AND Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. This Journal is supplied Weekly, or Monthly, by the principal Booksellers and Newsmen, throughout the Kingdom; but to those who may desire its immediate transmission, by post, we recommend the LITERARY GAZETTE printed on stamped paper, price One Shilling. No. 762. REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. Memoirs of Count Lavallette. SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1831. PRICE sd. The prince appeared at the moment dinner | but, above all, to leave Paris. M. d'Hilliers was being served up to the royal family. Im- received us very well; he gave us orders for Written by mediately some silly young men, thinking our route, and next morning, the 7th of SepHimself. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1831. Col-themselves very clever, cried out--Take care tember, at five o'clock, we were on the road to burn and Bentley. of the dishes! Here comes the Duke of Or- Fontainebleau, our knapsacks on our backs, THE last half century, so interesting in its leans!' Another imagined he was doing some military caps on our heads, and perfectly well events, so important in its results, cannot be wonderful achievement in brushing by the disguised by a sort of sailor's dress called a too minutely displayed. Every work, whether prince, and saying insolently- That was a Carmagnole. of history or biography, that gives either a new kick!' The prince, seeing himself thus in- "We arrived at Auxerre on the third day or more accurate account than has yet been sulted in the king's presence, left the palace after our departure, delighted with having given, has a value independent of its intrinsic abruptly, convinced that the queen had drawn quitted Paris, but full of anxiety for the dear merits. The volumes now before us ought to him into an odious snare. From that moment friends we had left there. The Revolution had rank high in their class, as the result of the he joined the most violent of the factions; and also passed through that town, and had left experience of one who had the best opportuni- the fatal and shameful consequences of that bloody traces behind it. The inhabitants were ties of observation, and time also to reflect on step are but too well known." full of consternation, and deploring several those observations. The name of Lavallette is Speaking of the massacre at La Forceyoung clergymen, sons of the most honourable familiar to all English readers; and as we "The massacre was already raging in all its citizens, that had been slaughtered. We lodged usually like those we have served, a sort of force. Being less known than my friends, I with the uncle of one of these victims, the national interest seems to attach to him, whose flew to the prison. Before the wicket that corpse of whom had been left for three days on life was saved by our own countrymen. Our leads to the Rue des Ballets, I found about fifty a dunghill, his parents not being suffered to glance has been a hurried one; but what we men at most. These were the butchers; the bury him. We thought that we ought not to have seen of these pages, we like much: they rest had been drawn there by curiosity, and remain long in that city. We set off in conare very French-that is, full of party spirit, were perhaps more execrable than the execu-sequence for Autun, and we arrived next day using expressions that seem extravagant to our tioners; for though they dared neither go away, at a village, not far from Vermanton, situated colder, insular ears; but containing much mat-nor take part in the horrid deed, still they ap- amidst woods, and the inhabitants of which ter, and giving a correct idea of the feelings of plauded. I looked forward, and at sight of a got their livelihood by making wooden shoes. the body to which their writer belongs. heap of bodies still palpitating with life, I ut- Two days before, a bishop and two of his grand We shall now proceed to our extracts, which tered a cry of horror. Two men turned round, vicars, who were escaping in a post-coach, had give the justest notion of the work itself. and, taking me abruptly by the collar, dragged been arrested by them. The coach was search"The royal family remained, therefore, sur-me violently to the street, where they reproached ed, and some hundred louis-d'ors having been rounded by a few hundred noblemen, whom me with imprudence, and then running away, found in it, the peasants thought the best way duty, or the most noble and courageous fidelity, left me alone in the dark. The horrible spec- to gain the property would be to kill the real still retained in France; but this fidelity was tacle I had witnessed deprived me of all cou-owners. Their new profession being more luaccompanied with so much hatred of the pa- rage: I went home, overwhelmed with shame erative than their former one, they resolved to triots, and so much foolish presumption, that and despair for humanity so execrably injured, continue it, and in consequence set themselves it proved more dangerous than useful to their and the French character so deplorably dis-on the look-out after all travellers. Our master. They were jealous of the National graced. The particulars of the massacre hav- sailors' dresses were not very promising, but Guards, who did duty in the palace; their ing all been recorded in the memoirs of the we carried our heads high,. our manners everlasting derision and threats disgusted all time, I need not repeat them here. I was seemed haughty; and so, a little hunch-backed the citizens honestly attached to the king. As moreover no spectator of them. They lasted man, an attorney of the village, guessed we soldiers, the National Guard undoubtedly were three days, and, I blush while I write it, at half might perhaps contribute to enrich them.