Fouche was again longed for; and Napoleon, in spite of his suspicions, found it prudent to replace him.-He continued to practise again his old game-delay-bold and mysterious conversation-blame of his master's plans,-which he nevertheless executed, when resignation was the alternative.

In 1810, Bonaparte suddenly abused him in council; obliged him to accept the government of Rome; then dismissed him from the ministry; sent him from Paris, and arrested him on the road. Fouche threatened discoveries, and escaped into banishment and obscurity, where he remained until the first abdication of the emperor. Fouche at first dreaded the counter-revolution; but seeing M. de Talleyrand in possession of the government, he not only took courage, but aspired to complete his whitewashing, by becoming the minister of Louis XVIII.

His conduct during the eleven months of that reign, was conformable to this project. To the patriots, he insisted on the necessity of a popular ministry. To the princes, with whom he continually intrigued, he promised the consolidation of the monarchy, as he had effected that of Napoleon, and expressed sincere contrition for the death of Louis XVI. To the jacobins, he declared his adherence, and promoted their projects and conspiracies. His conversation was of a piece. He abused the Bourbons-then said they might be saved by making him a minister;-occasionally announced a plot,which he assured the royalists he endeavoured to prevent for the sake of the king,-and the jacobins to save their heads. A little treachery towards all parties heightened the zest, and proved the authenticity of his communications-and increased the anxiety which was to make his assistance valuable.

When Napoleon landed, Fouche offered himself to the court. The princes negotiated with him; but after the first conference, orders were given to arrest him.-Some have thought, that this arrest was a stratagem, to insure the employment of Fouche by the usurper:-And the conduct of the former to Bonaparte, and the indiscretion of the royalists, who never ceased to count upon him, and to quote the proofs of their intelligence with him, might seem to warrant this notion; but we are more apt to attribute to the habitual distrust and weakness of that family, an act which, after all, could never conceal from Napoleon the constant intrigues of Fouche with the discarded dynasty. It is well known, that he had said to one of the emigrating royalists, Sauvez le Monarque-Je reponds de la monarchie." This, it is true, may be attributed to the habitual lightness of his conversation, which is so great,

that it is well known that when the duke of Wellington reproached him with having asserted to the chamber, in his message from the government, that the allies insisted on the restoration of the king, and challenged him to prove the truth of the assertion, he replied- Que voulez vous de plus? Le Roi n'est-il pas dans son Palais? C'est tout ce qu'il faut.'

Bonaparte, dependent and timid as he was at his last return, had no option about employing Carnot and Fouche; and the conduct of the latter from that moment became problemati cal. On the one hand, he used all means to attach to the imperial government, all those whose popularity gave strength to it. It is equally certain, that if he meditated at that time the overthrow of Napoleon, he did not confide his project to those friends of liberty whom he had rallied round the eagle, although many of them were his intimate friends. On the other hand, he did not fail to revert to his old tactics. In conversation, he blamed and treated with ridicule and contempt the projects of the emperor, whose government, he said, ran great risks. He allowed the royalists to write such libels as no government can permit; and exhorted the republicans. to attack, so that his house was the enemy's camp. He is said to have promoted the war in La Vendee; but of this charge there does not appear sufficient proof. After the bat tle of Waterloo, Fouche was named president of the government; and was entrusted with the conduct of the negociations. Whatever doubt may exist as to his intentions before, there can exist none as to his conduct after the abdication of Napoleon. He alone acted; and managed to keep his colleagues in a state of entire subserviency. They feared they might impede his measures by acting without his directions; and his mode of paralyzing their efforts, was to absent himself, whenever measures were likely to be proposed by any other person. It was known he was gone to lord Wellington;-delay was the consequence;-and Fouche gained a day, which was lost to his country! Thus he got over the time, from the 22d June to the 7th July, without giving any explanation to his colleagues, nor to the chambers, nor even to his intimate friends, whose lives were in danger from his impenetrable silence.

As to the negociations with the allies, he had but one proposition to make-but one remedy for all evils; Make me minister-I answer for the rest." He stipulated neither for France, nor for her constitution, nor for individuals-one single individual excepted. To him, without a doubt, is owing the return of the Bourbons without any condition whatsoever. Any other man at the head of the provisional government,

backed by the national representation which was devoted to liberty, and by an army of 70,000 men, with 800 pieces of cannon,--by the national guard well disposed, as their attachment to the tricolour has since proved,-would have saved the liberty of his country even with the present dynasty. But Fouche looked only to himself; and as his first idea in 1794 was to recover the place in society which he had forfeited by his crimes, so his last thought in 1815 was reconciliation with the court which he had so grievously offended. In one word, Fouche having become a rich and important personage, under the auspices of usurped dominion, was desirous to complete his titles after the fashion of legitimacy. Accordingly, he betrayed his country,-abandoned his friends,-signed the warrants for their death, and the lists of their proscription,and succeeded, as such persons usually do, for a time. But at last he found himself alone in the wilderness he had created. He would then have returned to a better system; but it was too late. His reports are eloquent and able, but they accelerated his downfal. He was the minister of Louis XVIII.; but he had been the judge of Louis XVI.; and he is now wandering over the face of the earth, perhaps less respected than any one of those whom he had, but a few weeks before, delivered to the vengeance of the court.

