the ceremony of her introduction to the Empress. After various projets had been offered and rejected, she made these three conditions:

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 revennes 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 old Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, and writes billets-doux to his little lady, so tender as to turn one's stomach; but at last dies in an edifying manner, to the great satisfaction of all his friends and acquaintances. Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, to follow his example; for he is seized with a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and burst; and give out so much water, that he is obliged for several days to sit with them in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, he recovers, and goes a campaigning for several years after.

1st, That the whole cortège of the Empress should receive her at the bottom of the staircase. 2dly, That the Empress herself should come to meet her at the outside of the door of her bed-chamber. And, 3dly, That she should be allowed an arm-chair during the interview. Whole days were spent in the discussion of this proposition; and at last the two first articles were agreed to; but all that she could make of the last was, that she 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, dans 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 diaecte 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 nant dans une langue étrangère; car elle savoit le cru faire un crime de lèse-grandeur en m'entretefrançais! 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 yet devised for the administration of consider able nations; and that it will always continue to be the most perfect which human virtue will admit of. We are not readily to be suspected, therefore, of any wish to produce a distaste or contempt for this form of government; and beg leave to say, that though the facts we have now collected are certainly such as to give no favourable impression of the private manners or personal dispositions of absolute sovereigns, we conceive that good, rather than evil, is likely to result from their dissemination. This we hold, in the first place, on the strength of the general maxim, that all truth must be ultimately salutary, and all deception pernicious. But we think we can see a little how this maxim applies to the particular case before us.

In the second place, we presume to think that the general adoption of these opinions as to the personal defects that are likely to result from the possession of sovereign power, may be of use to the sovereigns themselves, from whom the knowledge of their prevalence cannot be very long concealed. Such knowledge, it is evident, will naturally stimulate the better sort of them to counteract the causes which tend to their personal degradation; and enable them more generally to surmount their pernicious operation, by such efforts and reflections, as have every now and then rescued some powerful spirits from their dominion, under all the disadvantages of the delusions with which they were surrounded.

Finally, if the general prevalence of these sentiments as to the private manners and dispositions of sovereigns should have the effect In the first place, then, we think it of ser- of rendering the bulk of their subjects less vice to the cause of royalty, in an age of vio-prone to blind admiration, and what may be lent passions and rash experiments, to show called personal attachment to them, we do that most of the vices and defects which such not imagine that any great harm will be done. times are apt to bring to light in particular The less the public knows or cares about the sovereigns, are owing, not so much to any par- private wishes of their monarch, and the more ticular unworthiness or unfitness in the indi-his individual will is actually consubstantiated vidual, 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.

with the deliberate sanctions of his responsible counsellors, the more perfectly will the prac tice 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 government as involve the honour or the interest 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

suppose that the chief interest of the work must be exhausted by its completion. That portion of the story of Columbus has always, from obvious causes, been given with more amplitude and fidelity than any other; and Mr. Irving, accordingly, has been able to add but few additional traits of any considerable importance. But it is not there, we think, that the great interest or the true character of the work is to be found. The mere geographical discovery, sublime as it undoubtedly is, is far less impressive, to our minds, than the moral emotions to which it opens the

miss he brilliant, highly finished, and ryth- | mical style, which attracted them so much in those performances; and may find the less artificial and elaborate diction of this history comparatively weak and careless. In this judgment, however, we can by no means agree. Mr. Irving's former style, though unquestionably very elegant and harmonious, always struck us as somewhat too laboured and exquisite-and, at all events, but ill fitted for an extensive work, where the interest turned too much on the weight of the matter to be safely divided with the mere polish of the diction, or the balance of the periods.scene. The whole history of the settlement He has done well, therefore, we think, to discard it on this occasion, for the more varied, careless, and natural style, which distinguishes the volumes before us a style not only without sententious pretension, or antithetical prettiness, but even in some degree loose and unequal-flowing easily on, with something of the fulness and clearness of Herodotus or Boccaccio-sometimes languid, indeed, and often inexact, but furnishing, in its very freshness and variety, the very best mirror, perhaps, in which the romantic adventures, the sweet descriptions, or the soft humanities, with which the author had to deal, could have been displayed.