--not undeserving of some little ridicule; but a mile from the different prisons, nobody would The inhabitants, being resolved not to make ought they to have been thus irritated whilst have imagined that their countrymen were at any more wooden shoes, applauded the hunchthey were giving such disinterested proofs of that moment butchered by hundreds. The back's advice. We were brought to the mufidelity, and when they might have been so shops were open, pleasure was going on in all nicipality, whence the mob followed us. The extremely useful? The commander-in-chief of its animation, and sloth rejoiced in its vacuity. attorney placed himself on a large table, and the Guards was more particularly the object of All the vanities and seductions of luxury, vo- began reading with emphasis, and in a loud their bitter satires. This soured our temper, luptuousness, and dissipation, peaceably swayed voice, all our passports: Louis Amedée Auguste and I observed with regret, that many honest their sceptre. They feigned an ignorance of d'Aubonne, André Louis Leclerc de la Ronde, men who would have laid down their lives for cruelties which they wanted the courage to op- Maria Chamans de Lavallette. Here the rascal the king, took the fatal resolution of abandon-pose. And still there existed an assembly, the added the de, that was not in my passport. On ing him. I must say, however, that the royal organ and supreme protectress of the laws, mi-hearing these aristocratical names, a rumour family were far from approving the conduct of nisters entrusted with the executive power, a began: all the eyes directed towards us were their pretended friends. The king and queen paid guard and magistrates. The unfortunate hostile, and the hunchback cried out that our always shewed the greatest affability to the prisoners that were slaughtered had friends and knapsacks ought to be examined. The harvest National Guards; but their example was not relations, on whom they could not bestow a would have been rich. I was the poorest of the followed, nor were even their remonstrances last look. They perished, after horrible agony, set, and I had five-and-twenty louis in gold. listened to. I may quote one instance, of in the midst of the most cruel torments. We looked upon ourselves as lost, when D'Auwhich the consequences were fatal. The Duke bonne, whose stature was tall, jumped on the of Orleans had for some time felt that he stood table and began to harangue the assembly. He in an equivocal light, and that his position at was clever at making verses, and knew, besides, court was unworthy of his name and character. at his fingers' ends the whole slang dictionary. He wished to come to a reconciliation with the He began with a volley of abuse and imprecaking and queen. A negotiation, prudently tions that surprised the audience; but he soon managed, succeeded completely. It was agreed raised his style, and repeated the words counthat the first prince of the blood should come try-liberty-sovereignty of the people,-with publicly to pay his respects--I think it was on "There were five of us; young, well edu- so much vehemence and such a thundering Easter Sunday. The apartments were crowded. Icated, possessing some fortune, desirous to fight, voice, that the effect was prodigious. He Twelve hundred persons were killed in those How thankful ought we to be that such hor- Picture of Paris in 1794: was interrupted by unanimous applause. The pitch in society: all distinctions of rank had crimes were committed, they could have been giddy-headed young man did not stop there. disappeared; wealth had changed possessors; pictured before the eyes of the most barbarous He imperiously ordered Leclerc de la Ronde and as it was still dangerous to boast of birth, among their perpetrators, I fear not to say that to get upon the table. La Ronde was the and to recall the memory of former gentility, all, even Robespierre himself, would have recleverest mimic I ever saw. He was thirty-the possessors of newly-acquired wealth led the coiled with horror. Men begin by caressing five years old, of a grotesque shape, and as dark ton, and added the absurdities of a bad education theories, heated imagination presents them as as a Moor. His eyes were sunk in his head to those of patronage devoid of dignity. The useful and easy of execution; they toil, they and covered with thick black eyebrows, and class of artists, more commendable, acquired advance unconsciously from errors to faults, his nose and chin immeasurably long. D'Au- consideration through the general thirst for and from faults to crimes, till the contaminated bonne said to the assembly: You'll soon be amusement, and through the necessity many mind corrupts sensibility, and adorns by the able to judge whether or not we are repub-persons were in of seeking a livelihood in the name of state policy the most horrible outrages." licans coming from Paris.' And turning to arts of imagination. This same taste for the Madame de Stael." Madame de Stael, alhis companion, he said to him: Answer to the fine arts so universally diffused, caused in the ready celebrated for her superior mind, and a republican catechism. What is God? What fashions, and even in the morals of the metro- passion for fame, united