The marshal himself, when he begins to record his observations and sentiments, is sensible of this peculiarity, and enters rather more deeply into the causes of it.

I write by inspiration rather than by reflection. There must be a great number of persons to whom I cannot appear clear, nor agreeable, nor pro found. If I had all this merit, it would be only in the countries and the societies in which I have lived most, and which have learned nearly the same things that I have acquired, from a similar education, and almost the same circumstances. I am conscious that it is a great fault: for it not enough that we understand ourselves, we ought also to be understood by others.

I have also the fault of Reubens, who introduced himself and his two wives into all his pictures: but the indulgent will tolerate me, and acknowlege-Mutato nomine de me fabula narratur.'

This is an error into which the most lively and agreeable persons are perhaps most likely to fall; but in the amusing volumes before us we certainly find it carried to excess. Some passages lose all their merit by being clothed in phrases which owe their point to the temporary favour that they had acquired as the slang of a fashionable cóterie, and others are actually insusceptible of translation. While, however, we are discussing the merits of the Prince, in a character to which he hardly deigned to aspire, he is travelling with their Imperi al Majesties of Russia and Austria, and holding conversations with them on subjects so interesting and important, that we will not lose the privilege of listening. We have seldom an opportunity of joining such distinguished society, or of visiting the distant region to which a few lines will now transport us.

I fancy myself still dreaming, when in the corner of a coach with sixseats, which is a real triumphal chariot, adorned with cyphers in precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons, on whose shoulders the heat often makes me fall asleep, and from whom, in waking, I hear these expressions : "I have thirty millions of subjects, as they say, reckoning only the males."-"I have twenty-two," replies the other, "including all." "I ought to have an army of at least six hundred thousand men," says the first," from Kamschatka to Riga."" With half that number," answers the second, "I am exactly suited."

In our carriage we pass in review all states and all great people. God knows how we treat them. "Rather than subscribe to the separation of thirteen provinces, like my brother George," said Catharine the Second, "I would have shot myself."-" and rather than dismiss myself, as my brother and brother-in-law have done, by convoking and reassembling the nation to talk of abuses, I know not what I would have done," said Joseph the Second.

They agreed in opinion also respecting the king of Sweden, whom they did not like, and against whom the Emperor said he had taken a prejudice in Italy, on account of a robe de chambre of blue and silver with a bunch of diamonds. They allowed him energy, talent, and understanding." Yes certainly," I said in his defence, for the favours conferred by him on me, and the marks of a great character which I have seen him display, attached me to him, "your majesty really ought to prohibit a dreadful libel, which dares to treat as a Don Quixotte a prince of excellent qualities, amiable, and endowed with genius."

• Their Imperial Majesties sometimes felt one another's pulse in respect to those poor devils the Turks; and they threw out observations, looking at one another. As an admirer of glorious antiquity, and a little fond of novel. ty, I spoke of re-establishing the Greeks; and Catharine wished to give birth again to Lycurguses and Solons. For my part I spoke of Alcibiades : but Joseph the second, who attends more to the future than the past, and is more attached to substance than imagination, inquired, "What the devil. must we do with Constantinople?"

In this manner they captured several islands and provinces, without appearing to be engaged in any thing particular; and I said within myself, "Your Majesties will only capture miseries."-"We treat him too well," said the Emperor, speaking of me;" he has not sufficient respect for us. Do you know, Madame, that he was in love with one of my father's mistres. ses; and that he defeated me when just entering into life, in a contest for a marchioness, who was beautiful as an angel, and who was the first love of us both?"

Here is no reserve between these two great sovereigns. They related to each other the most interesting circumstances. "Has your life never been attempted? 1 have been menaced.—I have received anonymous letters." Here is a confessor's tale, and delightful details unknown to the whole world, &c.'

This letter goes on, in the same familiar and entertaining strain, to describe certain instructions in the art of French poetry, given by M. de Segur to the Empress of all the Russias, and her awkward first essays at versification. Of these, and the bouts rimés filled up by M. de Ligne, we cannot undertake to transfuse the spirit into our untractable tongue : but we must treat the reader with the contrast, so rapidly and strongly sketched, between the savage Tartar of Caffa and the refined Parisian.

'I entered several shops and coffee-houses. Here I saw foreigners from the most distant countries: Greeks, Asiatic Turks, manufacturers of arms from Persia and Mount Caucasus. There is no real civility, said I to myself on seeing them, except among the uncivilized. Here, when persons 3 G

VOL. II.

meet, they assume a manner full of gentleness, and more or less respectful. The language is noble, like the Greek or the Spanish; it is free from the hissing, the grossness, the drawl, and the sing, and the meanness of the European tongues. A Tartar would be greatly astonished, on arriving at the city most distinguished for urbanity and grace, to hear a coachman on the Boulevard speaking to his horses, or a lady of the corn-market talking with her neighbour at the Place-Maubert. What comparison between the insolence, the avarice, and the filthiness of the nations of Europe, and the plain dealing and cleanliness of this! Nothing is done here without being preceded as well as followed by libations. The libation with which the hairdressers regale their patients is a little extraordinary: they take the head between their knees, and pour one of their fountains over it.'

Almost every page would furnish us with an amusing extract. The whole description of Potemkin's character, as exemplified during the campaign against the Turks, is highly curious: but we must confine ourselves to a single trait. The marshal is writing to his Imperial

master.

an

'I am absolutely in this place a nurse taking care of a child; but my child is large, stout, and mutinous. Yesterday he again said to me, "Do you think you came here to lead me by the nose?" "Do you think, swered I," that I would have come hither if I had not expected to do so? Idle and inexperienced as you are, my dear prince, what could you do better? Why refuse to confide in a man who is anxious for your glory, and for that of the two empires? You want so little of being perfect! But what can your genius do, if it is not aided by confidence and friendship ?"

