it is well known that no faculty whatever is more susceptible of improvement; and accordingly, when at any time the possession of it happens to be at all fashionable in the higher circles, it very soon ceases to be a rare accomplishment. In the other sex the power of imitation is, I think, in general, greater than in ours. A frequent reiteration of any act, it has been often remarked, communicates to the mind, not only a facility in performing it, but an increased proneness or disposition to repeat it. This observation is remarkably verified in those who accustom themselves to the exercise of mimicry. Their propensity to imitation gains new strength from its habitual indulgence, and sometimes becomes so powerful as to be hardly subject to the control of the will. Instances of this have, more than once, fallen under my own observation; and, in a few well-authenticated cases, the propensity is said to have become so irresistible as to constitute a species of disease. As we have a faculty of imitating the peculiarities of our acquaintances, so we are able to fashion, in some degree, our own exterior, according to the ideal forms which imagination creates. The same powers of embellishing nature, which are exercised by the poet and the painter may, in this manner, be rendered subservient to the personal improvement of the individual. By a careful study of the best models which the circle of his acquaintance presents to him, an outline may be conceived of their common excellences, excluding every peculiarity of feature which might designate the particular objects of his imitation; and this imaginary original he may strive to copy and to realise in himself. It is by a process analogous to this (as Sir Joshua Reynolds has very ingeniously shown) that the masters in painting rise to eminence; and such, too, is the process which Quintilian recommends to the young orator who aspires to the graces of elocution and of action: "Imitate," says he, "the best speakers you can find; but imitate only the perfections they possess in common.” It is remarked by the same admirable critic, that although a disposition to imitate be, in young men, one of the most favourable symptoms of future success, yet little is to be expected from those who, in order to raise a laugh, delight in mimicking the peculiarities of individuals. An exclusive attention indeed to the best models which human life supplies indicates some defect in those powers of imagination and taste, which might have supplied the student with an ideal pattern still more faultless; and therefore, how great soever his powers of execution may be, they can never produce anything but a copy (and probably a very inferior copy) of the original he has in view. These observations may throw some light on the distinction between the powers of the mimic and of the actor. The former attaches himself to individual imitation; the latter, equally faithful to the study of nature, strives, in the course of a more extensive observation, to seize on the genuine expressions of passion and of character, stripped of the singularities with which they are always blended when exhibited to our senses. It has been often remarked that these powers are seldom united in the same person; and I believe the remark is just, when stated with proper limitations. It is certainly true that talent for mimicry may exist in the greatest perfection where there is no talent for acting, because the former talent implies merely the power of execution, which is not necessarily connected either with taste or with imagination. On the other hand, when these indisputable qualities in a great actor are to be found, there will probably be little disposition to cultivate those habits of minute and vigilant attention to singularities on which mimicry depends. But the powers of the actor evidently presuppose and comprehend the powers of the mimic, if he had thought the cultivation of them worthy of his attention; for the same reason that the genius of the historical painter might, if he had chosen, have succeeded in the humbler walk of painting portraits. If I am not much mistaken, the conclusion might be confirmed by an appeal to facts. Foote, it is well known, was but an indifferent actor; and many other mimics of acknowledged excellence in their own line have succeeded still worse than he did on the stage. But I have never known a good actor who did not also possess enough of the power of mimicry to show that it was his own fault he had not acquired it in still greater perfection. Garrick, I have been told by some of his acquaintance, frequently amused his friends with portraits of individua. character incomparably finer and more faithful than any that were ever executed by Foote. Queen Christina of Sweden. RANKE. [LEOPOLD RANKE is the author of the "History of the Popes of Rome during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." This work was translated from the German by Mrs Austin, 1840. It is truly observed by the translator, that the subject of the book "is not so much the history of the Popes as a history of the great struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism." The extract which we give presents a curious picture of the unlooked-for con quest by Catholicism of Queen Christina of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the great champion of Protestantism.] Christina was a wonderful product of nature and fortune. A young and noble lady, she was utterly free from personal vanity. She took no pains to conceal that she had one shoulder higher than the other; though