was one of her brothers. She mentions him frequently in her writings, and in her autobiography, entitled "A true Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life," she informs us particularly that her father had no title, although his estate might easily have purchased one, and she speaks of herself as daughter to one Master Lucas, of St. John's, neer Colchester, in Essex." It is interesting to see the fruits of Ballard's mistake. Sir Walter Scott and numerous biographers of great merit have adopted it.

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The family of Lucas was one of high repute and considerable wealth in the counties of Essex and Suffolk. Thomas Lucas, the father of the Duchess of Newcastle, was the representative of his house in the reign of Elizabeth, who banished him her kingdoms for having killed in a duel a Mr. Brooks, a relation, probably a brother, of her favoured Lord Cobham. He was in exile as long as that queen lived, but on the accession of James the First, who "gratiously gave him his pardon," he returned to his native country, "wherein he lived happily, and died peaceably, leaving a wife and eight children-three sons, and five daughters." Of these children, Margaret, the future duchess, was the youngest, being only an infant when her father died.

The widow of Thomas Lucas was a woman of rare virtue and charms. She conducted the business of her children's estate with energy and judgment, and was not only an indulgent, but a good mother. The Duchess, after speaking of the disasters the civil wars brought on her family, and the great difficulties her mother had to contend with, goes on to say, "but in such misfortunes my mother was of an heroick spirit, in suffering patiently where there is no remedy, or to be industrious where she thought she could help: she was of a grave behaviour, and had such a majestick grandeur, as it were, continually hung about her, that it would strike a kind of awe to the beholders, and command respect from the rudest; I mean the rudest of civilized people; I mean not such barbarous people as plundered her and used her cruelly, for they would have pulled God out of Heaven, had they had power, as they did royaltie out of his throne; also her beauty was beyond the ruin of time, for she had a

well-favoured loveliness in her face, a pleasing sweetness in her countenance, and a well-tempered complexion, as neither too red, nor too pale, even to her dying hour, although in years, and by her dying, one might think death was enamoured with her, for he embraced her in a sleep, and so gently, as if he were afraid to hurt her; also she was an affectionate mother, breeding her children with a most industrious care, and tender love; and having eight children, three sons and five daughters, there was not any one crooked, or any ways deformed, neither were they dwarfish, or of a giant-like stature, but everyways proportionable, likewise well-featured, cleer plexions, brown hairs, but some lighter than others, plain speeches, tunable voices-I mean not so much to sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor wharling in the throat, or speaking through the nose, or hoarsely, unless they had a cold, or squeakingly."

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It was a gladsome home under that best of mothers. "As for our garments, my mother did not only delight to see us neat and cleanly, fine and gay, but rich and costly; maintaining us to the height of her estate, but not beyond it; for we were so far from being in debt before these wars, as we were rather before hand with the world. 'Tis true, my mother might have increased her daughters' portions by a thrifty sparing, yet she chose to bestow it on our breeding, honest pleasures, and harmless delights, out of an opinion, that if she bred us with needy necessitie, it might chance to create in us sharking qualities, mean thoughts, and base actions, which she knew my father as well as herself did abhor; likewise we were bred tenderly, for my mother naturally did strive to please and delight her children, not to cross or torment them, terrifying them with threats, or lashing them with slavish whips; but instead of threats, reason was used to persuade us, and instead of lashes, the deformities of vices were discovered, and the graces, and vertues were presented unto us; also we were bred with respectfull attendance, every one being severally waited upon, and all her servants in generall used the same respect to her children (even those that were very young) as they did to herself, for she suffered not her servants, either to be rude before us,

"As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of virtuosus, as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working, and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather for formalitie than benefit, for my mother cared not so much for our dancing and fiddling, singing and prating of severall languages, as that we should be bred vertuously, modestly, civilly, honorably, and on honest principles."

When the children grew up, and entered London life, most of them as married people, "their customes were in winter time to go sometimes to plays, or to ride in their coaches about the streets to see the concourse and recourse of the people; in the spring time to visit the Spring Garden, Hide-park, and the like places; and sometimes they would have musick, and sup in barges upon the

water."

