simplicity of its mechanism, consisted in an | England and in the United States than in intricate system of relations between fami- his own country. The influence of Voltaire's lies and clans; and the habits of the people, negative criticism has of course been iminstead of displaying the innocence which mense, but his few positive opinions were Diodorus and Rousseau attributed to them, soon forgotten, and towards the comfortable were formed by the observance of cruel or practical philosophy which he inculcated his unmeaning customs, adhered to with a te- countrymen of our day have no feeling exnacity which civilizing influences have cept an extreme repugnance. But no word scarcely even now overcome. The Vendetta, or line of Rousseau's has been lost. The or traditional family feud, had to be sup- Confessions are the fountain, not only of pressed by the French Government as late Byronism and Lamartinism, their immediate as 1845; and in 1848, at the outbreak of progeny, but also of that host of works in the Revolution, it is known to have had a which the self-analysis of the writer supplies temporary revival. If Rousseau's legisla- him with the means of unlocking other men's tion had been put into force in Corsica and hearts. Without them there is no certainty there was at one time much chance of its that France would have had a Balzac or a adoption at the recommendation of Paoli Charles de Bernard, or England a Charlotte it must have miscarried as thoroughly as Bronté and a Thackeray. With the NouLocke's famous project of a constitution for velle Heloise began the modern apotheosis the Carolinas. Yet the opportunity which of the lower passions-the theme which inwas denied to Rousseau during his lifetime spires almost all French romance, and not a came with a vengeance twenty years later. little of English fiction. The Vicaire SaCorsica became part of France, and in 1789 voyard is the parent of modern sentimental the country which had appropriated the religion. In France, where its effects have little island in defiance of all justice was in- been profound, it gives the one ingredient duced to try on itself the very experiment which distinguishes the Neo-Catholicism of which it had prevented Rousseau from trying Lacordaire or Montalembert from the native on Corsica. The principles intended to be dogmatism of Roman Catholic theology. embodied in the Corsican Constitution are The Emile is the source of half the notions those of the Contrat Social, and they are which, sixty years after its publication, apthose which the Frenchmen of 1789 were peared in a new dress as the tenets of the feeling after when they overturned the world. Communists and Socialists. Even RousIt is astonishing to reflect on their history, seau's music is said to have been infinitely and to observe the naïveté with which they more studied than would be expected from are here set forth by Rousseau. Some of its apparent merits; and more than one them seem almost silly, but their childish- French composer is believed to owe his peness only arises from their having passed into the commonplaces of this century. Others appear preposterously untenable, but then it is only the terrible experience of the French Revolution which has taught us their emptiness. Those, however, who know what Rousseau's influence has been, will be on their guard against supposing that any fragment of his writings is rendered unimportant by false logic or false taste. It has been the fate of this extraordinary man to have sown no seed, bad or good, which has fallen on So remarkable an influence can only be stony ground. The greatest of his contem- explained by the antecedent readiness of poraries have produced no effects as yet men's minds to respond to it. Most French which can be compared with his. Montes- critics have accounted for it by the eloquence quieu, the highest intellect of the eighteenth of Rousseau's style. Others have supposed century, has had but one intellectual de- that the secret lay in his anticipation of scendant in France, Alexis de Tocqueville; modern theories of progress. Some, with and he is infinitely more of a prophet in more reason, have called attention to the

culiarities to an affectation of following the Devin de Village. But for direct influence on the fortunes of mankind, nothing of Rousseau's can be compared with the Contrat Social, of which the positive conclusions were intended to be embodied in the Constitution for Corsica. The fermentation of its principles produced the great explosion at the end of the century, and streamed out in a movement of which the end is not yet.

