BOOKS.
"INTERNATIONAL VANITIES."*
WE welcome the republication in a collected form of these Essays, which originally appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. The author has the happy faculty to discourse in a light and chatty manner, with amusing instructiveness, on a variety of topics which it is not easy to handle without dryness. Our only criticism against Mr. Marshall's workmanship is that he has not done justice to himself by selecting a title which fails to express the piquancy of the contents of his volume. "International Vanities "is a term that has too grave and bald a character to be coupled with the suggestion of amusing reading. It seems to us that Mr. Marshall would have introduced his agreeable Essays more attractively under some such designation as the "Curiosities of International Vanity." Habitual readers of Blackwood, no doubt, are well acquainted with his almost French talent for the amusing treatment of serious subjects, but the general public would hardly be led to anticipate from the title selected the amount of entertainment and quaint information that is presented in this volume, with a graceful absence of ostentation. "The accidents of occupation," says the author, "lead us sometimes into odd byways, where, in looking for one thing, we find another. These chapters are a product of this sort of wandering. They have floated to the surface of other work, and have been skimmed off it as they rise. With such an origin, they can have no pretension to be more than sketches ; they do not seek to teach, but simply to draw attention to some hall-unperceived, yet not unamusing forms of vanity." The chapters • International Vanities. By Frederic Marshall, Author of French Home Life." London: W. Blackwood and Bons. 1876. are eight in number, the first being devoted to the consideration, of Ceremonial, and the last to Glory, while Forms, Titles, Decora- tions, Emblems, Diplomatic Privileges, and Alien Laws furnish the intermediate text.
Forms necessarily constitute the basis on which the whole superstructure of Diplomatic Ceremonial reposes, and the tyro in this science will be bewildered at the varieties of this article, which have been developed by the ingenuity of international practitioners. "It is possible that we all may know (though pos- sibly it is scarcely likely) the exact signification of Bull, Brief, and Protocol, of Capitulations and Conclusums, of Exequaturs and Concordats; but how many are there of us who can define, for instance, the exact difference between a Rescript and a Prag- matic Sanction,—between a Golden Bull and a Placetum Re- gium ? or who can tell what is a Verbal Note, a Mernoire, or a Reversale ?" Yet every one of these mysterious puzzlea has been devised to respond to a particular development of diplomatic punctilio, has therefore retained a special significance for those. versed in this art, and is explained by Mr. Marshall with an air of mock gravity that is not a little amusing. It appears, for instance, that the kind of solemn utterance called a Manifesto has to be couched in the first person, but that what is considered as merely a Declaration must perforce be in the third ; while the subject of the manner in which Sovereigns may correspond with each other is surrounded with such ineffable augustness, that when authorities approach it, they venture to speak thereof only "with deep reverence" and 'bated breath. It is no light matter, whether the Sovereign shall close his letter with or without the expression, "Sur ce, nous prions Dieu gull vous alt en as gain* garde," for in the former case, it would be a sin of the first mag- nitude not to write in the plural "all personal pronouns referring to the sender or the receiver," while in the latter "the writer- speaks of himself in the singular,"—a difference involving a dis- tinction of no less incalculable, than to outsiders inappreciable, consequence.
Even more intricate is the unravelling of the system of Titles, their origin, their distinctive natures, and their relative bearings in the schedule of precedency, on all which knotty points Mr. Marshall discourses with amusing fullness:—
" Titles of dignity are easy to comprehend; they are made up of words which indicate a function and yet simple as this first category of royal substantives appears to be, it includes so many various nouns of sovereignty, that it would be difficult to compose an absolutely complete enumeration of all shapes of rtilership that the. world has known. 'Emperor' naturally heads the catalogue of pride
and then we get to 'King,' the universal king, which has lasted from all time in equivalent translations from one language to
another Hierarchically the next place belongs to Grand Duke, a designation which was originally conceived at Kieff, but which was acclimatised in the South in 1569, when Pius V. bestowed it on COSMO di Medici. But though Tuscany was the first non-Roman
land to own it, Germany only has preserved it as a reigning title We get next to Duke, which ceased to be a sovereign title under Louis XII. in France, but of which five examples still exist in Germany, notwithstanding all the changes which have taken place there. Palatine, Margrave, and Landgrave, which once were titles of independ- ent lordships, have all become merged in higher appellations Margrave is the most ancient of them, Palatine comes next ; Landgrave was the last to be created, and the last to disappear It was invented in 1130 by Louis, third Count of Thuringia, who adopted it in order to distinguish himself from the crowd of Counts around him. The idea was evidently admired by his colleagues, for Thierry, Count of Lower Alsace. appropriated the same denomination seven yearn afterwards, and Albert of Hapsburg, Count of Higher Alsace, followed the example in 1186. These were the three real Landgraves, the only ones that were recognised as original by the Empire,—all the others were imitations."
We have seen a Bonaparte assume the Imperial title under singu- larly arbitrary circumstances without anything approaching to a protest being uttered by any Sovereign, except the Russian Czar. It is curious, therefore, that this representative of Privilege should himself have acquired his Imperial designation in a manner the legitimacy of which was sternly challenged. Originally the Muscovitesovereigns styled themselves "Grand Dukes," and Ivan IV. first had himself proclaimed Czar, a designation rendered in Latin documents of an official character into "Imperator," which version was indignantly protested against by the august represen- tative of the Holy Roman Empire. Great Britain, however, addressed Peter the Great as "Emperor," in an official apology for some unceremonious treatment to which his Envoy had been ex- posed in London; but the more punctilious Courts of France and Spain continued to demur, and even down to the accession of Catharine the Great would only grant the "Majest4 Czarienne " against what is called in diplomatic terminology a " leure reversale," by which the Russian Court admitted that the title given "should cause no change in the ceremonial existing between the two Courts." It is nevertheless the fact that the right of the French
Sovereign to call himself "Majesty" was quite a modern assumption, for even in the preliminaries of peace at the close of the Thirty Years' War, the Chancery of the Holy Roman Empire ob- stinately persisted in recognising only a Serene Christian King, while "Sacred Majesty " was exclusively reserved to the rather roughly treated Emperor of Germany. But there is an even more involved series of titles than those appertaining to royalty. Foreigners often are puzzled to understand the principles which regulate our titles of nobility. It is, however, certain that the manner in which under the old Monarchy in France titles were distributed amongst members of a family is infinitely more puzzling. It is a mystery to discover why, in some houses, the heads bore designations of inferior rank, and the cadets were dignified with the higher style a aristocratic appellation. There we have a bewildering heraldic maze, for the clue to which a student would have reason to be thankful. '1 he Sire de Coney, with his familiar motto, "Roi ne suis, ne Prince, no Due, ne Comte aussi ; je suis le Sire de Coney," is an intelligible phenomenon, but what can possibly be the principle dictating the singular alternative adoption in regular succession of the ducal titles of Luynes and Chevreuse, so that predecessors and successors never have the same designation ? Mr. Marshall has omitted to enter upon the discussion of this branch of his subject. From his intimate knowledge of France, we venture to suggest to him That in his next edition he should devote some pages to the elucidation of these riddles. They will certainly not be the least novel nor the least instructive in his amusing volume, from which we must now part, with a strong recommendation of it to every one who likes pleasant and quaint reading. In the essays on "Decora- tions" and on" Emblems" most persons will meet with odd bits of curiosity, while under the heading of "Alien Laws" the author goes in his entertaining method into matter of a really grave character, and understands how to communicate ideas on the subject which are not undeserving the consideration of the more serious class of readers.
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