tradictory, that it was impossible to adhere to any fundamental prin ciple, either in opposing them, or complying with them. Not a word is said of the laws that were enacted, only to be violated; of the constitutions which lasted not a day, but melted away before the constitution of the next hour; or of the incessant encroachments on their own decreed rights of the crown. Was it proper, as a King, who had the good of his subjects at heart, to submit implicitly to the violators of all compacts? Was it possible not to regret many of his forced compliances, and to endeavour to counteract the mischief they had occasioned? According to the moral code of this lady, whoever does not comply with the extorted promises made to a highwayman or housebreaker, is an unprincipled scoundrel! But, perhaps, her maxim is not a general one, and is only to take place when the question is between monarchs and revolutionists. As a specimen of the Letters and Commentary, we insert the fol lowing Extract, premising that the lady's republican orgasm does not here burst out so violently as in most parts of her publication. The victory was gained, and she thought it decent to drop a few crocodile tears over the prostrate foe. The letter was written after the attack on the Thuilleries, on the 10th of August: (" MY BROTHER, "Paris August 12, 1792-Seven in the morning. * I am no longer King! The public voice will make known to you the most cruel catastrophe. . . . I am the most unfortunate of hu.bands and of fathers!.... I am the victim of my own goodness, of fear, of hope. . . . It is an impenetrable mystery of iniquity! They have be reaved me of every thing: they have massacred my faithful subjects; I have been decoyed by stratagem far from my palace; and they now accuse me! I am a captive: they drag me to prison; and the Queen, my children, and Madame Elizabeth, share my sad fate. "I can no longer doubt that I am an object odious in the eyes of the French, led astray by prejudice This is the stroke that is most insupportable. My brother, but a little while, and I shall exist no longer. Remember to avenge my memory, by publishing how much I loved this ungrateful people. Recall one day to their remembrance the wrongs they have done me, and tell them I forgave them. Adieu, my brother, for the last time! "LEWIS." Had a like attack been made by the loyalists on the National Convention, had the result been the death of all the members, as the the 10th of August produced the murder of the King, and had the Monarch, as the majority of the National Convention evidently did, sanctioned this outrage, how very eloquent and pathetic would H. M. Williams have been? On the present occasion, all is passed over without notice. It seems it deserved none. It was only a King to whom violence was offered. It was only a King whom it inevitably led to the guillotine and to throw away a thought on a matter so Miss Williams's Correspondence of Lewis XVI. 15 very trivial, it appears, is below the dignity of a true republican' mind. Let us see, however, what she does say: "My brother," says Lewis, "I am no longer King... I am the most unfortunate of husbands, and of fathers."-The most unfortunate of husbands, and of fathers !-Unhappy Monarch! amidst the loss of empire, of all the world calls greatness, the objects of his tenderness twine around his heart, and inflict its deepest anguish. Fallen from his high estate, pierced by the sharpest arrows of calamity, it is here that the iron enters into his soul!-Whenever we have occasion to contemplate Lewis XVI. in a domestic point of view, we, feel every sentiment of sympathy awakened in his favour, and lament that a mind, susceptible of the best affections of our nature, should have become the victim of those very affec tions, which, in other circumstances, would have been virtues, but which, in his situation, produced the effect of crimes. His conjugal attachment led him into the most fatal errors, which terminated in the most bitter calamities. That sentiment, by its cruel seduction, destined him to suf fer the pangs of remorse, almost without the consciousness of guilt; since his mind seems to have been penetrated with the sense of every duty which he neglected, and with the sacredness of every obligation he violated. He loved the people he betrayed, and disapproved the projects of their enemies, with whom he irrevocably linked his fate. Unfortunate and misguided Prince! while abhorrent at the idea of shedding one drop of human blood, he condemned himself to call the coalesced powers of Europe to arm against his country; and millions have perished in its defence and while he seems to have appreciated power and greatness at their true value, and to have felt the worth of being loved, he suffered himself to be dragged from the throne to the scaffold, rather than re nounce despotic empire, and be hailed the father of his people." upon The writer here, in a tone of hypocritical commiseration, accuses the Monarch almost of every crime of which, as a King, he could be guilty. This may pass with the society which she keeps at Paris : but we believe that the impartial and unprejudiced will join with us in saying, that he did not betray the people, but that both he and they were betrayed by the revolutionary demagogues; that he did not call forth the coalesced powers against his country, but against a faction, that has led that country through a sea of blood, and through unspeakable horrors, to more than eastern despotism; and that, instead of losing his life for his attachment to despotism, the whole tenor of his life gives the lie to the false and malignant accusation. But enough of the lady and her work.