Though the period comprized in the journal of the Marquis is of the greatest interest, it is so inadequately described in this collection of trifles that we hasten to take leave of it, and to confine our remaining observations to the supplementary pieces. The principal of these, the historical sketch of the regency of the Duke of Orleans, occupies about sixty pages of the fourth volume; and it contains, amid a number of médiocre passages, a few of a more entertaining stamp, such as the following picture of the Regent and his preceptor:

The Duke of Orleans possessed an agreeable figure, and an open, intelligent countenance; he expressed himself with ease and grace; and he was gifted with a character of great penetration and sagacity. He had a considerable knowlege of painting, music, chemistry, and mechanics; and he patronized the arts and sciences with both liberality and discernment: forming in his palace a valuable collection of pictures, and another of medals. He possessed great courage, was not without military talents, and was humane and magnanimous: while no prince was ever more easy of access or more prone to clemency. Qualities and abilities so eminent ought to have formed a great man: but one of the vilest flatterers corrupted his disposition, and made him imbibe the most pernicious principles in his early youth. He had four men of rank who acted successively as his governors, and who all died within a short period of each other. St. Laurent, a man of the greatest merit, was his preceptor: but, by a strange fatality, he also died. He had taken the Abbé Dubois, (who became afterward Cardinal and prime minister,) to copy the young Prince's lessons: this Abbé, by the pliancy of his character, gained the good will of the sub-governors; and, when St. Laurent died, he was authorized to continue the functions of preceptor. Dubois possessed a lively and sarcastic gaiety, which amused the Prince; and to please in such a quarter is to acquire an ascendency. When a vicious man wishes to govern a prince, his first care is to endeavour to corrupt him; and this plan was adopted by Dubois. He was well aware that he could never gain 'the esteem of his pupil, and sought only to make him subservient to his purposes.

Dubois began by giving the young prince opinions that were not only false in themselves but particularly hurtful to persons of rank. He separated mankind into two classes, knaves, and fools; and from this division he contended that he who passed for an honest man was nothing more than one who had the art to disguise his faults from the vulgar. These odious maxims were not brought forwards at once; sometimes they were merely insinuated; at other times they were hazarded in the form of repartees, and lively sallies; and in this manner they could be heard without exciting indignation. This was a great point gained; and thus, by little and little, they passed from the imagination to the heart. Dubois could never succeed in making a hypocrite of the Duke of Orleans; his frank, candid character prevented this: but he inspired him with a profound contempt for mankind; and the

L13

the openness of the Prince only served to render him an unblushing infidel, and conduced greatly to the dissoluteness of the court.'*

One of the first acts of the Duke was to restore to the parliaments the right of "making remonstrances on the orders of the sovereign," a right which had been suspended under the arbitrary and overpowering rule of Louis XIV. No period ever shewed more clearly than the reign of that despot the dangers of military success to civil liberty, or the necessity of watching the earliest infractions of the executive power on the other branches of the constitution. Another action of the Duke, which forms a striking contrast to the hard-hearted conduct of Louis, was the release of the prisoners so long confined in the Bastile.

The beginning of the regency did great credit to the Duke, who made many useful reforms in the household, the buildings, and equipages of the King: but the respect which the Marquis de Dangeau owed to the memory of his royal master and benefactor did not permit him to speak of a very remarkable act of justice performed after his death by the Duke. On one of the first occa sions on which the latter transacted business with the secretaries of state, he called for the list of all the lettres de cachet; and he found many of which the motives could not be explained, and which it was impossible to discover otherwise than by questioning the prisoners, a number of whom were ignorant of the cause of their detention. These unfortunate men pined in their dungeons for crimes which were perhaps imaginary, of which they were themselves ignorant, and which the government had forgotten, as well as the victims of their tyranny. The Duke gave liberty to all those who were not imprisoned for any serious offence that is, nearly to the whole. Among others was the Chevalier d Aremberg, who had been eleven years in a dungeon for having aided the escape of an ecclesiastic named Quesnel from the prison of Malines. Though still young, his long sufferings had given him all the appearance of decrepitude. An Italian was also found in the Bastile, who had been confined thirty-five years without knowing for what cause, and who had been arrested on the day of his arrival at Paris. Custom had so attached this man to his prison, where he had never been ill treated, that he considered it as his home: he represented that it would be in vain for him to search for relations or friends, all of whom must either have ceased to exist or must have forgotten him; and he asked as a favour to remain in the Bastile. The Regent complied with this singular request, and gave orders that he should be well treated, with liberty to go out and in whenever he chose."

*For particulars of the court of Louis XIV. and the Regent, sce Rev. Vol. vii. pp. 116. and 161. - Vol. xliv. p.60. Vol. lxxxi. p. 666.- Vol. xiv. New Series, p. 566.—and Vol. li. pp. 469. and 475. For memoirs of the Cardinal Dubois, see Vol.1xxix. N. S.

P. 449.

In the biographical sketch of Dangeau, Madame De G. labours much to give some importance to her hero: but, after all, he can be considered as nothing more than a good courtier, an indifferent poet, and a man of moderate abilities, whose memory was preserved chiefly by the manner in which Boileau dedicated to him his satire on nobility. This short narrative is followed by the Discours préliminaire, which consists of little else than a panegyric on Louis XIV. and an attack on Voltaire, D'Alembert, and the Encyclopedists, with what seems to us a matter of no little difficulty, an eulogy of Fénelon, united to a defence of the King's conduct towards that illustrious prelate. Madame DE G. will not admit that Bossuet was jealous of the Archbishop of Cambray: but, with all our admiration for the eloquence and piety of the former, we cannot help considering his hostility to Fénelon as a lamentable blemish on so fair a character.

