the dress of a peasant, with a sack at her back, and a pair of fowls in her hands. She found that the tone was now to flatter and conciliate the insurgents by all sorts of civilities and compliments; and after some time, she and her mother applied for, and obtained, a full pardon for all their offences against the Republican government. This amnesty drew back to light many of her former friends, who had been universally supposed to be dead; and proved, by the prodigious numbers whom it brought from their hiding-places in the neighbourhood, how generally the lower orders were attached to their cause, or how universal the virtues of compassion and fidelity to confiding misery are in the national character. It also brought to the writer's knowledge many shocking particulars of the cruel executions which so long polluted that devoted city. We may give a few of the instances in her own words, as a specimen of her manner of writing; to which, in our anxiety to condense the information she affords us, we have paid perhaps too little attention. "Madame de Jourdain fut menée sur la Loire, pour être noyée avec ses trois filles. Un soldat voulut sauver la plus jeune, qui était fort belle. Elle se jeta à l'eau pour partager le sort de sa mère. La malheureuse enfant tomba sur des cadavres. et n'enfonça point. Elle criait: Poussez-moi, je n'ai pas assez d'eau! et elle périt. 64 Mademoiselle de Cuissard, âgée de seize ans, qui était plus belle encore, s'attira aussi le même intérêt d'un officier qui passa trois heures à ses pieds, la suppliant de se laisser sauver. Elle était avec une vielle parente que cet homme ne voulait pas se risquer à dérober au supplice. Mademoiselle de Cuissard se précipita dans la Loire avec elle. "Une mort affreuse fut celle de Mademoiselle de la Roche St. André. Elle était grosse: on l'épargna. On lui laissa nourrir son enfant; mais il mourut, et on la fit périr le lendemain! Au reste, il ne faut pas croire que toutes les femmes enceintes fussent respectées. Cela était même fort rare; plus communément les soldats massacraient femmes et enfants. Il n'y avait que devant les tribunaux, où l'on observait ces exceptions; et on y laissait aux femmes le temps de nourrir leurs enfants, comme étant une obligation républicaine. C'est en quoi consistait l'humanité des gens d'alors. Les aucun soin. A peine les connaissait-on. envoya chercher Lamberty. Il la conduisit dans un "Quelque temps aprés, la discorde divisa les républicains de Nantes. On prit le prétexte d'accuser Lamberty d'avoir dérobé des femmes aux noyades, et d'en avoir noyé qui ne devaient pas l'être. Un jeune homme, nommé Robin, qui était fort dévoué à Lamberty, vint saisir Agathe chez Madame S***, la traîna dans le bateau, et voulut la poignarder, pour faire disparaître une preuve du crime qu'on parvint à l'attendrir, et il la cacha chez un de ses reprochait à son patron. Agathe se jeta à ses pieds; amis, nommé Lavaux, qui était honnête homme, et qui avait déjà recueilli Madame de l'Epinay: mais on sut dès le lendemain l'asile d'Agathe, et on vint l'arrêter. When the means of hearing of her friends were thus suddenly restored, there was little to hear but what was mournful. Her father had taken refuge in a wood with a small party of horsemen, after the rout of Savenay, and afterwards collected a little force, with which they seized on the town of Ancenis, and had nearly forced the passage of the Loire; but they were surrounded, and made prisoners, and all shot in the market-place! The brave Henri de Larochejaquelein had gained the north bank with about twenty followers, and wandered many days over the burnt and bloody solitudes of the once happy La Vendée. Overcome with fatigue and hunger, they at last reached an inhabited farm-house, and fell "Ma pauvre Agathe avait couru de bien grands fast asleep in the barn. They were soon dangers. Elle m'avait quitté à Nort, pour profiter roused, however, by the news that a party of de cette amnistie prétendue, dont on avait parlé dans the republicans were approaching the same ce moment. Elle vint à Nantes, et fut conduite devant le général Lamberty, le plus féroce des amis house; but were so worn out, that they would de Carrier. La figure d'Agathe lui plait: As-tu not rise, even to provide against that extreme peur, brigande ?' lui dit-il. Non, général,' répondit- hazard. The party accordingly entered ; and elle. Hé bien! quand tu auras peur, souviens-toi being almost as much exhausted as the others, de Lamberty,' ajouta-t-il. Elle fut conduite à threw themselves down, without asking any l'entrepôt. C'est la trop fameuse prison où l'on entassoit les victimes destinées à être noyées. questions, at the other end of the barn, and Chaque nuit on venait en prendre par centaines, slept quietly beside them. Henri afterwards pour les mettre sur les bateaux. Là, on lait les found out M. de la Charrette, by whom he malheureux deux à deux, et on les poussait dans was coldly, and even rudely received; but he l'eau, à coups de baïonnette. On saisissait