to kindness of heart are the people ? What is a king?' The polis, a most inconceivable licentiousness: the that has not been sufficiently appreciated. To other, with a contrite air, a nasal voice, and young men dressed their hair en victimes-that say the truth, it was a little her own fault. I winding himself about like a harlequin, an-is to say, raised up at the back of the neck as am convinced that she did not foresee the cruel swered, God is nature; the people are the if they were going to suffer on the scaffold. proscriptions that oppressed the vanquished poor; a king is a lion,—a tiger, an elephant The women, on the contrary, imitated in their party; but I certainly never witnessed so much who tears to pieces, devours and crushes the dresses the costume of ancient Greece. It is warmth of persecution. She undoubtedly saw poor people to death.' It was not possible to scarcely credible to those who have not seen nothing more in the struggle than the triumph resist this. Astonishment, shouts, enthusi- it, that young females, well-bred, and distin- of her political opinions, I should rather say asm, were carried to the highest pitch. The guished by their birth, should have worn tight feelings; but still it must be acknowledged, orators were embraced,-hugged, carried in skin-coloured pantaloons, sandals on their feet, that an absence of all reflection could alone triumph. The honour of lodging us grew a and transparent gauze dresses, while their bo- have led her to embrace so openly the part of subject of dispute. We were forced to drink, soms were exposed, and their arms bare up to men who trampled on liberty and national reand we were soon as much at a loss how to their shoulders; and that when they appeared presentation, the two most cherished objects of get away from these brutal wretches, now our thus in public places, instead of making mo- her worship. All that time she carried to enfriends, as we had been to escape out of their desty blush, they became objects of universal thusiasm her admiration of General Buona. hands while they were our enemies. Luckily, admiration and applause. The palaces and parte. I saw her for the first time at M. de D'Aubonne again found means to draw us out private gardens were changed into scenes of Talleyrand's. During dinner the praises she of this scrape. He gravely observed, that we riotous pleasure, called Elysium, Paphos, Ti- lavished on the conqueror of Italy had all the had no time to stop, and that our country voli, Idalia, &c. where crowds of people, bois- wildness, romance, and exaggeration of poetry. claimed the tribute of our courage. They let terous diversions, bad manners, and an utter When we left the table, the company withdrew us go at last.'" contempt for decency, created both shame and to a small room to look at the portrait of the disgust." hero; and as I stepped back to let her walk in, "I arrived in Paris towards the middle of These are among the blessings of a revolu- she said, How shall I dare to pass before an August. When I left that city in 1792, the tion. The deduction made from the following aide-de-camp of Buonaparte? My confusion people, freed from the wholesome restraint of account of the state of government is very just. was so great, that she also felt a little of it, and the laws, intoxicated with fury, and elated "The assembly had been loaded with an our host himself laughed at us. I went with their abominable triumphs, were madly enormous burthen. The king had been preci- to see her next morning. Her reception was enjoying a savage licentiousness, and, ever pitated from his throne, and the monarchy ex- kind enough to make me return often to her threatening, ever oppressive, set no bounds isted no longer. The republic had been esta- house; and I do affirm that her lively imaginato their tyranny. What a change did I not blished without consulting the people: and the tion and her incredible activity continued unfind after the short space of three years! king had been put to death because his exist- ceasingly the same up to the catastrophe. She Scarcity was terrible, misery at the highest ence was troublesome to the assembly. The had nothing before her eyes but the counterpitch, and the dethroned sovereign scarcely members soon became few, and they were com- revolution, the return of the Bourbons, the redared to complain. The people were no better posed of elements too hostile to one another to venge of the emigrants, and the loss of liberty." than a vile rabble, devoid of energy, shrinking be able to direct affairs securely and rapidly; Wounded vanity in after-years converted the under the rod that chastised them, but having they enacted therefore among themselves a go- admirer into the enemy: it is really quite exnot even the thought of resistance. In the morn-vernment called the committee of public safety, traordinary to think how much in this life is ing, the city presented a deplorable spectacle: that was to superintend the general adminis- effected by a few civil words. Count Lavalthousands of women and children were sitting tration of the country, and to direct the exer-lette justifies the Austrian government from on the stones before the doors of the bakers' tions of France against her foreign enemies. all participation in the murder of the French shops, waiting their turn for receiving a dearly They instituted also a committee of general plenipotentiaries: he thus accounts for it. bought bit of bread. More than one-half of safety, that was to suppress the attacks