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• Au quartier-général de Rosendall, le 22 Septembre, l'an 2 de la république Française.

Comme il n'y a de vil que les lâches calomniateurs et les fourbes, je ne rougirai pas de dire que mon père, après avoir, ainsi que moi, usé sa jeu nesse au service de son pays, fut contraint, n'ayant point de fortune, à accepter, pour vivre, une place de palfrenier, dans laquelle il s'enrichit si fort, que je jouis du doux plaisir de le nourrir dans sa vieillesse, des appointemens que je reçois pour mes services. Mon père, qu'un lâche ose insulter à soixante-huit années, est grenadier. Qu'on écrive à la section de Paris sur laquelle il réside, elle certifiera qu'il est pauvre, mais patriote, et en état de terrasser l'efféminé qui prétend l'avilir.

Citoyens, qui avez entendu la calomnie, écoutez la vérité.

Avant seize ans, sans fortune ni état, je servais au régiment des Gardes-Françaises.

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Je fus gradé par mes camarades, et ils me chargèrent de leurs affaires pendant la révolution.

• Je suis si partisan des Capets, que je commandais l'avant-garde, le 5 Octobre, lorsque l'on fut chercher le dernier d'eux.

Il est faux que ce soit Lacolombe qui m'ait placé. Avant d'entrer dans son regiment, je ne lui ai jamais parlé. Il est également faux que Lafayette m'ait placé dans le 58e. rígiment. C'est Servan, alors ministre et patriote, qui m'a donné cette place. Je la dois à mon activité, dont Servan avait été le témoin, puisque, lorsqu'il fut fait ministre, il venoit d'être mon colonel.

• Dubouzet, dont il est parlé dans la dénonciation, est mort à la tête de son régiment, à la glorieuse journée de Jemmappes. Faut-il qu'on lui envie jusqu'à son trépas? Puissent ceux qui le calomnient, mourir en défendant la patrie, ainsi qu'il l'a fait !

J'ai emporté l'estime de mes camarades; mon dénonciateur n'est aimé d'aucun des siens. J'ai versé mon sang, en défendant mon pays; et, pou vant rester à Paris, j'ai demandé à faire la guerre. Hudry a été contraint de marcher; il l'a fait de force, ayant quitté le service pour entrer à l'opéra. On connaîtrait la valeur de sa dénonciation, si on voulait la lire en entier : je la transcris ici, j'y joins seulement les copies de trois pièces, pour en contrebalancer l'autorité. Au surplus, je ne crois point avoir besoin de certificat; mon civisme est écrit sur mon front; je lève les yeux comme un brave républicain, et ne me cache point pour manifester mon opinion sur les personnes et les choses.

On trouvera, à la fin de ce mémoire, un extrait de ma correspondance avec Hudry, qui veut que je ne sois républicain que depuis le 10 Août 92. Je crois pouvoir assurer que beaucoup de nos républicains d'aujourd'hui ne 'étaient point à cette époque.

C'est en combattant les ennemis de la république, comme je l'ai toujours fait, que j'obtiendrai des certificats, et non en flagornant qui que ce soit. J'aime à servir par-tout où sont les ennemis; et je suis dénoncé par un homme qui n'a pu supporter l'idée de quitter la ville et les dames de Dunkerque. Si je suis accusé d'y mettre un peu de plaisanterie, je répondrai que les républicains de ma trempe, ceux qui préfèrent l'air pur et libre des champs au méphitisme des villes, et la paille des camps au damas de l'égoisme, détestent, comme ils le doivent, les soldats-colifichets,”

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The Second Volume consists wholly of Hoche's correspondence with different persons in office in the civil departments, and with various military commanders. Some statements in the work atrociously calumniate (for instance, vol. i. p. 296) English individuals and armed bodies: it should therefore be examined for the purpose of refutation by those who undertake the history of the operations of our armies. Hoche has in an especial manner been the Anti-British General of the French Republic.

A portrait of Hocke is prefixed, which exhibits very ftern and saturnine features.

