personalities tending to justify the author against some misrepresentations are indulged; and, at length, with the King's return to Madrid the volume closes :-it consists in all of twelve chapters. Volume II. contains only eight chapters, which treat of court-intrigues, of Cardinal d'Etrées, of squabbles reconciled, and of the opinion formed by the court of Versailles. Father D'Aubenton then becomes a personage of note: but the trifles, to which importance is here given, render the whole detail wearisome. The recall of Louville, the coming of Puysegur and Renaud to Madrid, the disgrace of Mad. des Ursins, and the recall of the Abbé d'Etrées, serve as topics for two chapters. A good section is the eighteenth, which treats of Spain from 1705 to 1716. The following anecdote occurs in it. A division arose between the two men then most necessary to the King of Spain, the Prince of Sterclaes and Lord Berwick. History has not quite decyphered the cause of the quarrel, but apparently it arose from the collision of independent command, each requiring obedience from the other. The Flemish General claimed as a sort of native, and the English as a necessary stranger. Whoever was in the right, the effect of the division was deplorable, since it distanced Lord Berwick from the seat of war during the two years when he would have been most useful, and brought thither the Marshal Tessé, who was not born to replace a hero.' In the nineteenth chapter, the Duke of Orleans and Cardinal Alberoni come on the stage, and Louville undertakes a second mission to Madrid. With the twentieth chapter, which discusses the triple alliance, and contains some anecdotes of the Czar Peter's visit to Paris, the work concludes. An appendix of official papers is attached. The state of Buenos Ayres in 1710 is a curious document, which proves the very slow progress of this well-situated city, under the wretched sway of Spain: it had already an importance which ought by this time to have expanded into a vast metropolis. The treaty of commerce between England and Spain, in 1715, is here reprinted: a Memoir concerning the legitimated princes by the Duke of Maine is annexed, with the minutes of a council of regency held at the Tuileries, January 26. 1721; and finally occurs the letter of abdication of Philip V., dated January 14. 1724. Antient diplomacy, it appears from all this narrative, was much more required to study persons than modern diplomacy: every thing then depended on a few influential characters, on the ostensible ministers, and on the confidential secretaries, mistresses, Hh 3 mistresses, and valets who governed them. Motives of public and general interest are now more efficacious; because instruction has been diffused more widely, and the general opinion can be called out against the perverse designs of official characters. Hence the business of intrigue, and attempts at over-reaching, are progressively abandoned for the nobler process of seeking to understand and to conciliate the rival interests of nations. Secrets and individuals are losing their importance, and publicity is preparing every where the triumph of good sense. ART. III. Le Visiteur du Pauvre, &c.; i. e. The Visitor of the THE pp. 158. Price 5s. HE Academy of Lyons offered a prize for the best essay on the following question: "To point out the means of discovering real indigence, and of bestowing alms so as to render them useful to those who give, as well as to those who receive." M.DEGERANDO obtained the prize, by contributing the memoir now before us. There is a tact which is exceedingly valuable, because it is almost indispensable to success, in adapting the style and tone of a discourse to the taste and feelings of the auditory to which it is addressed. To a sober committee of plain English gentlemen, engaged in inquiring into the best means of relieving the distresses of the poor in their neighbourhood, we should as soon have thought of reading a chapter out of the "Sorrows of Werter" or the "Heloise," as a discourse in which sentimental starts, ejaculations, and apostrophes occupy the place of dry facts, simple detail, and unornamented reasoning: but the French affect a magnificence in description, and a sensibility in expression, on occasions on which we should consider them as exceedingly misplaced. M. Degerando employs a picturesque style when he addresses the academecians of Lyons; describes to them in pathetic terms the dying mother on her bed of straw, the heart-broken father, and the famished children; and groupes indigence and disease, sorrow, sickness, and infirm old age, with the skill of a painter.— Sympathy with misfortune is undoubtedly that feeling which excites us to relieve it, but such sympathy pre-existed in the Society which could offer a reward for the best means of alleviating it; and in England we should regard such petty stimulants as high-coloured descriptions of beggary and wretchedness, with all the accompaniments of apostrophes to humanity, humanity, compassion, &c. as a waste of time and of feeling, both which might have been practically employed to better advantage. The style of this pamphlet is, therefore, to us positively disagreeable: but this is all to which we can object, and M. DEGERANDO knows his auditory much better than we do. The main point which the writer enforces is the personal investigation of each case of distress; arguing that real distress is only to be distinguished from that which is simulated by a vigilant and suspicious eye; and that charity distributed by the agency of intermediate persons is rarely so well regulated, and so nicely adjusted to all the circumstances of the case, as that which is administered at first hand by the philanthropist himself. Here is solved the latter part of the problem, "how to render the distribution of alms beneficial to him who gives, as well as to him who receives." This is effected by bringing opulence into personal contact with indi gence; the gratification of the receiver is not limited by the amount of money bestowed, but is rather to be measured by the interest taken in his affairs; and this interest chastens to the almoner his own affections, weans him perhaps from the levities of dissipation, and affords a subject of complacent meditation at every period of life. In order to facilitate and remind the domiciliary visitor of the most essential inquiries necessary to be made before relief is conferred on any