of inte- "A regiment of hussars of Szeckler, a sort of Paris lived on potatoes. Paper money was rior foes. The successes of the Vendeans and pandiers, recruited on the frontiers of Turkey, without value, and bullion without circulation: of the allied armies carried these two commit- already surrounded Rastadt, when the French this lasted nearly a year. A still stranger tees beyond all reasonable ideas, and made the ministers received an order to leave the place. sight struck the observer's eyes. The unfor- Convention feel that it must conquer or die. The Baden commander of the town had in tunate prisoners had recovered their liberty, Defence was maintained with all the force and vain advised them to set off in the morning, and having escaped almost certain death, they energy that personal safety and revenge can that they might cross the Rhine before nightenjoyed their good luck with a sort of ecstasy. inspire. The excellent direction given to the fall. Their preparations caused delay: they The dangers to which they had been so long armies, which they followed with admirable were encumbered with papers they wished to exposed excited a lively interest in their fa- courage, preserved France from a foreign yoke; keep, and they were, besides, convinced that vour; but vanity, so ingenious in France, dis- but the progress of civil war, and the secret ex- their sacred character of ambassadors would covered the means of turning their situation ertions of the royalists, could scarcely justify shelter them from insult. The day was far to advantage. Each person pretended to have the massacres and the horrible tyranny under advanced when they departed. At a few suffered more than his neighbour; and as it was which the country groaned for so long a period. leagues from Rastadt they were stopped and the fashion to have been persecuted, a great The rulers of the assembly will remain for ever murdered. I am persuaded that the Austrian many people who had remained safe in their loaded with the odium which their barbarous go- government did not give an order for murhiding-places, or had bought their security by vernment (of which history does not present dering them, but only for seizing their papers; base concessions, boasted of having languished another instance) will excite among future ge- while the soldiers, finding a great deal of mo in prison. An immense number of innocent nerations. Of all the lessons given by the his- ney about them, urged by avarice, and propersons had, in fact, perished on the scaffold; tory of human passions, there is one especially bably intoxicated, thought the best way would but if credit could have been given to the ac-on which the moralist must insist with force-be to stifle their complaints by murdering counts propagated by hatred and vanity, one I mean, the impossibility, which the most hon-them." might have thought that one-half of Paris ourable men will ever experience, of stopping, Surrender of Malta." The grand master, had imprisoned or butchered the other half. if once their passions draw them into the path fancying that the Order of Malta was irre Confusion was at this period at its highest of error. Surely, if a few years before so many trievably lost, and forgetting that from one moment to another an English fleet might | avoid the infection among us, we divided our- He is a close observer, and a clever man: his arrive and deliver him, resolved to sign a capi- selves into two brigades; and during the night Crayons are portraits of some of the most contulation with General Buonaparte. The treaty we pursued each other from room to room, spicuous members of the House of Commons; was soon concluded; and, two days after our throwing water in our faces, which was the and it must be confessed that he has very selarrival, the army was master of the city and only ammunition we possessed. Among the dom flattered his sitters. Indeed, except in forts, and the fleet at anchor in the fine har- few soldiers who consented to nurse the sick, the case of Daniel O'Connell, there is nothing bour of Valetta. General Caffarelli, on exa- there was a gunner who had been in Constan- like panegyric: the agitator himself is, howmining more minutely the fortifications, said tinople, where he pretended that he had es-ever, extolled to the skies. to the general-in-chief; It is very lucky for caped the plague. According to his assertion, The author, we should surmise,-from his ns that there were people in the place to open he possessed an infallible preservative against evident knowledge of the personal appearance, the gates for us; for if it had been deserted, the infection, which was, to keep his face and peculiarities, manners, habits, and style of the army would never have got in, notwith-hands perpetually moistened with water. But speaking, of the various persons whose pictures standing all our exertions." it was discovered that he washed his hands in he paints,-is connected with the daily press, oil. Indeed, it had been observed in Cairo, that and engaged in reporting the debates. He apthe lamp-lighters never caught the plague." pears on this occasion to have dipped his pen This latter is a curious fact. into ink with gall enough in it, and his satire Instance of Courage in a Physician." Ge- is bitter accordingly. We differ much from neral Buonaparte felt convinced that that fever him in his estimate of several of the characters; was really the plague; the physician-in-chief, but as we are neither called upon to pronounce Desgenettes, alleged, on