-The energies of Brigittina Williams are much too sublime for us: how they harmonise with those of Mr. Stone, and her other Parisian associates, we will not pretend to say. Our wonder, however, is excited by two things: 1st, How she ventures to display them under the superior imperial energies of Bonaparte. And, 2dly, how she can submit to live under a government, which is certainly not auspicious to her, to Thomas Paine, or to the French regenerators' Rights of Man. Besides the Letters, these volumes contain some other compositions on both public and domestic affairs. We have not paid a critical attention to the translation, taking it for granted, that a person so long domesticated in France, and now a veteran author, must be able to perform with sufficient accuracy the task she had undertaken. Essays on various Subjects. By J. Bigland. 12s. THESE Essays contain a variety of subjects; and their merit is as much varied as their matter. In all that relates to religion and morality, we generally agree with the author; we say generally, for, though Mr. Bigland is himself a friend to the National Church, and though we are also friends to moderate toleration, we do not think he enforces with all the energy he might, the precept of Pythagoras. Αθανάτες μὲν πρῶτα θεές, νόμῳ ὡς διάκειται Τίμα But in some other points we differ entirely from him. In the manner also, as well as the matter, we find something to praise and something to censure. We shall try to justify both our censure and our praise, by some extracts taken from the Essays, in the order in which they occur; for of a miscellaneous work of this kind there can be no analysis. In the Essay on National Establishments in religion, the author, we think, very properly observes, how much better it is to live among those with whom we agree in the more essential parts of Christianity, though we may differ as to forms, than with those who are entirely unbelievers. These are Mr. Bigland's words: "If he considered how much more eligible a Calvinist, a Quaker, or a Catholic, must find it to live among Christian Protestants, whose morals are influenced by the doctrines of the gospel, than among men who are destitute of religion, conscience, and morality; or how much more agree. able it must be to a Protestant to live among Christian Catholics, who agree with him in the belief of the same general essential, and fundamen tal doctrines, and the same obligatory precepts of Christianity, who have the same moral ideas as himself, make the same distinction between virtue and vice, and expect the same remuneration of their deeds, than among men who are totally unacquainted with these things, and whose inclinations are the only rule of their actions, he would view the difference of situation in the same light as a person who investigates the principles and considers the effects of civil legislature, sees the difference between a well regulated community and a horde of barbarians, ignorant of moral order, and under no legal restraint." All that we object to in this passage, are the expressions Catholic and Christian Catholic. We know this is the common language of the day; but it is new. We profess ourselves to believe in the holy Ca tholic Church, and if we appropriate this expression to the Church of Rome, as protesters against the doctrine of that church, we avow ourselves, to be heretics. Till very lately, Papist was their legal designation. We believe Lord Redesdale's bill is the first instance of their being called Roman Catholics in a solemn act of the legislature. We do not, however, wish to revive any odious distinction'; but do not let us call them xar' x Catholis. Essay VI. Vol. I. on Ecclesiastical Emoluments, has so much merit, that we wish our limits would permit us to make larger extracts from it. We shall lay before our readers what Mr. Bigland says on the schemes so much in favour with some of our modern writers on agriculture, for the abolition of tithes : "Ecclesiastical History, it must be allowed, affords several instances of the seizure of the revenues of the church in different countries; but those arbitrary proceedings are somewhat difficult to justify by any solid reasoning, or on any principles of equity, which we should think it safe to apply to any other cases of possession. The system adopted in some countries of seizing the lands of the church, and fixing the ecclesiastical stipends in money, is ruinous to the interests of the Christian clergy, and tends to the degradation of the clerical character, by