ART. XXXIII. Neue Schauspiele, &c. i. e. New Plays by AUGUSTUS VON KOTZEBUE. 8vo. pp. 566. Leipzig. 1798.

TH

HIS poet is one of those " At-Alls" who produce a tragedy, a comedy, a farce, or an opera, on the spur of any occasion, with nearly equal facility and equal success. Consequently, he seldom has time for a very artful structure of plot, or a very profound estimate of character: but he is well aware how entirely the arts of the theatre concentrate the attention of an audience on the passing scene; and that, provided the present situations be stimulant, and the actual effect impressive, the spectator has not leisure to care nor to inquire whether the personages were brought together by the wand of a conjurer, or by the pretended fortuitousness of a nicely contrived probability. Accordingly, he makes free use of the extraordinary if not of the miraculous discoveries of near relationships, between people who have spent their lives together without suspecting their kindred, or who meet for the first time. Personages arrived from the Antipodes, Hindus, Arabs, Negroes, Carolinians, Otaheiteans, all habited in their proper costume: moral prodigies, as filial piety robbing a father, complaisant beauty in want, chaste concubines, wicked Christians, respectable adultresses, bigamy from duty: such are the marvellous combinations to which M. VON KOTZEBUE too frequently recurs for the basis of his scenes. Yet his dialogue is written with a vivacity, a variety, and a boldness of appeal to the firest sentiments and dearest feelings of our natures, which Lever fail to arrest attention, to captivate sensibility, and to provoke applause. He has most power over the moderate emotions, and is less successful when he attempts to convulse his audience with the agonies of pathos or the loud laugh of drollery. In sentimental comedy, and in private-life tragedy, he is more masterly than in the farcical or the heroic drama.

This

This volume contains four new plays. I. The young COUNT OF BURGUNDY, saved in his infancy from the massacre of his family, has been educated, ignorant of his rank, by a hermit in Switzerland, and has rendered himself agreeable to Elizabeth, the daughter of a poor Swiss knight. News is brought that the usurper of the sceptre of Burgundy is dead; and the hermit now reveals to Henry the secret of his parentage; and sets off with him and the friendly messenger for Arles, in order to lay claim to the vacant inheritance. They carry with them the coronet, seal-ring, and cup, of the murdered Count, with other documents necessary to prove the pedigree and right of the young Henry. In the neighbourhood of Arles, they stay during the night at an inn: where some persons, observng the regalia in possession of the hermit, denounce him and his companions as conspirators in the massacre of the Count's family. The death of the usurper having withdrawn all supposed protection, every one is clamorous for their punishment; and they are dragged in bonds before an assembly of the burghers of Arles. Now follows one of the finest scenes, or rather acts, which we recollect in any drama. The stormy anger of the populace, clamouring for the execution of these suspected innocents, but mingled with a thousand bursts of affection for the murdered Count, the father of his country, whose benefits eighteen years of usurpation had not effaced the hermit dually obtaining leisure for defence, relating his story, and, instead of the murderer, discovering himself as the preserver of the rightful heir; and the glow of enthusiastic triumph with which Henry is welcomed by the agitated and altered crowd; are truly admirable. They break open the convent in which his widowed mother, Matilda, has immured herself; and she is led to her son at the critical moment of his recognition and restoration. The rest of the play is comparatively flat. Henry goes in disguise to Switzerland in order to seek his Elizabeth, and surprises her with the offer of a throne. She returns with him to Arles; and the piece concludes with their coronation.-A translation of this play has appeared ;we shall give some account of it in a future number.

II. FALSE SHAME-is a very skilful comedy: full of delicate and new situations, scarcely improbable. The characters are various, natural, and consistent, and the moral is good. There is so much of local nature in this play, and the situations are poignant so much more from the characters than from the circumstances of the personages, that we shall not offer an analysis of the plot, which would probably excite little curiosity. It appears to us, however, nearly the best German comedy Rr3

that

that we have seen:-the author of Minna von Barnhelm may frown: but does all the patient art of LESSING attain the glow of KOTZEBUE's rapidity?

