constitution still more democratical. In the struggle between reason and passion, the latter prevailed. The period during which a revolution can be directed is but short, and that period had passed away.-p. 474.

Here our author closes his work for the present. His object was to show how the revolutionary movement became unmanageable, and that object is accomplished. He says, however, that he has collected materials to continue his narrative to the close of the National Assembly.

This continuation would show the deplorable situation in which many members of that assembly found themselves, when, too late perceiving their errors, they wished to retrieve them, but found themselves surrounded by obstacles which they themselves had created; and, at last, dizzy at the sight of the portentous dangers they had conjured up, they resigned themselves to a fatal impulsion which they mistook for destiny, and which dragged them, the monarchy, and the country, into a frightful abyss.

REMINISCENCES OF COUNT MATHIEU DUMAS. Souvenirs du Lieutenant General Comte Mathieu Dumas, de 1770 à 1836. (Reminiscences of Lieutenant-general Count Mathieu Dumas, from 1770 to 1836.) Published by his Son. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1839.

France still continues to give us her memoirs of that extraordinary period, the last half century. It is remarkable, that they are chiefly the product of a class, who, in England, are, probably, the least literary body of the whole community-military men. It is true, that the French litterateurs have written on the perpetual subject of the Revolution; and, if the tomb of Napoleon could be raised of paper, it would long since have looked down upon the pyramids. But the litterateurs, in their lower degrees, are mere workmen, and in their highest are mere theorists; the one loathes his work as a drudgery, the other embellishes it like the scenery of a melo-drame, and both are equally tempted to model facts, the one to his profit, and the other to his party.

Of course there are exceptions in either case, but we speak of classes; and the lure is so powerful to the selfishness or the vanity of human nature, that our true surprise would be to find a French history of this great and terrible catastrophe, which did not bear the palpable imprimatur of personal feelings. We cannot open a volume on the subject without scenting the odour of the parti gauche, or the parti droit, or of that complacent centre, which, eschewing all honesty of opinion, as hazardous to all purchase of its possessor, sits in all weathers at the receipt of custom, smiles on both minister and republican with impartial corruptibility, and adapts itself and its wares to the purse of all mankind.

The Revolution was a wonder. It brought precipitately among men what they had heard of in history, and in the stories of ancestral life, but had never seen. If a comet had plunged among them in some wild wandering from its orbit, the astonishment, the terror, and perhaps the desolation, could scarcely have been greater. It is true that Europe had seen an American Revolution, but it was two thousand miles off; it belonged to another hemisphere; it swept, and blazed, and crushed, but it was among men of whom Europe knew not much more at that period than if they had been tenants of the moon. It was a comet, but far down in the horizon, feeble, cloudy, and without a tail. But it was a different phenomenon, when the Revolution rushed down on France; when they saw with their own eyes the measureless rapidity, ceaseless flame, and broad and burning disk, rolling above their heads, and hourly descending, till it impinged against their world.

The effects of those strange and terrible times have not yet passed from the French brain. La Jeune France, curled and coxcomb as it is, still exhibits evident and luckless proofs that it is not fit for sober and honest government of any kind. It still has to clear its giddy head of the vapours which fifty years of fantasy have been sending up; and this memorable compound of fierceness and frivolity, of the worst politics and the best tailoring on the face of the earth, must go through the cooling system of at least half a century to come, before it is fit to settle any thing beyond the steps of a quadrille.

Thus, from the politicians we can expect nothing in the shape of authorship more authentic than one of Rousseau's novels. But we must acknowledge that the military men have laboured actively to fill up the chasm. From them alone we have a series of memoirs, which all but complete the narrative of that mighty mystery-a mystery which will not be solved till the present generation are a hundred years beyond the search. They have had obvious advantages, the advantages of Virgil's hero, "quorum pars magna," of being among the subjects of the events; or of Cæsar, in first fighting the battles, and then telling them; or of modern cabinets, of keeping all their own blunders in the dark, and laying the blame on fortune. They have had another important advantage over their own contemporaries. They have outlived them.

