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tion for the severities and even the miscon- | Montmorin, who came to her from the King duct of his opponents, and the herd of ignorant late in the preceding evening, informed her, speculators at home;-in the same way as the that they were perfectly aware of an intention Leaders of political parties have uniformly far to assault the royal residence on the night of less rancour and animosity towards their an- the 12th; but that, to a certainty, nothing tagonists, than the vulgar followers in their would be attempted till then. At midnight, train. It is no small proof, however, of an however, there were signs of agitation in the elevated and generous character, to be able neighbourhood; and before four o'clock in the to make those allowances; and Madame de morning, the massacre had begun. M. de L. would have had every apology for falling Lescure rushed out on the first symptom of into the opposite error,-both on account of alarm to join the defenders of the palace, but her sex, the natural prejudices of her rank could not obtain access within the gates, and nd education, the extraordinary sufferings to was obliged to return and disguise himself in hich she was subjected, and the singularly the garb of a Sansculotte, that he might minmild and unoffending character of the be-gle with some chance of escape in the crowd loved associates of whom she was so cruelly of assailants. M. de Montmorin, whose disdeprived.

She had some right, in truth, to be delicate and royalist, beyond the ordinary standard. Her father, the Marquis de Donnison, had an employment about the person of the King; in virtue of which, he had apartments in the Palace of Versailles; in which splendid abode the writer was born, and continued constantly to reside, in the very focus of royal influence and glory, till the whole of its unfortunate inabitants were compelled to leave it, by the fury of that mob which escorted them to Paris in 1789. She had, like most French dies of distinction, been destined from her infancy to be the wife of M. de Lescure, a pear relation of her mother, and the repreentative of the ancient and noble family of lgues in Poitou. The character of this minent person, both as it is here drawn by widow, and indirectly exhibited in various rs of her narrative, is as remote as possible that which we should have been inà priori, to ascribe to a young French eman of the old regime, just come to in the first flush of youth, from a great ary school. He was extremely serious, ful, pious, and self-denying,-with great mess of character and sweetness of temfearless, and even ardent in war, but ple in his pretensions to dictate, and most derate of the wishes and sufferings of his fowers. To this person she was married in the nineteenth year of her age, in October 1790-at a time when most of the noblesse ad already emigrated, and when the rage for Chat unfortunate measure had penetrated even the province of Poitou, where M. de Leshad previously formed a prudent assomit of the whole gentry of the country, to peasantry were most zealously atwas the fashion, however, to emio many of the Poitevin nobility follow it, that M. de Lescure concerned his honour, not to ind and came to Paris in ke preparations for his Were, however, he was herself not to go Inty to obey. The eatest anxieties

miracle. After being insulted by the mob, guise was less perfect, escaped as if by a he had taken refuge in the shop of a small grocer, by whom he was immediately recog nised, and where he was speedily surrounded by crowds of the National Guards, reeking from the slaughter of the Swiss. The good natured shopkeeper saw his danger, and stepping quickly up to him, said with a familiar air, "Well, cousin, you scarcely expected, on your arrival from the country, to witness the downfal of the tyrant-Here, drink to the health of those brave asserters of our liberties." He submitted to swallow the toast, and got off without injury.

being much frequented by persons of the
The street in which M. Lescure resided,
Swiss nation, was evidently a very dangerous
place of retreat for royalists; and, soon after
it was dark, the whole family, disguised in
the dress of the lower orders, slipped out,
with the design of taking refuge in the house
of an old femme-de-chambre, on the other side
of the river. M. de Donnison and his wife
went in one party; and Madame Lescure,
then in the seventh month of her pregnancy,
with her husband, in another. Intending to
cross by the lowest of the bridges, they first
turned into the Champs-Elysées. More than
a thousand men had been killed there that
day; but the alleys were now silent and
lonely; though the roar of the multitude, and
occasional discharges of cannon and musketry,
were heard from the front of the Tuilleries,
where the conflagration of the barracks was
still visible in the sky. While they were
wandering in these horrid shades, a woman
came flying up to them, followed by a drunken
patriot, with his musket presented at her
head. All he had to say was, that she was
an aristocrat, and that he must finish his day's
work by killing her. M. Lescure appeased
him with admirable presence of mind, by
professing to enter entirely into his sentiments,
and proposing that they should go back to
gether to the attack of the palace-adding
only, "But you see what state my wife is in