III. A play on the subject of the misfortunes of La PéROUSE; who is here supposed to have been shipwrecked in the South-Seas. Malvina, a female savage, has saved him from the waves, and has conveyed him to an unoccupied island; where he lives with her, and has a son. In secret, he vents his sorrow for those whom he left behind in Europe: he observes a sail: he makes signals: the vessel approaches. A female and a boy are landed from a boat: they are the wife and son of La Pérouse, who had sailed on board the ship sent in search of him by the Convention. The two women gradually discover each other's relation to La Pérouse; their equal claims, their jealousy, their warm affection for him, and their children, supply interesting moments: but the parallelism of their situations is too complete, and gives an antithesis to their alternatespeeches which often fatigues.-The brother of Madame La Pérouse now intervenes. He descants on the revolution of France and the insecurity of happiness in Europe: he proposes to the party to establish themselves in the South-Seas, and to detach him with the vessel for other companions. The plan is determined, and the two women consent to live, in sisterly union, with La Pérouse.

IV. WILD OATS (for we know not how else to render the title der Wildfang) is an amusing farce, no doubt, on the stage, but is unfit for the closet. The endless disguises of the young lover, and the comic perversities of situation which occur, fill à busy but not very original plot.

A neatly engraved head of the author is prefixed to this volume.

ART. XXXIV. Herbarium Mauritianum, &c. i. c. An Account of the Plants of the Mauritius. By P. R. WILLEMET: With a Preface by A. L. MILLIN. 8vo. Leipzig. 1797.

HE author of this Herbarium was born at Nancy, April 2, 1762, and studied botany under Mounier at Paris. He went to India with Tippoo Saib's ambassadors, as body-physician to that sovereign. On his voyage, he landed at the Isle of France, where he speedily collected a great number of plants, which he described as well as circumstances would permit. The collection and remarks he forwarded to his friend MILLIN at Paris, in order to be kept for revisal on his return: but he died shortly after his arrival at Seringapatam.

In this work, M. WILLEMET follows Linné: only naming plants already known:-to the doubtful he adds a note of interrogation. The new he describes, adding the habitat and the time of flowering, in those cases in which he was acquainted with it.

ART. XXXV.

Homage d'un Suisse aux Braves d'Unterwalden. The Homage of a Swiss to the brave Unterwalders. pp. 41. 6d. De Boffe, London. 1798.

12mo.

ONCERNING Swiss history and politics, two works were noticed in our xxvith vol. p. 540 and 546. This also is one of the swan-songs of expiring independence, and records the brave but ineffectual resistance of the people of Unterwald to the violent intrusion of the French. The partition of Switzerland, like that of Poland, cannot be too much abhorred. It remains to be seen whether the magistrates of the Grisons, by favouring the introduction of the Austrians,-or the clubbists of Berne, by favouring the introduction of the French,-have brought on their country the more humiliating and irreparable grievance.

ART. XXXVI. Lettre au Général Dumouriez, &c. i.e. A Letter to General Dumouriez, respecting his Speculative Picture of Europe. By the Abbé J. P. T. L. S. 8vo. pp. 72.

Boffe, London. 1798.

Is. 6d. De

HIS letter objects to the approbation bestowed by Dumouriez on Buonaparte's concessions to the Emperor, in the negotiation of Leoben. With Vienna in his grasp, why did Buonaparte retire, and resign the Venetian territory, for liberty to withdraw? The whole affair admits but of one interpretation. Buonaparte could not have maintained himself at Vienna without democratizing the country; and the Directory know it to be for the interest of their own progressive aggrandizement, not to democratize any one of the great continental powers. The German national character is more popular in Europe than that of the French it is more orderly, humane, and just; less irascible, intolerant, and rapacious. If they had an equally advantageous structure of constitution to offer as the reward of subjection, they would appear to the petty European states the preferable sovereign: they would become the GEAT NATION, to the prejudice of France, and would extend the influence of their laws, their literature, and their arms, from Tarento to Copenhagen-whereas, by leaving the primary despotisms subsisting, the necessarily defective allegiance of the numerous

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