Another, and perhaps a more general source of disappointment to impatient readers, is likely to be found in the extent and minuteness of the prefatory details, with which Mr. Irving has crowded the foreground of his picture, and detained us, apparently without necessity, from its principal features. The genealogy and education of Columbus-his early love of adventure-his long and vain solicitations at the different European courts -the intrigues and jealousies by which he was baffled-the prejudices against which he had to contend, and the lofty spirit and doubtful logic by which they were opposed,-are all given with a fulness for which, however instructive it may be, the reader, who knows already what it is to end in, will be apt to feel any thing but grateful. His mind, from the very title-page, is among the billows of the Atlantic and the islands of the Caribs; and he does not submit without impatience to be informed of all the energy that was to be exerted, and all the obstacles to be overcome, before he can get there. It is only after we have perused the whole work that we perceive the fitness of these introductory chapters; and then, when the whole grand series of sufferings and exploits has been unfolded, and the greatness of the event, and of the character with which it is inseparably blended, have been impressed on our minds, we feel how necessary it was to tell, and how grateful it is to know, all that can now be known of the causes by which both were prepared; and instead of murmuring at the length of these precious details, feel nothing but regret that time should have so grievously abridged them. The last disappointment, for which the reader should be prepared, will probably fall upon those who expect much new information as to the first great voyage of discovery; or

of Hispaniola, and the sufferings of its gentle people-the daring progress of the great discoverer, through unheard-of forms of peril, and the overwhelming disasters that seem at last to weigh him down, constitute the real business of the piece, and are what truly bring out, not only the character of the man, but that of the events with which his memory is identified. It is here, too, that both the power and the beauty of the author's style chiefly display themselves-in his account of the innocence and gentleness of the simple races that were then first introduced to their elder brethren of Europe, and his glowing pictures of the lovely land, which ministered to their primitive luxury-or in his many sketches of the great commander himself, now towering in paternal majesty in the midst of his newlyfound children-now invested with the dark gorgeousness of deep and superstitious devotion, and burning thirst of fame-or, still more sublime, in his silent struggles with malevolence and misfortune, and his steadfast reliance on the justice of posterity.

The work before us embodies all these, and many other touching representations; and in the vivacity of its colouring, and the novelty of its scene, possesses all the interests of a novel of invention, with the startling and thrilling assurance of its actual truth and exactness-a sentiment which enhances and every moment presses home to our hearts the deep pity and resentment inspired by the sufferings of the confiding beings it introduces to our knowledge-mingled with a feeling of something like envy and delighted wonder, at the story of their child-like innocence, and humble apparatus of enjoyment. No savages certainly ever were so engaging and loveable as those savages. Affectionate, sociable, and without cunning, sullenness, inconstancy, or any of the savage vices, but an aversion from toil, which their happy climate at once inspired and rendered innoxious, they seem to have passed their days in blissful ignorance of all that human intellect has contrived for human misery; and almost to have enjoyed an exemption from the doom that followed man's first unhallowed appetite for knowledge of good and evil. It is appalling to think with what tremendous rapidity the whole of these happy races were swept away! How soon, after the feet of civilized Christians had touched their shores, those shores were desolate, or filled only with mourning! How soon, how frightfully soon, the swarming myriads of idle

and light-hearted creatures, who came trooping from their fragrant woods to receive them with smiles of welcome and gestures of worship, and whose songs and shoutings first hailed them so sweetly over their fresh and sunny bays, were plunged, by the hands of those fatal visitants, into all the agonies of despair!-how soon released from them by a bloody extermination! It humbles and almost crushes the heart, even at this distance of time, to think of such a catastrophe, brought about by such instruments. The learned, the educated, the refined, the champions of chivalry, the messengers of the gospel of peace, come to the land of the ignorant, the savage, the heathen. They find them docile in their ignorance, submissive in their rudeness, and grateful and affectionate in their darkness:And the result of the mission is mutual corruption, misery, desolation! The experience or remorse of four centuries has not yet been able to expiate the crime, or to reverse the spell. Those once smiling and swarming shores are still silent and mournful; or resound only to the groans of the slave and the lash of the slave-driver-or to the strange industry of another race, dragged by a yet deeper guilt from a distant land, and now calmly establishing themselves on the graves of their oppressors.

