distinctly proneness of the Celtic tribes to subject them- Scandinavian. Mr. Burton's remarks in selves to the influence of some priesthood, while vol. i. p. 243, on the Northern Mythology the Gothic people were shy of any intervention and its relation to other mythologies, reby human beings between themselves and the mighty deities they idolized. Yet in modern quire correction by the new light of the literature we find Druidism applied to the Comparative school. It is odd and misGothic as readily as to the Celtic nations, and leading, though perhaps not absolutely unthat although there are full means of being true in words, to speak (iii. 17) of "the acquainted with the religion of those nations, old code called the Salic Law - which is and of knowing that it was something entirely now supposed to have been intended for different from the system brought into shape the internal regulation of some part of under the name of Druidism. Germany." It was not Charles the Eighth (iii. p. 255), but Louis the Twelfth, who married Henry the Eighth's sister, and the King of England called himself not " Duke" "Lord" of Ireland. The (iii. 361) but We are wars of the Roses cannot be said to have kept the English army at home during the reign of James the Fourth (iv. 159), who came to the Crown in the year after Bosworth. We cannot make out how the Guises "gave themselves out as the true descendants of Charlemagne, through that Lothaire, the founder of Lotharingia or Lorraine, whose race was superseded on the throne of France by the dynasty of Hugh The West-Frankish Capet" (iv. 247). Karlings are not descended from Lothar but from Charles the Bald.

Modern authors, succeeding each other, have filled up the details of that system, and made it almost as complete as the Roman hierarchy. We have Archdruids and simple Druids; some set to this kind of work, some to that. told of the doctrines that they taught, and especially what they thought of the immortality of the soul. We are told of their various arrangements for exercising the influence of mystery on their deluded followers, and for preserving in profound secrecy the traditions of their order and the sources of their influence. Their costume. their pomp and ceremonies, are accurately described. They were long-bearded men clothed in white, and went forth with golden sickles to cut the mistletoe at the appointed hour of doom. We have their temples among us in a very distinct condition, with the altars on which they offered up human sacrifices, and the mystic signs which they left on the rock pillars which of old stood in the centres of their sacred groves.

After reading all that is thus piled up with the solemn gravity of well-founded knowledge, it is positively astounding to look back and see on how small and futile a foundation it all

rests.

When we are told of the interesting mysteries that surround the functions of this potent priesthood, we are led to a real source

But things like these are, in a book like this, mere spots on the sun. In a book which contained nothing else they might be serious. Our only regret is that we have not space for several more extracts from various parts of Mr. Burton's volumes. In all the latter part especially, his knowledge of human nature comes out as strongly as his power of dealing with historical evi

dence. We recommend the book to all historical students, and we shall look with anxiety for the remaining volumes.

From the Saturday Review.

THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. *

HISTORICAL criticism, as it is now understood, may almost be called the creation of the present century, and in the hands of German writers it has done wonders in the rehabilitation of injured characters and the reversal of unrighteous judgments. This has perhaps especially been the case as regards what were once considered, in the worst and most exclusive sense, the "dark ages," but which are now restored to their proper place in common estimation as an important stage in the social and moral education of modern Europe. One result, however, of the discovery of this new science has been to foster a kind of monomania for whitewashing soiled reputations, which of course implies blackening a good many that were previously thought spotless; and thus we are gravely bidden to respect in Richard III. a bright example of the animus paternus in an uncle, and in Henry VIII. a model husband, though of somewhat frigid temperament. Even in these extreme cases there is usually, though not always, some force in the appeal against the traditional verdict. Neither Richard nor Henry, for instance, are so black as they have often been painted; but there is still every reason for believing that the former murdered his nephews, and no sort of doubt that the latter divorced and decapitated his wives in a way hardly consistent with a high standard of marital excellence. On the other hand, Mr. Lewes has entirely failed to convince us that Nero was not the "monster" contemporary historians represent him. The battle is still raging over the grave, or rather the casket, of Mary Stuart. Very different is the case of Marie-Antoinette which is brought before us in these volumes. Few prominent personages in history have been so cruelly and so persistently assailed, and fewer still have won so complete a posthumous triumph.

Mr. Vizetelly has not added much to the substance of what is contained in the fourth volume of Mr. Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays on the too famous story of the Diamond

*The Story of the Diamond Necklace. By Henry Vizetelly. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.