It is a curious circumstance, and one which politicians ought to take to heart, especially in revolutions, that statesmen are formidably short-lived. Thus in France we have seen a crowd of septuagenarians and octogenarians bequeathing their reminiscences to posterity with the swords of Marengo, Jena, and Austerlitz hanging up over their firesides; while all the heroes of the pen and pike are long since the food of the worthier worm. The sabre and the grape-shot, bivouacs and Cossack hurrahs, were

found to be not half so hazardous as revolutionary sittings; the committee of public safety was more mortal than a dozen pitched battles; and in France the coward took refuge in the camp, charged in the field to avoid the majesty of angry republicanism in the streets, and made light of horse, foot, and artillery, in comparison of the simple but never rusty machinery of the guillotine. While the whole generation of the regicides, fratricides, and parricides, went to their own place; while the patriots of 1789 were beheaded by the patriots of 1793, the patriots of 1793 by the patriots of 1795, until the Republic was turned into a despotism, the patriots were turned into soldiers, the soldiers into slaves, and Bonaparte, turned into Napoleon le Grand, was the master of them all, the head-keeper of the wild beasts, the lion in the den of jackalls, the grand devourer in the banquet, where the bones of kings and people were the food; Mathieu Dumas and his confrères, the daring sabreurs, who had led the French infantry and cavalry, like so many torrents of fire and steel, over the Continent, bore "a charmed life;" saw Emperors and empires perish; saw "T'Empereur d'Empereurs" himself, chained like a vulture to a rock to scent the slaughters of Europe at a distance, without the power of partaking of the spoil; saw a new dynasty possess the throne; and lived to write the history of them all, and congratulate themselves on the harmlessness of bullets and lances, cannon shot, and even of camp brandy! To those men we owe all that is really valuable in the narratives of their time. And some of them have been indefatigable. Count Dumas had already written the annals of the war, from 1799 to 1807, a vast work, in nineteen volumes, with plates and plans; and now offers the "Memoirs of his own Time, from the beginning of the Revolution to 1836:" a space of thirty-seven years of the most singular changes and astounding casualties of the European world.

Mathieu Dumas, born at Montpellier, and intended for the army, was appointed to a sub-lieutenancy in the regiment of Medoc, in 1773. His first service was against the mob of Montauban, whom a fear, or pretended fear, of famine had stirred into a riot. "Even then," observes the old soldier, whom Napoleon and common sense had, by this time, thoroughly cleansed of his republicanism, "one might see beforehand to what an excess this turbulent population was capable of proceeding, and how much the bands of obedience were already loosened."

France was then at peace, and the hot blood of the young soldier had no opportunity of sowing any share of it, to produce laurels. But his mind was employed in a manner which promised a copious harvest in due time.

My regiment, [says he,] which was commanded by the marquis de Mauray, was ordered to Briançon. The year which I passed there was the one of all my youth which was best employed. I had been appointed to the training of some of our companies in one of the forts, during a long aud

severe winter. I gave my mind up to the pursuit, and formed for myself a system of military study, which I have ever since followed. I felt the importance of the details of service, as the elements of the science; and also the fitness of separating them from the larger scale of tactics. From the details I turned to military history; and also occupied myself with the study of field operations. I received excellent lessons from an old officer, highly accomplished, and practised in the detail of the general staff-M. Doumet, the town-major of Briançon. This officer had compiled, revised, and had also himself made some excellent military charts of the Alps, from Mount Cenis to the mouth of the Var. He travelled on foot, and studied the ground during the fine season, which there lasts so short a time; and, during the long winter, he worked on those plans, so accurately made, the operations of a supposed campaign. Those memoranda were actually equivalent to entire campaigns, and he pursued the manœuvres from day to day, as if he had to superintend them in the face of an enemy. I followed M. Doumet in this work; practised the planning of ground; drew a great deal; and read the memoirs of Marshal de Berwick, with the excellent notes of my instructor. I happened to meet a comrade, M. Poncet, who shared my foudness for study. He had originally been intended, like myself, for the engineers, and he had the same desire to take advantage of his early knowledge. As soon as the season allowed, we made reconnoissances together. The marquis de Mauray proposed to make a tour of the High Alps with us. We visited the principal summits and passages, the most important positions, and the posts most remarkable in former wars. We made journals, and drew up reports or memoirs on our reconnoissances.

