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.

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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

Whenever she visited London in her middle life, she took up her residence under the roof of Mrs. Garrick, who had now almost entirely withdrawn from mixed society; and her friends of the giddy world and the blue world appear to have gradually given place to such honoured names as Beilby Porteus, Kennicott, Horne, and Shute Barrington. It is, in many points of view, to be regretted, that her habitual residence near Bristol prevented her from seeing such friends as these so often as she and they would have desired; for the consequence certainly was, that she gradually connected herself more and more closely with persons far inferior to her and them in intellectual rank, and at length came to be, not without some show of reason, regarded by the public at large as too much the adherent of a prejudiced and rather uncharitable party in the religious republic.

The genuine liberality of her heart and conduct was never better exemplified than in the whole affair of her intercourse with Ann Yearsley, the Bristol milkwoman,' whose story has recently been recalled from oblivion by Mr. Southey's Essay on the Uneducated Poets. The popularity of that elegant work renders it needless for us to go into the details of the case on the present occasion. She was warned on the threshold by her friend Mrs. Montague, in these striking and beautiful words :

‘I am surprised and charmed with your account of the poetical milkwoman; but I beg of you to inform yourself, as much as you can, of her temper, disposition, and moral character. It has sometimes happened to me, that, by an endeavour to encourage talents and cherish virtue, by driving from them the terrifying spectre of pale poverty, I have introduced a legion of little demons: vanity, luxury, idleness, and pride, have entered the cottage the moment poverty vanished.'

Miss More, however, persisted; and, by her own ardent efforts, and the assistance of her friends, soon rescued Lactilla' from all her pecuniary distresses. The sad result we need not dwell upon. No long time has elapsed before we find Hannah thus terminating a letter to Mrs. Montague:

I am come to the postscript, without having found courage to tell you what I am sure you will hear with pain, at least it gives me infinite pain to write it—I mean the most open and notorious ingratitude of our milk woman. There is hardly a species of slander the poor unhappy creature does not propagate against me, in the most public manner, because I have called her a milkwoman, and because I have placed the money in the funds, instead of letting her spend it. I confess my weakness-it goes to my heart, not for my own sake, but for the sake of our common nature; so much for my inward feelings: as to my active resentment, I am trying to get a place for her husband, and am endeavouring to make up the sum I have raised for her to five hundred pounds. Do not let this harden your heart or mine against any future object. Fate bene per voi is a beautiful maxim.'

The

The milkwoman presently put her slander into a printed shape; and Mrs. Montague, on reading the libel, found one thing for which Mrs. More's letter had not prepared her: here is her comment:

'Mrs. Yearsley's conceit that you can enry her talents gives me comfort, for as it convinces me she is mad, I build upon it a hope that she is not guilty in the All-seeing eye.’

The last allusion Mrs. More herself makes to the behaviour of Lactilla' is on the occasion of a second publication of hers, in which the admirable patroness was again, after a lapse of two years, maligned and insulted with a cool bitterness that may well be called diabolical-and it is in these words-she is addressing Horace Walpole :-Do, dear Sir, join me in sincere compassion, without one atom of resentment. If I wanted to punish an enemy, it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.' (vol. ii. p. 81.)

We think no one who has read a recent tract entitled · Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott, by the Ettrick Shepherd,' can be at a loss for a tolerably complete parallel to the whole of this story of Hannah More and the Bristol Milkwoman. The unbounded benevolence on the side of the superior, and the festering vanity and jealousy of the inferior, at length bursting into open outrage against every good feeling and every rule of common decency, are alike in both cases: with this small difference in favour of the milkwoman, that she did not keep silence until the object of her envious spleen was no more; and with this difference also in favour of Hannah, that she was thus enabled to assert her own dignity—as who doubts Sir Walter would, under similar circumstances, have done ?—by the tranquillity of a compassionate forgiveness.

The second and third of these volumes are chiefly occupied with details about the Sunday and other schools established at Cheddar and elsewhere by Hannah and Martha More. In September, 1796, the former says, 'I think our various schools and societies consist of about sixteen or seventeen hundred.' Some of these were fifteen miles from their residence; and the devotion of the sisters to this wide-spread scheme of benevolence was such, that it may be said to have occupied them for many years as completely as any worldly profession occupies the most diligent and successful individual. Such conduct is above all praise. It is only to be regretted that Mr. Roberts has not followed up the most interesting series of letters in which this part of Mrs. More's history is conveyed, by something like a clear statement of the ultimate result of her exertions. He exposes, very properly, the noxious interference with which, from very small motives, a curate of one of her parishes thwarted and perplexed her; and all that he says

VOL. LII. NO, CIV.