the contrary, that it an opinion or enter into a controversy, but was nothing more than a common fever. His simply to allow the author to exhibit himself opinion and arguments served to tranquillise through the medium of a few selections, we the soldiers; but they had one bad effect, shall make these, and leave them to the public that of disposing them to neglect the caution without a comment. necessary in all contagious diseases. He wished, however, to add practical demonstration to his arguments by inoculating himself with the plague. In the middle of the hospital, and in the presence of all the sick, he plunged a lancet into the bubo of one of the patients, and pricked himself with it in his left side. This act, which was the more courageous, as he afterwards acknowledged that the disease had really all the characteristics of the plague, excited the admiration of the whole army, and insured to the physician lasting glory with posterity." Sudden Effort of Memory." The first billow nearly submerged us. One more effort was necessary; and while the sailors, pale as death, continued rowing with vigour, one of my tra. velling companions, an officer in the guides, fell on his knees and began the Lord's Prayer, of which he did not omit a single word. When the danger was over, his courage returned, and, ashamed of an act he could not himself comprehend, he whispered to me: I am now thirty-eight years old, and from my sixth year I never said a prayer in my life. I cannot conceive how I recollected that one; and I do declare, that at the present moment I should not be able to repeat a single word of it."" A little allowance for after-affectation will, we think, account for the mystery. Destruction of the French Fleet." It was had related them. Every one soon appeared Among the absurdities of that grandiloquent M. Lavallette. Crayons from the Commons; or, Members in WE have before encountered the effusions of There is a poetical dedication to the exmember for Galway, our old friend Dick Martin, which is followed by a whole-length of the Speaker; and he, in turn, by Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Mr. C. Grant, Sir James Graham, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Powlett Thomson, Lord Howick, Mr. Spring Rice, Sir F. Burdett, Sir R. Peel, Sir C. Wetherell, Mr. Herries, Mr. Bankes, Sir J. Scarlett, and Mr. O'Connell. We quote the first and a few other lines of Discussion fierce, and Whigs with clamour croak'd- "Embarrass'd, awkward, labour'd, and constrain'd, Of Mr. C. Grant it is said : "This minister is but a convert new To that grand scheme which Grey had long in view; "If outward signs' should aptly harmonise With lineage proud, and shew what birth implies, Picture of Paris in 1794: was interrupted by unanimous applause. The pitch in society: all distinctions of rank had crimes were committed, they could have been giddy-headed young man did not stop there. disappeared; wealth had changed possessors; pictured before the eyes of the most barbarous He imperiously ordered Leclerc de la Ronde and as it was still dangerous to boast of birth, among their perpetrators, I fear not to say that to get upon the table. La Ronde was the and to recall the memory of former gentility, all, even Robespierre himself, would have recleverest mimic I ever saw. He was thirty- the possessors of newly-acquired wealth led the coiled with horror. Men begin by caressing five years old, of a grotesque shape, and as dark ton,'and added the absurdities of a bad education theories, heated imagination presents them as as a Moor. His eyes were sunk in his head to those of patronage devoid of dignity. The useful and easy of execution; they toil, they and covered with thick black eyebrows, and class of artists, more commendable, acquired advance unconsciously from errors to faults, his nose and chin immeasurably long. D'Au- consideration through the general thirst for and from faults to crimes, till the contaminated bonne said to the assembly: You'll soon be amusement, and through the necessity many mind corrupts sensibility, and adorns by the able to judge whether or not we are repub-persons were in of seeking a livelihood in the name of state policy the most horrible outrages." licans coming from Paris.' And turning to arts of imagination. This same taste for the Madame de Stael." Madame de Stael, al his companion, he said to him: Answer to the fine arts so universally diffused, caused in the ready celebrated for her superior mind, and republican catechism. What is God? What fashions, and even in the morals of the metro- passion for fame, united to kindness of heart are the people? What is a king?' The polis, a most inconceivable licentiousness: the that has not been sufficiently appreciated. To other, with a contrite air, a nasal voice, and young men dressed their hair en victimes-that say the truth, it was a little her own fault. I winding himself about like a harlequin, an-is to say, raised up at the back of the neck as am convinced that she did not foresee the cruel swered, God is nature; the people are the if they were going to suffer on the scaffold. proscriptions that oppressed the vanquished poor; a king is a lion,—a tiger, an elephant The women, on the contrary, imitated in their party; but I certainly never witnessed so much who tears to pieces, devours and crushes the dresses the costume of ancient Greece. It is warmth of persecution. She undoubtedly saw poor people to death.' It was not possible to scarcely credible to those who have