ser, et n'a pas tort: c'est une vrai bête; elle répond | mother, and the slights of her whole generaà tout ce qu'on lui dit par un oui et un non, ac- tion. Their domestic life, when these galas compagné d'un rire niais qui fait mal au cœur.' were over, was nearly as fatiguing, and still Oh! dit ma sœur Charlotte, votre Majesté ne connoit pas encore tout son mérite. J'ai été un more lugubrious. The good old custom of matin à sa toilette; j'ai cru y suffoquer; elle exha- famishing was kept up at table; and immeloit une odeur insupportable! Je crois qu'elle a diately after dinner the King had his great pour le moins dix ou douze fistules-car cela n'est chair placed right before the fire, and snored pas naturel. J'ai remarqué aussi qu'elle est con- in it for three hours, during all which they trefaite; son corps de jupe est rembourré d'un were obliged to keep silence, for fear of discôté, et elle a une hanche plus haute que l'autre. Je fus fort étonnée de ces propos, qui se teturbing him. When he awoke, he set to noient en présence des domestiques et surtout de smoking tobacco;-and then sate four hours mon frère! Je m'aperçus qu'ils lui faisoient de at supper, listening to long stories of his la peine et qu'il changeoit de couleur. Il se ancestors, in the taste of those sermons retira aussitôt après souper. J'en fis autant. Il with insomnolency. Then the troops began which are prescribed to persons afflicted their exercise under the windows before four o'clock every morning, and not only kept the whole household awake from that hour by their firing, but sometimes sent a ramrod through the glass to assist at the Princess' toilette. One afternoon the King was seized with a sort of apoplexy in his sleep, which, as he always snored extremely loud, might have carried him off without much observation, had not his daughter observed him grow black in the face, and restored him by timely applications. She is equally unfortunate about the same time in her fatherin-law the Margrave, who is mischievous enough to recover, after breaking a bloodvessel by falling down stairs in a fit of drunkenness. At last she gets away with great difficulty, and takes her second leave of the parental roof, with even less regard for its inhabitants than she had felt on first quitting its shelter.

vint me voir un moment après. Je lui demandai s'il étoit satisfait du roi? Il me répondit que sa situation changeoit à tout moment; que tantôt il étoit en faveur et tantôt en disgrâce; que son plus grand bonheur consistoit dans l'absence; qu'il menoit une vie douce et tranquille à son régiment; que l'étude et la musique y faisoient ses principales occupations; qu'il avoit fait bâtir une maison et fait faire un jardin charmant où il pouvoit lire et se promener. Je le pria de me dire si le portrait que la reine et ma sœur m'avoient fait de la Princesse de Brunswick étoit véritable? Nous sommes seuls,' repartit-il, et je n'ai rien de caché pour vous. Je vous parlerai avec sincérité. La reine, par ses misérables intrigues, est la seule source de nos malheurs. A peine avez-vous été partie qu'elle a renoué avec l'Angleterre; elle a voulu vous substituer ma sœur Charlotte, et lui faire épouser le Prince de Galles. Vous jugez bien qu'elle a employé tous ses efforts pour faire réussir son plan et pour me marier avec la Princesse Amélie.'"

