66

chaleur, lorsqu'on vint le chercher de la part du roi. L'appartement de M. de Maurepas étoit le même qu'avoit occupé madame du Barry; il communiquoit à celui du roi par un escalier dérobé. Le ministre descendi sur-le-champ, et trouva le roi et la reine réunis, qui l'accueillirent avec la plus grande bonté, et lui témoignèrent l'un et l'autre combien ils étoient affectés d'un événement qui l'affligeoit au point de vouloir les abandonner. Leurs majestés daignèrent l'assurer que jamais elles n'avoient eu l'intention de lui causer un pareil désagrément. "J'ai cru, ajouta le roi, que vous m'aviez indiqué le comte de Ségur.-Non, sire, répondit M. de Maurepas ; "c'étoit le comte de Puységur.-Eh bien! reprit aussitôt sa majesté, M. de Ségur n'est pas encore installé, je vais révoquer sa "nomination. La reine ajouta avec cette grâce qui lui étoit toute particulière: "Je serais la première à solliciter cette révoca“tion, si la retraite d'un homme en qui le roi a mis si justement 66 sa confiance, devoit en être la suite. M. de Maurepas, touché de tant de déférence, crut devoir ne pas se laisser vaincre en générosité: il représenta au roi que "cette nomination étant connue et faite "sur la demande de la reine, il étoit de la dignité royale de la main"tenir; que les bontés actuelles de leurs majestés le dédommageoient "amplement de cette méprise, qui lui avoit effectivement fait croire "qu'il n'étoit plus digne de leur confiance; 'qu'on pouvoit faire l'es"sai des talens du comte de Ségur, et qu'il le seconderoit de son "mieux par respect pour le choix du roi et la protection de la "reine.

99

Leurs majestés, charmées de ce résultat, ordonnèrent au nouveau ministre de retourner chez M. de Maurepas le remercier, et de ne rien faire sans ses conseils et son aveu. I. 543-8.

As he advances in the Revolution, our good Abbé becomes very dull, and very foolish. Of the crimes and horrors of that miserable period of human history, there cannot be, and there are not, two opinions: But though they failed in it, the French had a right to make the effort for a better government. They lived under a despotism which every wise and good man must have wished to destroy. There existed among them privileged peers, monopolizing all honours, offices, and distinctions, and exempt from burthens. They were governed by valets, mistresses, and chambermaids. Property had no security from royal rapacity, nor liberty from royal caprice. Such a state of things naturally engendered that universal hatred and contempt of their rulers which is the sure forerunner of revolutions. so happened, that they brought upon themselves worse evils than they attempted to cure. This does not show, however, that there was no evil, and could be no cure; but only that they mistook the cure. The Abbé Georgel, indeed, is of a different opinion and seems to suppose, that the only legitimate object for which thirty millions of French people existed, was the com

It

fort and happiness of their King and Queen. By us, on this side of the water, it has occasionally been contended, that kings and queens were at first invented, and are still paid, fed, lodged and clothed, for the good and convenience of their people;-truths which it would be wrong to insist upon too often, for fear kings should be reverenced too little-but which it is right to bring forward sometimes, lest kings should forget themselves into tyrants, and subjects into slaves.

ART. VIII. Manuscrit de l'Isle d'Elbe. Des Bourbons en 1815. Publié par le Comte 8vo. pp. 100. Ridgway, London, 1818.

