he was a good scholar; but his principal ar-together that you know not whether the one gument he drew down from his own heart. has been solidified into stone, or the other The reader will have perceived from the evaporated into clouds. Then we have the prefixed list, that Stilling was a very volumin. book of the Revelation, and the number of ous writer. To put his works into English the beast; and the Old and New Testament changed into the "The Tales of a Grandfather;" and pious hymns and prayers, and a "golden treasury" of meditations for every day in the year, and for every text in the Bible; and "a grey man" gliding quietly through the throng and glitter of this wicked world, and prophesying that in the year 1836 (now past) the millennium is to commence, or the devil to be let loose-we forget which. The reader will excuse our going at large into the criticism of these works; they might have possessed--we believe they did possess measure, the thirteen German volumes must be multiplied by three, which gives us thirty nine; and the subject of all these volumes is one and the same; the eternal truth and beauty of Christianity, and the superiority of the supersensible over the sensible world.A silly employment this last (though by the way, radically identical with the other), will no doubt appear to us "practical Sadducees;" but it remains yet to be proved that studying animal magnetism, and concocting matter into mind, is a less ennobling employment than commenting on Jeremy Bentham, and considerable religious influence in their day; converting right and wrong into mere pleas. but they are altogether destitute of literary ure and pain; and it may also be doubted value,--and even in a religious point of view whether collecting ghost stories be a less edi- they are mere syllabub and whisked foam. fying employment than fabricating lies for The fact is, Stilling (like many greater men) newspapers, and political orations. Once spoiled himself by writing to much; and he and for all, every honest truth-loving man was spoiled also by writing exclusively for a must make a decided unconditional protest certain set of very aimiable people, who against the one-sidedness of English Ma- looked up to him as a sort of god. Even in terialism; at the same time we are willing sensible Britain, these things take place daily; to confess, that the Spiritualism of the Ger- how much more in Germany! mans is often a thing vague and unsubstan- But there is yet one work of this singutial, like the souls of the New South Wales lar individual, not of a strictly religious savages, (as they say), coming from clouds, character, that deserves special mention. and going back into clouds again; also that We mean the "Theorie der Geister-Kunthe dew of watery tears is too plenteous; and de;" a complete system of the supersensithat the soul of man is made to comport it- ble world, wherein the rights of ghosts and self like a mimosa pudica—all nerve and no spirits, the authenticity of visions, and exmuscle-so that a German man seems less traordinary visitations of all sorts, are most manly than a British child; there is also too nobly and manfully vindicated against the much of old wives' gossip, of a morbid anxi- incredulity of all gross, full-blooded men, ety about small things, of a provincial im- who eat beef-steaks, drink porter, laugh portance given to trifles, and of a national, loudly, and have their portion only in the sometimes also a universal dignity, to petty material. It would be premature to enter domesticities, and specially we are willing into any serious examination of this matter, to confess, and we forewarn the econom- so long as the prevended facts (?) of animal ical reader, that a great part of Jung Stilling's magnetism remain uninvestigated. These works can come under no better category facts, when ascertained and calmly and imthan that of pious drivel. We have much partially looked into, may possibly throw that does not rank far above the vulgar style great light on the whole philosophy of of street preaching; a great puff and a loud dreams, visions, and apparitions. The misbark, but not a single tooth to bite. The fortune is that impartial juries, and keen, "Home-sickness," for instance, is a very quick-witted barristers on each side, are selstrange, but also a very wearisome freak of dom at hand to try the evidence on which pious fancy; and no wonder; from a Ger- such extraordinary occurrences rest. In manization of John Bunyan, and a sanctifi- the meanwhile Jung Stilling sets out from cation of Tristran Shandy (so the author a transcendental principle, which we are himself explains it), something singularly afraid will not go far to conciliate his Engfantastic, but at the same time singularly lish readers. He borrows again a leaf from diluted and pithless, was to have been expect. ed. It is a most singular imagination, an expansion and universalizing of Stilling's own £ingular existence; a jumble of real and ideal, of plain and allegorical; heaven and earth thrown into one lumber-room, and shaken so Immanuel Kant; he