THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEK 



251 



which some worthy people have put forward on 

 this subject does not, when properly translated, 

 enjoin us to " take no thought," but ODly " not 

 to be over-anxious," in respect of what we shall 

 put on. 



Johnson, perhaps the greatest sloven of all 

 ages, said one of the best things ever uttered 

 against the puritanical view of this matter. " Let 

 us not be found, when our Master calls us, strip- 

 ping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of 

 contention from our souls and tongues. Alas ! 

 sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green 

 coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a 

 gray one." Slovenliness seems to have been 

 rather a weakness of lawyers, as well as of liter- 

 ary men — pace the bar and the press of to-day. 

 If in society we except " present company," so 

 in writing we exclude persons living. Lord Ken- 

 yon was so terrible a sloven that one wonders 

 George III. never scolded him about his personal 

 appearance, as his Majesty once did in respect of 

 his unlucky habit of misquoting classical authors. 

 "I wish, my lord," the king was pleased to 

 remark, "that you would leave off your bad Latin 

 and stick to your good law." 



Kenyon's law was certainly good ; but the 

 judge had a weakness as well as the man. As 

 his biographer puts it, "Lord Kenyon trusted 

 too much to the power of the terrors of the law 

 in guarding the right of property from fraud or 

 violence ; and he inflicted death (a great deal too 

 often) as the most terrible, and therefore the 

 most preventive, punishment." The weakness, 

 however, was of the understanding, and not of 

 the heart ; the chief-justice being very far from 

 a man of cruel disposition, as the following anec- 

 dote, at once ghastly and affecting, bears witness : 

 He had passed sentence of death upon a young 

 woman who had been found guilty of theft, but 

 had intimated that he meant to recommend her 

 to mercy. The young woman only heard the 

 formula of the sentence, in its horrible precision 

 of language, and fainted away. Lord Kenyon, 

 evidently much agitated* called out : " I don't 

 mean to hang you. Will nobody tell her that I 

 don't mean to hang her ? " 



For the disciple of Mr. Carlyle the word 

 Clothes has acquired a wide extension of mean- 

 ing; and Herr Teufelsdrock might have smiled 

 approval of the Monacan irreconcilable's warn- 

 ing, " Rabagas, on commence par une culotte, et 

 on finit par une decoration." Ever since titles 

 and ribbons were invented, a desire for them has 

 been the weakness of great minds, and of minds 

 that seemed in all things else the very types of 



common-sense. Our rugged Cromwell longed to 

 be called King Oliver ; and Louis Philippe, with 

 all his liberalism, was grieved at heart because his 

 subjects would not let him take the style of Louis 

 XIX., and because they made him King of the 

 French, instead of King of France and Navarre. 

 M. Guizothas told us of the genuine pleasure expe- 

 rienced by his sovereign when the Queen of Eng- 

 land conferred on bim the order of the Garter. 

 Once he had the blue ribbon, Louis Philippe fan- 

 cied he could no longer be sneered at as " King 

 of the Barricades," but would be looked on as a 

 thoroughly orthodox monarch, and a member of 

 the most select society in the world. A similar 

 weakness is said to have been displayed by a man 

 who was, perhaps, one of the main-stays of the 

 Orleans dynasty. He was the first member of a 

 famous house of bankers, who settled in Paris ; 

 and is said to have taken very seriously to heart 

 the title of baron, conferred on him by the Em- 

 peror of Austria. According to M. Larchey, the 

 great financier never traveled without a certain 

 purse in Russian leather, on which a baron's 

 coronet was more than conspicuous. In the 

 course of a certain journey he stopped at Lyons, 

 and, it being early in the morning, entered a res- 

 taurant, where he asked for a bouillon, which 

 French-bred persons think a cheering thing to 

 begin the day with. Having dispatched the 



bouillon, M. de R took out the famous purse, 



and asked for the bill. The waiter, espying the 

 coronet, and not being versed in heraldic lore, 

 thought it safest to address the stranger as 



"Monsieur le Due." M. de R gave but five 



sous of pourboire, and observed, with that accent 

 of which the secret has died with him, " Che ne 

 suis pas tuc." By-and-by he came back to lunch. 

 The same waiter served him, and proved quite as 

 attentive as in the morning. Only this time he 

 addressed the customer as " Monsieur le Comte." 

 The banker gave him five francs for himself, but 

 observed, at the same time, " Che ne suis pas 

 gonte." A couple of hours later, on his way to 



the station, M. de R stepped in once more, 



to take a cup of coffee. The waiter, much mys- 

 tified, ventured to call him " Monsieur le Baron," 

 and received a louis d'or by way of tip, while the 

 giver added, with an air of grave satisfaction, 

 these words, " Oui — che suis paron." 



Altogether, the number of great men, who 

 seemed hardly to understand how much above 

 the symbols of external greatness they stood, is 

 painfully large. In that list is our William III., 

 of all persons, who took a strange pleasure in 

 wearing the actual corporeal crown of England, 