she is a poor timid creature-and I must
first take her to her sister's, and then I shall
return here to you." The savage at last
the famous agreed to this, though before he went off, he
assures us, presented his piece several times
together swearing that he believed ther

hat M.crats after all, and that he had

battle, when Bonaparte returned to Paris, he | fuse a respectable office, with a salary of had not the least idea of being called upon 8000 louis, would certainly be considered as again to abdicate; but expected to obtain from fit for Bedlam: And in another place she obthe two chambers the means of renewing or serves, that it seems to be a fundamental continuing the contest. When he found that maxim in that country, that every man must this was impossible, he sunk at once into de- have a place. We confess that we have some spair, and resigned himself without a struggle. difficulty in reconciling these incidental intiThe selfishness which had guided his whole mations with her leading position, that the great career, disclosed itself in naked deformity in majority of the French nation is desirous of a the last acts of his public life. He abandoned free constitution, and perfectly fit for and dehis army the moment he found that he could not serving of it. If these be the principles, not lead it immediately against the enemy-and only upon which they act, but which they and no sooner saw his own fate determined, than their advocates avow, we know no constitution he gave up all concern for that of the unhappy under which they can be free; and have no country which his ambition had involved in faith in the power of any new institutions to such disasters. He quietly passed by the counteract that spirit of corruption by which, camp of his warriors on his way to the port even where they have existed the longest, by which he was to make his own escape- their whole virtue is consumed. and, by throwing himself into the hands of the English, endeavoured to obtain for himself the benefit of those liberal principles which it had been the business of his life to extirpate and discredit all over the world. At this point Madame de Staël terminates somewhat abruptly her historical review of the events of the Revolution; and here, our readers will be happy to learn, we must stop too. There is half a volume more of her work, indeed, and oue that cannot be supposed the least interesting to us, as it treats chiefly of the history, constitution, and society of England. But it is for this very reason that we cannot trust ourselves with the examination of it. We have every reason certainly to be satisfied with the account she gives of us; nor can any thing be more eloquent and animating than the view she has presented of the admirable mechanism and steady working of our constitution, and of its ennobling effects on the character of all who live under it. We are willing to believe all this too to be just; though we are certainly painted en beau. In some parts, however, we are more shocked at the notions she gives us of the French character, than flattered at the contrast exhibited by our own. In mentioning the good reception that gentlemen in opposition to government sometimes meet with in society, among us, and the upright posture they contrive to maintain, she says, that nobody here would think of condoling with a man for being out of power, or of receiving him with less cordiality. She notices also, with a very alarming sort of admiration, that she understood, when in England, that a gentleman of the law had actually refused a situation worth 6000l. or 7000l. a year, merely because he did not approve of the ministry by whom it was offered; and adds, that in France any man who would re

30

With our manners in society she is not quite so well pleased;-though she is kind enough to ascribe our deficiencies to the most honourable causes. In commiserating the comparative dulness of our social talk, however, has not this philosophic observer a little overlooked the effects of national tastes and habits-and is it not conceivable, at least, that we who are used to it may really have as much satisfaction in our own hum-drum way of seeing each other, as our more sprightly neighbours in their exquisite assemblies? In all this part of the work, too, we think we can perceive the traces rather of ingenious theory, than of correct observation; and suspect that a good part of the tableau of English society is rather a sort of conjectural sketch, than a copy from real life; or at least that it is a generalization from a very few, and not very common examples. May we be pardoned too for hinting, that a person of Madame de Staël's great talents and celebrity, is by no means well qualified for discovering the true tone and character of English society from her own observation; both because she was not likely to see it in those smaller and more familiar assemblages in which it is seen to the most advantage, and because her presence must have had the unlucky effect of imposing silence on the modest, and tempting the vain and ambitious to unnatural display and ostentation.

With all its faults, however, the portion of her book which we have been obliged to pass over in silence, is well worthy of as ample a notice as we have bestowed on the other parts of it, and would of itself be sufficient to justify us in ascribing to its lamented author that perfection of masculine understanding, and female grace and acuteness, which are so rarely to be met with apart, and never, we believe, were before united.

