manner must have been to the restrained and stately style of Flaxman,-Flaxman who could see in Roubillac nothing but conceits and epigrams of the chisel. One can understand also how infinitely Roubillac would have preferred to Flaxman's Greek severities what Northcote calls 'the captivating and luxuriant splendours of Bernini.' Roubillac, in short, besides being a Frenchman in grain, which was much, was also an eighteenth-century realist, which was more. He delighted in the seizure of fugitive expression, the fixing of momentary gesture, the indication of moods of mind, the ingenious reproduction of costume, detail, surface, texture. He copies the marks of small-pox, the traces of ancient scars, the clocks of a stocking, the petty folds and trivial wrinkles of material. In his work it is idle to look for repose, for gravity, for dignity. But he will give you action, even to gesticulation; expression, even to grimace. He is most happy in his busts; and these again are best of their kind when, like those of Pope and Hogarth, they are modelled from the life. Of his elaborate monumental and sepulchral efforts, the day is past. Still, they had their day; and those to whom the Nightingale tomb now seems bizarre and exotic, may nevertheless

take pleasure in remembering that it was once admired by a great authority on the Sublime and Beautiful-by the critic and orator, Edmund Burke.

NIVERNAIS IN ENGLAND.

LTHOUGH of late years two bulky volumes1

have been devoted to LOUIS-JULES-HENRIBARBON MANCINI-MAZARINI, Duke of Nivernais and Donziois, Peer of France, Grandee of Spain of the first class, Prince of the Holy Empire, Roman Baron, and grand-nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, they are rather proofs of what may be done by a practised writer with imperfect material than examples of eventful biography. As a matter of fact, his Grace's life presents no very moving accidents. He had, indeed, in his youth been a soldier under Villars and Belle-Isle. But he had speedily quitted the army from ill-health; and almost the only notable circumstance connected with his military career is, that his farewell' to the 'pluméd troop and the big wars' of Louis Quinze was couched in the unusual form of a rhymed épître to the regiment of which he was colonel. At the age of

1 Un Petit-Neveu de Mazarin,' 5e éd., 1891; and 'La Fin du XVIIIe siècle,' 4o éd., 1892,—both by the lady who employs the pseudonym of 'Lucien Perey.'

twenty-six, he had been elected a member of the French Academy, succeeding the celebrated Massillon, and having Marivaux for co-nominee. But he had printed nothing; and his literary claim was based mainly upon an unpublished parallel between Horace and Boileau, and a series of privately-circulated poems to the very young lady whom, in his teens, he had married, and with whom, aided by the family diamonds and a state 'coiffure en grandes boucles,' he subsequently fell violently in love. He was a favourite and capable actor in that Théâtre des Petits-Cabinets,' with its company of dukes and countesses, by which Madame de Pompadour sought to revive her fading hold upon the King; but he filled no prominent Court office, chiefly, it is conjectured, because of his connection by marriage with the great minister Maurepas, of whom the favourite was the deadly enemy. Yet, notwithstanding all this, he is a distinctly interesting figure in the society of the last century. He is almost the typical example of personal amenity, of refined charm and courtesy-of the 'grand seigneur homme de cour,' as the Prince de Ligne called him --of the canonical 'homme de bonne compagnie.' There cannot be a better judge in this matter than Lord Chesterfield, who knew him, and, in

some respects, resembled him in character; and Chesterfield speaks with no uncertain voice. 'I send you here enclosed,' he writes to Philip Stanhope, a letter of recommendation to the Duke of Nivernois . . . who is, in my opinion, one of the prettiest men I ever knew in my life. I do not know a better model for you to form yourself upon: pray observe and frequent him as much as you can. He will show you what

Manners and Graces are."

With these qualities, it. is perhaps only natural that Nivernais should shine as a diplomatist; and, as it happens, his occasional employments in this capacity are the salient features of his life. When Lord Chesterfield wrote the above, the Duke was representing the French Court at Rome; and he was afterwards sent to Berlin, and to London. Madame Geoffrin called him maliciously an 'ambassadeur manqué,' but the epithet is unjust. With abundance of acuteness and resource as a negotiator, his misfortune in his first two missions was that he had either nothing to do, or was not expected to do anything. His chief duty at Rome, where he remained four years, was to prevent Benedict XIV. from meddling with French clerical affairs, and from putting Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois' into the Index Ex