The prince said to me, Persuade your emperor to cross the Save, and I will cross the Bog." "How," asked I, can you stand upon compli ments as at the door of a drawing-room! My Emperor yields precedency to you: There is a Turkish army against him: there is none against you." "Do you think," said he, "that he would give the cross of Maria Theresa to us, and accept the cross of St. George for those who should distinguish themselves in our two armies?" I saw plainly at what he was aiming. He has a mania for orders. He is in possession of twelve only; and I have assured him that Oczakow was well worth our great cross, and that if he would render the taking of Belgrade more easy to your Imperial Majesty, he might lay claim to the order of St. Stephen. I entreat you, Sire, to confirm this hope which I have given him; and if our Roman-catholicity could be

Barbiers de cheveaux. The word patiens immediately following ap pears to imply, that the professions of hair-dressing and surgery are united in the Crimea, as they once were in this country. Rev.

deranged in his favour, so as to promise him the Fleece, he would be completely ours.'

The marshal's opinion of Catharine, Paul, and Alexander, of Rusria, appears in a judicious letter to the minister of state, Kaunitz.

'God preserve our immortal Empress! But as she will be immortal only in history, I deem it highly necessary to manage the Grand Duke, who, in reforming millions of old, will create new abuses. Capable of labour, too frequently changing his councils and his friends, to have either a favourite, a counsellor, or a mistress, prompt, ardent and inconsequent, he will perhaps be one day formidable, if he be the person to whom his mother will leave the empire: but I believe that, if she has time to accomplish her object, she would rather leave it to the grand duke Alexander, since she re. moves her son from business as much as she introduces her grandson into it. Young as he is, she herself forms him to the government,'

The versatile monarch, who now fills the throne of Catharine, must surely have done the greatest violence to the early impressions received from her care; but the causes of his alienation cannot be investigated with pride or with pleasure by an English politician. The author onters largely into a discussion on the character of the unhappy Paul, which, though curious as a piece of history, and then very important as political information, no longer possesses any practical interest. Among other singular features, he ascribes to Paul a hatred of his nation, and adds,' He once said of it to me at Gatschina such things as I cannot repeat.' Compelled to omit a thousand interesting details, and particularly the animated recital of the taking of Belgrade, we must however find room for the general character of the Turks, whom the marshal had the most favourable and repeated opportunity of studying with accuracy. How far he improved his means let the following letter testify.

Who wishes to be acquainted with the Turks? Here they are, very different from the idea commonly formed of them. They are a people of antitheses, brave and cowardly, active and lazy, profligate and devout, refined and coarse, filthy and cleanly, keeping in the same room roses and a dead cat. If I speak of the grandees of the court, the army, and the provinces, I shall call them lofty and mean, mistrustful and ungrateful, baughty and creeping, generous and yet thieves. All these qualities, good and bad, of which the first are more numerous than the second in the bulk of the nation, depend on circumstances, and are covered with a crust of ignorance and insensibility, which prevents the poor people from being miserable.

"It is clear that, if they were not under the yoke of monsters, who strangle them in order to possess their sons, their daughters, or their

wealth, they would not be so much familiarized with customs which give them the air of barbarism.

Their utmost effort is to smile, and to reply with the head, the eyes, the arms, and the hand, which they move with nobleness; but they scarcely ever speak. They have nothing vulgar, either in what I have had explained to me of their discourse, or in their manner. The little servant of a Janissary, though with naked legs and feet, and without a shirt, is a coxcomb after his fashion, and has an air of more superiority than the young lords of European courts. The poorest of the Turkish soldiers have no clothes to wear, but their arms of ornamented steel are covered with silver. I have seen them refuse two hundred piasters for them, fearing less to die of hunger than of shame.

The Turks are open to the impressions of gratitude and kind treatment, and, in all the circumstances of their lives, whether in war or elsewhere, constantly keep their word, and so much the more, they have sometimes told me, because they cannot write.

They resemble the Greeks in some points, and the Romans in many. They have the predilections of the one, and the customs of the other. Their works are charming, full of taste, and imply ideas (supposent des idées.) Those which they have are subtle and delicate. They have a flowing imagination in the little which they say or write. They are grave, like the Romans, and will not give themselves the trouble of laughing or dancing. Both the one and the other have buffoons. Ibrahim Nazir, whom we chased from Moldavia, had five or six handsome slaves, well dressed, and riding on horseback with him. The Turks have given me to understand that they take pleasure in seeing, when they wake, none but beautiful forms, to bring their coffee, their pipe, their aloes-wood to burn, their perfumes of amber, and their essence of roses. They laugh at us for suffering an ill-looking frotteur, or an old valet to come and make our fire, or open our curtains. They always recline, like the Romans, who, I doubt not, had their Divans, where they took their meals, or reposed during the whole day. like the Turks. Tunics and slippers prove that these two nations were not fond of walking. Nothing can equal the rage of cold and phlegmatic persons. The Turks, like the Romans, particularly those of the present age, set a value on revenge, and except in this particular, they are gentle. They never dispute, never quarrel. If a popular government did not always bring with it the spirit of party, intrigue, jealousy, and the crimes that follow, the Romans

It may be proper to inform our untravelled readers, that the frotteur is a stout long legged man who gives lubricity to the oaken floors of the conti nent, by rubbing them with a hard brush impregnated with bees-wax, and attached to his naked foot, with which he daily skates over the rooms before the family is stirring. Rev.