she had been told that her greatest beauty consisted in her luxuriant fair hair, she did not even pay the commonest attention to it: she was wholly a stranger to all the petty cares of life; so indifferent to the table, that she was never heard to find fault with any kind of food; so temperate, that she drank nothing but water. She never could understand to learn any sort of womanly works; on the other hand, she delighted to be told that at her birth she was taken for a boy; that when a little infant, instead of betraying terror at the firing of guns, she clapped her hands and behaved like a true soldier's child. She was a most intrepid rider; putting one foot in the stirrup, she vaulted into the saddle, and went off at speed; she shot with unerring aim; she studied Tacitus and Plato, and sometimes entered with more profound sagacity into the genius of those authors than philologists by profession; young as she was, she was capable of forming an independent and discriminating judgment on state affairs, and of maintaining it triumphantly amongst senators grown gray in commerce with the world. She threw into her labour the fresh and buoyant spirit which accompanies native perspicuity of mind; above all, she was penetrated with a sense of the high mission to which she was called by her birth; of the necessity of governing by herself. Never did she refer an ambassador to her minister: she would not suffer a subject of hers to wear a foreign order; she could not endure, she said, that one of her flock should bear the mark of another's hand. She knew how to assume a port and countenance before which the generals who made Germany tremble were dumb; had a new war broken out, she would assuredly have put herself at the head of her troops. With a character and tastes of so lofty and heroic a stamp, it may easily be imagined that the mere thought of marrying-of giving a man rights over her person-was utterly intolerable to her; any obligation of that kind which she might be supposed to lie under to her country she believed she had fully-exempted herself from by fixing the succession; immediately after her coro. nation she declared that she would rather die than marry. But could such a position as hers be maintained? There was something in it overstrained and forced-deficient in the equipoise of a healthy state of being, in the serenity of a natural existence content within itself. It was not inclination for business which precipitated her into it with such ardour; she was urged on by ambition and by a sense of her sovereign power and dignity-but she found no pleasure in it. Nor did she love her country; neither its customs nor its pleasures, neither its ecclesiastical nor its temporal occupation, nor its past history and glory, which she could not understand or feel: the state ceremonies, the long speeches to which she was condemned to listen, the official occasions on which she had personal duties to perform, were utterly odious to her; the circle of cultivation and learning, within which her countrymen remained stationary, seemed to her contemptibly narrow. Had she not possessed the throne of Sweden from childhood, it might perhaps have appeared an object of desire to her; but, as she had been a queen as long as she could remember, all those longings and aspirations of the mind of man, which stamp the character of his future destiny, had taken a direction averted from her own country. Fantastic views and a love of the extraordinary began to obtain dominion over her; she recognised none of the ordinary restraints, nor did she think of opposing the strength and dignity of a moral symmetry, suited to her position, to passing and accidental impressions; in short, she was highminded, intrepid, magnanimous, full of elasticity and energy of spirit; but extravagant, violent, studiously unfeminine, in no respect amiable, unfilial even, and not only to her mother, she spared not even the sacred memory of her father when an opportunity offered of saying a sarcastic thing. Sometimes, indeed, it appears as if she knew not what she said. Exalted as was her station, such a character and demeanour could not fail to react upon herself, and to render it impossible for her to feel contented, attached to her home and country, or happy. This unsatisfied and restless spirit frequently takes possession of the mind most strongly with regard to religion. Its workings in the heart of Christina were manifested in the following manner. The memory of the queen dwelt with peculiar delight on her teacher, Dr Johann Matthiæ, whose simple, pure, and gentle spirit gained her earliest affections, who was her earliest confidant even in all her childish affairs. Immediately after it had become manifest that no one of the existing ecclesiastical bodies would overpower the other, the expediency of a union of them was recognised by some few right-thinking men. Matthiæ was one of those who cherished this wish, and published a book in which he agitated the question of the union of the two Protestant Churches. The queen was strongly inclined to his opinion; she conceived the project of founding a theological academy, which should devote itself to the work of reconciling the two confessions. But the fiery zeal of certain inflexible Lutherans immediately rose up in arms against this project. A superintendent of Calmer attacked Matthiæ's book with fury, and the estates took part against it. The bishops admonished the queen's council to watch over the interests of the established religion of the country, and the high chancellor went **** |