Our readers can hardly need to be reminded of the painful interest with which all orders of people heard, about 1828, rumours that pecuniary distresses were likely to trouble the closing period of Mrs. More's life. Her establishment at Barley Wood had got into sad confusion after the death of her sister Martha, who had through life been the manager of their domestic details,—dishonest and dissolute servants had wasted her substance,-and' for a season it was doubtful whether enough remained to secure her the comforts to which she had been accustomed. In the end, however, it turned out that, though she must consent once more to change her place of residence, there would be no necessity for altering, in any essential respect, the style of her household economy. She removed to Clifton; and there, as has been already mentioned, she at last quietly and placidly ceased to breathe' in the September of last year. The account of her latter days, contributed to Mr. Roberts's book by her friend and physician, Dr. Carrick, is so interesting, that we would willingly extract it entire; but we can only give these fragments :

'From the time Mrs. More removed to Clifton, her health was never otherwise than in a very uncertain and precarious state, and she seldom continued beyond a few days exempt from some attack of greater or less severity.

To the friends and admirers of Mrs. Hannah More, it was painful during her latter years to see those great and brilliant talents, which had justly raised her to the highest pinnacle of celebrity, descending to the level of more ordinary persons. Yet there was this consoling circumstance in the case of this admirable woman; that while the grand and vigorous qualities of her mind submitted to decay, the good, the kind, the beneficent, suffered no diminution nor abatement, to the last moment of consciousness. Age, which of necessity shrinks and impairs the bodily powers, generally blunts sensibility, and narrows the social virtues. The soul which in youth, and in the prime of life, teemed with every liberal and benevolent quality, is not unfrequently observed to grow cold and insensible, parsimonious, and even avaricious, when sinking into the grave. With this remarkable woman it was signally the reverse. Her beneficent qualities not only suffered no abatement, but expanded with her years.

So long as her intellectual faculties remained but moderately impaired, her wonted cheerfulness and playfulness of disposition did not forsake her; and at no period of her declining life did an impatient or querulous expression escape her lips, even in moments of painful suffering.

It seems worthy of remark, that as it pleased the Almighty to protect this distinguished woman to a very advanced period of life, from the infirmities of temper, which often tend to render age both unamiable and unhappy, so it likewise accorded with his goodness to spare her from many of those bodily infirmities, which usually accom

pany

pany length of years. To the very last her eye was not dim: she could read with ease, and without spectacles, the smallest print. Her hearing was almost unimpaired; and until very near the close of life, her features were not shrunk, nor wrinkled, nor uncomely, and her person retained to a considerable degree its wonted appearance, as at a much earlier period. Even to the last, her death-bed was attended with few of the pains and infirmities which are almost inseparable from sinking nature.'-vol. iv. p. 299–304.

Our respect, nay, veneration for the memory of Mrs. More, who perhaps did as much real good in her generation as any woman that ever held the pen, has, whatever Mr. Roberts may think, made us lenient critics of his part in this work. We now leave him with respect for his motives and intentions; with regret for that narrowness of mind and feeling, which it is, we presume, too late to expand; and with a simple expression of our hope that, at some future period, the valuable letters embodied in these volumes may be printed by themselves. We are not aware that Mr. Roberts's connecting narrative has given us any one fact which is not stated in the text of the correspondence, either following or preceding the page where he has chosen to make it the subject of his circumlocutory prose.

ART. VII.-Mémoires ou Correspondance Secrète du Père L'Enfant, Confesseur du Roi pendant les trois années de la Révolution, 1790, 1791, 1792. 2 vols. Paris. 1834.

WE

E notice these volumes only to warn our readers against an imposition-not indeed so gross and shameless as the Memoirs of Louis XVIII. and Madame de Créqui, but yet very dishonest. The title-page announces this work as the Memoirs or Secret Correspondence of the Confessor of the King during three eventful years. The editor's preface adds, that the Père L'Enfant lived at court, and concludes (as he might do if his premises were but true) that these are indeed precious memoirs.' Now, the truth is, that the Abbé L'Enfant was not-nor, if he really was the penman of these Memoirs, (which are not memoirs,) does he himself even pretend to have been-the king's confessor; that during the three years specified he never was at court at all, and never so much as saw either the king or the queen; that the pretended Memoirs are only a series of letters which, even if genuine, have no claim to the character of a secret correspondence,' for they are chiefly and professedly mere repetitions of the journals of the day; and, finally, that, so far from being precious,' they are so nearly worthless, that we shall not even do them the small

honour

honour of binding them, and should think we made a good bargain if we could obtain a couple of shillings for what has cost us ten. Our readers will judge of the interest of such a publication by the confession of the editor, that

We have printed the correspondence entire, except some mysterious and allegorical passages, which we do not understand, or at least not clearly enough to be able to afford a key to them. There was certainly a political object hidden under these enigmatical passages, which however we have thought it advisable to omit, because we have not the means of explaining their secret meaning.'-Notice, xi.

This is excellent-the man publishes the whole correspondence, except the passages which might be really interesting; and these curious passages are hidden from the public eye, because the individual blockhead has not the means of explaining them as if that would not have been the best reason for publishing them, in the possibility that others better informed than he might be able to elucidate these important secrets: and, to crown the absurdity, it happens that, by a whimsical inconsistency, this editor, who thinks it right to suppress what he cannot fully elucidate, has not given us one note-no, not a single syllable of explanation or observation upon any part of the correspondence!

