sects, because the general belief has been so shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy himself with difference of sentiment upon some of the articles. The Encyclopedists, under pretence of enlightening mankind, are sapping the foundations of religion. All the different kinds of liberty are connected; the Philosophers and the Protestants tend towards republicanism, as well as the Jansenists. The Philosophers strike at the root, the others lop the branches; and their efforts, without being concerted, will one day lay the tree low. Add to these the Economists, whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of worship, and the government may find itself, in twenty or thirty years, undermined in every direction, and will then fall with a crash." pp. 80, 81. This prophecy was literally fulfilled about the time specified; for if the letter was written, as would appear to have been the case, about the year 1758 or 1759, the general spirit of revolt that broke out in 1789, and the consequences to which it led, most amply justified the speculations of this sagacious and bold politician. We shall adduce another instance of the prophetic spirit which seems to have prevailed in society at the time, more extensively than the historians of the Revolution have taught us to suppose. Calling, one day, at Quesnay's, I found him there. They were talking of M. de Choiseul. "He is a mere petit-maître," said the Doctor, " and if he were handsomer, just fit to be one of Henry the Third's favourites." The Marquis de Mirabeau and M. de la Rivière came in. "This kingdom," said Mirabeau, "is in a deplorable state. There is neither national energy, nor the only substitute for it money."- "It can only be regenerated," said La Rivière, " by a conquest, like that of China, or by some great internal convulsion; but woe to those who live to see that! The French people do not do things by halves." These words made me tremble, and I hastened out of the room.' pp. 140, 141. Amid all her grandeur, it is pretty certain that from the day Madame de Pompadour quitted her husband for Versailles, she never enjoyed a single hour's happiness. Her vanity was flattered by the homage that was paid her, but the higher she rose in her flagitious ascendancy, the wider she extended her influence, the more did she multiply the sources of her uneasiness and chagrin. my I pity you sincerely, Madame," said I, "while every body else envies you." "Ah!" replied she, " life is that of the Christian, a perpetual warfare. This was not the case with the women who enjoyed the favour of Louis XIV. Madame de la Valière suffered herself to be deceived by Madame de Montespan, but it was her own fault, or, rather, the effect of her extreme good nature. She was entirely devoid of suspicion at first, because she could not believe her friend perfidious. Madame de Montespan's empire was shaken by Madame de Fontanges, and overthrown by Madame de Maintenon; but her haughtiness, her caprices, had already alienated the King. He had not, however, such rivals as mine; it is true, their baseness is my security. I have, in general, little to fear but casual infidelities, and the chance that they may not all be sufficiently transitory for my safety. The King likes variety, but he is also bound by habit; he fears éclats, and detests manœuvring women. The little Maréchale (de Mirepoix) one day said to me, 'It is your staircase that the King loves; he is accustomed to go up and down it. But if he found another woman to whom he could talk of hunting and business as he does to you, it would be just the same to him in three days."" - pp. 64, 65. What a painful confession for a woman to make, who had sacrificed every thing that ought to have been dear to her for this splendour, which proved, upon experience, to be so empty and joyless. The probability is, that she would not have retained her situation so long as she did, if the King had not affected to imitate Louis XIV. as nearly as possible; and for this purpose a woman of a fine figure and an accomplished mind was necessary, in his idea, to be to him what Madame de Maintenon was to his predecessor. His heart, as she truly conjectured, never was concerned in this liaison, but a Pompadour was essential to his vanity, and to the amusement of his indolence. In the uncertainty of her condition, Madame de Pompadour had recourse to La Bontemps, a celebrated fortune-teller at Paris, and the misery of her mind may be estimated from the confidence which she reposed in the promises of that artful sibyl. Madame du Hausset gives a characteristic account of a visit which her mistress paid to La Bontemps, and of the pains which she took in order to disguise her features for the occasion. She had a false nose, made of bladder, stuck a wart under her left eye, painted her eyebrows, and concealed her hair under a night-cap. The fortune was told, by means of coffee-dregs left in a cup, in the usual way, that is to say, in a manner that nobody could understand, though Madame du Hausset and her mistress thought