fulness of gusto, and carried off his penances and his faux pas în a style of oriental grandeur. This is by no means the character of his followers among ourselves, who are a most pitiful sect. They may rather be considered as a collection of religious invalids; as the refuse of all that is weak and unsound in body and mind. To speak of them as they deserve, they are not well in the flesh, and therefore they take refuge in the spirit; they are not comfortable here, and they seek for the life to come; they are deficient in steadiness of moral principle, and they trust to grace to make up the deficiency; they are dull and gross in apprehension, and therefore they are glad to substitute faith for reason, and to plunge in the dark, under the supposed sanction of superior wisdom, into every species of mystery and jargon. This is the history of Methodism, which may be defined to be religion with its slabbering-bib and go-cart. It is a bastard kind of Popery, stripped of its painted pomp and outward ornaments, and reduced to a state of pauperism. "The whole need not a physician." The secret of the success of the Catholic faith and evangelical preaching, is the same-both are a religion by proxy.' p. 163

We are sure that we need not transcribe another sentence from these volumes, nor say a word more of their contents. The above is not a solitary instance of blasphemous ribaldry. There is much more of the same kind, mixed up with a variety of literary topics, which are treated for the most part with the flippancy of a petit-maitre infidel. One might almost admire the honesty, the sort of moral courage which is manifested in this open hostility against religion, contrasted with the insidious decency of air with which the attack is sometimes conducted, did it not seem to indicate that want of shame which, forbidding all hope of repentance, seals up the character in utter worthlessness.

As a specimen of the qualifications for moral and literary criticism, displayed in these volumes, the reader may however take the following remark.

The Dissenters in this country (if we except the founders of sects, who fall under a class by themselves) have produced only two remarkable men, Priestley and Jonathan Edwards!

Jonathan Edwards an English Dissenter!-born, educated, and resident all his days in America! This writer's accuracy is worthy of his other accomplishments. The assertion itself is too absurd to deserve serious refutation; and as to the Dissenters, the only shape in which they might fear to encounter these knights of the Round Table, would be that of panegyrists.

Art. VIII. Private Memoirs, which with the Work of M. Hue, and the Journal of Clery, complete the History of the Captivity of the Royal Family of France in the Temple. Translated from the French, with Notes by the Translator, 12mo. pp. 138. Price 6s. 6d. Murray. London. 1817.

THERE is scarcely any thing which is more calculated to

awaken, and call into exercise the tenderest feelings of our nature, than the contemplation of the privations and sufferings of those individuals especially, who seemed born to a better destiny. A diversity of opinion will probably ever continue to prevail, in regard to the actual circumstances which originated the French Revolution. Whether it arose out of the profligacy of the court, and the oppression of the aristocracy; what share the people themselves had in producing the convulsion; in what degree it is attributable to the writings of the French philosophers, which had preceded it; are questions of extremely dif ficult solution, and will long divide the opinions of the political world. But among Britons, there never can be more than one sentiment, one opinion, respecting the extreme cruelties inflicted upon the several branches of the royal household of France, during the long period of their cruel captivity.

We are accustomed to think and to speak of an English mob, as a many-headed monster of portentous mien and bearing. The populace of Britain, it must be confessed, are destitute of the courtesy and politesse of the French canaille; but we cannot persuade ourselves that any deputations from popular conventions in this country, or that British gens d'armes, could be brought to treat those who were yesterday their governors, but who are to-day in their power, with the shameful, or rather the shameless inhumanity which that unhappy family experienced; and this, often and without the smallest meaning, or the slightest pretext. The tale before us, is truly a tale of horror. It is formed of notes, taken by the only survivor of those who were personally the subjects of the shocking scenes it describes ; and who herself, for eighteen long months, endured not merely all the hardships and indignities of a rigorous confinement, but the heart-sickening uncertainty of the fate, and even of the existence of her own mother!

Hue and Clery have already given a detailed account of these transactions; but neither of these individuals was in possession of the many minute circumstances which make up the materials necessary to constitute a complete history of this hor-. rible affair. The incidents which are omitted by the above narrators, the tract now under notice professes to supply. It is, we are told, received at Paris, as a publication of indisputable authority; and indeed, it seems to possess all the internal evidence of an authentic narrative.

• The king aud his family,' it informs us, reached the Temple at seven o'clock in the evening of the 13th of August, 1792. The gunners wanted to take him alone to the Tower, (a detached part of the Temple never frequented, and hardly known,) and to have the other prisoners in the palace of the Temple. Manuel had by the way received an order to conduct the whole family to the Tower. Petion appeased the anger of the gunners, and the order was executed. Petion went away, but Manuel remained, and the municipal officers would not let the king out of their sight: he supped with his family. The Dauphin was dying with sleep. At eleven o'clock, Madame de Tourzill took him to the Tower, which was positively to be the common lodging of all. About one o'clock in the morning, the king and the rest of the family were conducted thither; there was nothing ready for their reception. Madame Elizabeth slept in the kitchen, and it was said that Manuel himself was ashamed at shewing her the way to such a bed chamber.'