individual, or poor family, M. DEGERANDO has given what he calls an Endéimètre, or the model of a little memorandum-book. The first part is to contain the name, residence, sex, age, employment, number of children, &c. of the individual; and whether he is rendered infirm by age, accident, or sickness; or has become incapable of maintaining his family from want of employment. In the second part, the visitor is to note down what the poor man has, and what he wants; the state of his beds, furniture, clothes, linen, and firing; whether his children go to school, what they earn, &c. &c. The third part is left blank for the purpose of noting any variation in his circumstances, which may have occurred at some subsequent visit. The fourth part is to include remarks on the state of morals and general conduct of the family: with respect to the parents, whether their misfortune appears to have been the result of improvidence, idleness, drunkenness, irreligion, gambling, or weakness of intellect: -with respect to the children, whether they have imbibed moral and religious instruction, whether they are docile or intractable, cleanly or otherwise, whether they are respectful in their behaviour towards their parents, and whether their Hh 4 parents parents are mild and kind in their behaviour towards them. On one side of each leaf is to be put down the time at which any aid is given, its amount if in money, and, if not, its nature, specifying whether food, clothing, fuel, &c. Such a book as this may certainly be useful: by it the young and inexperienced visitor is reminded of the inquiries necessary to be made; and, if there be any disposition to fraud or exaggeration on the part of the family visited, the transfer of this book from hand to hand serves as a check to imposition. An interesting chapter is given on the Education of the Poor, though it is short. Indeed, M. DEGERANDO, who is president of the Society for Educating the Poor in France, on the principles of Bell and Lancaster, having already published a little tract giving an account of the success of its labours, would not feel it necessary here to expatiate on the subject. He well observes that, in every thing else, privation makes itself felt, and leads to want, to desire, to demand. With regard to instruction, all this is reversed: the more we are deficient in it, the less we seek it; and, the more we have of it, the greater is our thirst to increase the store. If a poor man be ignorant, and ignorance is the lot of the greater part, not only has he, in general, no idea of preparing his son for knowing more than he himself knows, but he will frequently resist the attempt if offered on the part of others.' In a chapter on the establishments at Paris for the sick and infirm, for foundlings and old persons, we are made acquainted with one or two circumstances which redound but little to the credit of human nature. The corruption of our manners, says the author, has compelled us to open hospitals for foundlings, and to admit new-born children without making any inquiries, under the fear of urging to infanticide. At Rome, where centinels are placed at the cradle, and where certain formalities of admission are required, children are daily found drowned in the Tiber. About 5000 children abandoned by their parents are annually admitted into the hospitals of Paris; and of this number, about 350 legitimate children are deserted by those who gave them birth, and left to the uncertain and vicarious kindness of strangers! Horrible is it to reflect that such a multitude of human beings are thus annually cast on the mercy of strangers for their very existence; and still more horrible that many of them should be the legitimate offspring of most unnatural and miserable parents. A corresponding barbarity presents itself in the conduct of the young towards their old and dying relatives. It appears that, in the hospitals for the sick at Paris, a great many persons, in their very last agonies, have been brought thither by their own families, with the view of saving the expenses of the funeral ! Not to be allowed to die in peace; to be discomposed and ruffled both in mind and body at the last hour of life, when all should be silence, tranquillity, and calmness; as we stand tottering on the brink, to be pushed forwards into eternity by the very hands which ought to be stretched out to retain us a little longer on this side of the gulf; all this is so revolting to the feelings of our nature, that we could scarcely have given credit to such inhumanity, had it not been stated by the author (page 93.) that the administrators of the hospitals for the sick at Paris have been compelled to regulate and restrict the terms of admission, in order expressly to check the influx of miserable wretches brought by their relatives to die within the walls of these asylums! M. DEGERANDO hopes that, by the occasional assistance of visitors, the necessity of such cruel separations may cease to exist; and that, where no absolute necessity occurs, they may, by their frequent and impressive advice and persuasion, prevent the disposition thus violently to tear asunder the cords of affection and the ties of nature. ART. IV. M. LLORENTE's Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain. IN [Article concluded from the last Appendix.] N the work of M. Puigblanch, reviewed in our Number for April last, and in the volumes before us, we remark occasional coincidences of argument and manner too striking to be merely accidental. Puigblanch makes frequent reference to the annals of the Inquisition by LLORENTE, to support his positions; while Signor LLORENTE, in the present work, often impugns the historical arguments advanced by M. Puigblanch in "The Inquisition Unmasked;" particularly on the subject of Prince Carlos and Philip II.: but we cannot develope this little mystery, and must now resume the course of the history before us. When the abuses of the Inquisition had risen to their height in the sixteenth century, and the Jews and Moors had been nearly extirpated from Spain, the holy office had leisure to turn the tide of persecution against the Lutherans, as well as suspected sorcerers and necromancers. Some of the processes related by Signor LLORENTE are curious and interesting, although revolting, from the excess of absurdity and weakness which characterize them. Having mentioned the striking fact that immense numbers of women voluntarily ac cused |