Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 | Page 7

no right to interfere in the matter. The lady, indeed, had been in
an unpardonable hurry to be won, and must take the consequences.

In the afternoon, there was a great bustle in the hôtel, and half-a-dozen
voices were heard doing the work of fifty. I went out into the passage,
and caught the first fragments of an explanation that soon became
complete. M. Alphonse, courier to M. de Mourairef, had arrived, and
was indignantly maintaining that Sophie and Penelope, the two
waiting-maids of the princess, had arrived at the Tête Noire, to take a
suite of rooms for their mistress; whilst the landlord and his coadjutors,
slow to comprehend, averred that the great lady had herself been there,
and departed. The truth at length came out--that these two smart
Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give
up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When
M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people,
arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had
been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and
their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed
heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had been taken in.
The following winter, I went into a café newly established in the Rue
Poissonière, and was agreeably surprised to see Sophie, the
pseudo-princess, sitting behind the counter in magnificent toilette,
receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed
before her, whilst M. Jerome--exactly in appearance as before, except
that prosperity had begun to round him--was leaning against a pillar in
rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending
from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused,
but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn
at the counter--the little serf whispered to me as she passed, that I was
'a traitor, a barbarian,' and insisted on treating me to my coffee and my
petit verre, free, gratis, for nothing.

MEMOIRS OF LORD JEFFREY.
In the crisis of the French Revolution, British society was paralysed
with conservative alarms, and all tendency to liberal opinions, or even
to an advocacy of the most simple and needful reforms, was met with a
ruthless intolerance. In Scotland, there was not a public meeting for

five-and-twenty years. In that night of unreflecting Toryism, a small
band of men, chiefly connected with the law in Edinburgh, stood out in
a profession of Whiggism, to the forfeiture of all chance of government
patronage, and even of much of the confidence and esteem of society.
Three or four young barristers were particularly prominent, all men of
uncommon talents. The chief was Francis Jeffrey, who died in 1850, in
the seventy-seventh year of his age, after having passed through a most
brilliant career as a practising lawyer and judge, and one still more
brilliant, as the conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated
Edinburgh Review. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now
become the biographer of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable
knot of men in many respects, but we think in none more than a heroic
probity towards their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant
character, as was testified by their being permitted to triumph
harmlessly in 1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes
which were ultimately patronised by the great majority of the nation.
They all throve professionally, but purely by the force of their talents
and high character. As there was not any precisely equivalent group of
men at any other bar in the United Kingdom, we think Scotland is
entitled to take some credit to herself for her Jeffreys, her Cranstons,
her Murrays, and her Cockburns: at least, she will not soon forget their
names.
Lord Jeffrey--his judicial designation in advanced life--was of
respectable, but not exalted parentage. After a careful education at
Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, he entered at the bar in 1793, when
not yet much more than twenty years of age. His father, being himself a
Tory, desired the young lawyer to be so too, seeing that it would be
favourable to his prospects; but he could not yield in this point to
paternal counsel. The consequence was, that this able man practised for
ten years without gaining more than L. 100 per annum. All this time, he
cultivated his mind diligently, and was silently training himself for that
literary career which he subsequently entered upon. His talents were at
that time known only to a few intimates: there were peculiarities about
him, which prevented him from being generally appreciated up to his
deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then,
in his anxiety to get rid of the