TH HIS is a very singular publication; and so greatly superior in merit to all the others which have either proceeded from the persons about Buonaparte, or been imposed upon the world as his and theirs, that we are induced to take notice of it. The St Helena manuscript, by far the cleverest of the former productions of this class, is now generally admitted not to be authentic; although the best informed persons, and those who intimately know both the man and the events,-arma virumque,—are agreed that it bears marks of some authority, and are disposed to think it the work of writers who have been much in Buonaparte's society. The tract now before us, is given to the world as his own work; and a very absurd story is told in the Preface, which will probably have the effect of making most readers throw down the book as a clumsy fiction. The editor says, that Buonaparte sent for him at two o'clock in the afternoon, on the 20th February 1815, and made him wait while he wrote for an hour with a pencil; that he then gave him the paper to copy, which was done with some difficulty, and was found to contain merely the argument or contents of a treatise in several chapters; that between two and three in the morning of the 22d, he was called up and ordered again to attend, when Buonaparte dictated to him till ten o'clock as quick as he could speak. He adds, that though he wrote short-hand, he had much difficulty in following him, and was several times obliged to stop and rest his fingers, which could not continue their work; and he found that Buonaparte's rate of dictating was twenty octavo pages in an hour. The fatigue, it seems, prevented him from finishing the copy before the 26th, when Buonaparte left Elba, and intended to take the writing with him, as a sort of extended manifesto of his reasons against the Bourbons. Having known the person to whom the St Helena manuscript was sent, the editor thought

it right to entrust him with this also, that he might make such use of it as the Master' would be likely to sanction.

Now, all this story is on the face of it absurd and contradictory. Who ever thought of writing a book in so preposterous an order? Who begins with composing the table of contents, and then filling them up? Those contents, too, occupy only four small pages; and yet they took an hour's writing. The book itself is seventy-six widely printed octavo pages, of only twenty-six lines to a page; yet it took about seven hours short-hand writing to finish. The rate of writing is said to have been twenty octavo pages an hour; which would give 140 pages instead of 76; unless we suppose that the written pages were but half as large as the printed ones—which would make them contain only thirteen short lines each; and any one may find, upon trial, that ninety such pages could be easily read in an hour so deliberately, as to be taken down in short-hand word for word. Indeed, above twenty such pages could easily be written in the usual hand, within the space of an hour.-That Buonaparte should have made such an exertion, and then lost sight of the manuscript, by not requiring the extended copy to be delivered when he wanted to use it, is another incredible circumstance in this relation. Finally, its coming through the same channel with an admitted fabrication, the St Helena manuscript, the authenticity of which the present editor appears to recognise, is an additional reason for disbelieving every particular in the Preface.

In answer to this most suspicious introduction of the work, it is said that the whole account thus given is a fiction, used for the purpose of concealing the real channel through which Buonaparte has transmitted the manuscript; that the manuscript was written to his dictation; and that persons of undoubted credit have seen it in the handwriting of one well known for his intimate connexion with the alleged author. Against external evidence, such as this of the handwriting, there is no contending; and, if the fact be so, we must conclude, that at least the piece in question comes from those who are about Buonaparte, and in his confidence; but then it must be admitted, that they are the most foolish of mankind, to usher in their work to the public, with a tale which prepossesses every judicious reader against its claims to authenticity; trumping up this story,

*

* The manuscript, we understand, is still in England; and we have been informed, on authority that leaves no room for hesitation, that the writing has been recognised as that of the person most in Buonaparte's confidence, by a most honourable individual, alike distinguished for his antipathy to the crimes of the Ex-Emperor, and his contempt of the vindictive spirit displayed against some of his adherents.

to conceal from our view the channel through which the work has been conveyed, and yet asserting its authenticity, in such a manner as almost inevitably leads to a discovery of it.

Upon the internal evidence afforded by the work itself, we are unwilling to waste much time. It would be a vain attempt to compare its style and manner with those of an author of whom we possess so few authentic productions. And then there are some topics always at hand, to meet any objections that might be urged from such intrinsic qualities. If we show some gross blunder in point of fact, which the alleged author never could have committed, the answer is, that this proves it no forgery,—for such errors would have been avoided by a fabricator. If inaccuracies in language, or even grammar, are detected, they are ascribed to clerical or typographical mistakes; if we say that many things are told unlike all that had ever before been known of the events in question, we are reminded that this is the real and secret history of those events, and that it may be expected to contain novelties; while, if we complain that there is nothing in the story beyond what was already known to every body, an inference is drawn in favour of its truth, from its unpretending simplicity, and its consistency with facts of common notoriety. Upon the source, therefore, from which this piece proceeds, we shall offer no further remarks. Its merits as a piece of composition, and its force as an argument in behalf of the late, and against the present dynasty, require a few observations.

