To this Miss Taylor replies at much length, endeavouring to prove, that the creed of all who so think, is only Deism in disguise. The whole is somewhat too argumentative for verse, but we will give a short extract from it.

"But we have seen a high-flown, mental thing,
As fine and fragile as libella's wing;

All soul and intellect, th' ethereal mind
Scarcely within its earthly house confin'd;
On Heav'n oft casting an enraptur'd eye,
And paying compliments to the Most High;-
And yet, though harsh the judgment seem to be,
As far from Heav'n, as far from God, as he:
Yes, might the bold assertion be forgiv'n,
A poet's soul may miss the road to Heav'n!***

"But, gentle poet, wherefore not repair
To yonder temple? God is worshipp'd there.
Nay, wherefore should he?-wherefore not address
The God of Nature in that green recess;
Surrounded by His works, and not confin'd
To rites adapted to the vulgar mind?

There he can sit, and thence his soul may rise,
Caught up in contemplation, to the skies,
And worship Nature's God on Reason's plan:-
-It is delusion, self-applauding man!
The God of Nature is the God of Grace;
The contrite spirit is his dwelling-place;
And thy proud off'ring, made by reason's light,
Is all abomination in His sight.

"Let him distinguish (if he can indeed)
Wherein his differs from the deist's creed :~
O, he approves the Bible, thinks it true;
(No matter if he ever read it through)
Admits the evidence that some reject,
For the Messiah professes great respect,
And owns the sacred poets often climb
Up to the standard of the true sublime.
Is this then all? is this the utmost reach

Of what man learns when God descends to teach?
And is this all-and were such wonders wrought,
And tongues, and signs, and miracles, for nought?
If this be all, his reason's utmost scope,

Where rests his faith, his practice, and his hope?

We have thus endeavoured to give a sketch of the general nature and tendency of Miss Taylor's production: if, to the good principles she there inculcates, she adds an active

spirit of benevolence-not merely displaying itself in the ostentatious mockery of Sunday schools, set up by the paltry patronage of a village-we may venture to assert, that she will be one of the most useful women society has for a long time known.

ART. IX.-Carnot; sa Vie Politique et Privée; contenant des particuliarités intéressantes qui n'ont jamais été imprimées, &c. A Paris, chez Delaunay, Palais Royal, 1 vol. 1816. 8vo. pp. 214.

We have very recently looked through the shop of almost every bookseller in Paris, in order to find, as a subject for review, some new work of general interest and value; but, whether from the regulations imposed upon the French press, or from the present unsettled state of the public mind in that country, or from both these causes combined, we could discover no publication at all answering to our wishes. Excepting novels and fugitive pieces of the lightest kind, within the last five or six months, few but political works, and those only on one side of the question, have been printed; and we had, consequently, to make our selection from books which would give little entertainment to English readers. We might, it is true, have given an article on a new heroic poem, in five cantos, published under the title of "Les Bourbons;" but the grossness of the adulation of this author, who seems to have epics at command for every occasion, would have been as disgusting as his general insipidity and inanity would have been wearisome. We took the pains to wade through two of his five cantos, and we can assure our readers, that the only recompense we received was an occasional laugh at some ridiculous absurdity: in one place, Louis XVIII. is represented as visited by the shades of Henry IV. and Louis XIV., who jointly and severally confer upon him all the requisites of a wise and glorious monarch; and so fulsome is the flattery in some parts, that, taken by themselves, the passages would appear to ordinary readers as successful efforts at ironical satire. Another work of a similar character, in many respects, is intituled "Henri IV. peint par lui même," which is entirely a eulogy of the reigning Prince, and of the measures of his government. We might enumerate about twenty more, (independently of productions of the grossest kind,) pretending to disclose the cabinet secrets of Buonaparte, or to detail the supposed debaucheries of him

self and his family: one of the latter, at present in much request, is called "Les Amours de N. Buonaparte et sa famille," in which the author, to please the taste of his royalist-readers, gives the most flagitious accounts of the pretended enormities of an individual, whom, only a few years ago, he eulogized by the loftiest hyperboles, in a pamphlet called "Les Noces des Empires de France et Almagne."

None of these productions would be worthy even of the notice we have given of them, but for the purpose of shewing, in some degree, the present state of the press in France, which we do not attribute, as we have above remarked, more to the severe regulations under which it labours, than to the unavoidable circumstances of the country:-such works are the mere trash of the times, and impose upon no persons whom it is important not to deceive: whatever their title-pages profess, their subjects indicate the degree of reliance to be placed of their details; but the remark will not apply equally to the work before us, "Carnot, sa Vie Politique et Privée," which, although anonymous, is generally known to be written by an individual of some literary eminence, and which purports to give "particuliarités intéressantes qui n'ont jamais été imprimées," with his torical fidelity. In many parts of it, the author repeats his assertions of perfect impartiality, with all the anxiety of a person who is conscious that he does not deserve to be be lieved; but no where does he do so more ludicrously than in the opening of the Avant-propos:-" 11 paraît d'abord difficile (he says) à l'historien impartial, de peindre au naturel un homme qui fut deux fois à la tête du gouvernement, deux fois proscrit pour deux causes bien différentes, deux fois complice de la destruction d'un trône héréditaire, en un mot, du trop fameux Carnot; mais la difficulté cesse pour peu qu'on observe que le même homme, encore chéri de quelques uns, et détesté des autres, s'est attiré par sa conduite, sourtout depuis deux ans, l'animadversion de son souverain et de quiconque aime le maintien du gouverne ment legitime, l'extinction de tout germe révolutionaire, et la tranquillité de son pays."-This is, in truth, to say that, while some admire, and others condemn Carnot, it ceases to be difficult to be impartial, because he has incurred the animadversion of his sovereign. A little further on, after adverting to Carnot's two celebrated pamphlets, he exclaims: Voilà pourtant l'idole de quelques hommes égarés ou factieux! Voilà le prétendu Caton qu'il faut entière