not seen nothing more in the struggle than the triumph resist this. Astonishment, shouts, enthusi- it, that young females, well-bred, and distin- of her political opinions, I should rather say asm, were carried to the highest pitch. The guished by their birth, should have worn tight feelings; but still it must be acknowledged, orators were embraced, hugged, carried in skin-coloured pantaloons, sandals on their feet, that an absence of all reflection could alone triumph. The honour of lodging us grew a and transparent gauze dresses, while their bo- have led her to embrace so openly the part of subject of dispute. We were forced to drink, soms were exposed, and their arms bare up to men who trampled on liberty and national re and we were soon as much at a loss how to their shoulders; and that when they appeared presentation, the two most cherished objects of get away from these brutal wretches, now our thus in public places, instead of making mo- her worship. All that time she carried to enfriends, as we had been to escape out of their desty blush, they became objects of universal thusiasm her admiration of General Buons. hands while they were our enemies. Luckily, admiration and applause. The palaces and parte. I saw her for the first time at M. de D'Aubonne again found means to draw us out private gardens were changed into scenes of Talleyrand's. During dinner the praises she of this scrape. He gravely observed, that we riotous pleasure, called Elysium, Paphos, Ti- lavished on the conqueror of Italy had all the had no time to stop, and that our country voli, Idalia, &c. where crowds of people, bois- wildness, romance, and exaggeration of poetry. claimed the tribute of our courage. They let terous diversions, bad manners, and an utter When we left the table, the company withdrew us go at last.' contempt for decency, created both shame and to a small room to look at the portrait of the disgust." hero; and as I stepped back to let her walk in, "I arrived in Paris towards the middle of These are among the blessings of a revolu- she said, How shall I dare to pass before ar August. When I left that city in 1792, the tion. The deduction made from the following aide-de-camp of Buonaparte? My confusion people, freed from the wholesome restraint of account of the state of government is very just. was so great, that she also felt a little of it, and the laws, intoxicated with fury, and elated "The assembly had been loaded with an our host himself laughed at us. with their abominable triumphs, were madly enormous burthen. The king had been preci- to see her next morning. Her reception was enjoying a savage licentiousness, and, ever pitated from his throne, and the monarchy ex-kind enough to make me return often to her threatening, ever oppressive, set no bounds isted no longer. The republic had been esta- house; and I do affirm that her lively imagina to their tyranny. What a change did I not blished without consulting the people: and the tion and her incredible activity continued unfind after the short space of three years! king had been put to death because his exist- ceasingly the same up to the catastrophe. She Scarcity was terrible, misery at the highest ence was troublesome to the assembly. The had nothing before her eyes but the counterpitch, and the dethroned sovereign scarcely members soon became few, and they were com-revolution, the return of the Bourbons, the redared to complain. The people were no better posed of elements too hostile to one another to venge of the emigrants, and the loss of liberty." than a vile rabble, devoid of energy, shrinking be able to direct affairs securely and rapidly; Wounded vanity in after-years converted the under the rod that chastised them, but having they enacted therefore among themselves a go- admirer into the enemy: it is really quite ex not even the thought of resistance. In the morn-vernment called the committee of public safety, traordinary to think how much in this life is ing, the city presented a deplorable spectacle: that was to superintend the general adminis- effected by a few civil words. Count Lavalthousands of women and children were sitting tration of the country, and to direct the exer-lette justifies the Austrian government from on the stones before the doors of the bakers' tions of France against her foreign enemies. all participation in the murder of the French shops, waiting their turn for receiving a dearly They instituted also a committee of general plenipotentiaries: he thus accounts for it. bought bit of bread. More than one-half of safety, that was to suppress the attacks of inte- "A regiment of hussars of Szeckler, a sort of Paris lived on potatoes. Paper money was rior foes. The successes of the Vendeans and pandiers, recruited on the frontiers of Turkey, without value, and bullion without circulation: of the allied armies carried these two commit- already surrounded Fastadt, when the French this lasted nearly a year. A still stranger tees beyond all reasonable ideas, and made the ministers received an order to leave the place. sight struck the observer's eyes. The unfor- Convention feel that it must conquer or die. The Baden commander of the town had in tunate prisoners had recovered their liberty, Defence was maintained with all the force and vain advised them to set off in the morning. and having escaped almost certain death, they energy that personal safety and revenge can that they might cross the Rhine before nightenjoyed their good luck with a sort of ecstasy. inspire. The