otherwise. "When shall I die, and of what disease?" asked Madame. "I never speak of that," answered the priestess: " see here, rather—but fate will not permit it. I will show you how fate confounds every thing," pointing out to her several confused lumps of the coffee dregs. Well, never mind as to the time, then; only tell me the kind of death." The sibyl looked in the cup, and said, "You will have time to prepare yourself." They had the happiness to find the next morning that every particular of their visit to La Bontemps was known to the police of Paris. Madame de Pompadour also patronised, it seems, the famous charlatan, Count de St. Germain, who, for a considerable time, made all the old women of France believe that he had been living in this world of ours for the short space of two thousand years. The elixir by which he prolonged his own life he could impart at pleasure to others. One day he called on his servant to attest a fact that had occurred a thousand years ago: the man replied, "I have no recollection of it, Sir; you forget that I have only had the honour of serving you for five hundred years. By means of the phantasmagoria, and other applications of experimental philosophy, the Count excited the wonder of the ignorant, who, at that time, comprised numbers in every class of life. Had he lived a century or two earlier, he would have been condemned as a magician. The secret of his imposture was really the superiority of his acquirements beyond most cavaliers of his time. 'One day, at her toilet, Madame said to him, in my presence," What was the personal appearance of Francis I.? He was a King I should have liked." "He was, indeed, very captivating," said St. Germain ; and he proceeded to describe his face and person as one does that of a man whom one has accurately observed. "It is a pity he was too ardent. I could have given him some good advice, which would have saved him from all his misfortunes; but he would not have followed it; for it seems as if a fatality attended princes, forcing them to shut their ears, those of the mind, at least, to the best advice, and especially in the most critical moments." "And the Constable," said Madame," what do you say of him ?” "I cannot say much good, or much harm of him," replied he. 66 "Was the court of Francis I. very brilliant ?" Very brilliant; but those of his grandsons infinitely surpassed it. In the time of Mary Stuart, and Margaret of Valois, it was a land of enchantment, a temple, sacred to pleasures of every kind; those of the mind were not neglected. The two Queens were learned, wrote verses, and spoke with captivating grace and eloquence.-"Madame said, laughing, "You seem to have seen all this."- “I have an excellent memory," said he," and have read the history of France with great care. I sometimes amuse myself, not by making, but by letting it be believed, that I lived in old times." "You do not tell me your age, however, and you give yourself out for very old. The Countess de Gergy, who was ambassadress to Venice, I think, fifty years ago, says she knew you there exactly what you are now." - "It is true, Madame, that I have known Madame de Gergy a long time."-" But, according to what she says, you would be more than a hundred." "That is not impossible," said he, laughing; but it is, I allow, still more possible, that Madame de Gergy, for whom I have the greatest respect, may be in her dotage." pp. 98-101. The Count was said to be a bastard son of the King of Portugal. He was generally dressed very simply, but in good taste: his diamonds outshone even those of the King, and nobody sported a watch, snuff-box, and rings of such costly workmanship. Madame du Hausset speaks of his ruby sleeve-buttons as perfectly dazzling. He died, to the great astonishment of his disciples, in 1784. In order to diminish the scandal that was caused by seeing Madame de Pompadour with the title of Marchioness at Court, and her husband, M. le Normand d'Etioles, Farmer-General at Paris, she made repeated efforts to get him sent as ambassador to Constantinople. The charms, however, of a Paris life, the opera, and an opera-dancer, with the odd name of Mademoiselle Rem, detained him in the capital, and nothing would induce him to leave it. It was said afterwards that he married Rem; and the following witty epigram, which was much in vogue, celebrated his nuptials: ‹ Pour réparer miseriam p. 120. These Memoirs break off rather abruptly towards the decline of Madame de Pompadour's life, without affording us the means of ascertaining the year when the waiting-woman ceased to write. We have necessarily passed over many anecdotes which serve to give a zest to the book, and, indeed, often effect a higher purpose, by unveiling, though with a delicate hand, the interior of an apartment centering in itself much of the intrigue, servility, profligacy, and levity which characterised the reign of Louis XV. ART. V. Religions de l'Antiquité, considérées principalement dans leurs Formes Symboliques et Mythologiques; Ouvrage traduit de l'Allemand du Dr. Frédéric Creuzer, refondu en partié, compléte et développé par J. D. Guigniaut, Ancien Professeur d'Histoire, et Maître de Conférences, à l'Ecole Normale, Membre de la Société Asiatique de Paris. Vol. I. 8vo. Treuttel et Wurtz, à Strasbourg, Paris, et Londres. 