We have not room to comment upon, or to extract several passages which we had marked of characteristic description, of which the third letter affords an admirable specimen; and which, even in that style, may be advantageously contrasted with certain quaint, glaring, and elaborate performances on the same subject, which have probably been perused, and by this time nearly forgotten, by most of our readers. It is here, indeed, that an exuberant zcal in the cause of political justice, and somewhat of an excessive tendency to argumentative discussion, have diversified the work with dissertations upon congress, the slave trade, and the merits and demerits of individual politicians, to a degree that takes somewhat from the unity of the design, and deprives the work of that character of perfect impartiality which ought always to prevail in an historical memoir: but we venture nevertheless to affirm, that these letters afford materials for the future historian, considerably more valuable, both as to accuracy, copiousness, and connection, than any other work of the same description which the unparalleled interest of the subject has yet brought before the public. Perhaps a less conscientious adherence to the form and substance of the communications actually made to his friends at the several dates, might have improved the vo

lume now submitted to the world at large, by suppressing reasonings important no doubt in themselves, but, as our author must well know, not very likely, however deserving of attention, to guide the conduct of nations, even if the same circumstances were to recur. On the other hand, the scrupulous and intrepid fidelity of the writer in narrating events which refute his own predictions, his eagerness to speculate, and his willingness to retract, his admiration converted to blame, -his uniform preference of principles to persons-afford pledges of undeviating truth which we have rarely witnessed, -and abundantly compensate for those defects of arrangement, and that general looseness and diffuseness of style, which, in an author of such powers, can only be accounted for by the fact of his having now published, with little alteration, a series of letters, actually written to his private friends, with the copiousness and carelessness which belongs to such compositions.

The Wanderer in Norway, with other Poems By Thomas Brown, M. D. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Univer sity of Edinburgh. Second edition. 12mo. 6s.

[From the New Monthly Magazine.]

THE poem which gives a name to this little volume neither contains a story, nor is descriptive of romantic scenery; but is simply the moral picture of an impassioned mind suffering misery by having yielded to a guilty passion. The delineation, though strong, is far from being ideal, being no other than a portraiture of the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft drawn from her own letters, and the memoir of her life published by her husband. Dr. Brown has converted the history of that unhappy woman to an excellent purpose, by showing the essen tial importance of those high principles of conduct which no mind, however ardent in its general admiration of virtue, can abandon with impunity, and without the strength of which no powers are strong. Of the other pieces which make up the contents of the book, by far the most animated is that addressed to professor Dugald Stewart, with a copy of Darwin's Zoonomia.

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

Observations on the application of coal gas to the purposes of illumination. By WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE, F. R. S. L. and E. Prof. Chem. R. I. &c.

[From the Journal of Science and the Arts.]

THE employment of the gases evolved during the destructive distillation of common pit coal for the illumination of streets and houses, is a subject of such intrinsic and increasing importance, as to render some account of its progress and improvement, a proper subject of discussion in this Journal.

That coal evolves a permanently elastic and imflammable æriform fluid seems first to have been experimentally ascertained by the Rev. Dr. Clayton, and a brief account of his discovery is published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1739. The following is an extract from his paper. "I got some coal, and distilled it in a retort in an open fire. At first there came over only phlegm, afterwards a black oil, and then likewise a spirit arose, which I could no ways condense; but it forced my lute, or broke my glasses. Once when it had forced my lute, coming close thereto in order to try to repair it, I observed that the spirit which issued out, caught fire at the flame of the candle, and continued burning with violence as it issued out in a stream, which I blew out and lighted again alternately, for several times. I then had a mind to try if I could save any of this spirit, in order to which I took a turbinated receiver, and putting a candle to the pipe of the receiver whilst the spirit arose, I observed that it catched flame, and continued burning at the end of the pipe, though you could not discern what fed the flame. I then blew it out, and lighted it again several times; after which I fixed a bladder, squeezed and void of air, to the pipe of the receiver. The oil and phlegm descended into the receiver, but the spirit still ascending blew up the bladder. I then filled a good many bladders therewith, and might have filled an inconceivable number more, for the spirit continued to rise for several hours, and filled the bladders almost as fast as a man could have blown them with his mouth: and yet the quantity of coals distilled was inconsiderable.

"I kept this spirit in the bladders a considerable time, and endeavoured several ways to condense it, but in vain. And when I had a mind to divert strangers or friends, I have frequently taken one of these bladders, and pricking a hole therein with a pin, and compressing gently the bladder, near the flame of a can