The poor Prince, however, confesses that ne cannot say much for the intellect of his intended bride;-and really does not use a much nobler language than the rest of the family, even when speaking in her presence; On her return to Bareith, she finds the old for on her first presentation to his sister, find- Margrave quite broken in health, but extravaing that she made no answer to the compli- gantly and honourably in love with a lame, ments that were addressed to her, the enam- dwarfish, middle-aged lady, the sister of her oured youth encourages her bridal timidity ancient governess, whom he proposes to by this polite exclamation, "Peste soit de la marry, to the great discomfiture of the Prinbete!-remercie donc ma sœur!" The ac- cess and his son. They remonstrate with the count of the festivities which accompanied lady, however, on the absurdity of such an this marriage really excites our compassion; union; and she promises to be cruel, and live and is well calculated to disabuse any inex- single. In the mean time, one of the Marperienced person of the mistake of suppo- grave's daughters is taken with a kind of sing, that there can be either comfort or en- madness of a very indecorous character; joyment in the cumbrous splendours of a which indicates itself by frequent improcourt. Scanty and crowded dinners at mid- prieties of speech, and a habit of giving inviday and formal balls and minuets imme- tations, of no equivocal sort, to every man diately after, in June, followed up with dull that comes near her. The worthy Margrave, gaming in the evening;-the necessity of at first undertakes to cure this very troublebeing up in full dress by three o'clock in the some complaint by a brisk course of beating; moming to see a review-and the pleasure but this not being found to answer, it is of being stifled in a crowded tent without thought expedient to try the effect of marseeing any thing, or getting any refreshment riage; and, that there may he no harm done for seven or eight hours, and then to return to any body, they look out a certain Duke of famishing to a dinner of eighty covers;- Weimar, who is as mad as the lady-though at other times to travel ten miles at a foot- somewhat in a different way. This prince's pace in an open carriage during a heavy rain, malady consisted chiefly in great unsteadiand afterwards to stand shivering on the wetness of purpose, and a trick of outrageous grass to see fireworks-to pay twenty visits and inventive boasting. Both the Princess of ceremony every morning, and to present and her husband, however, take great pains and be presented in stately silence to persons to bring about this well-assorted match; and, whom you hate and despise. Such were the by dint of flattery and intimidation, it is general delights of the whole court;-and actually carried through-though the brideour Princess had the additional gratification groom sends a piteous message on the mornni being forced from a sick-bed to enjoy ing of his wedding day, begging to be let off, them, and of undergoing the sneers of her and keeps them from twelve till four o'clock

In the morning before he can be persuaded | seems to have given her the worst opinion of to go to bed. In the mean time, the Princess him, was his impolite habit of making jokes gives great offence to the populace and the about the small domains and scanty revenues preachers of Bareith, by giving a sort of of her husband. For the two following years masked ball, and riding occasionally on she travels all over Germany, abusing all the horseback. Her husband goes to the wars; principautés she meets with. In 1742, she and returns very much out of humour with goes to see the coronation of the new Empero her brother Frederic, who talks contemptu- at Francfort, and has a long negotiation about ously of little courts and little princes. The the ceremony of her introduction to the Emold Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, press. After various projets had been offered and writes billets-doux to his little lady, so and rejected, she made these three conditions: tender as to turn one's stomach; but at last—1st, That the whole cortège of the Empress dies in an edifying manner, to the great satis- should receive her at the bottom of the stairfaction of all his friends and acquaintances. case. 2dly, That the Empress herself should Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, come to meet her at the outside of the door to follow his example; for he is seized with of her bed-chamber. And, 3dly, That she a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and should be allowed an arm-chair during the burst; and give out so much water, that he interview. Whole days were spent in the is obliged for several days to sit with them discussion of this proposition; and at last the in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, two first articles were agreed to; but all he recovers, and goes a campaigning for that she could make of the last was, that she several years after. should have a very large chair, without arms and the Empress a very small one, with them! Her account of the interview we add in her

