Success is always a schoolmaster. But it is not just
to hold Robertson responsible for the faults of Alberry or the
failings of the tea-cup-and-saucer school of comedy-writers.
J.B.M.
THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.
It is the fashion to decry French memoirs of court-life, and,
considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of
this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs,
original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their
merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history;
notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of
Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French
manners, and longed for her native _sauer-kraut_ and sausages, which
to her taste were finer than all the luxuries and dainties of the
French cuisine. She was counted a severe moralist, and her tongue was
more dreaded than a bayonet-charge. To be sure, her enemies more than
hinted that her extraordinary virtue was trebly guarded by her
ugliness. On the latter subject she says herself, "I must be cruelly
ugly: I never had a passable feature.
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