causing the mini. sters of the altar to be considered as a sort of servants of the public. It also renders the church more burdensome to the lower orders of the peo. ple, of whom, every individual, in proportion to his consumption, furnishes his contribution to the national treasury, out of which, those sa laries must be paid, than it is found where lands are assigned for the clergy, and where it is consequently productive of no greater inconve nience to the people at large that an estate is in the hands of a Bishop or an Archbishop, than if it were in the hands of a Marquis or a Duke. The conversion of ecclesiastical revenues into pecuniary stipends, is also, in other respects, pregnant with certain bad consequences, of which, although it be impossible to calculate the full extent, we may, from preceding cir. cumstances, form a probable conjecture. No one is ignorant of the pro digious influx of money, and the consequent diminution of its value, which has, within the last three centuries, taken place. This is a cir. cumstance which has had a fatal operation on a number of public institu tions, to the support of which, a fixed stipend in money had been as signed. This is verified in every part of Europe, and particularly in Great Britain, where a number of charitable institutions, which were once of great importance and benefit to the public, are now dwindled down into insignificancy, and some of them considered so little worth attention as to be entirely lost, or converted to purposes totally different from those for which they were first intended.” The seventh Essay of Vol, I. treats on Education, in which we differ toto cælo from the author, who deprecates the public education of our great schools. This is one of his observations on the subject: A public education is generally supposed to be accompanied by some Considerable advantages, of which a private tuition is necessarily desti. NO. XCV. VOL, XXIV. C tute. tute. It is, in the first place, esteemed conducive to the acquisition of that easy confidence which is so generally applauded, and is unquestiona. bly of great use in life. If the supposition, that this quality is attainable in a public and unattainable in a private education, could be proved justifiable, it would powerfully contribute to cast the balance in favour of the former. This bold and easy assurance, if not carried beyond the bounds of moderation and decency, has, in every transaction of life, a decided advantage over that bashful timidity which totally disqualifies a person from making any figure in public. It is not, however, to be acquired in a seminary of turbulent boys, among whom noise and impudence exclude reason and reflection, and are the principal ingredients in their social intercourse, but by a gradual and well-timed, introduction into company, where various kinds of conversation contribute to amusementand instruction, and where the youthful mind may not only imbibe a variety of knowledge, and learn to form just ideas of a number of things appertaining to life, but also acquire a decency of behaviour, and a propriety and elegance of expression, not to be learnt in a tumultuous rabble of petulant children. It has, indeed, been frequently observed, that those who have been educated in public schools are generally as bashful and timid in any other company than that of their playmates, as those whose education has been more private, which shews that various conversation with the world can alone inspire a well-grounded and becoming assurance in discourse and behaviour, which is something very different from the troublesome and noisy petulance of ignorant self-sufficiency." Our experience has convinced us, that a manly confidence among equals, and the diffidence in the company of men and women, which is so amiable in youth, and which is the promise of future excellence in the man, is the usual consequence of a public school; and that the troublesome and noisy petulance of ignorant self-sufficiency is generally the fruit of an early introduction of boys into society, where they fancy they are acquiring a notion of things when they are only capable of learning words. The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Essays of the first volume, are entirely devoted to the subject of superstition; a labour which, at the present day, might surely have been spared, as incredulity rather than credulity, at least in all but the material world, is the character of the times. Surely we now have too much reason to say with the Roman satirist : "Esse aliquas 'manes & subterranea regna, Nec pueri credunt nisi qui rondum ære lavantur. We sincerely commend that laudable care which we believe to be now universal among parents and instructors, to keep ali superstitious stories from the ears of infancy; but when such stories happen to be read or related, Mr. Addison, in his admirable Spectator, on the subject, affords the best antidote to the poison; but he never goes the length of saying, with all the children's story books now published, that no such events ever did or ever could possibly happen; a founda |