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to the details of Struensée's administration, they are drawn up after the manner of an official precis, or abridgement, and are altogether too concise to excite any interest. They are unenlivened by any of those anedcotes, or characteristics of contemporary actors on the political stage, which one expects to meet in the journal of a person who had figured on the scene. As to those parts of the work which refer to Falckenskiold's life, before and after he held office in Denmark, they scarcely deserved the attention which M. Secretan bestowed upon them.

ART. XII. Revue Encyclopédique, ou analyses et annonces raisonnées des productions les plus remarquables dans la litterature, les sciences, et les arts. Paris. Treuttel and Wurtz. London.

Of the numerous periodical journals published on the continent, several of which are much less known in England than they deserve to be, the Encyclopedic Review unquestionably takes the lead. It embraces the whole circle not only of literature but of the sciences and arts, and furnishes, every month, reviews of about one hundred and fifty different works. In order to accomplish this almost incredible labour, the proprietors have correspondents established in every country where literature is cultivated, and these sign either their names, or initials, to the articles which they contribute. Of course it is impossible that, in a publication of so much variety, the reviews should be upon an extensive plan. Generally speaking, there are four or five papers in each number which, in some degree, resemble our own articles, except that, occasionally, they are diversified by original memoirs and essays, which do not belong to the critical department. These papers are usually exceedingly well executed, particularly those on scientific subjects, most of which appear to be written by members of the Academy. M. Sismondi is a constant and admired contributor to its pages; and several other names, well known to the literature of France, are so many pledges for the intelligence and impartiality which preside over this division of the Revue Encyclopedique.

In politics it leans uniformly to the liberal side, but at the same time respects the charter, and we have never seen in it any of those wild and ridiculous tirades against the constituted authorities, by which other "liberal" journals of France are in the habit of disgracing themselves, and injuring the true interests of freedom. In the sort of religious warfare which has been raging for some months between certain parties in that country, we have observed that the Revue Encyclopedique has taken a moderate and sensible course, and has endeavoured to check the asperity of the combatants on either side.

English literature, as might be expected, usually occupies a considerable number of pages in the critical department of this journal. Most of the articles in this section appear to be contributed by M. Degeorge, and though necessarily very brief, they exhibit a correct, and often a masterly, summary of the works to which they refer. We have often had occasion, also, to remark the justness of his critical judgments, though sometimes we have thought him rather too complimentary.

The notices of French literature are, of course, the most numerous, and, we may add, the most laudatory. Indeed, this division of the Revue Encyclopedique is little more than a catalogue containing a few remarks

on each work, usually in praise of it. How it happens that the present literature of France is so faultless in the eyes of French reviewers, it is not difficult for the reader to conjecture.

The literature of Russia, Prussia, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, and America, is also treated with due attention. Indeed, we know of no journal, English or foreign, which affords so extensive a view of the monthly progress of literature in every part of the world as the Revue Encyclopedique. Some sheets of each number are also devoted to articles of intelligence, chiefly connected with the progress of science, of national history, the arts, and the French drama.

ART. XIII. Napoleon devant ses Contemporains. 8vo. Paris. 1826. Treuttel and Wurtz. London.

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THIS volume consists of nearly five hundred pages of furious Buonaparteism. The Bourbons, indeed, are occasionally lauded; but the praise they receive is of that peculiar kind which, according to Pope, is damnatory. The most illustrious princes of their race are sometimes mentioned, but it is only to tell us how much Napoleon eclipsed them. The names of Charlemagne and Louis XIV. are quoted, in order to enable the author to tell us, that Napoleon was superior to both, through his passion for the duties of a prince, and his powers of discharging them; and because, exempt from the weaknesses of love, he knew how to overcome the taste for pleasure.' (p. 3.) In the same page the author assures us that he was more firm, and more reserved, than Henry IV. and two of his successors: he defended the public treasures without requiring a Sully to guard them; and he did not give the fruit of the labours of his people to Marchionesses de Verneuil, de Montespan, de Pompadour, or Dubarry.' (p. 3.) There is a great deal more of equally discriminating eulogy, which the moderation of the Bourbons, or their wisdom, has allowed to remain unpunished; and which, therefore, will be unregarded in France. The work is indeed most contemptibly executed. It is di vided into ten chapters, which contain the early life of Napoleon-the old story of his campaigns in Italy-the Egyptian expedition-the battle of Marengo, and the other campaigns down to the expedition to Russiathe abdication-departure-exile and death of Buonaparte.