indissoon raised a little army of his own, and betinctenient tout ce qui se trouvait à l'entrepôt; came again formidable in the scenes of his tellement qu'on noya un jour l'état major d'une first successes:-till one day, riding a little in corvette Anglaise, qui était prisonnier de guerre. Une autre fois, Carrier, voulant donner un exemple front of his party, he fell in with two repubde l'austérité des mœurs républicaines, fit enfermer lican soldiers, upon whom his followers were trois cents filles publiques de la ville, et les mal- about to fire, when he said, "No, no, they heureuses créatures furent noyées! Enfin, l'on shall have quarter;" and pushing up to them, estime qu'il a péri à l'entrepôt quinze mille per- called upon them to surrender. Without say sonnes en un mois. Il est vrai qu'outre les supplices, la misère et la maladie ravageaient les prisonniers, ing a word, one of them raised his piece, and qui étaient pressés sur la paille, et qui ne recevaient shot him right through the forehead. He fell at once dead before them, and was buried where he fell. pay "Ainsi périt, à vingt et un ans, Henri de la Rochejaquelein. Encore à présent, quand les sans se rappelient l'ardeur et l'éclat de son courage, sa modestie, sa facilité, et ce caractère de guerrier, et de bon enfant, ils parlent de lui avec fierté et avec amour. Il n'est pas un Vendéen dont on ne voie le regard s'animer, quand il raconte comment il a servi sous M. Henri."-Vol. ii. pp. 187, 188. tle in the same cause which proved fatal to the first, during the short period of Bonaparte's last reign, and but a few days before the decisive battle of Waterloo. We have not left room now for any general observations-and there is no need of them. The book is, beyond all question, extremely curious and interesting-and we really have no idea that any reflections of ours could appear half so much so as the abstract we have The fate of the gallant Marigny was still now given in their stead. One remark, howmore deplorable. He joined Charrette and ever, we shall venture to make, now that our Stofflet; but some misunderstanding having abstract is done. If all France were like La arisen among them upon a point of discipline, Vendée in 1793, we should anticipate nothing they took the rash and violent step of bring- but happiness from the restoration of the ing him to a court-martial, and sentencing him Bourbons and of the old government. But the to death for disobedience. To the horror of very fact that the Vendeans were crushed by all the Vendeans, and the great joy of the re- the rest of the country, proves that this is not publicans, this unjust and imprudent sentence the case: And indeed it requires but a mowas carried into execution; and the cause de- ment's reflection to perceive, that the rest of prived of the ablest of its surviving champions. France could not well resemble La Vendée in When they had gratified their curiosity with its royalism, unless it had resembled it in these melancholy details, Madame de L. and the other peculiarities upon which that royalher mother set out for Bourdeaux, and from ism was founded-unless it had all its nothence to Spain, where they remained for blesse resident on their estates; and living in nearly two years-but were at last permitted their old feudal relations with a simple and to return; and, upon Bonaparte's accession agricultural vassalage. The book indeed to the sovereignty, were even restored to a shows two things very plainly, and both of great part of their possessions. On the earnest them well worth remembering. In the first entreaty of her mother, she was induced at place, that there may be a great deal of kindlast to give her hand to Louis de Larochejaque-ness and good affection among a people of lein, brother to the gallant Henri-and the inheritor of his principles and character. This match took place in 1802, and they lived in peaceful retirement till the late movements for the restoration of the house of Bourbon. The notice of this new alliance terminates the original Memoirs; but there is a supplement, containing rather a curious account of the intrigues and communications of the royalist party in Bourdeaux and the South, through the whole course of the Revolution, and of the proceedings by which they conceive that they accelerated the restoration of the King in 1814. It may not be uninteresting to add, that since the book was published, the second husband of the unfortunate writer fell in bat insurgents against an established government; and, secondly, that where there is such an aversion to a government, as to break out in spontaneous insurrection, it is impossible entirely to subdue that aversion, either by severity or forbearance-although the difference of the two courses of policy is, that severity, even when carried to the savage extremity of devastation and indiscriminate slaughter, leads only to the adoption of similar atrocities in return-while forbearance is at least rewarded by the acquiescence of those who are conscious of weakness, and