On the removal of his regiment to Valenciennes, this intelligent young soldier pursued the same course of manly industry. In 1774, Louis XVI. had ascended the throne, and some vague conceptions of a change in the inactivity of public affairs seemed to have stimulated the younger officers. Dumas not only found here subalterns, who willingly joined his studies, but was made acquainted with several individuals, who afterwards figured in public life; among the rest, M. Servan, subsequently minister of war; M. Lacuée, who became minister of war under Napoleon; and the Count de Grimoard, the author of the Essay on Battles.

I laboured [says he] a great deal with them; I studied the Flemish wars, and the campaigns of our best generals on this frontier. I personally visited the most famous fields of battle, such as Denain, Fontenoy, &c. One day I went over that of Malplaquet, and, following the critical narrative of Feuquières, which I had in my hand, I looked, in the wood of Sars, for the passage by which Prince Eugene, after having turned the left wing of the French line, broke and separated the cavalry, and, by this manoeuvre, decided the fate of that bloody day, so deadly to the French army.

He remarks that, by a curious fortune, he was enabled to examine the field by the help of an eye-witness of the battle, though a century had passed by. This eye-witness was the son of the miller who had acted as guide to Eugene. He was then (Sept. 11, 1709,) fourteen years old, and he still perfectly remembered the whole scene. "Look there," said the old man, "that is the path by which we went on leaving the mill; see that little chapel riddled with balls-that was the middle, and the hardest fought, spot of the whole battle. Further towards the right, you will see the VOL. I.—NO. 1.—MAY, 1839.

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copse where so many of the Dutch troops fell." His account tallied exactly with that of Feuquières.

The

The marquis de Castries, governor of French Flanders, attracted by his talents, and also acquainted with his family, took particular notice of the young officer; and introduced him to Puysegur, lieutenant-general, and distinguished as an inspector of infantry, who made him his aide-de-camp; doubtless a mark of especial approval, where the candidates must have been so numerous. But the time for bringing his acquirements into practice was now come. American rebellion, in 1775, had instantly awoke the slumbering perfidy of the French court. The loss of Canada, and the peace of 1763, which confirmed it as a British colony, had rankled in the heart of the French cabinet; though Canada had been a despised colony while it remained in the hands of France; but, though this appeal was made to French pride, the true motive of the cabinet was, not to recover Canada, which, after all, it made no attempt to recover by either treaty or arms, but to disable England, by cutting off the United States from the empire. Nothing could be more treacherous to England, or more fatal to France herself. It was a breach of peace for the sake of plunder, a violation of the most solemn compact with a friendly and unoffending nation, for the sake of its final ruin. But such atrocities will not go unpunished, while a high Providence dispenses justice among nations. Vengeance fell upon the great criminal, instant, open, and irresistible. There never, perhaps, was an instance in history, which more distinctly displayed its connexion with the crime. The French troops which were sent out as auxiliaries to America returned as the enemies to their own government. The support of rebellion against treaty transformed them into rebels to their own allegiance. The guilty intrigue of the French cabinet was punished in the extinction of the whole monarchy-the corruption of the soldiery, by wars, civil and foreign, which drank their blood during ten years of desperate hostility—the dishonest acquiescence of the higher classes, by confiscation, exile, and death; the unhappy weakness of the king, by the loss of his head-the unprincipled ambition of France, by sufferings of unexampled length and misery, finished by being twice overrun by the armies of Europe.

It is not less remarkable that the individual whom the French cabinet had sent as its chief agent to America, La Fayette, was the especial beginner of the French revolution-the commander of the national guards, which overthrew the monarchy-the heartless and treacherous coxcomb, who bowed the unfortunate king of France, on the 6th of October, into a dungeon, from which he emerged only to the scaffold. Dumas was appointed aide-de-camp to Rochambeau, who was sent with a corps of 8,000 men to assist the rebels. The expedition sailed under the admiral Duternay, and arrived only in time to see general Green beaten