proves, from the first chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason,' that space and time have no existence except in the mind; they are mere ways of looking at things, not things themselves; they have no perinanent reality; consequent. ly the whole of the modern philosophy, we profit have led some of them to doubt on which is founded on the relations of space some points with regard to which we have and time-the mechanical systems, as Stil- never taken the trouble even to inquire. Is ling styles them, of Copernicus and New- this Christian? Is this gentlemanly? Veton-are equally phantastical, equally un-rily, if we can learn nothing else from Gerreal. There is no permanent reality ex- man theology, we may learn toleration, and cept in God, and in the world of angels and that, though a mere negative thing, is a spirits, which the word of God reveals. great deal, for it is negative of folly, and But this supersensible world is independent puts a gag upon the greedy maw of the allof all vulgar relations of space and time, swallowing EGO of dogmatism. The vir and cannot be legitimately judged of by the tue of religious tolerance, as we are accuslaws that regulate the co-existence and suc- tomed to exercise it, is a mere material and cession of material facts. The scoffs and outward thing. A man may preach as sneers of the Sadducean merely prove his much nonsense as he pleases, and we will ignorance. The empirical man is himself the not incarcerate him. Very good. This is shadow into which he would convert the tolerating another man's nonsense; it is but intelligible universe. Such is the wide and one step above savage barbarity to do so; all-embracing basis on which Stilling pro- but how shall we learn to tolerate another poses to rebuild the sacred temple in which man's sense? This is indeed a hard thing ghosts and spirits, dreams, omens, and pre- for flesh and blood; for it implies the counsentiments, were wont to be worshipped; terpart idea, that some nonsense may also be and perhaps if the English nation were not on our side. Practically, to tolerate the so much accustomed to think by the same notion that another man may be right in laws that regulate steam-coaches and spin- some things while we are in the wrong, is ning-jennies, the scheme might not appear a very difficult thing; a thing very differaltogether unreasonable. There is at least this adventage (as Kant says) in going beyond the limits of experience, that no experience can be brought to contradict us. ent from the parade which it is now the fashion to make of religious toleration; a thing which many very orthodox people never learnt at all; a thing which only the To conclude. Henry Jung used to say, habitual spiritual application of that golden that he had received more real Christian rule, "Do unto others," &c. can enable a kindness from that one heathen, Göthe, than man to attain to. If we are to pay any refrom all his brother Pietists at Elberfeld put gard to the opinions of impartial foreigners, together. Possibly, if we were to try the oftentimes repeated, we must confess ourexperiment, we might find that there is selves, notwithstanding our gold and our more of the spirit of true Christianity to be machinery, to be bigots in some things. borrowed from one of these heterodox neo- Let us go to Germany, and study toleration. logians, or anti-neologic German pietists, Let us remember what Guizot says; "It is than from a host of our own most orthodox necessary, if religion is to accomplish its doctors. There is nothing strange in this. end, that it should become accepted by li. The mere novelty and contrast of the foreign berty,-that man should submit himself vo. mode of thought acts as a beneficial stimu- luntary and freely to it,—that he should be lus to the reflective faculties. But inde- free, notwithstanding his submission. This pendent of this, where shall we find such a is the twofold problem that religion is resincere reverential love of truth, such a quired to solve." Therefore let neology scrupulous conscientiousness of investiga- quietly work its own purification. "Erastion, such a vital breathing in the atmos- mus has laid the egg:" God will send some phere of all that is most holy, as amongst "Luther to hatch it" when the fulness of these Germans? It is high time that we time shall come. And if the Germans should do them justice in the domain of re- have not laid any real egg in metaphysicoligion, as we have already done in the more theological matters, they have at least startfamiliar walks of literature. Hitherto, in ed some new ideas, which we, with our respect of matters theological, we have com- broad practical understanding, may condeforted ourselves too much like Penelope's scend to lay hold of and apply. Even this suitors; we feed upon another man's sub- man, Jung Stilling-half woman as he unstance, and call the master of the house a questionably is-may teach us much. He may bravo. We furnish the shelves of our libraries teach us to unite the most zealous and jealous with the fruit of their industrious research