gives time and opportunity for those mutual concessions by which alone contending factions or principles can ever be permanently reconciled. (November, 1812.) Mémoires de FREDERIQUE SOPHIE WILHELMINE DE PRUSSE, Margrave de Bareith, Sœur de Frederic le Grand. Ecrits de sa Main. 8vo. 2 tomes. Brunswick, Paris, et Londres: 1812. PHILOSOPHERS have long considered it as probable, that the private manners of absolute Sovereigns are vulgar, their pleasures low, and their dispositions selfish; that the two extremes of life, in short, approach pretty closely to each other; and that the Masters of mankind, when stripped of the artificial pomp and magnificence which invests them in public, resemble nothing so nearly as the meanest of the multitude. The ground of this opinion is, that the very highest and the very lowest of mankind are equally beyond the influence of that wholesome control, to which all the intermediate classes are subjected, by their mutual dependence, and the need they have for the good will and esteem of their fellows. Those who are at the very bottom of the scale are below the sphere of this influence; and those at the very top are above it. The one have no chance of distinction by any effort they are capable of making; and the other are secure of the highest degree of it, without any. Both therefore are indifferent, or very nearly so, to the opinion of mankind: the former, because the naked subsistence which they earn by their labour will not be affected the testimony of any competent observer; when the volumes before us made their ap pearance, to set theory and conjecture at rest, and make the private character of such sovereigns a matter of historical record. by that opinion; and the latter, because their legal power and preeminence are equally independent of it. Those who have nothing to lose, in short, are not very far from the condition of those who have nothing more to gain; and the maxim of reckoning one's-self last, They bear to be Memoirs of a Princess of which is the basis of all politeness, and leads, Prussia, written by herself; and are in fact insensibly, from the mere practice of dissimu- memoirs of the private life of most of the lation, to habits of kindness and sentiments of princes of Germany, written by one of their generous independence, is equally inapplica- own number-with great freedom indeed— ble to the case of those who are obviously and but with an evident partiality to the fraterniin reality the last of their kind, and those who ty; and unmasking more of the domestic are quite indisputably the first. Both there- manners and individual habits of persons in fore are deprived of the checks and of the that lofty station, than any other work with training, which restrain the selfishness, and which we are acquainted. It is ushered into call out the sensibilities of other men: And, the world without any voucher for its authenremote and contrasted as their actual situa- ticity, or even any satisfactory account of the tion must be allowed to be, are alike liable manner in which the manuscript was obtainto exhibit that disregard for the feelings of ed: But its genuineness, we understand, is others, and that undisguised preference for admitted even by those whose inclinations their own gratification, which it is the boast of would lead them to deny it, and appears to us modern refinement to have subdued, or at least | indeed to be irresistibly established by intereffectually concealed, among the happier or- nal evidence. It is written in the vulgar ders of society. In a free country, indeed, the gossiping style of a chambermaid; but at the monarch, if he share at all in the spirit of same time with very considerable cleverness liberty, may escape this degradation; because and sagacity, as to the conception and delineahe will then feel for how much he is depend- tion of character. It is full of events and porent on the good opinion of his countrymen; traits—and also of egotism, detraction, and and, in general, where there is a great ambi-inconsistency; but all delivered with an air of tion for popularity, this pernicious effect of good faith that leaves us little room to doubt high fortune will be in a great degree avoided. [ of the facts that are reported on the writer's But the ordinary class of arbitrary rulers, who found their whole claim to distinction upon the accident of their birth and station, may be expected to realize all that we have intimated as to the peculiar manners and dispositions of the Caste; to sink, like their brethren of the theatre, when their hour of representation is over, into gross sensuality, paltry intrigues, and dishonourable squabbles; and, in short, to be fully more likely to beat their wives and cheat their benefactors, than any other set of persons-out of the condition of tinkers. But though these opinions have long seemed pretty reasonable to those who presumed to reason at all on such subjects, and even appeared to be tolerably well confirmed by the few indications that could be