SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

ST. JOHN LONG

Has distanced the majesty of British justice in the persons of the coroner, the bailiffs, and the Bow-street magistrates, after all. We knew that he would do so; but in this we take no possible credit to ourselves, for every one knew that he would do so. Public opinion is, we must confess, still divided as to the place of his retreat, some pronouncing it America, where his purpose is, to set up a bank with Rowland Stephenson; others, New South Wales, by a natural and pleasant anticipation; and others, Paris, which of late years has superseded Philadelphia, and even New York, as the general receptacle of "the unfortunate brave," the asylum of those men of genius, who have too much talent to live in England, the favoured spot of regeneration for those brilliant speculators whose conceptions equally outrun their credit and their age. However, the majority are clearly for Paris; and the objects of the visit are said to be political, and not personal. The friends of the ex-ministers, it is understood, have succeeded in engaging him; and he is about to put in operation a very extensive system of counter-irritation among the canaille of the French capital. Should his exertions be attended with success, he will, on his return, be retained by the Home-office, and despatched into the disturbed districts to counter-irritate the erring disciples of "Swing."

On the whole, we are convinced that St. John Long will be seriously missed at the West-end. His house was a pleasant lounge; his chocolate was unimpeachable, whatever his honesty might be; no one could ever question the strength of his coffee, whatever might be surmised of his science; and the sandwiches which promenaded the rooms regularly every half-hour, were a triumphant answer to all the aspersions that his patients lived upon air. We have no doubt that it was a much pleasanter place than the bazaars, to which such hosts of old peeresses order their carriages every day at one, with such matchless punctuality, to buy sixpence-worth of ribbon, and kill three hours. To this, St. John Long's promenade was a paradise. The comfortable manner in which all the comforts of the old ladies were provided for; the pleasantries arising from the nature of the scene between the various rubbed: the files of young women, with their mouths fixed to gas-pipes, and imbibing all sorts of vapours; and, never to be forgotten in the catalogue of attractions, the men of all ages who came to learn the art of being cured of all calamities, that of the purse inclusive. Then, too, St. John's own judicious generosity; the presents of invaluable snuff, of first-growth Champagne, of Mocha coffee to one, and of gunpowder tea to another, showed a knowledge of women and human nature, that must, but for the malice of justice, inevitably have led to fortune. What will now become of the countess, who led her daughters to this palace of Hygeia as regularly as the day came; and with a spirit worthy of the great cause, declared that, if she had twenty daughters, she would take every one of them every day to the same place, for the same rubbing? What will become of the heavy hours of him who declared St. John's gas a qualification for the Cabinet, and that a sick minister applying to this dispenser of all virtue, would be on his legs in the House, and making a victorious speech within the twenty-four hours? What will become of the battalion of beauties who, at every puff of the gas-pipe, ran to their mirrors, and received the congratulations of the surrounding dandies, or the revived carnation of their cheeks? "Othello's occupation's o'er." But a St. John Long, of some kind or other, is so essential to the West-end world, that a successor must be rapidly erected in his room. Every age has its St. John Long, formed by the mere necessities of the opulent and idle. A new Perkins, with a packet of metallic tractors on a new scale would be extremely acceptable in any handsome street in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor-square. Animal magnetism would thrive prodigiously between this and the dust-months, when London is left to the guardsmen and the cab-drivers; and when, as Lady Jersey says, nobody who is anybody is to be seen in the streets from morning till night, that is, from three till six. But the true man of success would be Dr. Graham, of famous memory; the heir of his talents would make a fortune in any season of the year; and now that St. John Long has vacated the throne, nothing could be more favourable for his ambition, than to take advantage of the interregnum, and make himself monarch of charlatanry without loss of time.—From "Notes of the Month," by far the most piquant portion of the Monthly Mag.

FLOWERS IN A ROOM OF SICKNESS.

"I desire, as I look on these, the ornaments and children of Earth, to know whether, indeed, such things I shall see no more!—whether they have no likeness, no archetype in the world in which my future home is to be cast? or whether they have their images above, only wrought in a more wondrous and delightful mould."—Conversations with an Ambitious Student in Ill Health.

STANZAS.

THE LATE MADAME DE GENLIS.