excellent direction given to the fall. Their preparations caused delay: they The dangers to which they had been so long armies, which they followed with admirable were encumbered with papers they wished to exposed excited a lively interest in their fa- courage, preserved France from a foreign yoke; keep, and they were, besides, convinced that vour; but vanity, so ingenious in France, dis- but the progress of civil war, and the secret ex- their sacred character of ambassadors would covered the means of turning their situation ertions of the royalists, could scarcely justify shelter them from insult. The day was far to advantage. Each person pretended to have the massacres and the horrible tyranny under advanced when they departed. At a few suffered more than his neighbour; and as it was which the country groaned for so long a period. leagues from Rastadt they were stopped and the fashion to have been persecuted, a great The rulers of the assembly will remain for ever murdered. I went mo I am persuaded that the Austrian many people who had remained safe in their loaded with the odium which their barbarous go-government did not give an order for mirhiding-places, or had bought their security by vernment (of which history does not present dering them, but only for seizing their papers; base concessions, boasted of having languished another instance) will excite among future ge- while the soldiers, finding a great deal in prison. An immense number of innocent nerations. Of all the lessons given by the his-ney about them, urged by avarice, and propersons had, in fact, perished on the scaffold; tory of human passions, there is one especially bably intoxicated, thought the best way but if credit could have been given to the ac on which the moralist must insist with force be to stifle their complaints by murdering counts propagated by hatred and vanity, one I mean, the impossibility, which the most hon-them." might have thought that one-half of Paris ourable men will ever experience, of stopping, Surrender of Malta.-"The grand master. had imprisoned or butchered the other half. if once their passions draw them into the path fancying that the Order of Malta was irre Confusion was at this period at its highest of error. Surely, if a few years before so many trievably lost, and forgetting that from one would moment to another an English fleet might | avoid the infection among us, we divided our- He is a close observer, and a clever man: his arrive and deliver him, resolved to sign a capi-selves into two brigades; and during the night Crayons are portraits of some of the most contulation with General Buonaparte. The treaty we pursued each other from room to room, spicuous members of the House of Commons; was soon concluded; and, two days after our throwing water in our faces, which was the and it must be confessed that he has very selarrival, the army was master of the city and only ammunition we possessed. Among the dom flattered his sitters. Indeed, except in forts, and the fleet at anchor in the fine har- few soldiers who consented to nurse the sick, the case of Daniel O'Connell, there is nothing bour of Valetta. General Caffarelli, on exa. there was a gunner who had been in Constan- like panegyric: the agitator himself is, howmining more minutely the fortifications, said tinople, where he pretended that he had es- ever, extolled to the skies. to the general-in-chief; It is very lucky for caped the plague. According to his assertion, us that there were people in the place to open he possessed an infallible preservative against the gates for us; for if it had been deserted, the infection, which was, to keep his face and the army would never have got in, notwith-hands perpetually moistened with water. But standing all our exertions." it was discovered that he washed his hands in oil. Indeed, it had been observed in Cairo, that the lamp-lighters never caught the plague.". This latter is a curious fact. Sudden Effort of Memory." The first billow nearly submerged us. One more effort was necessary; and while the sailors, pale as death, continued rowing with vigour, one of my tra. velling companions, an officer in the guides, fell on his knees and began the Lord's Prayer, of which he did not omit a single word. When the danger was over, his courage returned, and, ashamed of an act he could not himself comprehend, he whispered to me: 'I am now thirty-eight years old, and from my sixth year I never said a prayer in my life. I cannot conceive how I recollected that one; and I do declare, that at the present moment I should not be able to repeat a single word of it."" A little allowance for after-affectation will, we think, account for the mystery. 6 Instance of Courage in a Physician." General Buonaparte felt convinced that that fever was really the plague; the physician-in-chief, Desgenettes, alleged, on the contrary, that it was nothing more than a common fever. His opinion and arguments served to tranquillise the soldiers; but they had one bad effect,— that of disposing them to neglect the caution necessary in all contagious diseases. He wished, however, to add practical demonstration to his arguments by inoculating himself with the plague. In the middle of the hospital, and in the presence of all the sick, he plunged a lancet into the bubo of one of the patients, and pricked himself with it in his left side. This act, which was the more courageous, as he afterwards acknowledged that the disease had really all the characteristics of the plague, excited the admiration