Bochart, in his Sacred Chronology (what a chronology!) takes quite a different turn. Of these innumerable hordes of Celts he makes an Egyptian colony, skilfully and easily led by Hercules from the fertile banks of the Nile into the forests and morasses of Germany, whither, no doubt, these colonists carried the arts and the language of Egypt, and the mysteries of Isis, no trace of which has ever been found among them.

I think they are still more to be congratulated on their discoveries, who say that the Celts of the mountains of Dauphiny were called Cottians from their king Cottius; that the Bérichons were named from their king Betrich; the Welsh, or Gaulish, from their king Wallus; and the Belgians from Balgem, which means quarrelsome.

A still finer origin is that of the Celto-Pannonians, from the Latin word pannus, cloth, for, we are told, they dressed themselves in old pieces of cloth badly sewn together, much resembling a harlequin's jacket. But the best origin of all is, undeniably, the tower of Babel.

CEREMONIES-TITLES-PRECEDENCE.

ALL these things, which would be very useless and very impertinent, in a state of pure nature, are, in our corrupt and ridiculous state, of great service.

Of all nations, the Chinese are those who have car. ried the use of ceremonies to the greatest length; they certainly serve to calm as well as to weary the mind. The Chinese porters and carters are obliged, whenever they occasion the least hindrance in the streets, to fall on their knees and ask one another's pardon according to the prescribed formula. This prevents ill language, blows, and murders. They have time to grow cool, and are then willing to assist one another.

The more free a people are, the fewer ceremonies, the fewer ostentatious titles, the fewer demonstrations of annihilation in the presence of a superior, they possess. To Scipio, men said "Scipio;" to Cæsar,

"Cæsar;" but in after times they said to the emperors, your majesty,' your divinity."

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The titles of St. Peter and St. Paul, were "Peter" and "Paul." Their successors gave one another the title of " your holiness," which is not to be found in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in the writings of the disciples.

We read in the history of Germany, that the dauphin of France, afterwards Charles V. went to the emperor Charles IV. at Metz, and was presented after cardinal De Périgord.

There has since been a time when chancellors went before cardinals; after which, cardinals again took precedence of chancellors.

In France, the peers preceded the princes of the blood, going in the order of their creation, until the consecration of Henry III.

The dignity of peer was, until that time, so exalted, that at the ceremony of the consecration of Elizabeth, wife to Charles IX. in 1572, described by Simon Bouquet, echevin of Paris, it is said that the queen's dames and demoiselles having handed to the dame d'honneur the bread, wine, and wax, with the silver, for the offering to be presented to the queen by the said dame d'honneur, the said dame d'honneur, being a duchess, commanded the dames to go and carry the offering to the princesses themselves," &c. This dame d'honneur was the wife of the constable Montmorency.

The arm-chair, the chair with a back, the stool, the right hand, and the left, were for several ages important political matters. I believe that we owe the ancient etiquette concerning arm-chairs to the circumstance that our barbarians of ancestors had at most but one in a house, and even this was used only by the sick. In some provinces of Germany and England, an arm-chair is still called a sick-chair,

Long after the times of Attila and Dagobert, when luxury found its way into our courts, and the great men of the earth had two or three arm-chairs in their donjons, it was a noble distinction to sit upon one of these thrones; and a castellain would place among

his titles, how he had gone half a league from home to pay his court to a count, and how he had been received in an easy-chair.

We see in the Memoirs of Mademoiselle, that that august princess passed one-fourth of her life amid the mortal agonies of disputes for the back-chair. Were you to sit, in a certain apartment, in a chair, or on a stool, or not to sit at all? Here was enough to involve a whole court in intrigue. Manners are now more easy; ladies may use couches and sofas without occasioning any disturbance in society.

When cardinal De Richelieu was treating with the English ambassadors for the marriage of Henriette of France with Charles I. the affair was on the point of being broken off on account of a demand made by the ambassadors of two or three steps more towards a door: but the cardinal removed the difficulty by taking to his bed. History has carefully handed down this precious circumstance. I believe that if it had been proposed to Scipio to get between the sheets to receive the visit of Hannibal, he would have thought the ceremony something like a joke.'