"Je vis cette Princesse le jour suivant. J'avoue qu'à sa place j'aurois imaginé toutes les étiquettes et les cérémonies du monde pour m'empêcher de paroître. L'Impératrice est d'une taille au-dessous boule; elle est laide au possible, sans air et sans de la petite, et si puissante qu'elle semble une grace. Son esprit répond à sa figure; elle est bigotte à l'excès, et passe les nuits et les jours dans son oratoire: les vieilles et les laides sont ordinairement le partage du bon Dieu! Elle me reçut en remblant et d'un air si décontenancé qu'elle ne avoir gardé quelque temps le silence, je commençai put me dire un mot. Nous nous assîmes. Après la conversation en français. Elle me repondit, dang son jargon autrichien, qu'elle n'entendoit pas bien cette langue, et qu'elle me prioit de lui parler en allemand. Cet entretien ne fut pas long. Le dia lecte autrichien et le bas-saxon sont si différens, qu'à moins d'y être accoutumê on ne se comprend point. C'est aussi ce qui nous arriva. Nous aurions préparé à rire à un tiers par les coq-à-l'âne que nous faisions, n'entendant que par-ci par-là un mot, qui nous faisoit deviner le reste. Cette princesse étoit si fort esclave de son étiquette qu'elle auroit cru faire un crime de lèse-grandeur en m'entretenant dans une langue étrangère; car elle savoit le français! L'Empereur devoit se trouver à cette visite; mais il étoit tombé si malade qu'on craignoit même pour ses jours.”—pp. 345, 346.

The Memoirs are rather dull for four or five years after the author's accession to the throne of Bareith. She makes various jour-own words. neys, and suffers from various distempershas innumerable quarrels with all the neighbouring potentates about her own precedence and that of her attendants; fits up several villas, gives balls; and sometimes quarrels with her husband, and sometimes nurses him in his illness. In 1740, the King, her father, dies in good earnest; and makes, it must be acknowledged, a truly heroic, though somewhat whimsical, ending. Finding himself fast going, he had himself placed early in the morning in his wheel-chair, and goes himself to tell the Queen that she must rise and see him die. He then takes farewell of his children; and gives some sensible advice to his son, and the ministers and generals whom he had assembled. Afterwards he has his best horse brought, and presents it with a good grace to the oldest of his generals. He next ordered all the servants to put on their best liveries; and, when this was done, he looked on them with an air of derision, and said, "Vanity of vanities!" He then commanded his physician to tell him exactly how long he had to live; and when he was answered, "about half an hour," he asked for a lookingglass, and said with a smile, that he certainly did look ill enough, and saw "qu'il ferait une vilaine grimace en mourant!" When the clergymen proposed to come and pray with him, he said, he knew already all they had to say, and that they might go about their business." In a short time after he expired, in great tranquillity.

Though the new King came to visit his sister soon after his accession, and she went to return the compliment at Berlin, she says there was no longer any cordiality between them; and that she heard nothing but complaints of his avarice, his ill temper, his ingratitude, and his arrogance. She gives him great credit for talents; but entreats her readers to suspend their judgment as to the real character of this celebrated monarch, till they have perused the whole of her Memoirs. What

After this she comes home in a very bad humour; and the Memoirs break off abruptly with her detection of an intrigue between her husband and her favourite attendant, and her dissatisfaction with the dull formality of the court of Stutgard. We hope the sequel will soon find its way to the public.

Some readers may think we have dwelt too long on such a tissue of impertinencies; and others may think an apology requisite for the tone of levity in which we have spoken of so many atrocities. The truth is, that we think this book of no trifling importance; and that we could not be serious upon the subject of it without being both sad and angry. Before concluding, however, we shall add one word in seriousness-to avoid the misconstructions to which we might otherwise be liable.

We are decidedly of opinion, that Monarchy, and Hereditary Monarchy, is by far the bes

form of government that human wisdom has | In the second place, we presume to think yet dev.sed for the administration of consider that the general adoption of these opinions as able nations; and that it will always continue to the personal defects that are likely to result to be the most perfect which human virtue from the possession of sovereign power, may will admit of. We are not readily to be sus-be of use to the sovereigns themselves, from pected, therefore, of any wish to produce a whom the knowledge of their prevalence can. distaste or contempt for this form of govern- not be very long concealed. Such knowledge, ment; and beg leave to say, that though the it is evident, will naturally stimulate the better facts we have now collected are certainly sort of them to counteract the causes which such as to give no favourable impression of tend to their personal degradation; and enable the private manners or personal dispositions them more generally to surmount their perof absolute sovereigns, we conceive that good, nicious operation, by such efforts and reflecrather than evil, is likely to result from their tions, as have every now and then rescued dissemination. This we hold, in the first some powerful spirits from their dominion, place, on the strength of the general maxim, under all the disadvantages of the delusior.s that all truth must be ultimately salutary, and with which they were surrounded. all deception pernicious. But we think we can see a little how this maxim applies to the particular case before us.