marked religious turn of his mind, and have | the necessity of carefully studying the actual pointed out that, amid the general discredit laws of Corsica with an emphasis which of received systems of religion, the vague might belong to a disciple of Montesquieu; doctrine of Rousseau had almost a monop- but it soon appears that he merely wishes to oly of the whole field of belief. An expla- know what existing institutions are, for the nation, different from all these, is afforded purpose of pruning away the irregular exby Mr. Maine, in his recently published crescences on the simplicity of nature which volume on Ancient Law. Mr. Maine thinks he supposes to have been introduced by the that the parentage of Rousseau's ideas is usurping Genoese. And, when he begins to not chiefly imaginative, nor chiefly meta- work out his conception, nothing can be physical, nor chiefly religious, but princi- clearer than that his mind is full of the legal pally legal; and that his philosophy is in commonplaces of his day and country consubstance a popular exposition of certain cerning natural law. In the passage of Ditheories of the Roman lawyers which had odorus which took so strong a hold on his long had currency in modern Europe. Ac- fancy, he is particularly impressed with the cording to this view, the lawyers of Rome, statement that among the primitive Corin the absence of a more definite rule of sicans the first person who found honey in a legal progress, had placed the perfection hollow tree was admitted by his neighbors of law in symmetry and simplicity. A to be proprietor of it-this, as Mr. Maine has law corrected by these standards they called shown, being the exact theory of the origin the law of nature, and they seem to have of property which prevailed among jurists in been under a vague impression that man- the last century. Again, in recommending kind had practised it before civil history the ancient customs of Switzerland to the began, in a state or condition of nature. adoption of the Corsicans, he tells them that all the cattle of the canton were allowed to The vision of some beautifully simple and harmonious code, answering to the ideal the first occupants of any one of them was roam together on the mountains, and that picture of the natural state, had long danced allowed to keep it-thus reproducing in before the eyes of the better class of lawyers terms the rule of Roman law with respect in all countries in Europe, taking occasion- to the acquisition of ownership in animals ally a more definite and precise shape when which are in a state of nature. But perhaps it passed over into England, but fancifully the most startling illustration of the influand vaguely conceived in general, yet not proposition which he evidently took from the ence which legal theories had over him is a too indistinctly to irritate and vex the law-writers on Public Law. The Publicists lay yers of France and Italy by its contrast with down that national communities, when indethe perplexity and confusion of existing cus- pendent, are subject only to the law of nattoms. Of this mythus of jurisprudence, Rousseau made himself the popular expositor. He collected into a focus the ideas of natural perfection which floated in the atmosphere of legal thought, and when they were collected they set the world on fire.

ure. Rousseau inverts this assumption, made up his mind to create a society which and transfers it to civil society. Having shall be governed only by natural law, he concludes that all the persons who live in it must be independent of each other; and his reflections on the point lead him to this startling aphorism, "From that mutual dependence of men on each other which is be

No doubt much support is lent to this theory by the newly published Constitution for Corsica. The greater part of the frag-lieved to be the bond of society, spring all ment consists of detached notes in an aphoristic form, not unlike the Pensées of Pascal, and these crude statements of Rousseau's thoughts betray their legal pedigree more clearly than the balanced rhetorical sentences of the Contrat Social. The method which Rousseau proposed to follow in framing his code was to take the institutions of Corsica as he found them, and then cut them down to his own measure of harmonious simplicity. In his letters to M. de Buttafuoco, he states

of thought can be traced in numberless pasthe vices which destroy it." Rousseau's line sages of the Corsican Constitution, but in none so instructively as this. First, he misunderstands the proposition of law. Then, he transfers it to an inappropriate subjectmatter. Lastly, he transforms it into an audacious general maxim which militates against sibly be applied without a subversion of all all received ideas, and which could not posexisting order. Such is the history of much which seventy years ago passed as a revelation of new and beneficent truth.

From The Spectator.

brilliant event that should make her perfectly happy, without, however, knowing, or enstill loved all men, and believed in their faithdeavoring to know, what it would be. She fulness and sincerity. No sting had as yet wounded her heart, no blighted hope, no illusion destroyed, had thrown a shade of discontentedness upon her smooth forehead. Her blue eye beamed with joy and happiness, and her mirth was so hearty and innoquite melancholy. She well knew that the happy period when life stands before us like the golden dream of morn could not long endure."

cent, that it sometimes made her mother feel

The book is full of such sentences, unreal descriptions which might not be out of place in a watery novel, but which, inserted in a memoir, simply demonstrate that its authors are writing either for effect or for sale. Their utter vagueness diminishes instead of increasing our means of judging of character, and the readers of this book, after perusing all kinds of anecdotes, will still find that its heroine is to them a lay figure without one quality except affection for her children and dread of her imperious stepfather. Messrs. Wraxall and Wehrhan endeavor, indeed, to analyze her character, but it is in sentences like the following. Hortense had a girl's liking for Duroc, and the compilers, after taking the few facts known from Bourienne, remark:

MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE. * AN accurate and outspoken life of Queen Hortense might have some interest for the world. The fate of all these Bonapartes was so remarkable, their rise so rapid, their fall so complete, and their lives so full of incident, that the insignificance of their personal characters is lost in the wonder created by their fortunes, and mankind read their histories as children read the account of Whittington, with the unconscious feeling that luck so unmerited makes their own prospects brighter. All of them, too, were connected more or less with the career of the one great man among them, and everything which relates to Napoleon, like every fact which elucidates the character of Cæsar Augustus, is of perennial interest. But the life which is to satisfy curiosity must be something very different from this specimen of book-making. Written in the style of a French courtier, who hopes that anecdote may supply the place of facts, and adulation that of analysis, it is absolutely devoid of any proof of its own authenticity. For all they tell us, its authors might have derived their facts from the lips of Louis Napoleon, or from a collection of memoirs of the Restoration, or from their own imaginations. The book has no preface or introduction, or explanation, and not one reference to any authority of any kind, except, indeed, Madame de Cochelet; but the extent to which her authority is relied on is never so much as indicated. There is scarcely one document the authenticity of which is proved, and not one attempt to justify the assertions on which the story is at variance with accepted narratives. Yet it is a memoir of that kind which, of all others, most requires elaborate justification. Everything itude alone could she open her heart, to it "Hortense sought solitude, because to solis related as if the writers had been the most only could she whisper the fact that she intimate friends of the ex-queen, had access loved with all the innocence and fervency, to the cabinet of Louis XVIII., or had heard all the energy and self-denial, of a first love. Louis Napoleon relate the most familiar rem- How delightful did these hours of wakeful iniscences of his childhood. What, for ex- dreaming appear to her! The future preample, is the meaning of this style of para-sented itself to her eye as one long and glograph, unless uttered by Josephine herself:rious summer day, that was just dawning, and whose sun she shortly expected to rise." "Hortense looked into the future with that childish curiosity which makes the behold the world through the rose-colored light of fancy. She expected some great and

eye

Memoirs of Queen Hortense. By Lascelles Wraxall and Robert Wehrhan. Hurst and Black

ett.

"For some time past, however, Hortense had taken a less lively part than usual in the fêtes and amusements; she no longer seemed ties of the court, but preferred retirement to derive great gratification from the festiviand seclusion in her own apartments. The soft melancholy notes of her harp seemed to charm her more than the witty and polite conversation in her mother's salons.

That description may be quite true, though it reads so exactly like the description of a love-sick girl in a good young lady's novel, but there is not a particle of evidence for it all, or indeed for anything, except that Hortense, as passionate as any other Creole,

used to carry on a clandestine correspond- may have recorded his most secret emotions ence with Duroc through Bourienne. The towards his wife, and Hortense may have negotiation was broken off, Duroc, says our analyzed the special kind of indifference in authors, making love only out of ambition, her heart, but there is not the slightest eviand Hortense consented to marry Louis dence offered to prove either, and without Bonaparte, whom her mother had selected evidence the conversation is simply absurd. as the one of her husband's family most likely The story that they lived as such couples to be an ally. The motive is likely enough usually live-he occupied with his own duties in itself, but who revealed the annexed facts? and amusements, and she with flirtations Hortense herself, or her spirit through some more or less prononcés-is at least more prob"medium" ? able. What is certain is, that she was popular in Holland; that in the quarrel between Louis and his brother she adhered to the winning side; that when after Fontainebleau the Emperor Alexander visited Maria Louisa at Rambouillet, he found Hortense consoling her instead of Josephine, and when the Bonapartes were proscribed, the Emperor Alexander made terms for her which gave her the title of Duchess, and a great estate in France. She defended her conduct by her care for the interests of her children, but her brother, as cruelly wronged as herself by Napoleon, took a different view of his duty, and in a noble letter to Alexander refused a duchy as the price of his allegiance :

"Josephine joyfully embraced her daughter. She little thought what a night of agony, what a night of prayer and despair, Hortense had passed. She little suspected that her daughter's seeming composure was nothing but the despairing resignation of a

broken heart.

"Hortense smiled, for Duroc must not see how she suffered. Her love for him was dead, but the pride of a betrayed woman still lived within her. It was this pride that wiped away her tears and summoned up a smile to her pale lip."

Her union was not a happy one; among other reasons, because Louis was not a man to be loved by any woman, but, say the memoir writers, this might have passed away, for scenes like these used to take place between the unhappy pair :

"Already would Louis sit for hours, with his wife, endeavoring to amuse her by a witty conversation; and Hortense began to consider it her most sacred and sweetest duty to make her husband forget, by kindly showing him all possible attention, how miserable he was at her side. They both hoped that the child they expected would indemnify them for an unhappy union and the freedom they had lost.

"SIRE,-I have read the proposals of your Majesty; they are doubtless very kind, but they cannot shake my resolution. I am afraid I manage to express my thoughts badly when I had the honor of seeing you, if your Majesty can believe for one moment that I am capable of selling my honor for any price, however high it may be. Neither a duchy of Genoa, nor a kingdom of Italy, can tempt me to treason. The example of the King of Naples does not seduce me; I would sooner be an honest soldier than a treacherous prince.

