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universal distress pervaded the whole country, It was by these means that thousands of the wretched inhabitants of Bengal perished through hunger in the granary of India,' P. 185.

The fourteenth note on Sahara, the Great Desert, is a very interesting one, but too long to transcribe, and not easy to abridge. In the eighteenth note, entitled 'Tides in the Atmosphere,' which colonel Capper seems to deny, the observations are, we think, less correct. The nineteenth, on the currents in the ocean, is curious and interesting. The meteorological remarks and prognostics of the weather are not always correct. To these our author's theory seldom applies, except in a general outline.

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The Appendix consists in a great measure of miscellaneous subjects. The first article is on the rise and progress of the fine arts, which are proved, from their history, to have seldom attained any high degree of perfection, but where they have been immediately employed in the service of religion. The second is entitled, "Observations on Tartary.' The limits of that vast country have not been ascertained. Our author thinks that a range of mountains may exist between the latitudes of 50 and 55° north; so that Siberia may include the countries north of 50° to the Frozen Ocean, and from the confines of European Russia to Behring's Straits. Tartary will of course comprise the countries between latitudes 31 and 50°, and from the Black Sea to the empire of China. The Tartars of this region are supposed by Mr. Warton to have retired from the progress of the Roman armies northward, and to have peopled Scandinavia under Odin. It was fortunate, adds colonel Capper, that the Tartarian heroes of a later date turned to the east, rather than the west; or letters, and the empires then formed, might have experienced a common ruin. A Persian origin may, he thinks, be traced in our words, the structure of our language, and the customs of our ancestors; which he enlarges on with great ingenuity.

Vapour on the hills' is not always a sign of rain,' without other accompanying circumstances, of which our author is not aware. Subterraneous winds are well explained; and tables of the velocities of the wind and of the weather at Aleppo are useful additions. On the subject of electricity we observe some mistakes, apparently important in their consequences. On the whole, we think this work curious and valuable. In the present state of science, however, we had reason to expect more; and perhaps, at a future period, the author may enrich another edition with some modern discoveries, and their application.

ART. III.-Historical and Political Memoirs of the Reign of Lewis XVI. from his Marriage to his Death, &c. (Conti nued from Vol. XXXIV. p. 254.)

WE proceed to lay before our readers, that they may justly appreciate this publication for themselves, several extracts from its voluminous author.

• We have seen a most extraordinary occurrence take place in France. A royal house, the most powerful and most considerable in Europe, is precipitated from the throne of Henry IV. in a very short space of time. Has nature co-operated in the production of this catastrophe? Such a question, when the morals of mankind are the object of consideration, is not foreign to the province of history. I shall endeavour to answer it.

• When Lewis XVI. ascended the throne, there were in France five families of the blood royal, and fourteen princesses.

• Besides the royal house, and those of Orleans, Condé, Conti, and Penthièvre, there were also in Europe three families descended from the house of Bourbon, which reigned in Spain, at Naples, and at Parma, and in which were six princes. At no preceding period had the house of Bourbon appeared either more flourishing or more numerous. The succession to the crown, and the stability of the government, had more sureties on the side of nature than ever before had been known.

The case was not the same with respect to the political talents which, for the preservation of monarchy, those princes ought to have possessed. The heroic ages of the house of Bourbon were expired: the blood of Henry IV. had lost the qualities which create monarchies, and either prevent or extinguish revolutions. The double prejudice of the royal and catholic families in Europe, of forming matrimonial alliances only with those of the same rank and of the catholic religion, had induced the house of Bourbon to reject every marriage with protestant houses, and to confine its connubial inter course to those of Medicis, Austria, Savoy, and Bourbon. The blood of the dynasty which reigned over the French was held so sacred, that to mix it with that of the nobility of the kingdom would have debased it in the estimation of the people: the Bourbons were obliged to have recourse to marriages with Austrians, Saxons, &c. to preserve the dignity of the race: a singular restraint in the physical history of mankind, reprobated by nature, and which subjected the family to great inconveniences. In reality, whatever additional consideration the house acquired by marriages contracted with its equals, it lost more than an equivalent in point of character and qualities; and it could not but degenerate from the virtue of its ancestors, the original founders of its power. A kind of old age of the family, an effeteness of character, and an almost total annihilation of great passions and sentiments, became a necessary consequence of generations being multiplied and formed of the same blood.