in evangelism with a certain free latitudinarianclassical literature and biblical criticism, ism, that has not the least kindred with indifand then we turn round upon them and ference. We may learn from him that relidenounce them as infidels and atheists, be- gion is not theology, and piety is not churchcause those very habits of inquiry by which going. We may learn to forego the letter which killeth, and seek after the spirit But names that could once so deeply inwhich maketh alive. We may learn even terest can never lose all their power over of ourselves even by reading the depths of the spirit. The charms of that acted roour own hearts-to know that which is mance were too closely interwoven with our right. We may arrive at the great and im- own youthful thoughts, opening prospects, portant conclusion, that the practical re- and panting aspirations not to retain for us generation of the moral nature of man, who have outlived them, and who alone were which is the beginning and the end of the conscious of their stern but gorgeous realiGospel of Jesus Christ, is a very different ty, the tribute which the human bosom pays thing from any local ordinance, whereby a ever to living truth; and this it pays with a man is tattooed and tabooed into the tradi- sincerity and simple sadness totally unlike tions of the elders. all the ideal of fancy's boldest creations. These beings of recent history lived and breathed, felt, loved and hated, like ourselves. We grant the same fact theoretically in other instances, but we know it in this case of our own experience; and when the robes of pomp and tinsel with which circumstances invested them at the moment, have fallen and faded in the damps of decay; when the factitious glare of elevated station has died, and the sole light that haloes ART. II.-Mémoires sur la Reine Hortense et la Famille Imperiale, par Mademoisel. le Cochelet, Lectrice de la Reiné. (Madame Parquin) 4 tom. Paris, 1836- their mouldering forms springs from the 1838. cold corruption of the grave, the deepest moral that human wisdom ever taught sinks WHAT a crowd of half-forgotten sensations upon the heart in that silence of desolation; are called up by the phrase of the Imperi- a tie that, far stronger than interest, pride, al Family of France! Fear, admiration, hatred, hope or ambition, binds man to the wonder, expectancy, and depression, the tomb of fallen greatness in the instinctive energies of late vengeance, and active hos- brotherhood of humanity. We feel in them tility, with the pulses of final triumph, of for ourselves: and hear the cchoes of their sympathy, and even sorrow for those who destiny in mute consciousness that it is also filled so long so splendid a place in histo. the doom of our own perishable nature. ту. Yet this downfal and desolation were To emotions such as these for the world as complete as their earlier felicity. The of survivors at large, another, and not always feelings that then filled our minds, and a more creditable feeling may be added in formed a material part of our every-day the land of those who filled the subordinate existence, as involving the very principle of parts of the drama; or who, from their vicinour national, if not individual welfare, now ity, were most mixed up with its effects. The lie unnoted and overlaid by subsequent interest necessarily felt by those who were changes and events, or rise but as half-for- the instruments of that greatness, had led to gotten dreams amidst the long oblivion of a systematic attempt on the part of ingenious, the past. The very associations to which but unprincipled writers, to take advantage those days were attached, the circumstances of their state of feeling for their own sordid that sprung out of them, the order of things purposes, by mis leading public recollections to which they more immediately led, even and falsifying history. No labour, no cost, these are but as the tale of yesterday, yield- no talent has been spared to concoct inconing their influences to those of the actual sistencies and dovetail disjointed facts; time. The system last formed is based up filling up the unavoidable fissures with on their ruin, and its foundations are com- surmises instead of certainties, inferences for posed of their broken and jumbled compo- results and bold assumptions of incongruous nents. The rising generation but knows falsehoods, whilst art and impudence plasterthem as the theme of history or a moral, ed the whole together with a layer of glossy while that which rose, lived with, and has varnish to conceal the defects of workmansurvived them, recalls slowly and with diffi- ship. The public bought and read, comculty the scenes of their domination. It is a mented with praise or censure, viewed with drama at which they had once assisted, love or detestation the objects of the concealbut whose pageants are closed and the dress-ed writer's affection or hate; till, detecting es divested now; the audience has long re- the fraud, a general scepticism arose, and the tired, while the last expiring lights gleamed artifice, like all others, was found to cheat its only on empty benches and naked boards, own contrivers at the last. daubed canvass, the pulley, and the beam. 