We do not propose to give any thing like an abstract of a story, the abstract of which is already familiar to every one; while the details, like most other details, would lose half their interest, and all their character, by being disjoined from the narrative on which they depend. We shall content ourselves, therefore, by running over some of the particulars that are less generally known, and exhibiting a few specimens of the author's manner of writing and thinking.

neither full nor meagre; his complexion fair and freckled, and inclined to ruddy; his nose aquiline; his cheek-bones were rather high; his eyes light had an air of authority. His hair, in his youthful grey, and apt to enkindle; his whole countenance days, was of a light colour; but care and trouble, according to Las Casas, soon turned it grey, and at thirty years of age it was quite white. He was moderate and simple in diet and apparel, eloquent in discourse, engaging and affable with strangers, and of an amiableness and suavity in domestic life, that strongly attached his household to his person. His temper was naturally irritable; but he subdued it by the magnanimity of his spirit; comporting himself with a courteous and gentle gravity, and never indulging in any intemperance of language. Throughout his life he was noted for a strict attention to the offices of religion, observing rigorously the fasts and ceremonies of the church; nor did his piety consist in mere forms, but partook of that lofty and solemn enthusiasm with which his whole character was strongly tinctured."

For eighteen long years did the proud and ardent spirit of Columbus urge his heroic suit at the courts of most of the European monarchs; and it was not till after encountering in every form the discouragements of withering poverty, insulting neglect, and taunting ridicule, that, in his fifty-sixth year, he at last prevailed with Ferdinand and Isabella, to supply him with three little ships, to achieve for them the dominion of a world! Mr. Irving very strikingly remarks,

Peter

"After the great difficulties made by various courts in furnishing this expedition, it is surprising how inconsiderable an armanient was required. It is evident that Columbus had reduced his requisitions to the narrowest limits, lest any great expense should cause impediment. Three small vesof them were light barques, called caravals, not sels were apparently all that he had requested. Two superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days. Representations of this class of vessels exist in old prints and paintings. They are delineated as open, and without deck in the centre, but built up Mr. Irving has settled, we think satisfacto-high at the prow and stern, with forecastles and cabins for the accommodation of the crew. rily, that Columbus was born in Genoa, about the year 1435. It was fitting that the hemisphere of republics should have been discovered by a republican. His proper name was Colombo, though he is chiefly known among his contemporaries by the Spanish synonyme of Colon. He was well educated, but passed his youth chiefly at sea, and had his full share of the hardships and hazards incident to that vocation. From the travels of Marco Polo he seems first to have imbibed his taste for geographical discovery, and to have derived his grand idea of reaching the eastern shores of India by sailing straight to the west. The spirit of maritime enterprise was chiefly fostered in that age by the magnanimous patronage of Prince Henry of Portugal, and it was to that court, accordingly, that Columbus first offered his services in the year 1470. We will not withhold from our readers the following brief but graphic sketch of his character and appearance at that period:

"He was at that time in the full vigour of manhood, and of an engaging presence. Minute descriptions are given of his person by his son Fernando, by Las Casas, and others of his contemporaries. According to these accounts, he was tall, well-formed, muscular, and of an elevated and dignified demeanour. His visage was long, and

Martyr, the learned contemporary of Columbus,
says that only one of the three vessels was decked.
The smallness of the vessels was considered an
advantage by Columbus, in a voyage of discovery,
enabling him to run close to the shores, and to enter
when coasting the gulf of Paria, he complained of
shallow rivers and harbours. In his third voyage,
the size of his ship, being nearly a hundred tons
burden. But that such long and perilous expedi-
tions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in
vessels without decks, and that they should live
through the violent tempests by which they were
circumstances of these daring voyages.'
frequently assailed, remain among the singular

It was on Friday, the 3d of August, 1492, that the bold adventurer sailed forth, with the earliest dawn, from the little port of Palos, on his magnificent expedition; and immedi ately began a regular journal, addressed to the sovereigns, from the exordium of which, as lately printed by Navarette, we receive a strong impression both of the gravity and dignity of his character, and of the importance he attached to his undertaking. subjoin a short specimen.

We

"Therefore your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes, lovers and promoters of the holy Christian faith, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and heresies, detormined to send me, Christopher Columbus. to the