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about the conduct of the then Bishop of Bath and Wells, who on every occasion supported and countenanced the sisterhood, is satisfactory to the mind; but we are left in the dark as to the great practical question in how far the scheme realized in the issue Hannah More's fervent anticipations; and another scarcely less important, namely, whether the machinery she had arranged was found to be at all effective when advancing years and other circumstances made it impossible for her and her sister to continue their own daily labours in its superintendence. That much good was done it is, however, impossible for us to doubt; and we transcribe this account of the funeral of one of their humble assistants, as in itself a sufficient testimony.

Cheddar, August 18, 1795.-We have just deposited the remains of our excellent Mrs. Baber, to mingle with her kindred dust. Who else has ever been so attended, so followed to the grave? Of the hundreds who attended, all had some tokens of mourning in their dress. All the black gowns in the village were exhibited, and those who had none had some broad, some little bits, of narrow black ribbon, such as their few spare pence could provide. The house, the garden, and place before the door were full. But how shall I describe it? Not one single voice or step was heard their very silence was dreadful; but it was not the least affecting part to see their poor little ragged pocket-handkerchiefs, not half sufficient to dry their tears-some had none; and those tears that did not fall to the ground, they wiped off with some part of their dress. Though the stones were rugged, you did not hear one single footstep. The undertaker from Bristol wept like a child, and confessed, that, without emolument, it was worth going a hundred miles to see such a sight. I forgot to mention, the children sobbed a suitable hymn over the grave. Here was no boisterous, hysterical grief, for the departed had taught them how to select suitable texts for such occasions, and when to apply the promises of Scripture. I think almost tears enough were shed to lay the dust.'

It is well known that Mrs. More, among other good works, gave a powerful support to the old constitution of these realms by various political tracts, in prose and verse, which she put forth during the revolutionary war. It is impossible to read the letters in which she adverts to the internal danger of her country at that period, without applying her language to the still more alarming condition of England at the present day. What a true picture is the following!

Bath, happy Bath, is as gay as if there were no war, nor sin, nor misery in the world! We run about all the morning, lamenting the calamities of the times, anticipating our ruin, and regretting the general dissipation; and every night we are running into every excess, to a degree unknown in calmer times. Yet it is the fashion to affect to be religious, and to show it by inveighing against the wickedness of France !' As

As to the revolutionary rulers of France themselves, we are sorry to say her indignant denunciation of them is exactly what, if she had now been among us, she could not have hesitated to utter concerning some of our own Reformers.

Judgment, memory, comparison, combination, and deduction, afford human sagacity but slender assistance in its endeavours to develope their future plans. We have not even the data of consistent wickedness on which to build rational conclusions. Their measures, though visibly connected by uniform depravity, are yet so surprisingly diversified by interfering absurdities, such is their incredible eccentricity, that it is hardly extravagant to affirm that improbability is become rather an additional reason for expecting any given event to take place.'-Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont.

But we must now prepare to shut these volumes. The sisterhood drop away from before us one by one, and the sterling sense and worth of every one of them are successively exhibited in the most touching manner in the details of a Christian death-bed. We have been dealing largely in quotation, but we are sure every reader will thank us for transcribing a page out of the correspondence of the late venerable Bishop of Limerick, just published, in which his lordship gives an account of a visit which he paid at Barley Wood in September, 1817, shortly after the death of Sarah More.

Feeling, as they do very deeply, the sad breach made in their circle, they are wisely, cheerfully, and piously submissive to this appointment of Providence; and neither their talents nor vivacity are in the least subdued. Patty is suffering, with exemplary patience, the most excruciating pain; not a murmur escapes, though, at night especially, groans and cries are inevitably extorted; and, the moment after the paroxysm, she is ready to resume, with full interest and animation, whatever may have been the subject of conversation. Hannah is still herself: she took Charles Foster and me a drive to Brockley Combe; in the course of which, her anecdotes, her wit, her powers of criticism, and her admirable talent of recitation, had ample scope. On the whole, though not unmingled with melancholy, the impression of this visit to Barley Wood is predominantly agreeable,-I might, indeed, use a stronger word: differences of opinion there do, it cannot be denied, exist; but they are differences, on their part, largely the growth of circumstances; differences, too, which will vanish before the earliest beams of eternity: I parted with them, as noble creatures, whom, in this world, I never might again behold; and while I felt some pangs, which I would not willingly have relinquished, it was with deep comfort that I looked forward in hope to an hereafter, when we might meet without any of those drawbacks, in some shape or other, inseparable, perhaps, from the intercourse of mortals.'-Bishop Jebb's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 333,4.

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