The following smart account of the late Madame de Genlis, is translated from that very piquant French paper the Figaro of the 4th January:—

She nearly died the day she came into the world; a mere chance saved her; and the noble lady lived eighty-five years. What a misfortune, not only for the Ducrest and the Genlis, if the clumsy Bailiff who sat down in the arm-chair where the infant prodigy had been left by the careless nurse, had crushed under the ample and heavy developement of his various femoral muscles, the hope of French literature! The concussion would have despoiled us of a hundred volumes, and Heaven can witness what volumes! History in romances; morality in proverbs; and religion in comedies. This is what the world of letters would have lost,—society would have lost a very different thing.

Such a nose as never was possessed before; a nose modelled by Love himself, and celebrated by ten court poets, and which the censer of praise was as unable to improve as a certain tumble which its owner had in infancy. Hands the most beautiful that could be, and which Madame de Genlis put up for exhibition during twenty years, upon the strings of a harp, now passed into a proverb. A form without fault, and which made the delight of the Palais Royal parties in the open air. A foot, alike triumphant at the Court and at the Porcherons. Eyes capable of making an impression upon the running footman of M. de Brancas, and of an innumerable crowd of dukes, lawyers, officers, and men of letters. A genius!—oh! for her genius, if she had not been encumbered with so much modesty, Madame de Genlis would have shone by it alone in the first rank; through feminine modesty she remained in the second.

Philosophy may breathe again. The author of "The Evenings at the Castle" was the Attila of philosophers;—she crushed Voltaire, considering him as a mauvais sujet; pursued Diderot and d'Alembert; breasted Rousseau; refuted the Encyclopaedia; and was always of the party in favour of the Altar and the Throne, excepting only the clay when the revolution of 1789 commenced.

Foul-mouthed people allege Madame de Genlis to have been a great coquette, which, is a calumny. She was virtue itself. No doubt she was the object of rude assaults; public declarations, scenes of despair, disguises, eulogies in verse, madrigals in prose—all were employed to seduce her affections; but she resisted always. To revenge her cruelty, they attacked her morals, and epigrams rained on her. She replied by her Memoirs—rather diffuse confessions, which Lavocat (the publisher) contrived to dilute further—but edifying, and which have demonstrated that if Mad. de Genlis was not canonized in her life-time, it was because there is no longer any religion to speak of, or that she neglected to cultivate interest with the Pope.

One poet had the audacity to put up Madame de Genlis' honour at the Exchange for a dollar; the ladies of the Directory exclaimed against this; the Countess herself said nothing: she despised the exaggeration which nobody could credit. In truth, Madame de Genlis was quite as good as the particular Queen, whose modesty was only to fall before the millions of a Cardinal-Duke.

Mirabeau boasted, in one of his letters, that he had communicated his own tenderness to the charming tigress; but Mirubeau was a vain, good-for-nothing coxcomb, and the boudoir on four wheels which he presented as the theatre of his triumph, was a horrible invention. The proof is, that Madame de Genlis says nothing whatever about it in her Memoirs. Posterity should be just towards the illustrious Countess, and accept, as sincere, her revelations. Let us, then, consider her as the most virtuous of women; as the least arrogant; the most sensible; the most learned; for all, in fine, that she desired to appear; for Madame de Genlis never said what was untrue; she solemnly declares so.

Madame de Genlis had a talent that was very dear to her, but the title of a good housewife was that she coveted above all the rest. I can never forget the following circumstance, exemplifying the naîf vanity of the pretension to be without pretension, which the noble lady sometimes assumed. I was anxious to see this celebrated person, and wrote to ask the favour of a brief interview. She appointed the following day. At twelve o'clock I presented myself;—Madame de Genlis was writing; she laid down her pen, and obligingly offered me a seat, then said—"Allow me, sir, to finish my pot an feu; above being a woman of letters, I value myself as a good housewife." And the Countess scraped the carrots and the leeks, tied them up, put them into the soup-kettle, skimmed the meat, and neither forgot cloves nor fried onions. Then taking off her kitchen apron, came with very good grace to offer herself to my curiosity We talked upon art and literature; and I must say that she did not speak of her harp more than twice, of her talent for acting more than once, or of her facility of writing—very much more than six times.

Madame de Genlis died almost suddenly, and was employing herself as usual, when death struck her. She leaves two works, which will, no doubt, be published as soon as a bookseller is found to put them together, and idlers seem disposed to read them. The King offered her rooms in the Tuileries, and she had replied to his gracious proposal the evening before she died.

Louis Philip never forgot his preceptor—Madame de Genlis is said to have had some desire to be forgotten by her pupil.—New Monthly Magazine.