U 2

(February, 1816.)

Mémoires de MADAME LA MARQUISE DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN; avec deux Cartes du Théatre de la Guerre de La Vendée. 2 tomes, 8vo. pp. 500. Paris: 1815.

THIS is a book to be placed by the side of extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of Mrs. Hutchinson's delightful Memoirs of her fortune, and striking displays of individual heroic husband and his chivalrous Independ- talent, and vice and virtue, than the more soents. Both are pictures, by a female hand, lemn movements of national hostility; where of tumultuary and almost private wars, car- every thing is in a great measure provided ried on by conscientious individuals against and foreseen, and where the inflexible subthe actual government of their country:—and ordination of rank, and the severe exactions both bring to light, not only innumerable traits of a limited duty, not only take away the inof the most romantic daring and devoted ducement, but the opportunity, for those exfidelity in particular persons, but a general altations of personal feeling and adventure character of domestic virtue and social gen- which produce the most lively interest, and tleness among those who would otherwise lead to the most animating results. In the have figured to our imaginations as adventur- unconcerted proceedings of an insurgent popuous desperadoes or ferocious bigots. There lation, all is experiment, and all is passion is less talent, perhaps, and less loftiness, either of style or of character, in the French than the English heroine. Yet she also has done and suffered enough to entitle her to that appellation; and, while her narrative acquires an additional interest and a truer tone of nature, from the occasional recurrence of female fears and anxieties, it is conversant with still more extraordinary incidents and characters, and reveals still more of what had been previously malignantly misrepresented, or entirely unknown.

The heroic daring of a simple peasant lifts him at once to the rank of a leader; and kindles a general enthusiasm to which all things become possible. Generous and gentle feelings are speedily generated by this raised state of mind and of destination; and the perpetual intermixture of domestic cares and rustic occupations, with the exploits of troops serving without pay, and utterly unprovided with magazines, produces a contrast which enhances the effects of both parts of the description, and gives an air of moral picturOur readers will understand, from the title- esqueness to the scene, which is both pathetic page which we have transcribed, that the and delightful. It becomes much more attractwork relates to the unhappy and sanguinary ive also, in this representation, by the singuwars which were waged against the insur-lar candour and moderation-not the most gents in La Vendée during the first and maddest years of the French Republic: But it is proper for us to add, that it is confined almost entirely to the transactions of two years; and that the detailed narrative ends with the dissolution of the first Vendean army, before the proper formation of the Chouan force in Brittany, or the second insurrection of Poitou; though there are some brief and imperfect notices of these, and subsequent occurrences. The details also extend only to the proceedings of the Royalist or Insurgent party, to which the author belonged; and do not affect to embrace any general history of the war.

This hard-fated woman was very young, and newly married, when she was thrown, by the adverse circumstances of the time, into the very heart of those deplorable contests; and, without pretending to any other information than she could draw from her own experience, and scarcely presuming to pass any judgment upon the merits or demerits of the cause, she has made up her book of a clear and dramatic description of acts in which she was a sharer, or scenes of which she was an eyewitness, and of the characters and histories of the many distinguished individuals who partook with her of their glories or sufferings. The irregular and undisciplined wars which it is her business to describe, are naturally far more prolific of

usual virtue of belligerent females-with which Madame de L. has told the story of her friends and her enemies the liberality with which she has praised the instances of heroism or compassion which occur in the conduct of the republicans, and the simplicity with which she confesses the jealousies and excesses which sometimes disgraced the insurgents. There is not only no royalist or antirevolutionary rant in these volumes, but scarcely any of the bitterness or exaggeration of a party to civil dissensions; and it is rather wonderful that an actor and a sufferer in the most cruel and outrageous warfare by which modern times have been disgraced, should have set an example of temperance and impartiality which its remote spectators have found it so difficult to follow. The truth is, we believe, that those who have had most occasion to see the mutual madness of contending factions, and to be aware of the traits of individual generosity by which the worst cause is occasionally redeemed, and of brutal outrage by which the best is sometimes de based, are both more indulgent to human nature, and more distrustful of its immaculate purity, than the fine declaimers who aggra vate all that is bad on the side to which they are opposed, and refuse to admit its existence in that to which they belong. The general of an adverse army has always more tolera