'The eminent publisher of the volumes be fore us has felt, like many of his bookselling "About a fortnight since a porter presented himself in our warehouse with a parcel directed to us and on it was only written Papers on business.' No letter of advice had preceded it, nor was any de livered with it. From her situation in the household it may be easily guessed that her sphere of action and vision was extremely confined; and that the impressions of characters received by Mademoiselle Cochelet are, like those of Chinese printing, all on one side. The light, conventional tone of the writer's mind was certainly better calculated for society than biographic labour; but she was brought by circumstances into contact with persons whose names give their characteristic features to the events of those times of trouble, and the side-lights thus offered may, according to the reader's own estimation of their value, serve to assist his judgment, in some degree at least, as to the parties referred to. The work of course is one of the lightest possible reading, as the reader may gather from its "The next day, a friend came to us and said; 'You have received a parcel; it contains the Memoires de Mademoiselle Cochelet (Madame Parquin): they must be commencement. printed by the 25th of this month, and this "The is the only condition for their publication.' year 1813 commenced more sadly "After reading the manuscript we found than those preceding it. The first day of that its object was to make known the the year was on a Friday !-what a sinister history of an august person, whose rever- presage!-After all the disasters of our ses have always been greater than the at- armies we could not but think that further tendant good fortune; who after twenty disasters were reserved for us—and everyyears' exile from home, has left, not body said What can result from a year France only, but Europe for twenty more, that bears the number 13, and begins on a in order to rejoin and save a son, the only Friday? To what misfortunes is France, one who remained out of three nourished is Europe still to be subjected? in the bosom of grandeur. We are proud "Superstition with the majority is only and happy to have been chosen to contri-a jest others attach importance to it. For bute to the publicity of authentic facts, myself, I said, nothing can happen worse accompanied with irrefragable proofs, and, than we have experienced;-but the excess which substitute truth for a series of pre- of the evil gives hopes of its termination." judices and errors, too long believed and cherished. Marshals, generals, and officers, she pro"Lastly we have seen that the manusceeds to say, returning daily, brought home cript (which by dint of great exertions we the most fearful reports: but the prompt ar succeeded in publishing by the required rival of the emperor re-assured everybody; time) was of a nature to attract the inter- hope returned, and gaity re-appeared. est of the public to a young girl, who has A matter of scarcely less importance, to just lost her mother, and whose father is the individual concerned at least, as would confined on a serious accusation. These For various motives were more than sufficient appear, occupies the next pages. to do away with any scruples we might family dinners with the emperor, &c. the have had. (Signed) C. Ladvocat. queen was in the habit of dressing in about five minutes; the children were always with her. "Paris, the 25th of November, 1836." Mademoiselle Cochelet was the daughter of the advocate-general of the bailiwick of "While her hair was being dressed, they Charleville, belonging to the Prince de Conde, amused themselves with running after one and a deputy of the tiers-état. She was another between their mother's chair and brought up at St. Germain under Madame the hair-dresser, who, on account of the Campan, and there commenced her inter- length of the hair, was obliged to keep at macy with Mademoiselle Hortense de Beau- formed a little arch under which they passome distance from the chair, and thus harnais. Advanced to the station of reader ed. The poor hairdresser was meanwhile to her early friend at the elevation of the latter, in a cold sweat, and dared not complain. she shared also her exile in Switzerland and But when the queen, with a garland on her died lately at Thurgovia, leaving it appears, head, which was sometimes put on right, a large quantity of papers and correspon- and sometimes wrong, had left the room, dence with some of the most celebrated per-reputation; it is impossible to dress the he would break out: 'I am losing my sonages of the times, but of these the only queen's hair well; she does not give me portion intended for publicity are the contents time.' And then, in the most serious tone, of the present volumes, referring to the he would add: What will the emperor years, 1813, 1814, and 1815. think or say of me?