And being now arrived at life's decline, "At length, with paint and paper, bright and gay, The customers would not have missed them more. They live, and civic honours crown their age: And extra stateliness of dress and mien, The august lappet that contains her chin." (p. 1-4.) This is followed by a series of moral and religious re flexions, drawn out under the title of Prejudice, upon the disposition and habits of the lady; of whom Miss Taylor well says "Were but her brain dissected, it would show Rang'd duly, side by side, without a gap,— We lament that we have not room to give a specimen of sufficient length to do the serious observations full justice, but they are dictated by good sense, and flow from an observing mind, that draws knowledge from the most ordinary Occurrences. The essay, intituled "Poetry and Reality," is directed obviously against Mr. Southey, and the poem which he published among his Juvenilia, beginning, if we rightly recollect, "Go thou unto the house of prayer, I to the woodland wend my way, To this Miss Taylor replies at much length, endeavouring to prove, that the creed of all who so think, is only Deism in disguise. The whole is somewhat too argumentative for verse, but we will give a short extract from it. "But we have seen a high-flown, mental thing, All soul and intellect, th' ethereal mind But, gentle poet, wherefore not repair To yonder temple? God is worshipp'd there. There he can sit, and thence his soul may rise, And worship Nature's God on Reason's plan:- "Let him distinguish (if he can indeed) Of what man learns when God descends to teach? Where rests his faith, his practice, and his hope? We have thus endeavoured to give a sketch of the general nature and tendency of Miss Taylor's production: if, to the good principles she there inculcates, she adds an active spirit of benevolence-not merely displaying itself in the ostentatious mockery of Sunday schools, set up by the paltry patronage of a village-we may venture to assert, that she will be one of the most useful women society has for a long time known. ART. 1X.-Carnot; sa Vie Politique et Privée; contenant des particuliarités intéressantes qui n'ont jamais été imprimées, &c. A Paris, chez Delaunay, Palais Royal, 1 vol. 1816. 8vo. pp. 214. We have very recently looked through the shop of almost every bookseller in Paris, in order to find, as a subject for review, some new work of general interest and value; but, whether from the regulations imposed upon the French press, or from the present unsettled state of the public mind in that country, or from both these causes combined, we could discover no publication at all answering to our wishes. Excepting novels and fugitive pieces of the lightest kind, within the last five or six months, few but political works, and those only on one side of the question, have been printed; and we had, consequently, to make our selection from books which would give little entertainment to English readers. We might, it is true, have given an article on a new heroic poem, in five cantos, published under the title of "Les Bourbons" but the grossness of the adulation of this author, who seems to have epics at command for every occasion, would have been as disgusting as his general insipidity and inanity would have been wearisome. We took the pains to wade through two of his five cantos, and we can assure our readers, that the only recompense we received was an occasional laugh at some ridiculous absurdity: in one place, Louis XVIII. is represented as visited by the shades of Henry IV. and Louis XIV., who jointly and severally confer upon him all the requisites of a wise and glorious monarch; and so fulsome is the flattery in some parts, that, taken by themselves, the passages would appear to ordinary readers as successful efforts at ironical satire. Another work of a similar character, in many respects, is intituled "Henri IV. peint par lui même," which is entirely a eulogy of the reigning Prince, and of the measures of his government. We might enumerate about twenty more, (independently of productions of the grossest kind,) pretending to disclose the cabinet secrets of Buonaparte, or to detail the supposed debaucheries of him, self and his family one of the latter, at present in much request, is called "Les Amours de N. Buonaparte et sa famille," in which the author, to please the taste of his royalist-readers, gives the most flagitious accounts of the pretended enormities of an individual, whom, only a few years ago, he eulogized by the loftiest hyperboles, in a pamphlet called "Les Noces des Empires de France et Almagne." None of these productions would be worthy even of the notice we