The style of the work is vigorous, concise and rapid. Every sentence has some material fact or remark; and the effect of the whole is striking, not so much from any epigrammatic turn in the language, as from the nervous manner of the narrative or observation, and the fulness of the matter, which almost over-informs the diction. At the same time, with one or two exceptions, we look in vain for any new or even little known facts, or for any reflexions remarkable either by their originality or depth. We shall give a specimen or two of the composition as we proceed. Let us now attend a little to the train of the argument, which is extremely hollow and inconclusive, though specious,

The author begins with Henry IV., and gives a sketch of his changes of religion, probably in order to defend Buonaparte from the charge of trifling with it in Egypt and elsewhere. `Undoubtedly that great prince is open to the accusation of making his belief, or at least the publick profession of it, subservient to political purposes. He was born and bred a protestant; forced to abandon that faith at his marriage, and eager to return to it as soon as he regained his liberty; for he then declared his abjuration to have been compulsory, "Ventre saint-gris," said he afterwards, when he found there was no carrying his point with

out conforming to the national faith,-" Paris vant bien une Messe." He once more performed abjuration, was received into the bosom of the Catholic Church, and accused ever after by the Huguenots of ingratitude, and by the Romanists of insincerity. La caque sent toujours le hareng,' said the latter.

He then contends that the third dynasty of France, that of the Capet race, was extinguished in the saine manner, with the two first dynasties; that every legitimate government begins by overturning a prior legitimate government; that the Capets having thus succeeded to the Carlovingian kings, as they did to the Merovingian race, were in their turn replaced by the Republick, -whose foundations were laid in the assent of the people, exactly as those of all the others had been. He enumerates the recognitions of twenty-three sovereign states, either by treaty or by embassy, or by solemn publick declaration. These acts of state were performed successively between the 15th June 1792, when Genoa acknowledged the Republick, and the 27th March 1802, when England herself made with it the treaty of Amiens. Soon after, the Concordat with the Pope, who had recognised it in his temporal capacity, added the sanction of the head of the Catholic church as such. The present King who had emigrated in 1791, took refuge first in Coblentz, then in Turin; then moved to Verona, to the Austrian dominions, to Russia, and afterwards was obliged to seek for safety in England; having been successively driven from all those retreats by the Princes to whom he applied for protection. Even in England, he was only allowed to take the title of Comte de Lille, and was never recognised as King. The Revolution, in short, had altered the state of things completely in every essential particular; it was no conflict of parties or families for power or for territory, but an insurrection of the whole nation against the unjust and oppressive privileges of a few. The change was complete, and, together with the civil and foreign wars that accompanied it, left the country new-modelled in constitution-legal and judicial system-distribution of property, honours, and employments, and ecclesiastical establishment. The author thus rapidly and nervously sketches the result of these prodigious changes.

Tout ce qui était le résultat des événemens qui s'étaient succédés depuis Clovis, cessa d'être. Tous les changemens étaient si avantageux au peuple, qu'ils s'opérèrent avec la plus grande facilite, et qu'en 1800 il ne restait plus aucun souvenir ni des anciens priviléges des provinces, ni de leurs anciens souverains, ni des anciens parlemens et baillages, ni des anciens diocèses; et pour remonter à l'origine de tout ce qui existait, il suffisait d'aller rechercher la loi nouvelle qui l'avait établi. La moitié du territoire avait changé de propriétaires; les paysans et les bourgeois s'en étaient enrichis. Les progrès de l'agriculture, des manufactures, et de l'industrie, surpas