Necklace, but he has given us both the story and the evidence at full length for the first time, and, it is fair to add, in a very readable form. Indeed his tale has all the interest of a romance which is too strange not to be true. We could wish he had been content to use Mr. Carlyle's materials without being so fond, both in the text and the headings of chapters, of imitating his style, which, however striking, is—or at least was originally-even in its author an affectation, and in his imitators becomes simply intolerable. When Mr. Vizetelly allows himself to write naturally, his English is simple and clear enough; and this makes us regret the more that it should be disfigured by so many lapses into Carlylese, and by the occasional introduction of such questionable grammar as "a person who lived in the same house that she did, and whom she knew was a native of that place." These are minor blemishes in what is really a good book on the whole. The most original portion of it is the summing up of the evidence at the end, to which we shall have to refer again presently, and especially the exhaustive analysis and refutation of M. Louis Blanc's adverse arguments. To the concluding words no reader will be likely to refuse his assent: "Time, that rights all things, is at last doing Marie-Antoinette justice; and she whom patriotism accused, and demagogism condemned, humanity [we should rather have said justice] has well nigh absolved." The actual story of the necklace may be told in very few words; that it should ever have received the interpretation which darkened the last years, and was long suffered to stain the memory, of the unfortunate Queen, can only be explained by the critical state of affairs at the period, and the intense bitterness of party spirit. There are none of whom it may be said, with greater truth, Delicta majorum immeritus lues, than of Louis XVI. and his unhappy consort. The following passage shows how well the soil was prepared for the seeds of calumny so artfully sown by the real culprit in the plot, whose superlative knavery elevated her for the time into a heroine, and has secured for the name of an unscrupulous and abandoned woman, who knew no motive but the grossest selfishness, and no aim but the gratification of her ambition or her lust, an historical connexion with the outbreak of the French Revolution:

From the day she became Queen, to the very hour of her death, and even after the grave had closed over her headless corse, the unhappy

she was ever seen either with the Necklace itself, or any of the loose diamonds composing "part of it, in her possession. No one connected with the Court, neither Besenval nor De Lauzun, both on terms of closest intimacy with, and both, to some extent, detractors of the Queen, has stated that Madame de la Motte was ever once seen in the Queen's company, but all who have made allusion to her, like Lacretelle, Besenval, and Madame Campan, have stated precisely the reverse. in almost daily communication with the Queen, been constantly seen by some of the inferior as she pretended was the case, she must have servants; her friend the gate-keeper of Little Trianon, for instance, or the valet de chambre, Deselos, who, when the Queen had perished by the guillotine, and there was no longer any motive for preserving silence, would have talked of the affair for talking's sake.

If she was

the necklace privately, making the Cardi- | thing of the facts, do we find the slightest accunal her agent for the purpose. They ea- sation against the Queen with regard to the gerly caught the bait, and in February, 1785, Diamond Necklace. No one has stated that the Cardinal having obtained the necklace from the jewellers on presenting a forged order signed "Marie-Antoinette de France," handed it over to the Countess for Her Majesty. Madame de la Motte of course lost no time in disposing of the diamonds for her own advantage, and the jewellers, after many vain attempts to extract payment from her or from the Cardinal, at length brought the affair before the notice of the Queen, and the bubble burst. On the 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption, Cardinal de Rohan was arrested in full pontificals, when preparing to celebrate mass in the Royal chapel at Versailles, and a few days later the Countess and her accomplices were also lodged in the Bastile. The Cardinal was finally acquitted, though banished from the precincts of the Court. The Countess was condemned to be whip- And if there is no evidence, neither is there ped, branded, and imprisoned for life; but in any assignable motive for the Queen's desirthe following year she escaped to England, ing to obtain the necklace :where she was killed at the age of thirtyfour, in August, 1791, by falling from a window two stories high from which she It was certainly not for the purpose of wearhad jumped out to avoid the bailiffs who ing it, for no one ever pretended to have seen it had come to seize her for debt; not how-selling it piecemeal, to stave off some pressing on her person. It was not with the object of ever before she had left abundant materials, pecuniary difficulty, for the De la Moites had in her autobiography and her lying "Mé- the whole of the proceeds; and in none of the moires Justificatifs,' to sustain for long contradictory statements made by them did afterwards the odious and baseless calumnies against the Queen which she had so sedulously propagated on her trial and throughout her subsequent career.

For the fate of her husband and the other minor characters in this extraordinary drama we must refer our readers to Mr. Vizetelly's pages, which will well repay a perusal. His summing up of the evidence, both negative and positive, which exculpates Marie-Antoinette from any complicity whatever with the scandalous intrigue in which she was represented as bearing so prominent a part, is admirable. One passage we must extract, on the force of the negative argument. After showing that the Countess must have been able to offer some shadow of proof of her alleged intimacy with the Queen, if it really existed, and that through all the revolutionary period some evidence against the Queeh would surely have been forthcoming, he proceeds:

And yet not a scintilla of evidence, true or false, against the Queen has come to light. In none of the memoirs of the time, written by those who had opportunities of knowing some

they ever pretend they were selling the diamonds on the Queen's behalf. The statement the Count made to the jewellers was, that he

inherited the diamonds from his mother; then

their joint statement was, that they sold them on behalf of the Cardinal; their final statement from the Queen, the wage in fact for the diswas, that they were a present to the Countess honourable service which she so unblushingly asserts she rendered to Marie-Antoinette. Supposing the Queen to have had some motive for possessing the Necklace which we cannot penetrate, would she have purchased it through such a doubtful pair of agencies as the Countess

de la Motte and the Cardinal de Rohan?

On the other hand there is direct evidence of the Countess de la Motte having herself disposed of far the greater part of the diamonds; while at least seventeen of her own statements on her trial are contradicted, either by herself or by independent testimony. We cannot follow the author through his detailed examination of M. Louis Blanc's counter-assertions, but no doubt will exist among those who study the evidence here presented to them as to the verdict of history on this strange episode in the life of Marie-Antoinette.