of the whole army, and insured to the physician lasting glory with posterity." Destruction of the French Fleet." It was then that the general-in-chief learned the disaster of our fleet at Aboukir. The news was brought to him by an aide-de-camp of General Kleber. The officer's horse being unable to go any farther, he had written some particulars in an open letter, which I found in the hands of a Poisoning the Sick at Jaffa."I must here peasant to whom he had entrusted it. I read say a few words on an odious imputation made the letter, and advancing towards the general- long since against Gen. Buonaparte,-I mean, in-chief, I begged him to withdraw for a mo- the pretended poisoning of the soldiers sick of ment from the group of staff officers which sur- the plague. It is so contrary to truth that rounded him. I then gave him the note. When General Buonaparte proposed to poison the unhe had read it he said to me, You know its fortunate men, that M. Larry, first surgeon contents; keep the secret.'" We returned to to the army, never ceased to pronounce it an Belbeys, where we found breakfast on table. atrocious calumny; and he several times, in Every body was in good spirits, and particu- the last fifteen years, pressed M. Desgenettes larly the troops, who had retaken from the to declare publicly with him the fact through Mamelukes the spoil of the caravan. They the medium of the press. The latter, having were going to sell the goods for almost nothing; been ill-used by the king's government, rebut the general-in-chief forbade the officers to coiled probably at the thought of a declarabuy any of them there, and ordered the soldiers tion which might make his situation still more to dispose of them on their return to Cairo. painful. It is, besides, impossible to name any All of a sudden, while breakfasting, the gene-person to whom the proposal should have been ral-in-chief said to his guests: It seems you made. Finally, the calumny was spread by the like this country: that is very lucky, for we English while they were in Egypt, and propa. have now no fleet to carry us back to Europe.' gated by a writing of Sir Robert Wilson, who He then acquainted them with the particulars was then extremely young, and who in maturer of the battle of Aboukir, and they were listened age has openly declared that he had been misto with as much earnestness as the general taken." had related them. Every one soon appeared Among the absurdities of that grandiloquent reconciled to the event, and nobody talked any love of simile which distinguishes the French, more of it." we must particularise one. The mob forced the The Plague." All the physicians died suc-king to put on the red cap, then liberty's symcessively; the overseers of the infirmaries went bol. "His fate must be deplored, and the baraway, and it was no longer possible to enter barous insult of the red cap must be considered the hospitals with impunity. We were obliged in the same light as the crown of thorns placed to take Turks to nurse the sick, and to pay a on the head of the Christian Lawgiver." very great price for their services; while the We shall resume this work next week; but superintendence over them was so relaxed, on before we now leave it, we must bestow wellaccount of the danger with which it was ac-merited praise on the translator, who has execompanied, that the most flagrant misconduct cuted his task with much spirit and good taste, was not to be prevented. At Gen. Marmont's and has corrected several strange blunders of lodgings we had been obliged to do without M. Lavallette. table-cloths or sheets; all our clothes were fumigated; the out-door servants had no connexion with those of the interior. The carriage gateway was nailed up; while every thing that was brought to the house from out of doors, and even the meat, was thrown through a wicket into a tub of water. With a view to Crayons from the Commons; or, Members in The author, we should surmise,--from his evident knowledge of the personal appearance, peculiarities, manners, habits, and style of speaking, of the various persons whose pictures he paints,-is connected with the daily press, and engaged in reporting the debates. He appears on this occasion to have dipped his pen into ink with gall enough in it, and his satire is bitter accordingly. We differ much from him in his estimate of several of the characters; but as we are neither called upon to pronounce an opinion or enter into a controversy, but simply to allow the author to exhibit himself through the medium of a few selections, we shall make these, and leave them to the public without a comment. There is a poetical dedication to the exmember for Galway, our old friend Dick Martin, which is followed by a whole-length of the Speaker; and he, in turn, by Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Mr. C. Grant, Sir James Graham, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Powlett Thomson, Lord Howick, Mr. Spring Rice, Sir F. Burdett, Sir R. Peel, Sir C. Wetherell, Mr. Herries, Mr. Bankes, Sir J. Scarlett, and Mr. O'Connell. We quote the first and a few other lines of Discussion fierce, and Whigs with clamour croak'd- "Embarrass'd, awkward, labour'd, and constrain'd, Of Mr. C. Grant it is said : "This minister is but a convert new To that grand scheme which Grey had long in view; And both, we think, (though all the world may doubt Would gladly wish the Whigs could stand without it. "If outward signs' should aptly harmonise With lineage proud, and shew what birth implies, |