Margaret joined the court at Oxford,

and became a maid of honour to Henrietta Maria. Her brothers and sisters disapproved the step, because she was painfully bashful, and unaccustomed to society. "For though they knew I would not behave myself to their, or my own dishonour, yet they thought I might to my disadvantage, being inexperienced in the world.” Her timidity did not prevent her beauty working her high fortune at the court in which she remained almost two years, until she was married. "For my Lord, the Marquis of Newcastle, did approve of those bashful fears which many condemned, and would choose such a wife as he might bring to his own humours, and not such an one as was wedded to selfconceit, or one that had been tempered to the humours of another, for which he wooed me for his wife; and though I did dread marriage, and shunn'd mens companies, as much as I could, yet I could not, nor had not the power to refuse him, and he was the only person I ever was in love with; neither was I ashamed to own

it, but gloried therein, for it was not an amorous love; neither could title, wealth, power, or person, entice me to love; but my love was honest and honourable, being placed upon merit, which affection joy'd at the fame of his worth, pleased with delight in his wit, proud of the respects he used to me, and triumphing in the affections he profest for me, which affections he hath confirmed to me by a deed of time, seal'd by constancy, and assigned by an unalterable decree of his promise, which makes me happy in despight of fortunes and frowns." men have dared to ridicule such a woman as this, and treat her memory with contempt, because she was guilty of some absurdities!

And

Her love for her husband remained unabated to her dying day. She was his joy and chief solace during his long exile; she smiled on him in his broken fortunes, and looking at those smiles he could not murmur at the rebels for having plundered him of the far greater portion of his wealth, since Heaven had bestowed on him so precious a companion. There was no make-belief in their devotion to each other; it was genuine and unforced. She had a noble heart and her mother's beauty, and he merited the possession of them.

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There have been many who have tried to sneer away the excellence of this nobleman; but his is a fame which can afford to meet with detraction. His services to the Stuarts are ignorant of; he fought bravely for them in the field, he shared their exile, he lost enormous wealth in their cause, and he remained true to them after the restoration, when they slighted him and rewarded him with poverty and a dukedom! Titles and wealth were not, in those days, conferred together on men of honour! William Cavendish, the first duke of Newcastle, was an ornament to his family, and not unworthy his connection with Suffolk, to which county the Cavendishes originally belonged, and from a parish in which county they take their honourable name. He was the model cavalier, with all the virtues and none-or almost none-of their failings-courageous, and yet gentle. His temper was proof even against an unruly horse, "I rarely beat them, or punish them with either rod or spur, but

"In

when I meet with a great resistance, and that rarely." "His bearing was courtly, easy without formality, and yet had something of grandeur in it that caused an awful respect to him." His demeanour to others, especially to those beneath him in rank, was kind and considerate as a really great man's ever is. "To the meanest person he would put off his hat, and suffer everybody to speak to him." His costume was scrupulously neat and cleanly, but unostentatious. his diet he was so sparing and temperate, that he never ate nor drank beyond his set proportion, so as to satisfie only his natural appetite. He made hut one meal a-day, at which he drank two good glasses of small beer, one about the beginning, the other at the end thereof, and a little glass of sack in the middle of his dinner, which glass of sack he also used in the morning for his breakfast, with a morsel of bread. His supper consisted of an egg, and a draught of small beer; and by this temperance he found himself very healthful at the age of seventy-three." His recreations were riding and training his splendid horses, the exercise of weapons, the practice of music, and the study of poetry and architecture.

If he had a great blemish, it was a too pasionate fondness for women, but even this in him was pardoned by his generous wife. "In short,"

she says, "I know him not adicted to any manner of vice, except that he has been a great lover and admirer of the female sex; which, whether it be so great a crime as to condemn him for it, I'le leave to the judgment of young gallants and beautiful ladies." The prisoner, it is needless to say, was acquitted.

The works he has left show him to have been a man of no ordinary capacity, though Clarendon said he was fitter to break Pegasus for a ménage, than to mount him on the steeps of Parnassus. His comedies are sprightly and pleasant, showing a lively appreciation of character, and no mean power in delineating it. Without a doubt they are far superior to the less happy productions of the best writers of that time. Of his books on horses it is not easy to speak with too great praise. Every line of them is that of a practical man. He examines all previous writers on equestrian matters