obtained as to the state of the fact, there was but little prospect of the world at large getting at the exact truth, either by actual observation or by credible report. The tone of adulation and outrageous compliment is so firmly established, and as it were positively prescribed, for all authorized communications from the interior of a palace, that it would be ridiculous even to form a guess, as to its actual condition, from such materials: And, with regard to the casual observers who might furnish less suspected information, a great part are too vain, and too grateful for the opportunities they have enjoyed, to do any thing which might prevent their recurrence; while others are kept silent by a virtuous shame; and the remainder are discredited, and perhaps not always without reason, as the instruments of faction or envy. There seemed great reason to fear, therefore, that this curious branch of Natural History would be left to mere theory and conjecture, and never be elucidated by own authority, or, in any case, of her own belief in the justness of her opinions. Indeed, half the edification of the book consists in the lights it affords as to the character of the writer, and consequently as to the effects of the circumstances in which she was placed: nor is there any thing, in the very curious picture it presents, more striking than the part she unintentionally contributes, in the peculiarity of her own taste in the colouring and delineation. The heartfelt ennui, and the affected contempt of greatness, so strangely combined with her tenacity of all its privileges, and her perpetual intrigues and quarrels about precedence-the splendid encomiums on her own inflexible integrity, intermixed with the complacent narrative of perpetual trick and duplicity-her bitter complaints of the want of zeal and devotedness in her friends, and the desolating display of her own utter heartlessness in every page of the history-and,-finally, her outrageous abuse of almost every one with whom she is connected, alternating with professions of the greatest regard, and occasional apologies for the most atrocious among them, when they happen to conduct themselves in conformity to her own little views at the moment-are all, we think, not only irrefragable proofs of the authenticity of the singular work before us, but, * I have not recently made any enquiries on this subject: and it is possible that the authenticity of this strange book have been discredited, since the now remote period when I last heard it discussed. It is obvious at first sight that it is full of exaggerations: But that is too common a characteristic of genuine memoirs written in the tranchant style to which the minuteness and confidence of its deto which it belongs, to detract much from the credit tails may otherwise be thought to entitle it. may together with the lowness of its style and dic- | beatings with which it was frequently accomtion, are features-and pretty prominent ones panied!-feigned sicknesses-midnight con—in that portraiture of royal manners and dis- sultations-hidings behind screens and under positions which we conceive it to be its chief beds-spies at her husband's drunken orgies office and chief merit to display. In this -burning of letters, pocketing of inkstands, point of view, we conceive the publication to and all the paltry apparatus of boarding-school be equally curious and instructive; and there imposture;-together with the more revolting is a vivacity in the style, and a rapidity in the criminality of lies told in the midst of caresses, narrative, which renders it at all events very and lessons of falsehood anxiously inculcated entertaining, though little adapted for abstract on the minds of her children.-It is edifying or abridgment. We must endeavour, how-to know, that, with all this low cunning, and ever, to give our readers some notion of its contents. practice in deceiving, this poor lady was herself the dupe of a preposterous and unworthy confidence. She told every thing to a favourite chambermaid-who told it over again to one of the ministers-who told it to the King: And though the treachery of her confidante was perfectly notorious, and she herself was reduced privately to borrow money from the crecy, she never could keep from her any one thing that it was of importance to conceal. What is now before us is but a fragment, extending from the birth of the author in 1707 to the year 1742, and is chiefly occupied with the court of Berlin, down till her marriage with the Prince of Bareith in 1731. She sets off with a portrait of her father Frederic William, whose peculiarities are already pret-King of England in order to bribe her to sety well known by the dutiful commentaries of his son, and Voltaire. His daughter begins with him a little more handsomely; and assures us, that he had "talents of the first order"-"an excellent heart"—and, in short, "all the qualities which go to the constitution of great men "Such is the flattering outline: But candour required some shading; and