ment démasquer, l'hypocrite cent fois plus dangereux sans doute que le Ministre son collègue, que tous les Français maintenant connaissent et abhorrent. Il ne nous appar. tient point de faire ici l'apologie de cet ouvrage; mais nous pouvons certifier l'authenticité de toutes les particuliarités jusqu'à ce moment inconnues, que nous y rapportons, et nous aimons à croire que le public nous saura quelque gré d'avoir, en refutant les mensonges et les paradoxes poli tiques de Carnot, sontenu la nécessité et apprécié les avantages du gouvernement partenel sous lequel nous avons le bonheur de vivre."

One of the many evils of a licensed press is, that works which are permitted to be printed, are supposed by many of their readers to have received, not only the allowance, but the approbation of the government; which is thereby made a party to all the fabrications, and a supporter of all the arguments they contain: this has been more especially the case with the volume on our table, which has been widely circulated in all parts of France, and has been swal lowed by some as a sort of authenticated official refutation of the productions of Carnot, to vindicate his vote against Louis XVI., and his conduct during what is fashionably called the interregnum of France, viz. the period between the expulsion and return of Louis XVIII. We do not charge the author of this volume with any absolute misstatement of facts which are in the knowledge of most of the inhabitants of Europe, but at least he has perverted and distorted them; and has besides, among his particu liarités intéressantes, as he calls them, inserted, merely on his own unsupported authority, anecdotes, some of which contradict themselves, and other matters which come in a most questionable shape. We shall notice some of these as we proceed. This impartial writer, who professes to pay such devotion to "la verité de l'histoire," opens his work

in these terms:→

"Quand du milieu des débris d'un trône, relevé deux fois par la justice nationale et par le vœu de tous les peuples, on entend sans cesse un nouvel Erostrate s'écrier d'une voix lugubre, mais audacieuse encore, qu'il n'a point porté une main sacrilege sur ce trône; quand, après avoir participé à l'assassinat du meilleur des rois, il ose imputer cette atrocité à une nation entiere, qui la dèsavoue avec toute l'horreur qu'elle inspire: quel est l'écrivain, le Français, qui pourrait contenir son indignation, garder le silence, et ne point déchirer le reste du voile dont cet hypocrite s'efforce de se couvrir encore? Telle est la tâche que nous nous sommes imposée. Celui

qui n'a pas craint de tremper son pinceau dans la boue et le sang pour esquisser le portrait de Fouché, pourrait-il épargner Carnot, son collegue, son collaborateur, son complice?

"Carnot naquit à Nolay, en Bourgogne, le 13 Mai, 1755, d'un père avocat; il se distingua dans ses études: mais les palmes qu'il cueillit à la fiu de chaque année scholaire furent aussi niusibles, pour l'avenir, à la moralité de ses principes politiques, que chers, pour le moment à son amour-propre. Né dans ce malheureux temps cù régnait le philosophisme de Voltaire, de Jean Jacques Rousseau, de Raynal, et de mille autres fous, si improprement appelés esprits forts, le jeune Carnot courbé sous des lauriers aussi perfides qu' agréables, n'en suça qu'avec plus d'avidité ce virus démagogique, dont on laisse imprégués encore tous les ouvrages des principaux auteurs classiques, Grecs et Latins, qu'on met entre les mains des élèves, sans songer qu'on leur présentant comme autant de traits héroïques, le dévouement de Mutius Scévola, la férocité des deux Brutus, et la mort de Caton d'Utique, on remplit du poison d'un républicanisme impolitique les cœurs des jeunes gens faits pour vivre sous une monarchie.*

"Le jeune élève ne quitta Démosthène et Ciceron, que pour adopter Jean Jacques Rousseau, l'auteur à la mode à cette epoque; Rousseau, qu'on pourrait avec raison surnommer le Bonaparte du dernier siècle, sous le rapport politique. Ce sophiste, aussi dange. reux par son eloquence, que par ses paradoxes, devint son auteur favori: à quinze ans il savait, dit on, par cœur, le Contrat Social, c'est a dire le code le plus antisocial qu'un esprit déréglé ait pu concevoir."

Making every allowance for the extreme loyalty of the author's mind, and for the consequent enmity he feels against Carnot, we may appeal to our readers, if they ever read more vulgar and senseless abuse than we have above extracted. We might have forgiven the narrow-minded bigotry which, in such a sweeping sentence, condemns the ablest authors of his own country; but the manner in which he censures the study of the classics, as impregnating young minds with too much of the love of liberty, by inculcating anti-monarchic principles, is surely below contempt. Yet this is a work widely disseminated, and much read, and which some venture to suppose has the sanction of the present government of France. The writer of the volume in our hands then goes on to state, that Carnot studied with much success the higher branches of mathematics and engi

On ne saurait exprimer combien de pareils exemples échauffent les têtes des jeunes élèves. Camille Desmoulins convenait qu'il ne dévait sa démagogie qu'aux idées republicaines qu'il avait puissées dans les auteurs Grecs et Latins; et ce furent ces idées que le conduisirent à l'échafaud.