ART. VIII. De la Souveraineté, &c.; i. e. On Sovereignty, and Forms of Government; an Essay intended to rectify several Political Errors. By FREDERIC ANCILLON, Author of the Sketch of Political Revolutions in Europe since the End of the Fifteenth Century," and of "Miscellanies in Literature and Philosophy." Translated from German into French, with Notes. 8vo. pp. 166. Paris. 1816.

THE

HE name of ANCILLON has long been known to readers of French literature, and the author of the treatise now before us is the son of the writer of the same denomination; whose family, originally French, has been settled for a century past in the Prussian dominions. We extract an account of him from the Biographie des Hommes Vivans, the work now in course of publication at Paris of which we have given a report in the VIth Article of this Appendix.

⚫ ANCILLON was born at Berlin in 1766, and commenced his career as professor in the Royal Military Academy and preacher in a reformed church in that metropolis. In 1801 he published Mélanges de Littérature et de Philosophie, 2 vols. 8vo., which were reprinted in 1809: but that which really established his reputation was his historical work, written in French, and intitled, "Tableau des Révolutions du système politique de l'Europe, depuis la fin du 15me siècle, Berlin, 1806, 4 vols. 8vo., which he himself translated into German, calling it General Considerations on History, &c. His success as an author brought him into favour with the present King of Prussia, who made choice of him as governor for his son the Prince-Royal, and for his nephew Frederic-William-Louis; and he had the honourable but melancholy task of pronouncing in the French Protestant church of Berlin a funeral oration on the late Queen of Prussia, who died in the

bloom of youth, a victim to the distresses of her country. Her melancholy fate was feelingly depicted in this discourse, which was but little known in France, because it was strictly prohibited by the Imperial government.'

The idea of the present publication was evidently suggested by the dissatisfied situation of Germany, particularly of the Prussian dominions; where the inhabitants are of opinion that their government has been very backward in fulfilling the promises given so largely in 1813, when the exertions of all ranks and all ages were required for the overthrow of Bonaparte. The Germans are fond of discussions ab ovo; and M. ANCILLON begins with an inquiry into the origin of society, the only striking passage of which is his resolute censure of the state of nature that is so much extolled by the disciples of Rousseau. He follows this by a string of observations, evidently written for the meridian of monarchy; among which he brings forwards the old argument for considering a nation as a family, and their ruler as their parent. We are always prepared for a moderate share of inconsistency and sometimes of contradiction in the compositions of our French neighbours: but we were in hopes that the sedate habits of Germany had released M. ANCILLON from any liability to such vexatious deviations. His work, however, discovers much discrepancy; the most charitable explanation of which is that his personal opinions lean to the side of freedom, but that his situation at court produces, perhaps unconsciously to himself, a very material alteration in the thread of his deductions. What, for example, is the reader to think of such a passage as the ensuing?

The sovereign power is that which determines the will of the society at large; the sovereign in fact creates this will. It is only then, when such a will exists, which obliges, commands, and forbids, whatever be its nature or its action, that an assemblage of individuals becomes a society, a people, a state. It is therefore absurd to say that sovereignty is inherent in the people, and that it cannot be alienated; for this assertion supposes that it is possible for a people to exist before the sovereignty; whereas the existence of a people begins only when the sovereignty is introduced under one form or another; and, wherever this is not the case, there is no such thing as a people.

The sovereignty, therefore, does not belong to the people, nor is it inherent in them, as it has been pretended whenever the intention was to overthrow the legitimate government, and to deprive the people of the advantages of stability and social order. It is equally false to say that sovereignty proceeds from the people; for the people, as a people, owe their existence to it.'

It would be a waste of words to enter on a refutation of such notions, and to exert ourselves to prove that sovereign

power

power should be exercised only for the benefit of the people; or to shew that, with regard to Prussia, the question is not materially altered by the accidental benevolence of the reigning sovereign, since his successors may, and in all probability will, act the part of despots. Passing over the subsequent passages, in which the writer appears to deem it possible to guard liberty without imposing any restraint on the royal prerogative, we proceed to a more pleasant part of our task by quoting his description of a mixed government.

The great problem, how ought a constitution to be framed, so as to answer the most beneficial purposes? cannot be resolved in a general manner. The object is the same at all times and in all places, but the means of attaining it are as multiplied and as various as are nations, countries, and ages. The most perfect acquaintance with all circumstances, moral and physical, the closest examination of all the peculiar characteristics of a people,and constant attention to their past and present situation, -are the only means of determining so important a question, or obtaining useful results. The best constitution is always that which proceeds from the real character and history of a nation, and which consequently is so adapted to it as not to admit of application to any other state. If it be true that Solon gave the Athenians the laws of all others the most suitable to them, he exhibited no doubt an example of the perfection of legislation. To say which are the best laws, in a general sense, is in my opinion an absurdity; it is no more possible to have one model of government for all countries than to have one bridge for all streams, or one soul to animate all bodies.'

Here, as to the intention of the author, all is evidently right, and the only fault is a fault of style; - viz. a vagueness and want of precision almost always attendant on those who address themselves more to the imagination than the intellect. We may evidently discern something more defined in the following passage on the subject of Popular Representation :

The representative form of government, although unknown to the antients, is the only means by which a great people can take a share in the legislation, and the best for preserving them from anarchy; or, in other words, from the despotism of the rabble: it ought ever to be the basis of a mixed government. No one will now dream of seeking for liberty in popular assemblies. The end of social union is the progressive improvement of the individuals of whom society is composed, and the true means by which we may attain it are liberty and safety; that is, the ascendancy of just laws, the only safe-guard of liberty. When, therefore, it is asked who ought to be chosen as representatives of the people? we must answer, those in whom we expect to find the purest principles of liberty and the best abilities; those who have the strongest interest in maintaining public security, and the

stability