The utter insipidity and insignificance of these Memoirs, as to any purpose either of information or amusement, relieves us from the necessity of adducing our reasons for disbelieving that they were written by the Père L'Enfant at all. We shall only say that we incline to suspect that they have been lately fabricated by rummaging the files of old newspapers; or, if they were really written at the time, they must have been the nouvelles à la main of some asinine quidnunc in town, to some equally ignorant correspondent in the country, which the editor finds it convenient to attribute to a priest who fell in the massacre of the Abbaye, and whose name might therefore be usurped with impunity. As an article in the Biographie Universelle furnished the editor of Madame de Créqui's Memoirs with his fictitious heroine, so we believe the editor-i. e. fabricator of the present volumes has borrowed his hero from the same work. But however that may be, nothing can be more stupid than the result. In the 777 pages of which the two first volumes consist, (we are to have more, if the public consents to be duped,) we have been able to discover but one passage which contains anything like novelty. On the occasion of some difficulties in which the National Assembly is represented as having found itself in July 1791, after the return of the king, an old woman is quoted as having said, Voici le commencement de la fin.' (vol. ii. p. 256.) Now, we had always heard

it seems,

heard this mot attributed to M. de Talleyrand on the occasion of Buonaparte's invasion of Spain; and we confess that we are rather inclined to believe it of the well-known old gentleman than of the anonymous old woman. M. de Talleyrand, we know, affected-for reasons obvious enough-to think that the Memoirs of Louis XVIII.' were genuine. We suppose that this little incident will prevent his vouching for the authenticity and originality of the Mémoires du Père L'Enfant.'

ART. VIII.-Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston, his Lineage, Life, and Times. By Mark Napier, Esq. Edinburgh, 4to. 1834. pp. 535.

THIS

HIS is an elaborate work, the fruit of long-continued and varied research. That it should be the first attempt to narrate in detail the personal history of the inventor of the logarithms, reflects little honour on Scotland.

The author of such a book can afford to be told, without circumlocution, of petty mistakes and errors. He has overlaid his memoir with circumstances possessing but the thinnest and most fanciful connexion with its proper subject; he has frequently deformed a naturally plain and manly style with vicious panni of trope and metaphor, which have about as ridiculous an effect as a garland of roses and lilies stuck on a lawyer's wig; and he indulges in sneers and innuendos, at the expense of certain contemporary writers, in a tone wholly unsuitable to a work of grave and dignified pretensions.

If his estimate of his ancestor's merits be somewhat exaggerated, with that we are little disposed to quarrel; and at all events there is no remedy for it,—the feeling in question inspired the writer to his task, and it is inextricably interwoven with the whole texture of his performance.

We think he might have spared us the old woman's story about the first Napier being a second son of some antique Earl of Lenox, who in some action, place and date unspecified, did such signal service, that after the battle, every one setting forth his own acts, the then king [name unknown] said unto them, ye have all done valiantly, but there is one amongst you who hath NA-PEER, and calling Donald into his presence commanded him to change his name from Lenox to Napeer,' &c. &c. The only shadow of evidence in support of this legend is in the fact that the Napiers of Merchiston bore, as far back as their line has been traced, the ancient arms of Lenox, with such a slight variation as

might have naturally been adopted by a cadet. But the existence and fortunes of a second son of such a house, at a period after the Scots kings had ceased to speak Gaelic, would have no doubt been traceable in the chartularies of a nation proverbially studious of pedigree; and as to the matter of arms, why, if the legend of the name be true, should the Merchistons have been the only Napiers that bore the coat of Lenox? They may have been originally, us some other families of the same name certainly were, vassals of the ancient Earls of Lenox; and in this case an adventurer, removing into another part of the country, might have chosen to set forth, with a difference, the escutcheon of his chief, whose protection he still looked to in case of need, rather than the obscurer insignia of his own immediate race. We will not chase these dreams farther; the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy * is enough to overturn all that the present writer says as to the infallibility of heraldic types as indications of descent.

The first ascertained ancestor of the philosopher is Alexander Napier, who purchased the estate of Merchiston in 1438, and was Provost of Edinburgh. He was, no doubt, a thriving trader of the town, who naturally invested his capital in lands close to its walls, our author calls him distinguished,' but specifies nothing save his provostship, which, however, was in those days a post usually held by men of some condition. His son, Sir Alexander Napier, was also a Provost of Edinburgh—but he rose

*We allude to a magnificent book, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas, of which two volumes, in folio, are already in our hands, and a third is daily expected. It contains the evidence adduced in the court of the Earl Marshal of England, in 1385-9, in a cause originating out of a grand heraldic dispute between two families, both in after time highly distinguished. Two knights, it seems, appeared in the army of Richard II., during his Scotch campaign of 1385, bearing precisely the same coat-armour, viz, azure a bend or these were Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor. The one challenged the other's right, and four years passed before the dispute could be settled; but in the end either party brought a host of witnesses to show that the arms in debate had been carried from all memory by his ancestors, and the Marshal at length declared himself satisfied that neither had trespassed in the slightest degree against the laws and usages of heraldry. Three volumes folio on such a subject may cause the reader of 1834 to stare; but we can assure him this mass of evidence cannot be gone through without bringing out many curious traits of national manners. Among the witnesses on the part of Scrope are John of Gaunt, Hotspur, and Geoffry Chaucer, Esquire, aged forty years, armed twenty-seven years,' who deposes to having seen Sir Richard's banner in the camp of Edward III. all through the expedition of 1359-60, until he, Geoffry, was taken prisoner; and adds, that he was once in Friday-Street, London, and walking through the street, he observed a new sign with those arms thereon, and inquired what inn this was which had hung out these arms of Scrope; but one answered him, saying, "These arms, Sir, are not hung out for the arms of Scrope, but are painted and put there by a knight of the county of Chester, called Sir Robert Grosvenor;" and this was the first time he ever heard speak of the said Sir Robert, or of any one bearing the name of Grosvenor.'-vol. ii. p. 412. The Editor promises to give us in his third volume the details of various other old causes of the like description.

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