Circle, dim satellites, the distant throne:
Saxons themselves in heart, use, tongue disguised,
Their own despising, by the world despised,
While those for whom they yield their country’s pride,
Their name, their nation, and their speech deride.
The above figures of speech are admissible in poetry, but in truth and plain prose they are ‘palabras.’ The two authors are as crushingly severe on the English cockade as on the anti-Jacobite Scottish nobles. The cockade is shown to be altogether an imposture. The words in which the demonstration is made have, however, left her Majesty’s throne unshaken. ‘At this moment, most persons imagine that black is’ (the colour of) ‘the English cockade, ignorant that it was that of the Elector of Hanover, and only introduced into England with George I., who bore it as a vassal of the Empire; and it may be little flattering to the amour-propre of the British people to know that the cockade which they wear as national is the badge of a petty fief, the palatinate of a foreign empire.’ On this matter it is certain that the national withers are unwrung. The black cockade won glory at Dettingen, lost no honour at Fontenoy, and was worn by gallant men whom ‘John Sobieski Stuart’ could not overcome when his sword was (if report be true) unsheathed against English, Irish, and Scots, on the field of Waterloo.
THE ALLENS IN EDINBURGH.
Let us now turn to a minor Jacobite episode.—A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ M. H. R. (August 1st, 1857, p. 95), refers to an account the writer had from an informant, who was accustomed to meet John and Charles Allen in Edinburgh society. ‘I find however that their claims to legitimate descent from the Royal Stuarts were treated in such society quite as a joke, though the claimants were fêted and lionised, as might be expected in such a case, in fashionable circles. They usually appeared in full Highland costume, in Royal Tartan. The likeness to the Stuart family, I am told, was striking, and may have been without improving their claim a whit.’ The writer then alludes to the number of young ladies who, at Her Majesty’s accession, were thought to bear a great resemblance to the Queen. But accidental resemblance is worthless as proof of consanguinity. ‘If,’ the writer continues, ‘the two claimaints have no better foundation to rest upon, their cause is but weak, for it is obvious there may be likeness without legitimate descent; and I fancy, if the real history is gone into, that is the point to be decided here.’
THE SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN.
The writer goes on to traduce the character of the wife of Charles Edward. It must, indeed, be allowed that from the year 1778, when she was twenty-six years of age, and she first became acquainted with Alfieri, the lover with whom she lived from 1780, with some intervals, till his death in 1803, her character was under a shade, and yet, in 1791, the Countess of Albany was received at Court, in London, by so very scrupulous a sovereign lady as Queen Charlotte. So scrupulous was the queen, that her reception of the widow of Charles Edward seemed to disperse the breath of suspicion that rested on her. Another circumstance in her favour is the fact of George III. having settled a pension upon her. The Countess of Albany died at Montpellier plain Madame Fabre, in 1824, leaving all she possessed to her husband, the historical painter. It will be seen from the last-named date, that Queen Victoria and the wife of Charles Edward were for a few years contemporaries.