BEFORE AND AFTER WATERLOO.* Tars volume is partially, though not

mainly, valuable as com- pleting the biography of Bishop Stanley, and filling up

interstices in the preceding volumes, Dean Stanley's Edward and Catherine Stanley and Early Married Life of Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley. Besides, the letters are preceded by a concise Life, which clearly indicates the main features of the Bishop's strenuous and honourable career, and demonstrates the important part played in that career by his wife Catherine, the daughter of the Rev. Oswald Leycester, of Stoke Rectory,

in Shropshire. When she herself became mistress of Alderley Rectory, what Sydney Smith called her "porcelain under- standing," or what a more prosaic eulogist terms "a quiet wisdom, a rare unselfishness, a calm discrimination, a firm decision," made her quite as influential as her husband, whose courage was exhibited equally in quelling a prize-fight and in fighting against political and theological conventionalities :—

" His words and actions," we can well believe, "must often have been startling to his contemporaries ; when temperance was a new cause, he publicly spoke in support of the Roman Catholic Father Matthew, who had promoted it in Ireland; when the idea of any education for the masses was not universally accepted, he advocated admitting the children of dissenters to the national schools; and when the stage had not the position it now holds, he dared to offer hospitality to one of the most distinguished of its representatives, Jenny Lind, to mark his respect for her life and influence."

The success and happiness of Edward Stanley's life were due, it is quite clear, to his own sunny temperament, and to the extraordinary variety of his interests, a variety which was not surpassed even by his distinguished son. He, indeed, summed up his whole career as Bishop in a letter which he wrote in the year before his death, 1849 :— " I have been in various directions over the parish [of Alderley] visiting many welcome faces, laughing with the living, weeping over the dying. It is gratifying to see the cordial familiarity with which they receive me and Norwich clergy would scarcely know me by cottage fires talking over old times, with their hands clasped in mine as an old and dear friend."

It is quite as much because this volume is a revelation of temperament and character as because it throws sidelights on

the state of Europe after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and 1803, after the Peace of Paris in 1814, and after Waterloo in 1816, that it will be found readable as well as sociologically

valuable. Edward Stanley was a born traveller, and the first letters which are given here, and which were written to his father and mother, indicate admirably the pleasures, and still more the prejudices, of a young Englishman, who finds it difficult to believe that a typical Frenchman can, in morals

and education, be the equal of his countrymen. Shortly after he arrives in Rouen he writes to his father, who had been in France before the Revolution :—

"I never saw France before the Revolution, and therefore cannot judge of the contrasted appearance of its towns, but this I can safely say, that I never before saw such strong marks of poverty, both in the houses and inhabitants. I have as yet seen nothing like a gentleman ; probably many may affect the dress • Before and After Waterloo Letters front Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Nortotch ; 1802; 1814; 1816. Edited by Jane If. Adeane and Maud Grenfell. London: T. Fisher Unwin. r148.:1

and manners of the lower orders in order to screen themselves, and may consider that an outward show of poverty is the only way of securing what riches they have. I can conceive nothing so melancholy.'

Still better as a revelation of healthy national prejudice is the following :—

" I dined yesterday at a table d'hôte with five French officers. In my life I never saw such ill-bred blackguards, dirty in their way of eating, overbearing in their conversation, though they never condescended to address themselves to us ; and more proud and aristocratical than any of the ci-devant noblesse could ever have been. From this moment I believe all the accounts I have heard from our officers of the French officers who were prisoners during the war. They were always insolent, and, excepting in. some few cases, ungrateful in the extreme for any kindness shown to them."

Edward Stanley is, however, quite impartial in his racial dislikes. Of the Spaniards whom he saw at Barcelona, Gibraltar, and elsewhere on this, his first holiday, he says :—

"As for the people, both noble and vulgar, it requires but a very short residence amongst them to be highly disgusted ; few receive anything which deserves the name of a regular education, and I have been told from, I believe, undoubted authority, that a nobleman unable to write his name or even read his own pedigree is by no means a difficult thing to meet with."

The volume becomes much more interesting from the his- torical point of view after Napoleon's fall in 1814. The rector of Alderley, as he was then, was "eager to seize the chance of viewing the wreck of Napoleon's Empire, while the country was still ringing with rumours of battles and sieges.' It was contemplated at first that a whole family party should. visit Paris, but ultimately the rector went without his female- kindred, taking as his sole travelling companion his brother- in-law, Edward Leyc,ester. Mrs. Stanley, however, accom- panied her husband and brother as far as London, and in consequence we have a number of interesting letters from her and her relatives as well as from the rector. Here are- photographs of Byron and of Madame de Stael :—

"He is a mixture of gloom and sarcasm, chastened, however, by good breeding, and with a vein of original genius that makes some atonement for the unheroic and uncongenial cast of his whole mind. It is a mind that never conveys the idea of sun- shine. It is a dark night upon which the lightning flashes Her conversation was for the benefit of all who had ears to hear, and even my imperfect organ lost little of the discourse—happy if memory had served me with as much fidelity ; for had the whole discourse been written without one syllable of correction it would be difficult to name a dialogue so full of eloquence and wit. Eloquence is a great word, but not too big for her. She speaks as she writes ; and upon this occasion she was inspired by indignation, finding herself between two opposite spirits who gave full play to all her energy."