Italian authors, French, Spanish, and English-laughs at their blunders, and concludes by begging every man to try his horses before buying. A generous indignation breaks from him at cruelty to dumb animals, which is scarcely more vehement than his scorn for the pedants of the schools who profess a contempt for his favourite brute. "What makes scholasticks degrade horses so much proceeds (I believe) from nothing else but the small knowledge they have of them, and from a persuasion that they themselves know everything. They fancy they talk pertinently about them, whereas they know no more than they learn by riding a hackney horse from the University to London and back again." Many other fine qualities are unintentionally revealed in the pages. In a frank, ingenuous manner, altogether free from vanity, he mentions the compliments paid him on his horsemanship. The Marquess of Carasena was so civilly anxious to see me ride, that he was pleased to say, it would be a great satisfaction to him to see me on horseback, though the horse should but walk." Charles the Second was his pupil, and was placed by him on the first horse he mounted. Don John of Austria and the Dukes of York and Gloucester were his guests, and he lets you know it—but with highbred simplicity, not with a mean adoration of the great. The work on horses and horsemanship is illustrated with pictures of a superior style of art. In one of them Monseigneur le Marquis appears in a triumphal car drawn by centaurs, and surrounded by horses on their knees paying homage to their great king. In another, Monsiegneur le Marquis is leaping on his steed bang up into the clouds, and the gods, clustering together in their celestial abode, look with approbation at such a model of chivalric as Monsiegneur le Marquis. Without doubt there is no slight vanity on the part of the noble equestrian displayed in these drawings; but then was he not 'best' in his art? and if best, why should he not rejoice in his power, and wish men to know it ?

But had he no other claim to ap plause, his earnest love for his wife, and his being the object of such an ennobling love as hers would en

title him to it. She did not hesitate to declare him the equal of Cæsar (Julius) in every thing but good luck. Neither want of success, nor the evil tongues of his enemies, could lessen him in her esteem. "Although Nature," she writes, "had favoured my lord and endued him with the best qualities and perfections she could inspire into his soul, yet fortune hath ever been such an inveterate enemy to him, that she invented all the spight and malice against him that lay in her power: and, notwithstanding his prudent counsels and designs, cast such obstructions in his way, that he seldom proved successful, but where he acted in person. And since I am not ignorant that this unjust and partial age is apt to suppress the worth of meritorious persons, and that many, will endeavour to observe my lords noble actions and fame, by casting unjust aspersions upon him, and laying (either out of ignorance or malice), Fortunes envy to his charge, I have purposed to represent these obstructions which conspired to render his good intentions and endeavours ineffectual." This is something like faith! He was not less generous to her. Some one said she was not the originator of the works that went in the world under her name. The Duke came to her defence, with "an epistle to justifie the Lady Newcastle, and truth against falsehood; laying those false and malicious aspersions of her, that she was not authour of her books,' in which he said, "This ladie's philosophy is excellent, and will be thought so hereafter; and, the truth is, that it was wholy and onely wrought out of her own brain, as there are many witnesses, by the several sheets that she sent daily to be writ fair for the presse. As for her poems, where are the exceptions to these? Marry, they misse sometimes in the numbers and in the rimes. It is well known by the copies, that those faults lie most up on the corrector and the printer. But put the case, there might be some slips in that kinde: is all the book damned for it? No mercy, gentlemen? When, for the numbers, every schoole-boy can make them on his fingers; and for the rimes. Fenner would have put down Ben Johnson; and yet, neither the boy or Fenner so good poets. No; it is neither of those either makes or condemns a poet; it

is new-born and creating phansies that glorifies a poet; and in her book of poems, I am sure there is excellent and new phancies as have not been writ by any, and that it was onely writ by her, is the greatest truth in the world. * As for the book of her Philosophical Opinion, there is not any one thing in the whole book that is not absolutely spun out by her tedious phancy; and if you will lay by a little passion against writers, you will like it, and the best of anything she has writ; therefore, read it once or twice, not with malice, to finde a little fault, but with judgement to like what is good.

"Truely I cannot beleeve so unworthily of any scholar (honouring them so much as we both do), that they should envie this ladie; or should have so much malice or emulation, to cast such false aspersions on her that she did not write those books that go forth in her name." The Duke's original abilities must not be condemned as mean from this letter, for it was penned by him when he was more than three score years and ten of age. He was considerably older than the Duchess Margaret, who was his second wife.

Whether a profound scholar, or any English thinker, posterior to Bacon, would be likely to appropriate the Duchess's productions, the reader may form his opinion from the following extracts. One of her many folio volumes bearing the impressive title of "Grounds of Natural Philosophy," is a collection of little chapters on things in general, from "the clouds" to corns on the feet." The following chapter on "Weakness," is a fair sample of the lady's Philosophical Conceits, as she called them:

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66 CHAPTER. V "OF WEAKNESS.

"THERE are many sorts of weakness; some weakness proceeds from age, others, through want of food; others, are occasioned by oppression; others, by disorders and irregularities; and so many other sorts, that it would be too tedious to repeat them, could I know them; but such sorts of weakness as human creatures are subject to, after some disease or sickness, are somewhat like weariness after a laborious or over-hard action; as, when a man hath run fast, or laboured hard,