we must confess that it is laid on freely, and with good effect. His temper, she admits, was ungovernable, and often hurried him into excesses altogether unworthy of his rank and situation. Then it must also be allowed that he was somewhat hard-hearted; and throughout his whole life gave a decided preference to the cardinal virtue of Justice over the weaker attribute of Mercy. Moreover, "his excessive love of money exposed him" (her Royal Highness seems to think very unjustly) "to the imputation of avarice." And, finally, she informs us, without any circumlocution, that he was a crazy bigot in religion-suspicious, jealous, and deceitful-and entertained a profound contempt for the whole sex to which his dutiful biographer belongs. This "great and amiable" prince was married, as every body knows, to a princess of Hanover, a daughter of our George the First; of whom he was outrageously jealous, and whom he treated with a degree of brutality that would almost have justified any form of revenge. The princess, however, seems to have been irreproachably chaste: But had, notwithstanding, some of the usual vices of slaves; and tormented her tyrant to very good purpose by an interminable system of the most crooked and provoking intrigues, chiefly about the marriages of her family, but occasionally upon other subjects, carried on by the basest tools and instruments, and for a long time in confederacy with the daughter who has here recorded their history. But though she had thus the satisfaction of frequently enraging her husband, we cannot help thinking that she had herself by far the worst of the game; and indeed it is impossible to read, without a mixed feeling of pity and contempt, the catalogue of miserable shifts which this poor creature was perpetually forced to employ to avoid detection, and escape the The The ingenious Princess before us had for many years no other brother than the Great Frederic, who afterwards succeeded to the throne, but whose extreme ill health in his childhood seemed to render her accession a matter of considerable probability. Her alliance consequently became an early object of ambition to most of the Protestant princes of her time; and before she was fully eight years old, her father and mother had had fifty quarrels about her marriage. About the same time, she assures us that a Swedish officer, who was a great conjurer, informed her, after inspecting her hand, "that she would be sought in marriage by the Kings of Sweden, England, Russia, and Poland, but would not be united to any of them :". -a prediction, the good Princess declares, that was afterwards verified in a very remarkable manner. Swedish proposition indeed follows hard upon the prophecy; for the very next year engagements are taken for that match, which are afterwards abandoned on account of the tender age of the parties.-The Princess here regales us with an account of her own vivacity and angelic memory at this period, and with a copious interlude of all the court scandal during the first days of her existence. But as we scarcely imagine that the scandalous chronicle of Berlin for the year 1712, would excite much interest in this country in the year 1812, we shall take the liberty to pass over the gallantries of Madame de Blaspil and the treasons of M. Clement; merely noticing, that after the execution of the latter, the King ordered every letter that came to his capital to be opened, and never slept without drawn swords and cocked pistols at his side. But while he was thus trembling at imaginary dangers, he was, if we can believe his infant daughter, upon the very brink of others sufficiently serious. His chief favourites were the Prince of Anhalt, who is briefly characterized in these Memoirs as brutal, cruel and deceitful, and the minister Grumkow, who is represented, on the same authority, as a mere concentration of all the vices. These worthy persons had set their hearts upon our author's marriage with the nephew of the former, and her ultimate elevation to the throne by the death of her sickly brother. But when that brother begins to improve in health, and the old King not only makes his will without consulting them, but threatens to live to an unreasonable age, they naturally become impatient for the accomplishment of their wishes, and resolve to cut off both father and son, the first time they can catch them together at an exhibition of ropedancing,with which elegant entertainment it seems the worthy monarch was in the habit of recreating himself almost every evening. The. whole of this dreadful plot, we are assured, was revealed to the King, with all its particularités, by a lady in the confidence of the conspirators; but they contrive, somehow or other, to play their parts so adroitly, that, after a long investigation, they are reinstated in favour, and their fair accuser sent to pine, on bread and water, in a damp dungeon at Spandau. times to convulsive starts and spasms, and being seized with one of them when at table, with his knife in his hand, put his hosts into no little bodily terror. He told the Queen, however, that he would do her no harm, and took her hand in token of his good humour; but squeezed it so unmercifully that she was forced to cry out-at which he laughed again with great violence, and said, "her bones were not so well knit as his Catherine's." There was to be a grand ball in the evening; but as soon as he had done eating, he got up, and trudged home by himself to his lodgings in the suburbs. Next day they went to see the curiosities of the place.