*

For a whole century, the order of carriages, and taking the wall, were testimonials of greatness and the source of pretensions, disputes, and conflicts. To

The Memoirs of Anne of Austria, by Madame Motteville, abound with curious particulars of this sort of etiquette, and of its operation upon the poor Mademoiselle d'Orléans, adverted to by Voltaire. Alluding to the precedence connected with arm-chairs, stools, &c. we copy the following passage from the translation of a French work upon the rules of deportment in France, in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. It describes the proper manner of being seated in the presence of a person of quality::-" If we be desired to sit, we must do it, but with some little demonstration of unwillingness, in regard of our respect; and be sure to place ourselves beneath him towards the lower end of the room, which is always next the door where we came in; and the upper end is, where the person of honour sits himself.

"It must not be forgot also, that when we do sit, it be upon a seat inferior to his, if it be to be had; there being great difference to be observed between a chair with arms, a back-chair, and a joynt-stool; the first being the most honourable, the second the next, and the stool the lowest of the three."-T.

procure the passing of one carriage before another was looked upon as a signal victory. The ambassadors went along the streets as if they were contending for the prize in the circus; and when a Spanish minister had succeeded in making a Portuguese coachman pull up, he sent a courier to Madrid to apprise the king his master of this great advantage.

Our histories regale us with fifty pugilistic combats for precedence as that of the parliament with the bishops' clerks, at the funeral of Henry IV.-the chambre des comptes with the parliament, in the cathedral, when Louis XIII. gave France to the Virgin,-the duke of Epernon with the keeper of the seals, Du Vair, in the church of St. Germain. The presidents of the enquêtes buffeted Savare, the doyen of the conseillers de grand' chambre, to make him quit his place of honour (so much is honour the soul of monarchical governments!) and four archers were obliged to lay hold of the president Barillon, who was beating the poor doyen without mercy. We find no contests like these in the Areopagus, nor in the Roman senate.

In proportion to the barbarism of countries or the weakness of courts, we find ceremony in vogue. True power and true politeness are above vanity.

We may venture to believe that the custom will at last be given up which some ambassadors still retain, of ruining themselves in order to go along the streets in procession with a few hired carriages, fresh painted and gilt, and preceded by a few footmen. This is called "making their entry;" and it is a fine joke, to make your entry into a town seven or eight months before you arrive.

This important affair of punctilio, which constitutes the greatness of the modern Romans,-this science of the number of steps that should be made in showing in a monsignor, in drawing or half-drawing a curtain, in walking in a room to the right or to the left,"-this great

It was a circumstance of this nature that occasioned the quarrel between cardinal Bouillon and the famous princess of Ursino, his intimate friend; and the hatred of that woman, who VOL. II.

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art, which not Fabius nor Cato could ever imagine, is beginning to sink: and the train-bearers to the cardinals complain that everything indicates a decline.

A French colonel, being at Brussels a year after the taking of that place by marshal de Saxe, and having nothing to do, resolved to go to the town assembly. "It is held at a princess's," said one to him. "Be it So, answered the other, "what matters it to me?" "But only princes go there; are you a prince?" "Pshaw!" said the colonel, “ they are a very good sort of princes; I had a dozen of them in my antiroom last year, when we had taken the town, and they were very polite."*

In turning over the leaves of Horace, I observe this line in an epistle to Mecænas-"Te, dulcis amice revisam"-" I will come and see you, my good friend." This Mecenas was the second person in the Roman empire, that is, a man of greater power and influence than the greatest monarch of modern Europe.

Looking into the works of Corneille, I observed that in a letter to the great Scuderi, governor of NôtreDame de la Garde, &c. he uses this expression in reference to cardinal Richelieu: "Monsieur the cardinal, your master and mine." It is perhaps the first time that such language has been applied to a minister, since there have been ministers, kings, and flatterers in the world. The same Peter Corneille, the author of Cinna, humbly dedicates that work to the Sieur de Montauron the king's treasurer, whom, in direct terms, he compares to Augustus. I regret that he did not give Montauron the title of monseigneur, or my lord.

An anecdote is related of an old officer, but little conversant with the precedents and formulas of vanity, who wrote to the marquis Louvois as plain monsieur,

was as vain as himself, but more skilful in intrigue, was one of the chief causes of his ruin.

* Napoleon carried this carelessness of princely pretension much farther, and that too with princes of a much higher grade than those encountered by the French colonel at Brussels. Nothing appears more puny and contemptible than artificial distinctions when strongly contrasted with commanding intellect and irresistible power.-T.