"If I should give you a son,' Hortense said, with a smile, when he first addressed "The Emperor, you say, has wronged you by the sweet title of father you would per-me. If so, I have forgotten it. I only rehaps forgive me for being his mother.' member his kindnesses. Everything I possess or am, I owe to him; my rank, my titles, my fortune, and, above all, what you kindly call my glory. Therefore, I am determined to serve him as long as I live. My heart and my arm are equally his. May my sword shiver in my hand if ever I draw it against the Emperor or my native country. will at least secure me your esteem. I am, I flatter myself that my well-founded refusal

And in pressing that son to your heart, in feeling how dearly you love him, you might forget that it is I who am his father. You will at least cease to hate me, for I shall be the father of your beloved child.'” Exquisitely French that, certainly, but was the little comedy enacted in public, or, if not, who related Louis' ideas with so painful an accuracy? Scenes of this kind, if real, illustrate character more clearly than any public acts, but then they must be supported by the most decisive testimony. In the present instance the description may of course be absolutely exact: Louis, the reserved scholar,

etc., etc.""

Louis had returned to France from his Styrian retirement to share his brother's fate; Jerome had no option, Joseph was always obedient, and Hortense, therefore, shares

:

with Murat the credit of being one of the have helped to make European history worth two Bonapartes who made a "transaction studying, she deserves a better panegyric with the conquerors. That appearances did than this vague paragraph:"the queen some injustice may be allowed. She had no special reason to love Napoleon, and Napoleon's mother never included her in the condemnation she passed on the Queen of Naples; but hers was certainly not a great or an exceptional nature, and the best that can be said of her is that she was wholly without vindictiveness, an admirable mother, ever ready for self-sacrifice when her sons required her aid. She saved Louis Napoleon from the consequences of his early devotion to the cause of the Italian Revolution, and up to her death in Switzerland, in 1837, it was to the queen that the future Emperor turned for guidance and sympathy in his greatest straits. But though not great as one of the marvellous family who from 1785

"And yet, in spite of all this sorrow and humiliation, Queen Hortense had the courage not to hate humanity, and to teach her children to love their fellow-men and treat them kindly. The heart of the debut she did not allow these wounds to cicathroned queen bled from a thousand wounds; trize, or her heart to harden beneath the broad scars of sorrow. She loved her sufferings and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but the very fact of suffering so fearfully caused her to spare the sufferings of others and try to appease their grief. Hence her life was one incessant act of kindness, and when she died she was enabled to say of herself, as did her mother, the Empress Josephine, 'I have wept greatly, but I never caused others to weep.'

THE ASTOR LIBRARY.

RESIGNATION OF DR. COGSWELL.

OUR literary readers will learn with lively emotion that the faithful and learned superintendent of the Astor Library, Joseph G. Cogswell, LL.D., has felt himself compelled, by the pressure on his physical powers of advancing years, to resign the station which he has filled with so much honor and success from the very foundation of the noble library with which his name and fame must ever be identified.

The present is not the occasion for recapitulating the long and varied services of Dr. Cogswell both at home and abroad, in actively, judiciously, and economically collecting and arranging that immense body of books in most of the languages of civilized man, which is destined to stand among us for coming ages, a living record of his devotion to the cause of learning We feel well assured that appropriate measures will be adopted in our literary and scientific circles to give due expression to their feelings of grateful appreciation.

It was in September last that Dr. Cogswell brought to its final close his arduous undertaking of preparing the catalogue of the library, filling four massive volumes of 2,110 pages, accurately arranging in alphahetical order the titles of all the volumes, nearly 120,000 in number, now on the shelves; and of which every syllable and letter underwent his personal and careful inspection.

this most laborious task, reflecting in its successful accomplishment additional and enduring honor on the institution he has so long and so faithfully served."

Cogswell declared his unalterable determination At the succeeding meeting of the trustees Dr. to resign the office of superintendent, to take effect at the close of the year, whereupon they passed the following resolution :

"Resolved, That the trustees accept the resignation of Dr. Cogswell with sincere regret. faithful, laborious, and most valuable services to They thankfully acknowledge his devoted, the institution, from its organization to the present day, they record, with gratitude, their sense from their intercourse with him, and they tender of the pleasure and instruction they have derived him their warmest wishes for his future welfare”

"

By a further resolution they requested him to use, as long as he may find agreeable, the rooms he has hitherto occupied in the library building."

Dr. Cogswell retains his seat in the Board of Trustees, and will continue, as we fervently hope, for many years, while relieved from more active labor, to aid his colleagues by his ripe and varied experience.

The trustees, on his recommendation, and in accordance with their sense of the merits of the On receiving the work the trustees resolved, successor named by him, have selected as su"That they hereby record their high appre-perintendent Francis Schroeder, Esq., late of ciation of the eminent service rendered to the library by the elaborate and admirable catalogue just completed by Dr. Cogswell, and now tender him their thanks for the untiring industry and self-sacrificing devotion he has exhibited in

Rhode Island, and former charge d'affaires from the United States to the court of Sweden, a gentleman of fine literary culture, extensive knowledge of books, and courteous and attentive manners.- -New York Evening Post.