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We meet with no lively sketches of character,-no graphic selections,― no brilliant descriptions, nor philosophical views. The reflections which the author intersperses are of the most common-place kind; and his prejudice and ignorance are equally remarkable. In alluding, for instance, to the death of Napoleon, he says, (p. 401) Some sinister suspicions, rumours which will be perhaps one day confirmed by facts now enveloped in darkness,—are afloat about the real causes of the death of Napoleon. Many persons seem to believe that the new Rome, more impatient than the ancient one, because more rancorous in her hatred, and fearing that the accomplishment of her desire would be too long postponed, refused to wait for the natural death of the modern Hannibal. Napoleon had a presentiment of this,' &c. &c.

As a specimen of the author's skill and discrimination in drawing character, we subjoin a brief specimen of his portrait of Napoleon :—' As a commander, he possessed the fertile invention of Hannibal: the art of

Mithradates in maintaining harmony and union among twenty nations, marching to battle under his sovereign guidance: the political and warlike genius of Cæsar, along with his supreme ascendancy over his soldiers: the rapidity of Charlemagne in transporting his armies from one end of Europe to the other: the extensive designs of Alexander, and the celerity of his conquests. He even created a Macedonian phalanx, which is represented to us by the imperial guard.' (p. 416.)

So much for this author's historical portraits. Of his blunders, his prejudice, and his rancorous abuse of England, we might select numerous specimens but it is not worth while. This egregious piece of Parisian book-making may safely be left to a fate from which even persecution could hardly save it.

ART. XIV. Les Barricades Scenes Historiques. Mai, 1588. 8vo. Paris. 1826. Treuttel and Wurtz. London,

THE Volume before us has excited great attention in Paris, and has met with very decided and deserved success. The edition on our table is the second, and we believe a third has since been demanded. The author modestly ascribes the extensive sale of his work to the order which forbade its advertisement; but, in reality, The Barricades' form a collection of scenes of such high dramatic merit, united to a meritorious fidelity to history, that we are sure the book would have obtained equal circulation, even if it had not been honoured with the slight persecution to which the author alludes.

The title of the book sufficiently explains upon what period of the history of France the scenes before us are founded. The conspiracy of Henry Duke of Guise against Henry the Third of France, in which he was supported by the League, forms the connecting link of the whole of this irregular drama. The author has disclosed to us, in the fifteen divisions of which it consists, the interior of the Louvre, of the hôtel de Guise, of the inns, the churches, and the private dwellings of the personages belonging to the different parties, leaguers, politiques, or huguenots, with great variety and liveliness. Wherever (says the author in his preface) I have found anything picturesque, a faithful picture of manners, or a new trait of character, I have endeavoured to reproduce it by sketching a scene. There has of course resulted from this plan merely a series of portraits; or, to speak in the language of painters, a few studies or rough drafts, which have no claim to any other merit than to that of resemblance.' (pp. i. ii.)

The introduction to the Barricades is called The return from Vincennes,' and details with great spirit the plan and progress of the unlucky attempt, made by some of the Committee of Sixteen, to arrest Henry III. on his way from mass. The remaining scenes lead us from the first scheme of the leaguers to force the Duke of Guise to put himself at their head, through the hesitating counsels of the Louvre, the star-worshipping of the queen-mother, the intrigues of the Spanish ambassador, the rising of the leaguers, and the destruction of the huguenots, to the day of the barricades. The scene of the barricades is described with great vivacity— as are its consequences as they operate on the Guise and Valois parties. The fifteenth scene contains the catastrophe-the departure of Henry III.

from Paris, leaving Catherine de Medici in charge of the government, and the failure of the Guise conspiracy.

The characters of Henry, Guise, Catherine, Crillon, the Duchess de Montpensier, Crucé, Poulain, and Jacques Clément, are drawn with great force and fidelity. The scenes in which they figure are remarkable for their freedom and spirit. The author's comic vein is favourably developed in the scenes in which the cameriere, Sanchez, and the mob are introduced; but his forte is in the serious scenes of the drama, though there is very little pathos, and no terror about them.

The work presents the only specimen of a French historical play, in prose, with which we are acquainted, if we except the tragedy entitled François II. by the President Henault. The latter was modelled upon Shakspeare's Henry VI. The play of the Barricades seems to have been more nearly copied from Schiller's Wallenstein, to the first part of which splendid trilogy it bears, in many parts, a resemblance so remarkable, as to render it almost impossible that it should have been accidental. A second and third part of the Barricades are announced, for the publication of which we shall look with some impatience.