-That I am an idle, awkward rascal, and do not know how to | The panic was at his height, and nothing dress hair!" " -p. 21. was thought of but carnage, massacres The queen, notwithstanding the especial evil infused the idea of finding shelter and. and pillage. The thoughts of the latter favour with which she was regarded by Na-concealment ; every one was then occupipoleon, and which she appears to have deed in placing his most precious effects in Served by her devotion to him throughout, sure places; but this was not always very was placed with her household under espion easy. nage by the Duke de Rovigo. She expressed utter indifference at this circumstance, ascribing it merely to his innate propensities, and declared it harmless and not worth notice. "Iffriends met in the streets, they were sure to whisper to one another- Where the ladies quitted Paris, others pulled their have you hidden your jewels?' Many of houses to pieces in order to make hiding. places, which, at the moment of danger, -"Yes, the queen said that, and neverwould have served to show, collected in one theless the Duke of Rovigo came one day spot,treasures which would have been more to advise her to observe me more closely, secure from pillage in their usual places. as I was in correspondence with Russia, "A person of my acquaintance had and was constantly receiving visits from caused the door of a little isolated closet foreigners; and said that if the Emperor to be bricked over, after having put into it knew it, he would force her to remove what he valued the most, among which. me."-p, 69. • The queen was greatly beloved by her attendants, and deservedly for the mildness of her manners, even in reproof. "I have sometimes been a week in endeavouring to console one of her women,. who felt great pride in winning her appro bation, and who never ceased weeping, only because the queen had said, in her usual mild manner,- I have had a very bad night; I have not slept at all; the bed was not well made.' Any one who had seen the maid in tears, would have said that she had at least been beaten; and if I had not myself heard the reproach made with so much midlness, I should have imagined that she had received a very se vere reprimand."-p. 72. A slight sketch of public feeling appears in the following passage: "The emperor arrived at St. Cloud on. the 9th of November: his return revived the courage of every one, and changed their fears into hopes. Every one imagined that it only depended on the emperor to sign the treaty of peace, and they exclaimed against him because he did not do so immediately. "The queen went on the 15th with the empress Maria-Louisa, to be present at opening the meeting of the legislative body, when the Emperor intimated in his speech that he wished for peace. They all said 'Why not make peace then? Cannot he do whatever he pleases?" p. 172. The following were the first effects of the approaching danger in Paris. The second extract is inexpressibly affecting. were several elocks; but had, unfortunately, forgotten to stop them, and for a week afterwards they regularly struck the hours all together; thus informing the neighbours of precautions which they did not wish them to suspect. Others considered their cellars the securest places, bundled into them a thousand things which were afterwards wanted, but when taken out were found to be completely spoilt by the damp."-p. 192. "Two of her old acquaintances came, nothing doubting, to assist me in amusing her. They were two fops of former days, of the small number of idlers that society possessed at that grand epoch of our history, when every thing was serious, great,, important, or useful. These two gentlemen arrived with long faces, so different from their usual sprightly air, that my first movement was to break into a fit oflaughter. All the ladies surrounded them, thinking that they had some distressing news which they were unwilling to disclose, whilst they themselves wished to interrogate us, in order to set their minds at rest on a subject of uneasiness which occupied their thoughts. They were anxious to know if the projects of defence for the city of Paris would not put the fine walks in the Bois de Boulogne in danger of being destroyed. It was there, in fact, that they loitered away the best part of the day; there was the theatre of their successes and exploits; and was that to be utterly annihilated ?"-p. 196. On the news of the capture of Mâcon, Feb. 9, the Parisians consoled themselves with this very satisfactory pun, impossible to conceive in English. Maçon, they said, could not possibly have held out, being as sailed by 24-pounders, (des pièces de vingt quatre,) and having nothing to oppose to them but pièces de vingt (vins). "The 2nd of February (which I remember as a time of depression very nearly approaching to despair) we heard that the Grand Duke Constantine had promised No man is a hero to his valet-de-chamhis troops to warm them in the ashes of Paris, and said that his brother the Empe-bre; and we therefore take the next extract, ror had sworn to sleep in the Tuileries. as showing the Emperor a false prophet, |