In the first place, then, we think it of service to the cause of royalty, in an age of violent passions and rash experiments, to show that most of the vices and defects which such times are apt to bring to light in particular sovereigns, are owing, not so much to any particular unworthiness or unfitness in the individual, as to the natural operation of the circumstances in which he is placed; and are such, in short, as those circumstances have always generated in a certain degree in those who have been exposed to them. Such considerations, it appears to us, when taken along with the strong and irresistible arguments for monarchical government in general, are well calculated to allay that great impatience and dangerous resentment with which nations in turbulent times are apt to consider the faults of their sovereigns; and to unite with a steady attachment and entire respect for the office, a very great degree of indulgence for the personal defects of the individual who may happen to fill it. Monarchs, upon this view of things, are to be considered as persons who are placed, for the public good, in situations where, not only their comfort, but their moral qualities, are liable to be greatly impaired; and who are poorly paid in empty splendour, and anxious power, for the sacrifice of their affections, and of the many engaging qualities which might have blossomed in a lower region. If we look with indulgence upon the roughness of sailors, the pedantry of schoolmasters, and the frivolousness of beauties, we should learn to regard, with something of the same feelings, the selfishness and the cunning of kings.

Finally, if the general prevalence of these sentiments as to the private manners and dispositions of sovereigns should have the effect of rendering the bulk of their subjects less prone to blind admiration, and what may be called personal attachment to them, we do not imagine that any great harm will be done. The less the public knows or cares about the private wishes of their monarch, and the more his individual will is actually consubstantiated with the deliberate sanctions of his responsible counsellors, the more perfectly will the practice of government correspond with its admitted theory; the more wisely will affairs be administered for the public, and the more harmoniously and securely both for the sovereign and the people. An adventurous warrior may indeed derive signal advantages from the personal devotedness and enthusiastic attachment of his followers; but in the civil office of monarchy, as it exists in modern times, the only safe attachment is to the office, and to the measures which it sanctions. The personal popularity of princes, in so far as we know, has never done any thing but harm: and indeed it seems abundantly evident, that whatever is done merely for the personal gratification of the reigning monarch, that would not have been done at any rate on grounds of public expediency, must be an injury to the community, and a sacrifice of duty to an unreturned affection; and whatever is forborne out of regard to his pleasure, which the interest of the country would otherwise have required, is in like manner an act of base and unworthy adulation. We do not speak, it will be understood, of trifles or things of little moment; but of such public acts of the gov. ernment as involve the honour or the int2.s of the nation.

(September, 1828.)

History of the Life and Voyages of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 4 vols. 8vo. London: 1828.

THIS, on the whole, is an excellent book; and we venture to anticipate that it will be an enduring one. Neither do we hazard this prediction lightly, or without a full conscious

ness of all that it implies. We are perfectly aware that there are but few modern works that are likely to verify it; and that it probably could not be extended with safety to so many

as one in a hundred even of those which we praise. For we mean, not merely that the book will be familiarly known and referred to some twenty or thirty years hence, and will pass in solid binding into every consider- | able collection; but that it will supersede all former works on the same subject, and never be itself superseded. The first stage of triumph, indeed, over past or existing competitors, may often be predicted securely of works of no very extraordinary merit; which, treating of a progressive science, merely embody, with some small additions, a judicious digest of all that was formerly known; and are for the time the best works on the subject, merely because they are the last. But the second stage of literary beatitude, in which an author not only eclipses all existing rivals, but obtains an immunity from the effects of all future competition, certainly is not to be so cheaply won; and can seldom, indeed, be secured to any one, unless the intrinsic merit of his production is assisted by the concurrence of some such circumstances as we think now hold out the promise of this felicity to the biographer of Columbus.