The history then proceeds to describe the several instances of personal insult, which the members of the Royal Family, and the King especially, were exposed to daily, by the men who were employed as constant guards of their persons, and inspectors of all their actions. One man in particular, who had headed the mob to force open the palace doors on the 20th of June, was ever exercised in contriving some mode of shewing the cruelty of his hatred by acts of vulgar revenge. Knowing that the Queen had a particular aversion to tobacco, he would puff' it in her face, and in that of the King, when they happened to pass him. He would retire early to bed, because he knew that the family must necessarily go through his room, in order to reach their own. But it was not within doors only, that these vulgar insults were constantly shewn. The garden was full of workmen who insulted the king. One of them even boasted before him, that he wished to split the queen's head with the tool with which he was working.' It is, however, added, that Petion caused this man to be arrested.

Madame de Lamballe, who was at first confined with the family, was soon forced away from them. While they were in anxious suspense respecting her, there was one day an uncommon tumult, accompanied with the most horrid shouts. It was insisted by some who entered the Temple, that the King should shew himself at the windows. This, however, was over-ruled; but upon the King's asking what was the matter, one of the guards replied, Well! since you will know it, it is the head of Madame de Lamballe that they want to shew you.'

*Madame de Lamballe was of the house of Savoy; the wi"dow of Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, son of the Duke of . Penthievre.'

This was the only occasion, the Duchess of Angoulême informs us, on which the firmness of her mother was overcome. She adds, that when the municipal officers shewed their anger against the young man who had thus unfeelingly made known this horrible transaction, her father, the King, excused him,' taking the fault upon himself for having questioned him.

The trial and condemnation of Louis, and his conduct during the time the trial lasted, as well as the firmness and resignation with which he died, are then briefly related; and the narrative' continues in the following words.

On the morning of this terrible day, the princesses rose at six. The night before, the queen had scarcely strength enough to put her son to bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her own bed, where she was heard shivering with cold and grief all night long. At a quarter past six the door opened; the princesses believed that they were sent for to see the king; but it was only the officers looking for a prayer-book for the king's mass. They did not, however, abandon the hope of seeing him, till the shouts of joy of the in furiated populace came to tell them that all was over!'

6

After this, we are not surprised to hear that nothing could calm the agony of the Queen, and that she would sometimes look upon her children and her sister with an air of pity that 'made them shudder.'

Another dreadful trial soon awaited her. On the third of July, a decree of the Convention was read to the Queen and Princesses, purporting that the Dauphin should be separated from them. The Queen heard this decree with the utmost agony of horror, and she actually defended against the efforts of the officers, the bed in which she had placed him.' Her horror was augmented when she learnt that one Simon, a shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen in the Temple, was one of the officers to whom her unhappy child was confided. This miscreant's principal duty, we are told in a note by the Translator, was to debilitate the child's body, and impair his understanding. Simon was eventually involved in Robespierre's overthrow, and was guillotined the day after him, July 29th, 1794.

The Queen was ordered at length to prepare for her trial; and, as a preliminary step, her separation from the Princesses was ordered, and put into execution. The infamous Simon, in the mean time, was teaching the young Dauphin the most horrid oaths and execrations against God, his own family, and the aristocrats. Happily, the Queen was ignorant of these horrors. Her earthly course had terminated, before the child had learned this infamous lesson. It was an infliction which the mercy of heaven was pleased to spare her.'

It was on the 16th of October, 1793, that Marie AntoinetteJosephe-Jeanne de Lorraine, daughter of an emperor, and wife of VOL. VII. N. S.

2 H

a king, was executed. She was thirty-seven years and eleven months old. She had been twenty-three years in France, and had survived her husband eight months.

The princesses could not persuade themselves that the queen was dead, though they heard her sentence cried about by the newsmen. A hope, natural to the unfortunate, made them believe that she had been saved.

'There were moments, however, at which in spite of their reliance on foreign powers, they felt the liveliest alarm for her, when they heard the fury of the unhappy populace against the whole family. Madame Royale (the Duchess of Angoulême) remained for eighteen months in this cruel suspense.'

This tract contains also a circumstantial account of the manner in which the life of the Dauphin was terminated. It seems the choice was given to the shoemaker Simon, whether he would continue to be the keeper of the Dauphin, or accept the situation of a municipal officer. As he preferred the latter, the unhappy child was absolutely abandoned to misery and wretchedness; he continued for more than a year without any change of linen, so that every kind of filth and vermin was allowed to accumulate about him, without being removed during all that time.

'His window, which was locked as well as grated, was never opened; and the infectious smell of this horrid room was so dreadful that no one could bear it for a moment. He might indeed have washed himself, for he had a pitcher of water, and have kept himself more clean than he did; but overwhelmed by the ill-treatment he had received, he had not resolution to do so, and his illness began to deprive him of even the necessary strength. He never asked for any thing, so great was his dread of Simon, and his other keepers. He passed his days without any kind of occupation. They did not even allow him light in the evening. This situation affected his mind as well as his body, and it is not surprizing that he should have fallen into a frightful atrophy. The length of time which he resisted this persecution shews how good his constitution must originally have been.'

In consequence of this cruel neglect and ill-treatment, the Dauphin fell into a disorder attended with swellings of his joints and fever, of which he died, according to this account, on the 9th of June, 1795, at three o'clock in the afternoon. He was

not poisoned,' says the history, as some have believed. The only poison which shortened his days was filth, made more fatal by horrible treatment, by harshness and cruelty, of which there is no example.'

Here the Memoirs terminate. It is stated in a note, that the Duchess remained six months in the Temple after the death of her brother, and left it on the 19th of December, which was the seventeenth anniversary of her birth.