choose to render the old Marechal unpopular with her readers, otherwise she might have thrown the business of counteraction upon his shoulders. Avoiding that, she has considerably impaired the interest of her tale by making it unnatural; for nobody would believe that Edouard would deny to himself the possession of a heart which he had so long and so successfully solicited.

After staying about six months in the delightful retreat of Faverange, the Marechal was recalled to court. The ascendancy which Edouard had obtained over the affections of Natalie, soon became evident to that crowd of fashionable admirers, by which she was surrounded, and scandal was not slow to whisper abroad that Natalie, the daughter of one of the most noble houses in France, was about to form a mesalliance. The rumour at length reached the Marechal's ear, Natalie confessed every thing, and Edouard was no longer permitted to remain in the family of Olonne. His only resource was to seek in America, an honourable termination to a life which had no longer any attractions for him.

The officer, who is the imaginary depositary of the tale, concludes it thus:

I spent the night in reflections suggested by the story of Edouard's life. I pitied his fate, and wished that I could afford him some consolation. But I felt that I had no remedy to offer which could in any degree lighten his afflictions. The next morning, I went into his chamber at an early hour; he was not there. I observed on the table some newspapers which had just arrived from France. Nobody could tell whither he had gone. As I knew that an attack was intended to be made this morning on the English camp, I became anxious about him, and though suffering from wounds which I had recently received, I mounted my horse and followed the march of the troops. I found them engaged in a violent cannonade in order to drive the enemy from a strong position. I saw Edouard in the front rank, and I reached him in time to receive him as he was falling covered with wounds. His blood gushed out in torrents; I tried to stop it. "Let me die,

for me;

he said: need not be sorry you the measure of life is my filled; existence is intolerable; for me all is lost." He reclined his head on my breast, and expired.

In one of the newspapers I observed the following paragraph: "Yesterday were celebrated, in the parish church of Saint-Sulpice, the funeral obsequies of Madame Louise-Adelaide-Natalie d'Olonne, widow of the Duke de Nevers, who died, of consumption, in her twenty-first year. After the ceremony the cavalcade set out for the Limousin, where the Duchess de Nevers expressed a wish to be interred, and her remains will be deposited in the vault of her ancestors in the church of Faverange."

• Towards

Towards the end of the same year peace enabled me to return to France; and I brought home with me the body of my unfortu nate friend. I requested and obtained permission from the Marechal d'Olonne to deposit it in the vault which contained the earthly remains of her whom in life he loved. I laid him at the foot of Natalie's coffin, and then for the first time I felt my grief consoled.

6 The Marechal d'Olonne had withdrawn himself from court and from the world. He resided at Faverange to the close of a long life, which he devoted to acts of benevolence. But though his days were many and to all appearance tranquil, he still was wrapt in the profoundest melancholy. He often said that he had deceived himself in thinking that there were in life two modes of being happy.'

ART. XIII. Sophie Ariele; Eine Novelle. Von L. M. FOUQUÉ. Berlin. 1825.

TH CHIS is another, and, we believe, the latest of the BaronFouquÉ's novels. It is the most mysterious, and, to say truth, the most unintelligible production we have yet seen from the rhapsodical press of Germany. As it has not been translated into English, and is most unlikely, if we may be allowed to form a judgment, ever to find its way into general circulation in this country, we shall enable the reader, if we can, to inform himself of its leading features. The only glimpse of meaning, indeed, which we can gather from its pages is an intended allegorical illustration of the doctrines of Christianity. But if we are right in attributing so sublime an object to the work before us, then we must say that its details are eminently fantastical and absurd.

A Doctor Matthieu, a physician living in Marseilles, is in correspondence with Emanuel Swedenborg, by the good offices of certain carrier-pigeons. Why the name of Swedenborg is introduced, we are at a loss to conceive. When these matters are properly expounded, a young Swede, named Gustavus Gyllenskiold, presents himself to the Doctor with the following credentials: Relief for friend Gustavus Gyllenskiold from his frightful dreams, through friend Matthieu in Marseilles.' This is in the hand-writing of Swedenborg. Of course the Doctor attends to such a recommendation, though not with so good a grace as might. have been expected, for there is some little jarring between him and his patient before they come to the point. last, however, Gustavus (who is, like all the Baron's men, a hero par excellence,) explains the nature of his dreams, of

At.

which the following sample will probably be enough for our readers.

