tremely probable, and that the Persians derived their Peris from the Hindoos, whose "holy Balakhilyas," diminutive personages, about the size of a man's thumb, assemble on the grass under trees, and employ themselves not in dancing but devotion. These pigmy devotees seem very likely to be the origin of the northern faries: and from the size assigned to them are perhaps connected with the character of Daumling, Tamlane, Tomalyn, or Tom Thumb. The most amusing of these fairy legends is perhaps the story of 'Daniel O'Rourke'-that most remarkable for its fancy is The Legend of Bottle Hill.' The author (Mr. T. Crofton Croker, we believe) has traced the origin of some of his stories in the preface-perhaps he will be glad to be informed that the "Legend of Bottle Hill" is a Hindoo fiction, in all its principal points. It exists in the Pantcha Tantra lately published by the Abbé Dubois. The second edition of Fairy Legends' is embellished with some engravings full of Irish character and drollery, from the design of a young Cork artist. It possesses also the wood cuts of the first edition, some of which are as remarkable for their grace as others for their humour. We are happy to see that the ingenious author intends to continue his researches in Fairy Land. A very flattering and lively letter from Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Crofton Croker is prefixed to the volume. ART. XVIII. German popular Stories. E Translated from the Collection of M. M. Grimm. Vol. 2. Robins and Co. London. 1826. We think that the objections which have been made to the first volume of these stories holds good against the present one, and that it is deficient in antiquarian research and illustration. Tales that merely delight the nursery, cannot be expected to please in any great number, when transferred into a foreign literature. We should have thought, therefore, that a few specimens of those stories would have been sufficient to satiate curiosity, unless it were intended to follow up a more extended translation of them, by such references and elucidations as would show the curious coincidence of plot and agency which they bear to the traditions of those communities that are undonbtedly of Celtic origin. In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, tales are heard every day which differ very little from many of those that have delighted the common people of the northern regions of Europe for ages. But the relations before us, though marked by simplicity and character, must necessarily loose a good deal by wanting that force and humour, which the natural dialect of the uninformed gives to their favourite narratives. The designs by Cruikshank are quite irre sistible; but to enjoy the full effect of some of his eccentric exhibitions, it is necessary to forget the narrative itself, as it happens more than once that a scene of real pathos, or at least of serious interest in the story, is distorted by the artist into the most ludicrous caricature. THE MONTHLY REVIEW. APPENDIX TO VOL. II. FOREIGN LITERATURE. ART. I. Mémoires Autographes de M. le Prince de Montbarey, Ministre Secrétaire d'Etat, sous Louis XVI. &c. &c. Prèmiere Livraison. 2 Vols. 8vo. Paris et Londres, chez Henri Colburn. 1826. M. LE PRINCE DE MONTBAREY must certainly have been a most egregious and egotistical coxcomb:-but his memoirs are nevertheless abundantly amusing, and give us a very lively picture of the courts of Louis XV. and his well-intentioned, but ill-advised successor. Even the folly and profligacy of the author, have in one sense ministered to the curiosity of his work. For, so communicative a personage was he, that neither respect for his own character, nor any sense of decency or shame, seems to have restrained him from disclosing the most secret, and the least reputable circumstances of his life; and the account of himself and his contemporaries, which he was pleased to prepare for the edification of posterity, will, accordingly, serve better than all the grave and formal histories of the time, to expose the utter licentiousness of the higher classes of society in France under the ancien regime.' 9 With a self-complacency which, in a man of any other age or country, would be perfectly astonishing, M. le Prince delights to record the whole course and management of his libertine amours; and he unblushingly mingles them with the details of his military and political career, as matters equally important in his life, and not less creditable to his reputation. He paints them in conjunction with his share in the public events of his times, and has had no suspicion that they are less worthy of record and renown. Nor can we here altogether blame his judgment: the composure with which he speaks of his own vices as things of course, and the indifference with which he forces us to observe that such trifles were generally treated by the circle in which he moved, certainly form by far the most curious points in his memoirs. We already possessed, indeed, some other notable fragments of biography by actors in the same scenes; but this work strikes us VOL. II. NO. X. GG He as more peculiarly characteristic of the epoch to which it relates, than almost any former publication of the kind. Here we have a nobleman of the court of Louis XV. recounting to us all his actions, views, and sentiments, with a total absence of reserve, and with a simplicity of candour which, considering the nature of some of his confessions, is often superlatively ludicrous. draws himself and his associates from the life, and therefore-of course without intending it-in colours which exhibit them, as their frivolities and excesses alternately occupy the canvas, to ridicule and contempt. We really know not any book from which the curious reader may form so perfect an idea of the genuine character of the Frenchman of la vieille cour,' or which is calculated to give him so thorough an insight into the real tone of morals and manners among the French nobility for fifty years preceding the revolution. In one respect, however, these memoirs have a little disappointed us. Although the author was assiduous and constant in his attendance at court for the last twenty years of the life of Louis XV., and finally obtained a high official appointment-the ministry of war-in the following reign, he has not afforded us as much novel matter, touching the court and cabinet, as might have been expected. Nor, though he very early formed the resolution to prosecute his fortune as a courtier, and was, therefore, naturally an anxious and watchful spectator of every political intrigue and cabal, has he been able in general to throw any new light upon these springs of action, or to possess us with a single political fact of importance during his service, of which we were not previously informed. The attraction of the narrative is less in the mere value