1825. No subject possesses more interest for the reflecting mind, none furnishes more abundant materials for philosophic speculation, than the consideration of the various systems of religion which have in remote periods prevailed among nations distinguished by intellect and cultivation. When we cast our eyes over ancient Greece, Italy, or Egypt, or when we contemplate at the present hour the extensive regions of India and the surrounding countries, we are amazed at the various extravagant forms representing the beings which are held to preside over the universe, and before whom the worshipper bends down in adoration. Yet we feel it impossible to believe that minds so cultivated as we know those of the higher classes in these nations to have been could have really believed in the existence of beings formed like these their uncouth and monstrous images. It avails not to say that these images were the conception of the ignorant and the vulgar, to which the enlightened conformed. The inspection of an image, the very extravagance of its shape and attitude, must convince us that more was meant than meets the eye,, and that a deep sense lies concealed beneath the external grotesqueness of form. The many-headed and manyhanded deities of India, the Artemis of Ephesus, the Pan of Arcadia, suggest, at the first glance, the idea of a hidden sense. The later Platonists, men, perhaps, too much depreciated, saw this clearly, and in their controversies with the Christians adopted this system of explication in defending the apparent absurdities of Paganism, but, owing to a want of knowledge, and an endeavour to explain every thing, they not unfrequently exposed themselves to the ridicule of their opponents, and to the sneers of modern writers. But the system was founded in truth: the grotesque forms of the deities, and the wildness of the adventures and actions attributed to them, were the inventions of sages seeking, through the medium of the senses, to instruct the vulgar. In no work has this system been more fully developed, or more ably supported, than in that of which we are now to give an account. Mr. Creuzer, one of the ablest and most learned men of the most learned nation, has, during a long course of years, devoted himself to the consideration and comparison of the various religious systems of the ancient world, and the result of his labours has been given to the world in the work of which the present volume is the first livraison of a French translation, with most valuable notes and elucidations by M. Guigniaut. That all ancient religions were symbolical, that is, instructed by means of sensible objects, is the system of Mr. Creuzer. He supposes persons of superior cultivation to have appeared among rude and barbarous tribes, and he asks how they were to convey to them religious and moral ideas of a higher and purer kind than they had hitherto possessed; reasoning would be out of place, for logic they have no capacity; there remained, therefore, but one way, that of appealing to their senses. 'The pure light of intellectual notions should first be reflected in natural objects, and in some sort put on a body not to dazzle by excessive brightness the weak eyes of these rude men.' The teachers accordingly devised the symbol and figure; the great power of superior beings was represented by images furnished with a multitude of arms; their superior wisdom by numerous heads; the prolific power of nature by a female image hung with numerous breasts; and an image with three eyes denoted the superintendence of the Deity over the heavens, earth, and sea. According to the belief of the rude and ignorant savage every thing was endowed with life and animation; the refined distinction of matter and spirit was unknown, the tree and the stone lived after their way, and flowers, trees, and rocks could sympathise with dying heroes or unhappy lovers. With inanimate power he was unacquainted; every effect was produced by the animated person; the teacher therefore worked on this principle in the construction of theogonies and cosmogonies; to the great agents were ascribed human forms and human passions; love and enmity actuated, and the process of generation gave origin to the world and all it contains; each thing was destroyed by death, and from the bosom of death sprang forth life. Personification, from which, at the present day, the philosopher cannot totally emancipate himself, was then the natural language of the understanding, a yoke which antiquity bore without difficulty, and delighted to cover with flowers. Mr. Creuzer proceeds to explain the distinction between symbol and mythos, and classifies the different kinds of them. The mythos frequently originated in the explanation of a symbol, as that of the sphynx, which in Egypt was a symbol of wisdom, in Greece a mis, |