Edward Stanley's own picture of Madame de Steel is a little_ livelier. He attended a party of hers in Paris, and we can well believe him when he says she was not shy :-- "She compared the Englis'i and French character, in which she, (and I presume it was a maternal opiuion) would not allow an atom of merit to the latter. On finding that I was a clergyman. she immediately began upon Religion, talked of Hodgson, Andrews, Wilberforce, and then, in questioning me about the Methodists (about whom she seemed to have heard much and entertained confused notions), we slid into mysticism, which carried us, of course, into the third volume of A/Zentagne. She spoke in raptures of the mystic school, said she was quite one in heart. ' Cela se pent,' thought I; but somehow or other 'Jet ne le orois pas,' for I had heard some little anecdotes of her mother, in which, whatevez may be her theoretical views of mysticism, her practical opinions- are rather more lax than Fenelon's.'

The discarded Josephine, to whose retreat of Malmaison the- rector went after reaching Paris, finds in Edward Stanley a hearty apologist :— "The French all speak highly of her, and it is impossible on. seeing Malmaison, and hearing of her virtues, not to join in their- opinion She was fond of society, and patronised the Arts. She allowed artists to sit at leisure in her gallery to copy pictures, and conversed with them a great deal. Sho did an infinity of good to all within her reach, and was beloved by all never dwelt with more satisfaction, or felt more inclined to coincide with the verdict of that best of judges of human nature and' human frailty, Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more,' than in criticising the character of Josephine."

The rector, however, is not specially benevolent when be- comes to deal with Napoleon's Marshals after they had transferred their allegiance to the Bourbons. Ney, indeed, is "a fine handsome man, but remarkably fair, with light curling hair," and Massena is "the most military of all, dark hair and countenance, fine figure." But Jourdan is "a sharp, queer-looking fellow, not at all stamped with the features

of a hero" ; Murat is "an effeminate coxcomb, with no characteristic but that of self-satisfaction "; Soult is "a stern soldier, vulgar but energetic " ; the Due de Dantzig is "very ugly and squinting." But Stanley's best invective is reserved for Davoust. "Every bad passion seemed to have set its mark on his face; nothing grand, warlike, or dignified. It was all dark, cruel, cunning, and malevolent. His body, too, seemed to partake of his character. I should fancy he was rather deformed. I never saw so good a Richard III." In fairness, however, to the French Generals who are so amply vituperated in this book, it must be noted that Stanley's attitude towards everybody and everything Gallic seems to have been rendered worse by his second visit to France. Every third page or so relating his experiences in 1814 contains some such passionately prejudiced passage as : "We slept at Chateau ThieiTy—such an inn and such insolent pigs of people. Spain was scarcely worse." According to Stanley, the French were incapable of allowing the Allies to win a victory :—

" Wherever I go—whatever field of battle I see—be it eraon, Laon, Soissons, or elsewhere—victory is never accorded to the Russians. 'Oh, non, les Russes etaient tonjours vaincus.' One fellow who had been one of Buonaparte's guides at Craon had the impudence to assure me that the moment he appeared the Allies ran away. Ay, but,' said I, 'how came the French to retreat and leave him alone P' 'Oh, because just then the trahison which had been all arranged nineteen months before began to appear.' "

Of the Anglophobia which prevailed in France at this time Stanley writes candidly:—

" Poor England is certainly not much beloved; we are admired, feared, respected, and courted ; but these people will have it, and perhaps with some reason, that upon all occasions our own interest is the sole object of consideration, that our treaties have the good of ourselves and not the peace of Europe at heart, and so far they carry this opinion that I was very near getting into a quarrel with a fat man in the diligence, who spoke it as a common idea that we fought with our money and not with our blood, for that we were too rich to risk our lives, and had there been a bridge Napoleon would have been in London long ago."

The third instalment of the Stanley letters deals largely with the field of Waterloo. On this subject, however, neither Stanley nor any of his relatives had anything that was really fresh to say. None of his discoveries on the scene of battle is much more important than this :—

"On the heights where the British squares received the shock of the French cavalry, we found a British officer's cocked hat, much injured apparently by a cannon shot, with its oilskin rotting away, and showing by its texture, shape, and quality that it had been manufactured by a fashionable hatter, and most probably graced the wearer's head in Bond Street and St. James's."

Stanley is far more at home when he is in Paris engaged in snap-shotting notabilities:—

"We have seen the Bourbons. The King is a round fat man, so fat that in their pictures they dare not give him the proper contour lest the police should suspect them of wishing to ridicule ; but his face is mild and benevolent, and I verily believe his face

to be a just reflection of his heart Then comes the Duchesse d'Angouleme. There is no milk and water there. What she really is I may not be able to detect, but I will forfeit my little finger if there is not something passing strange within her She is thin and genteel, grave and dignified ; she puts her fan to her under-lip as Napoleon would put his finger to his forehead Then comes the Duchesse de Berry, a young pretty thing, a sort of Royal kitten ; and then comes her husband, the Due de Berry, short, vulgar looking, anything but a kitten he is."

Although the Bourbons were in the ascendant in Paris, Napoleon was in everybody's mind:—

" Buonaparte never went to Versailles but once, to look at it, but at the Trianon he and Josephine lived, and it is impossible in seeing those places not to feel the principal interest to be in the enquiry—where he lived, where he sat, where he walked, where he slept—so accordingly we asked our guide. Monsieur, je ne connais pas ce coquin 11' soon told us what we were to expect from him, but his silence and his loyalty and the combat between his hatred of the English and his hatred of Buonaparte was so amusing that we soon forgave him for not telling us anything about him. He said • Boney' was only fit to be hanged. 'Why did you not hang him then ? ' He could onlor shrug his shoulders."

Altogether, if this volume cannot accurately be described as a valuable contribution to the history of the French people at a great crisis in their career, it is an interesting contribution to the history of racial understandings and misunderstandings. There is not a dull page or sentence in it