of the incidents which it records, than as it seems to introduce us into the interior of the French court and fashionable circles of his age, and thus to familiarize us with all the conventional forms assumed by French character and society during the last century. Of the authenticity of the book, we cannot have the shadow of a doubt. That the Prince of Montbarey had, during his retirement from the storms of the revolution, composed his own memoires, was known to the editors of the Biographie Universelle; and their regret was excited, that the work had not been found among his papers after his death. That these volumes contain the identical and precious treasures, the loss of which was thus deplored, there can be no question: though their publisher has failed to explain how they came into his possession. But their genuineness cannot be mistaken: the gossiping and laborious relation of many trifling particulars, so absolutely uninteresting, that it could never have occurred to any one but the egotist himself, to have dwelt on them; the long and tiresome enumeration of his pedigree, and of all his family connections and relatives, within the hundredth degree of consanguinity; the innumerable and careless repetitions with which the volumes are loaded; the absence of any contradiction even in the midst of this confusion; and, above all, the happy assurance and strain of self-eulogy with which his own conduct is every where spoken of, even while he is unwittingly developing his weakness and vice;-all these peculiarities are so many indubitable pieces of internal evidence, that the book can have been written by no other person, than by him whose life it so minutely and garrulously records. We give the editor credit for having, with very scrupulous and praiseworthy fidelity to the public, sent the MS. to the press as he found it he declares that he has abstained from making the slightest alteration, even where the author has appeared to offend against the laws of taste, or to violate the rules of grammar;' and it is indeed easy to believe, in these respects, that the work has not at least been tampered with, by any attempt at improvement. The solecisms in its style are almost as glaring and frequent as the impurity of the sentiments which it delivers. Having thus sufficiently commented on the general character, and estimated the value of the memoirs for which we are indebted to M. le Prince, we shall illustrate our criticism by running through a few of the leading points in their contents, which appear to us most interesting, either as relating to his own career and conduct, or in their connection with the courts of Louis XV. and his grandson. The prince was born at Besançon, in 1732. To save us from the necessity of imitating him in his eternal references to his pedigree, we may observe, once for all, that he was descended from an ancient and noble family of Franche Comté, and that the services of his ancestors to the House of Austria, while that province was an appendage of the imperial crown, entitled him, under an old diploma, to sue out his investiture in the dignity of a prince of the holy Roman Empire. He was also collaterally allied to several of the sovereign houses of Europe; and in right of his descent, through his maternal grandmother, from a Spanish grandee of the first class, he claimed that rank of the court of Madrid. We mention these genealogical points, because his memoirs are full of them; and his character is illustrated by the importance which he attached to such empty distinctions. It was in fact, he declares, an occupation of his life, and one to which a great deal of his interest at court was devoted, to attain these dignities of a Spanish grandee and a German prince. For the latter, he succeeded, in 1774, in securing an imperial grant, at the trifling cost of one hundred thousand francs. Our embryo prince was an only son; and his mother lost her life, on the day after he was born, in a deplorable manner. It was then, it seems, the custom in France, if a lady died in childbed, for her wardrobe to devolve to the nurse; and the wretch who attended Madame de Montbarey, was seduced, by the hope of this spoil, to poison her. We learn from the Biographie Uni verselle, that it was the discovery of this crime which naturally produced the abolition of the custom that had prompted it. The Comte de Montbarey, after the general prejudice of the French nobility, destined his child, while yet in his cradle, for the profession of arms; and although, when the war of the imperial succession broke out, young Montbarey was not quite twelve years old, his father determined that he should lose no time in commencing his military career. At that tender age, with more ambitious zeal, as it would seem, for his early advancement, than paternal regard for his real welfare, the count removed him from the Jesuit's college at Paris, to join his own regiment, in which he had obtained a commission for him. It was in the campaign of 1744, on the Rhine, that the boy-soldier saw his first service; and we have, connected with it, rather an interesting anecdote of his father. At the siege of Fribourg, young Montbarey mounted his first guard in the trenches, and he was seated at breakfast in them with his father and other officers, when a shell from the garrison fell close to the spot. The father threw himself upon his young son, to shield him, with his own body, from the effects of the explosion by a curious chance, he escaped himself unhurt, but notwithstanding his effort, his child was slightly wounded in the leg by a splinter. Young Montbarey continued to serve throughout the remainder of that war, until the peace of Aix la Chapelle; was present at the battles of Raucoux and Laufeld; and was a second time wounded, at the latter engagement, before he had passed his fourteenth year. He has left us a very remarkable account of the luxury and 'enormous licence' which Marshal Saxe introduced or permitted in the French armies during these brilliant campaigns, and which the presence of Louis XV. and his court tended only to augment. A troop of comedians constantly followed the head quarters; and the battle of Raucoux, says our reminiscent, was, perhaps, the first for which the announcement and orders were ever issued from the stage. After the piece, the actress, who should have given out the title of the entertainment for the next evening, came forward and delivered the following couplets : Demain, nous donnerons relâche Vous ne songez qu'à la victoire.' After these couplets, a staff officer of the day appeared, and said aloud, that the sounding of the tattoo of that evening would serve for the générale, and that the different corps were to send for powder and ball at ten o'clock. He delivered orders that officers and soldiers should forthwith repair to their respective posts, and |