have given of them, but for the purpose of shewing, in some degree, the present state of the press in France, which we do not attribute, as we have above remarked, more to the severe regulations under which it labours, than to the unavoidable circumstances of the country :-such works are the mere trash of the times, and impose upon no persons whom it is important not to deceive: whatever their title-pages profess, their subjects indicate the degree of reliance to be placed of their details; but the remark will not apply equally to the work before us, "Carnot, sa Vie Politique et Privée," which, although anonymous, is generally known to be written by an individual of some literary eminence, and which purports to give "particulia rités intéressantes qui n'ont jamais été imprimées," with his torical fidelity. In many parts of it, the author repeats his assertions of perfect impartiality, with all the anxiety of a person who is conscious that he does not deserve to be believed; but no where does he do so more ludicrously than in the opening of the Avant-propos:-" Il paraît d'abord difficile (he says) à l'historien impartial, de peindre au naturel un homme qui fut deux fois à la tête du gouvernement, deux fois proscrit pour deux causes bien différentes, deux fois complice de la destruction d'un trône héréditaire, en un mot, du trop fameux Carnot; mais la difficulté cesse pour peu qu'on observe que le même homme, encore chéri de quelques uns, et détesté des autres, s'est attiré par sa conduite, sourtout depuis deux ans, l'animadversion de son souverain et de quiconque aime le maintien du gouvernement legitime, l'extinction de tout germe révolutionaire, et la tranquillité de son pays."-This is, in truth, to say that, while some admire, and others condemn Carnot, it ceases to be difficult to be impartial, because he has incurred the animadversion of his sovereign. A little further on, after adverting to Carnot's two celebrated pamphlets, he exclaims: Voilà pourtant l'idole de quelques hommes égarés ou factieux! Voilà le prétendu Caton qu'il faut entière 66 ment démasquer, l'hypocrite cent fois plus dangereux sans doute que le Ministre son collègue, que tous les Français maintenant connaissent et abhorrent. Il ne nous appartient point de faire ici l'apologie de cet ouvrage; mais nous pouvons certifier l'authenticité de toutes les particuliarités jusqu'à ce moment inconnues, que nous y rapportons, et nous aimons à croire que le public nous saura quelque gré d'avoir, en refutant les mensonges et les paradoxes politiques de Carnot, sontenu la nécessité et apprécié les avantages du gouvernement partenel sous lequel nous avons le bonheur de vivre." One of the many evils of a licensed press is, that works which are permitted to be printed, are supposed by many of their readers to have received, not only the allowance, but the approbation of the government; which is thereby made a party to all the fabrications, and a supporter of all the arguments they contain: this has been more especially the case with the volume on our table, which has been widely circulated in all parts of France, and has been swallowed by some as a sort of authenticated official refutation of the productions of Carnot, to vindicate his vote against Louis XVI., and his conduct during what is fashionably called the interregnum of France, viz. the period between the expulsion and return of Louis XVIII. We do not charge the author of this volume with any absolute mis statement of facts which are in the knowledge of most of the inhabitants of Europe, but at least he has perverted and distorted them; and has besides, among his particuliarités intéressantes, as he calls them, inserted, merely on his own unsupported authority, anecdotes, some of which contradict themselves, and other matters which come in a most questionable shape. We shall notice some of these as we proceed. This impartial writer, who professes to pay such devotion to "la verité de l'histoire," opens his work in these terms: Quand du milieu des débris d'un trône, relevé deux fois par la justice nationale et par le vœu de tous les peuples, on entend sans cesse un nouvel Erostrate s'écrier d'une voix lugubre, mais audacieuse encore, qu'il n'a point porté une main sacrilége sur ce trône; quand, après avoir participé à l'assassinat du meilleur des rois, il ose imputer cette atrocité à une nation entiere, qui la dèsavoue avec toute l'horreur qu'elle inspire: quel est l'écrivain, le Français, qui pourrait contenir son indignation, garder le silence, et ne point déchirer le reste du voile dont cet hypocrite s'efforce de se couvrir encore? Telle est la tâche que nous nous sommes imposée. Celui |