-What pleased him most was a piece of antique sculpture, most grossly indecent. Nothing, however, would serve him but that his wife should kiss this figure; and when she hesitated, he told her he would cut off her head if she refused. He then asked this piece and several other things of value from the King, and packed them off for Petersburgh, without ceremony. In a few days after he took his departure; leaving the palace in which he had been lodged in such a state of filth and dilapidation as to remind one, says the princess, of the desolation of Jerusalem. In the year 1717, Peter the Great came with his Empress and court to pay a visit at Berlin; and as the whole scene is described with great vivacity in the work before us, and serves to illustrate its great theme of the private manners of sovereigns, we shall make rather a fuller abstract of it than we can afford We now come to a long chapter of the aufor most parts of the narrative. The degrees thor's personal sufferings, from a sort of half of grossness and pretension are infinite-and governess, half chambermaid, of the name of the court of Prussia, where the Sovereign got Letti, who employed herself all day in beatdrunk and kicked his counsellors, and beating and scratching her, for refusing to repeat the ladies of his family, thought itself entitled to treat Peter and his train as a set of Barbarians! On his first presentation, the Czar took Frederic firmly by the hand, and said, he was glad to see him; he then offered to kiss the Queen-but she declined the honour. He next presented his son and daughter, and four hundred ladies in waiting-the greater part of whom, our Princess assures us, were washerwomen and scullions promoted to that nominal dignity. Almost every one of them, however, she adds, had a baby richly dressed in her arms-and when any one asked whose it was, answered with great coolness and complacency, that "the Czar had done her the honour to make her the mother of it."-The Czarine was very short, tawny, and ungraceful-dressed like a provincial German player, in an old fashioned robe, covered with dirt and silver, and with some dozens of medals and pictures of saints strung down the front, which clattered every time she moved, like the bells of a packhorse. She spoke little German, and no French; and finding that she got on but ill with the Queen and her party, she called her fool into a corner to come and entertain her in Russian-which she did with such effect, that she kept her in a continual roar of laughter before all the court. The Czar himself is described as tall and rather handsome, though with something intolerably harsh in his physiognomy. On first seeing our royal author he took her up in his arms, and rubbed the skin off her face in kissing her with his rough beard; laughing very heartily at the airs with which she resented this familiarity. He was liable at all that the King and the Queen said in her hearing, and kept her awake all night by snoring like fifty troopers. This accomplished person also invented ingenious nicknames, which seem to have had much currency, for all the leading persons about the court. The Queen she always called La grande ånesse, and her two favourites respectively La grosse vache, and La sotte bête. Sometimes she only kicked the Princess' shins-at other times she pummelled her on the nose till "she bled like a calf;" and occasionally excoriated her face by rubbing it with acrid substances. Such, however, was the magnanimity of her royal pupil, that she never made the least complaint of this dreadful usage; but an old lady found it out, and told the Queen, that "her daughter was beaten every day like plaster," and that she would be brought to her one morning with her bones broken, if she did not get another attendant. So La Letti is dismissed, though with infinite difficulty, and after a world of intrigue; because she had been recommended by my Lady Arlington, who had a great deal to say with the court of England, with which it was, at that time, a main object to keep well! But she is got rid of at last, and decamps with all the Princess' wardrobe, who is left without a rag to cover her nakedness. Soon after this, the King is taken with a colic one very hot June, and is judiciously shut up in a close room with a large comfortable fire; by the side of which he commands his daughter to sit, and watch like a vestal, till her eyes are ready to start from her head; and she falls into a dysentery, of which she gives a long history. |