think it peculiarly fortunate that the means of completing it should have fallen into such hands as Mr. Irving's. The materials, it was obvious, were only to be found in Spain, and were not perhaps very likely to be intrusted without reserve to a stranger; while there was reason to fear that a Spaniard might not have courage to speak of the errors and crimes of his countrymen in the tone which the truth of history might require; or might not think it safe, even yet, to expose the impolicy, or canvass the pretensions, of the government. By a happy concurrence of circumstances, an elegant writer, altogether unconnected either with Spain or her rivals and enemies, and known all over the civilized world as a man of intelligence and principle, of sound judgment, and a calm and indulgent temper, repaired to Madrid at a time when the publication of Navarette had turned the public attention, in an extraordinary degree, to the memorable era of Columbus; and, by the force of his literary and personal character, obtained the fullest disclosure of every thing that bore upon his history that was ever made, to native or foreigner,-at the same time that he had the means of discussing personally, with the best informed individuals of the nation, all the points on which the written documents might seem to leave room for doubt or explanation.

Though the event to which his work relates is one which can never sink into insignificance or oblivion, but, on the contrary, will probably excite more interest with every succeeding generation, till the very end of the world, yet its importance has been already long enough Of these rare advantages Mr. Irving has apparent to have attracted the most eager at- availed himself, we think, with singular judgtention to every thing connected with its de- ment and ability. He has written the history tails; and we think we may safely say, that of the greatest event in the annals of mankind, all the documents which relate to it have now with the fulness and the feeling it deserved; been carefully examined, and all the channels and has presented us with a flowing and conexplored through which any authentic infor- tinuous narrative of the events he had to mation was likely to be derived. In addition to record, far more luminous and comprehensive the very copious, but rambling and somewhat than any which previously existed, and ye garrulous and extravagant accounts, which much less diffuse and discursive than the were published soon after the discovery, and earlier accounts, from which it is mainly deand have since been methodised and arranged, rived: While, without sacrificing in any Don F. M. Navarette, a Spanish gentleman degree the intense interest of personal adven of great learning, and industry, and secretary ture and individual sympathy, he has brought to the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, the lights of a more cultivated age to bear on has lately given to the world a very extensive the obscure places of the story; and touched collection of papers, relating to the history skilfully on the errors and prejudices of the and voyages of Columbus; a very considerable times at once to enliven his picture by their portion of which appears not to have been singularity, and to instruct us by their explana known to any of those who had formerly tion or apology. Above all, he has composed written on the subject. Mr. Irving's first the whole work in a temper that is beyond design was merely to publish a translation all praise. It breathes throughout a genuine of this collection, with occasional remarks; spirit of humanity; and, embellished as it is but having, during his residence at Madrid, with beautiful descriptions and wonderful had access, by the kindness of the Duke of tales, its principal attraction in our eyes conVeraguas, the descendant of the great Ad-sists in its soft-hearted sympathy with suffer miral, to the archives of his family, and to ing, its fearless reprobation of injustice and various other documents, still remaining in oppression, and the magnanimous candour of manuscript, which had escaped the research its judgments, even on the delinquent. even of Navarette, he fortunately turned his thoughts to the compilation of the more comprehensive and original work now before usin which, by those great helps, he has been enabled, not only to supply many defects, but to correct many errors, and reconcile some apparent contradictions in the earlier

accounts.

It was evidently very desirable that such a k should at length be completed; and we

But though we think all this of Mr. Irving a work, we suspect it may not be altogether unnecessary to caution our more sensitive and sanguine readers against giving way to certair. feelings of disappointment, which it is not impossible they may encounter at the outset of their task; and to which two or three very innocent causes are likely enough to expose them. In the first place, many great admirers of Mr. Irving's former works will probably