by the House of Lords for better regulating the forms of Process in the Courts of Law in Scotland. ander Henderson, M.D.; Topography of all the Known Outlines of Philosophical Education, illustrated by the Method of Teaching the Logic Class in the University of Glasgow; together with Observations on the Expediency of extending the Practical System to other Academical Establishments, and on the propriety of making certain Additions to the Course of Philosophical Education in Universities. By 1. An Enquiry into the Expediency of applying the Princi- ples of Colonial Policy to the Government of India. 2. Two Letters to Sir Charles Forbes on the Liberty of the 3. Considerations on the State of British India. 4. Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal. 5. On the Import of Colonial Corn. II. TREMAINE; or, THE MAN OF REFINEMENT III. AN ACCOUNT OF THE EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH, by means of the Pendulum vibrating Seconds in different Latitudes: as well as on 1. A Letter to the Magistrates of Warwickshire on the Increase of Crime in general, but more particularly in the County of Warwick; with a few Observations on the Causes and Remedies of this Increasing Evil. By 2. A Letter to the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Surrey, on the Misconduct of Licencing Magistrates, and the V. THE COMMERCIAL POWER OF BRITAIN, exhibiting a com- plete View of the Public Works of this Country, under the several heads of Streets, Roads, Canals, Aqueducts, VI. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. By Thomas Moore. 371 VII. MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq. F. R. S. Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II.; comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith, from the original Short-hand MS. in the Pepysian Library; and a Selection from his Pri- VIII. A COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE OF THE MINERAL AND MOSAI- CAL GEOLOGIES. By Granville Penn, Esq. IX. TRAVELS AMONG THE ARAB TRIBES INHABITING THE COUN→ TRIES EAST OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE, including a Journey from Nazareth to the Mountains beyond the Dead Sea, and from thence through the Plains of the Hauran to Bozra, Damascus, Tripoly, Lebanon, Baal- THE WESTMINSTER JULY, 1825. REVIEW. ART. I. Collection des Chroniques Nationales Françaises écrites en Langue Vulgaire du treizième au seizième siècle ; avec notes et éclaircissements. Par J. A. Buchon. Tomes 1 to 9. Paris. 1824. THE French kings of the thirteenth race have been eminently distinguished by their conquests, from Hugh Capet who recommenced the edifice of the monarchy, down to Louis 14th who completed it. Though confined within very narrow limits, both in point of territory and of power, this race succeeded by slow degrees in acquiring the whole of France and in gaining absolute rule, in the space of seven hundred years. Under Hugh Capet it obtained the crown by conquest; under Louis le Gros it obtained by the same means the estates of the smaller barons who surrounded Paris, and whose castles formed the bounds of a royal authority which was almost ludicrous from its limits under Philip Augustus, the same race conquered Normandy, Poitou, Tourraine, Anjou, Maine, and Auvergne ; under Saint Louis, Languedoc; under Philip le Bel, Champagne; under Philip of Valois, Dauphinè; under Charles 7th, Normandy, which had been lost, and Guyenne, which had not yet been occupied ; under Louis 11th, Provence and Burgundy; and under Charles 8th, Brittany. The monarchy had then for its limits the Alps, the Pyrenées, and two seas. As the family of Capet had been conquerors in their own country, so they were beyond it; and they made two grand attempts at external invasion: the one in Italy under Charles 8th, Louis 12th, and Francis 1st, and the other in the countries towards the Rhine, under Louis 14th. But the French monarchy, which had been formed by force of arms, found other monarchies which had risen in the same manner; and the race of the Capet kings, eager as they were for conquest and territory, found other kings who, like them, existed by combats and victories. The career of Francis 1st was arrested by Charles 5th and the battle of Pavia; that of Louis 14th by prince Eugene, the duke of Marlborough, and the battle of Malplaquet, The latter monarch, after fighting sixty years of his life against Europe, definitively settled the boundaries of his realms, which he had increased by a part of Flanders, Lorraine and Franche Comté. The dynasty of Capet had succeeded in gaining by its victories at once power and territory. It had successively destroyed two sorts of governments which though different were free. Before the existence of political and territorial centralization, there were fiefs which were governed as sovereignties, and municipalities which were administered as republics. These the kings disorganized. As often as a feudal lord was stripped of his sovereignty or a city lost its independence, there succeeded a general sovereignty of the various orders of the nation in the states this was merely another form of independence; and by the effect of centralization, the rights, which had been local by being isolated, became political. But public liberties had the same fate as the abolished sovereignties. Charles 6th had destroyed the republican municipalities, Louis 11th the feudal principalities, and Louis 13th abolished the States-general. At the period of Louis 14th's accession to the throne, there was but one power in France-absolute monarchy; as there was but one possessor of territory--the king; for the same violent means which serve to gain victories, are equally useful in establishing despotism. But at the close of the reign of this very powerful prince, royalty having nothing further to gain by conquests, sunk into repose; the belligerent class of the nobility, having no longer to fight, became weakened; and a great change took place in the manners, opinions, and interests of France, which quitted a state of military existence for the more quiet character of a civil government. However, as its military existence had lasted till that period, it is curious to follow its history and to trace its usages. Every order of society must have some regulations in order to exist; and even that kind of society which moves on through disorder, and lives by the destruction of others, must be governed by certain morals and laws of its own. The feudal society of the middle age took its morals and its laws from its situation, that is to say, from a state of continual warfare. As war was constantly carried on from man to man, from sovereign to subject, from manor to city, and from city to castle, all education was resolved into a long military apprenticeship; vestments gave |