Kingly heads rise from out the vapoury world of dreams, with long grey beards, and, anon, female forms of such wonderful and dazzling beauty, that my closed eyes smart before the splendour of their charms. These forms might, in truth, be called wonderfully beautiful; but around their sharply-pouting coral lips there is such an air of mockery, and their eyes, meanwhile, sparkle with such hostility, that a deep and awful horror takes possession of my soul. And then, too, they sing so wildly and detestably, and it ever seems that I understand their words, and again, that I understand them not; and an over-strained attention to their now appearing, now obscured import, makes my brain giddy. Then the old crowned heroes shake their pale heads in disapprobation, and again they appear overspread with the fiery glow of rage. And then, in wild alarm, the females turn pale, and their faces are convulsed. On a sudden, the females become the pale, crowned heads, and the old, rage-inflamed heroes are transformed into the appalling and beautiful forms. And now they vex and worry each other, and seem anxious to escape from themselves; and this they cannot accomplish; and then there begins such a dreadful race! - such a vain, unmeaning chase, that in the end they all fall down like deformed corpses. And now the fearful chorus commences, the terrible corpses sing the words "Leben ist Sterben" (Life is Death), and I, against my will, sing with them, and, alarmed by the hollow sound of my own dreaming voice, I start and awake. But still the dreadful sounds haunt me, "Leben ist Sterben." And earth looks strangely on me, and the light of the sun changes to a misty grey, and the shout of the glad feast fills my heart with sadness, and mid-day to me is midnight.'

-

What Dr. Matthieu would have prescribed for this case, a circumstance we must presently mention prevents us from knowing. It is the custom in Germany to eat heavy suppers. We are greatly mistaken if the mystical Baron be not in the habit of doing that meal great justice, and of suffering from its consequent effects; for it is quite clear that he here describes his hero as being afflicted with nightmare. During the previous conversation between Gustavus and the Doctor,

The door opened softly, and in tripped a most delicate female figure, a white dove upon her arm, herself as delicate and snowy as her dove. She coloured slightly at the unexpected presence of the stranger, curtsied to him with ineffable grace, and, whispering a few words into the Doctor's ear, disappeared through the opposite door.'

This is Sophie Ariele! a being whom the Doctor encountering somewhere in the clouds makes his wife. In his letter

to

to Matthieu, stating the non-effect of his enquiries upon that subject, there is one remark so naïve, and yet so philosophical, that we cannot refrain from giving our readers the benefit of it. After stating that he had in vain applied to the spirits of the air and the spirits of the waters, he comes to the fire-spirits: of whom he says, Well, Matthieu, you yourself, as a good natural philosopher, know that there is no jesting with salamanders!

But we left the Doctor about to prescribe for his patient; and while he is doing so, the latter falls into a sleep, from which he is aroused by a song from the lady of the white dove,' who is likewise amusing herself with tearing up the prescription, and throwing the fragments out of the window. She, in fact, undertakes the cure of Gustavus, not by means of her husband's prescriptions, but in a manner not perhaps more miraculous, had they been successful. She appoints her dove to be the guardian of his slumbers; and in one of his usual dreams, Psyche descends from heaven, and outsings the dreadful choristers in a song of her own, to the words "Leben ist Leben" (Life is Life). In the end, the mighty heroes,' and the wonderfully beautiful females,' not liking this sort of interruption to their revels, gradually disappear, and Gustavus eventually learns that "Sterben ist Leben" (Death is Life). The convalescent remains with them for some time, and rescues Ariele from the power of certain corsairs. He is then not heard of for twenty years. During the lapse of that period we presume that prescriptions continue to be written by the Doctor, and to be torn and " given to the winds" by his wife, or the cloud-born spirit, who, to avoid scandal, passes as such, and is called by her neighbours "Madame Matthieu." We find, however, other proofs of her corporeality, for she has brought the Doctor a son, who being hard pressed by corsairs (again!) in the Mediterranean, is delivered by Gustavus, who happens to be cruizing in those The hero, however, falls in fight with the Moors; and his fate being made known to "Monsieur le Docteur" and to "Madame," they erect a monument to his memory, with this inscription, "Sterben ist Leben." And so the NOVEL of Sophie Ariele ends.

seas.

429

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