ART. XV. De la Litterature Allemande. Par M. Christian Muller. 8vo. pp. 83. Geneva. 1826.

PROFESSOR Muller is of opinion that in order to form a correct judgment of German literature, it is necessary to be acquainted with that of the middle ages. In this we perfectly agree with him. The literature of Germany is so essentially national, that whenever it has ceased to be that of the people it has degenerated: and it has risen to its present force and elevation by the imitation, in a loftier tone, of the ancient popular romances and traditions which Schottky, Büsching, Grimm, and others, have done so much to preservc. The romantic literature which thus became the delight of the Germans, led them to turn their attention to other compositions of the same character: hence sprung their love of Shakspeare, of the English and Spanish writers in general, and their more recent affection for the poetry of the Hindoos, which Goethe and Schlegel have recommended by their study of it.

At the end of the peace of Westphalia, the French tongue began to be studied in Germany, and from the middle of the seventeenth century till Lessing rose, French literature was imitated. Lessing put an end to this, but encouraged the study of the language; the Germans began to be disgusted with the French literature, and its glory was nearly departed, when Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand charmed them with productions in a style analogous to their own. The old French authors were, however, always popular in Germany; and the French had turned from them to the classical school just when Germany had quitted the latter for the romantic one. Previous to this the Germans had lived, as Professor Muller happily phrases it, du Français appesanti, and so heavy was it, that Father Bouhours, not content with proposing the question," whether a German could be a bel esprit ?" triumphantly answered it in the negative.

No literature in the world ever owed less to the protection of princes than the literature of the Germans, nor had more obstacles io surmount. Among their sovereigns there was no Louis XIV. nor. Leo X. Nay,

Frederick II., a literary monarch, despised the literature and language of Germany. He was acquainted with no writers but those of France, and delighted in the mockery of that state of debasement, into which the national authors had fallen, merely from their servile imitation of the literature of France.

For this reason there has never been any courtly literature in Germany, nor even a classical one. They have no Tasso, Racine, or Voltaire, whom they are compelled to imitate with servility. They do not love everlasting reputations. The claims of Schiller, Goethe, and all the other illustrious poets of Germany, to immortality, have been boldly discussed, and must be founded upon genuine excellence, not upon the consent of a few writers to set them up as standards of purity and models for slavish and eternal copying. The exclusive force of reasoning among the Germans, the absence of persiflage, and the small effects of wit and ridicule upon their literary discussions, give great value to the works upon which the fierce chemistry of their analysis and argument has been tried in vain.

It is delightful to find that their philosophical and rich language is now very generally studied throughout Europe, and that even in France their splendid literature and poetry are becoming known and working daily wonders. Of that poetry we give Professor Muller's own eloquent but somewhat mystical character.

Our poetry is that perfume of the soul, that immortal enthusiasm, and vigorous imagination, which overleap those rules dictated to us by a writer who was evidently ignorant in what poetry consisted. It consists in those brilliant colours which trace the lofty heavens and the depths of the human heart; which paint the delights of the spring, which are charming as the breath of a summer night, or a cluster of roses: in that tone which, avoiding at once all appearance of imitation, or of the mannerism of antiquity, calls up to our minds all that is most attaching, all to which we are most attached,—to christianity, to its sentiments and its virtues, to our national history, to its heroes, and to the events of the middle age, to which our poetry owes so much. The romantic school of our literature claims, as its characteristics, an enthusiasm for the christian religion and our national story. Boldness of fancy, brilliant colouring, and carnest truth of situation and character, are its indispensable requisites, together with that of obedience to the invariable laws of beauty which exist in the minds of all cultivated nations. This is our romantic poetry. Grace, tenderness, and gaiety, may mingle in its composition, but they may also be dispensed with.'-pp. 53, 54.

It is wonderful to find poetry of this kind relished in France, but such is the fact. We should dismiss Professor Muller's pamphlet with unqualified praise, if the learned author had only classed in better order the subjects which he has so ably treated.

ART. XVI. History of the French Revolution. By A. F. Mignet. 1 vol. 12mo. Hunt and Clarke. London. 1826.

THIS is a philosophical history of the French revolution, free from all exaggeration and partiality, and written in a clear, concise, and even severe style. Indeed the affectation of perpetual conciseness and severity is the only fault with which we can reproach M. Mignet, and this we are

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