For preserving both the vegetable and animal tribes in health and vigour, and for preventing a degeneracy of the different species, the means ordained by nature is a mixture of families. In the vege

table kingdom, this purpose is effected by grafting; and it is a principle of policy among enlightened people to discourage intermarriages with relations. Nature suffers violence by repeatedly producing new generations from the same blood; while, on the contrary, she is invigorated and rendered more prolific, by connubial alliances with individuals of a different stock; the vital principle, which had been impaired, then recovers its activity, a new individuality, both physical and moral, is generated, and there ensues a recomposition, which gives life and energy to character. Domestic animals would degenerate in less than an age, if the breed were not crossed. In short, the mixture of distinct races improves every offspring, not only in vigour of constitution, but in beauty and form.

In the human species, this doctrine is confirmed by a thousand observations. We are acquainted with families in which not physical evils only, such as the gout, consumption, and other maladies, seem to be established, and to pass from father to son, but the germ of many moral infirmities also, such as folly, imbecillity of mind, nervous affections, madness, and other similar defects, circulates in the blood. M. Turgot "made haste," according to his expression, to regenerate the department of finance, because, said he, " from time immemorial, my ancestors have died of the gout at the age of fifty years." The history of hereditary diseases is well known. As long as those maladies exist, the race is continually in danger of becoming extinct; its individuals lead a valetudinary life: but when new blood is introduced for the support of a fresh generation, the constitution of the family is restored and the lineage improved.

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The practice of grafting, and changing the grain, with respect to vegetables, and crossing the breed in animals, appears then to maintain and improve the species. Multiplied copulations with the same blood, on the contrary, seem to be the cause of decay and extinction. The difficulty of crossing the breed in its own propagation was, during two centuries, the radical defect in the house of Bourbon.

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Where do you find in the race that decision of character, that firmness of mind, impetuosity of volition, enlightened by genius, which animated Henry IV. the head and founder of the power of this house? We see how in each generation the strength of character diminishes, from the conqueror of the league, when the king subdued the people, to the 6th of October, when the people subdued their king.

The house of Medicis commenced with heroes; and its latter princes, at the epoch of its extinction, will be unknown to history. Behold cardinal York terminating obscurely at Rome the destiny of the Stuarts! see how the last male heirs of the house of Hapsburg finished their career at Vienna, in the person of the insignificant Charles VI.! read the history of the house of Valois, and that of Charlemagne; examine the character of the last of the offspring which terminate these different races: observe how many of the sovereign houses of Europe are now decayed, by forsaking the dictates of nature, like the last shoots of those dynasties of which history recites the decrepitude; while nature is maintained unimpaired and perpetuated among the people, accompanied with health, vigour,

and increasing population. To conclude, look into our own history, how many families of the blood royal are become extinct since the time of Hugh Capet! Examine the genealogy of the house of Bourbon, by Desormeaux; examine other larger genealogies of the same family, and you will find that the observation is verified. Reflect on the chronological table containing the creations of the ducal families of the kingdom: all those which existed before Henry III. are extinct all those which existed in 1572, at the time when the house of Crussol was advanced to the peerage, are no more; for in 1789 the house of Crussol remained the most ancient. The desire of posterity, and the solicitude, so natural, of preserving families from extinction, one might have supposed would have concurred in the preservation of these privileged races. But such sentiments have been useless. The mass of the people alone is preserved, by their morals and by the perpetual circulation of the blood from one race of Frenchmen to another; so that our population is composed nearly of four millions and a half of families, which descend from their father without any extinction of the male line, transmitting existence. to future ages by propagation, exemplifying in the present revolution the bravery of the ancient Gauls, and preserving to their country the splendor, the energy, and the capacity of the founders of the na

tion.

'I might confirm these observations by a statistical account of the youth and old age of the different nations which occupy the globe; I might show how in the north the human species degenerates, and the duration of life decreases, from the severity of the climate and the solitary state of the inhabitants, with whom the neighbouring people refuse to form an alliance. I might mention the great family of the Chinese, separated from the rest of the world, through a long succession of ages, and exhibiting in the countenance of every individual a proof of their national deterioration. These colonies, and many others, have been degenerating from 'a remote period, in consequence of their isolated manners, and of prejudices which hinder them from intermarrying with other nations; while in the districts of Greece, where the laws, the manners, and, above all, the geographical position of the inhabitants, permitted a continual intercourse with strangers, there resulted a race of the human species the most beautiful with respect to person, and in a moral view the most interesting, as long as civilisation remained in the governments of that happy country.

In fine, the perfection of the human lineage is yet more perceptible in the mixture of the blood of negroes with that of Europeans, in respect both of corporeal form and of morals: whence it may clearly be inferred, that the chief cause of the degeneracy of the blood of the Bourbons arose from its circulation in the same vessels; the prejudices respecting both its dignity and religion having neither permitted it to form alliances with protestant princes, nor to chuse from among the people young women of the country, to preserve to the dynasty a continuance of health and vigour of constitution." Vol. ii. P. II.

Our author, in this chapter, assumes the province of the natu

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ral historian; and the doctrines of Buffon are pursued to their utmost extent. We have nothing to do with the religious creed of any man, provided he do not insult the public by its communication; to his God and his conscience he is alone amenable. But, disguised as the religious opinions of this writer are throughout the whole of his Memoirs, and honestly as he seems to have been attached to the cause of royalty, we think we have some glance, from the specimen before us, of what the abbé Barruel refers to, when, in his Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme,' he speaks of the apostate Soulavie,' who, he tells us, was sent to Geneva by Robespierre to consummate the work of the philosophists. We mean not, however, to compare either the fidelity or the judgement of the memoirist of Lewis XVI. to those of the memoirist of Jacobinism; but we totally protest against the system here adverted to, of the uniform materiality of all animal and vegetable nature. We have no hesitation in admitting several of the principles to which it appeals; but we must contend for a discrimination which does not exist in the school in which our author has studied; and we cannot avoid noticing, that several of the positions he has here hardily advanced are either totally destitute of foundation, or altogether adverse to the conclusion at which he is aiming. What does M. Soulavie mean by a proof of national deterioration exhibited among the great family of the Chinese, in the countenance of every individual?' as though fourscore millions of inhabitants would not afford a sufficient variety to graft, and change, and cross the breed,' to prevent a decay in the species. The districts of Greece' are in like manner ill selected to prove that it was from a continual intercourse with strangers that there resulted a race of the human species, the most beautiful with respect to person, and in a moral view the most interesting as long as civilisation remained in the government of that happy country.' It is well known that no people on the face of the earth ever exhibited so much national pride as the Greeks; and that, far from courting an intercourse with foreigners, they regarded the inhabitants of all other nations with contempt, and haughtily rejected their overtures. But to advance to the direct point before us; Lewis XVI., and the dauphin his father, instead of exhibiting proofs of the gradual effeteness here contended for-a progeniem vitio siorem offer to the view a combination of intellect and moral virtues, which we shall perhaps vainly look for in any of the Bourbons their ancestors; and were angels of light in comparison with their immediate progenitor, Lewis XV. The mode of improving both our morals and corporeal form by a mixture of the blood of negroes with that of Europeans savours rather too strongly. of the fraternity of St. Domingo to be relished in this country.

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