"Two months! two months!" he murmur'd deep, Uncounted wealth his coffers told, His flashing gems might empires buy, No! not a moment. Inch by inch That pulseless hand a casket clutch'd, And 'neath the pillow lurk'd a scroll He might no longer hide ; While buried heaps of hoarded gain Bore witness to the Omniscient Eye honour, favour, &c. But the other changes advocated by the "School Friend" are much newer; and are, as yet, it seems to us, far from being entitled to claim the sanction of that despot, Usus, quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi. However the essayist in the Cincinnati paper deserves to be heard with respect and we give his second number without further preface. (From the School Friend.) SPELLING. In a late article on the subject of SPELLING, it was shown, as we think, conclusively, that the law of progress, and the practical character of the present age, require, that all changes should be in favor of simplicity. It is a matter of fact, that numerous and great changes have been made in our language, all tending to simplify its construction. Let us take, as an illustration, a few common words, and trace the changes through which they have passed, within the last two or three hundred years. The left hand column below gives the spelling which was common in the 16th century; the next, that of a subsequent period; and the right hand, the present method of spelling the same words: Musicke Musick Music, &c., &c. SPELLING. Under this head several essays have appeared in the "School Friend,"* vindicating some recent The above examples are selected at random, the changes in the mode of spelling many English first that happen to meet the eye, and form a fair words: changes which mainly consist in simplify-been made, and are still in progress in our language, specimen of the nature of the changes which have ing orthography, by striking out letters hitherto deemed essential. Doctor Johnson's retention of when in the hands of men of good sense and ink in public, &c., to which many have adhered even telligence. within the last twenty years, is now almost universally exploded. high authorities have also revolted from another usage, held orthodox by him and by his successors till very recently—the employment of u in colour, Let us now examine some of the more modern changes, and those which we, as individuals, may It is not to be denied, that many bear a part in advancing or retarding. In the left hand line we will show old spelling, and in the right hand, the modern improvement. We will classify the different sets of words, and quote from Cobb's Spelling Book for the old method. *The School Friend is an excellent monthly paper of 16 pages octavo, published and circulated gratuitously by Messrs. W. B. Smith & Co., Cincinnati. It is among the wonders of the day. About 3 of the pages are filled with advertisements of works published: the rest is reading matter, almost all valuable, relative to schools, education, &c. It is sent, without price, to all teachers, school-commissioners, and others, who will write to the publishers (postpaid) and request it. We hope and believe they find their account in this liberality and if they do, it is a striking example of the way in which enlightened self-interest works for the public good. 1st. Old method. Modern method. Cubick Cubic Stoick Stoic Tunick Tunic Antick Antic Classick Classic Theatre overcome. Center Meter Niter Theater, &c. In these two classes of words, Mr. Cobb, in his New Spelling Books, has omitted the k and the u, though, as he states, "Not in consequence of a Of this class of words, which are transferred conviction that analogy or sound philological rea- from the French, a portion have received an Engsons require it; but from a conviction that the lish dress, as, chamber, disaster, diameter, disorder, practice and habit of omitting them, particularly charter, monster, tender, tiger, enter, fever, &c., the letter k, has become too firmly rooted to be from the French words, chambre, disastre, diameWe expect, if we should live much tre, disordre, chartre, monstre, tendre, tigre, entre, longer, to see the same acknowledgment and re-fevre, &c. A proper generalization of the princitraction with regard to the following classes of ple requires that they should all be treated alike, words with which we continue our list. In these, and this adds another feature of simplicity. Anoththe old method is still followed in Cobb's New er class is as follows: Spelling Book, and other works. We refer to Mr. Cobb thus especially, because he presents it as a point particularly recommencing his works, that they adhere closely to the old method of spelling, which is so rapidly becoming obsolete. We believe, that very soon even he will say of these, also, "that the practice and habit has become too firmly rooted to be overcome !!" 5th. Old method. Modern method. Defense, defensive Expense, expensive Offense, offensive Pretense, pretension, &c. In these words, by the old method, we have the primitive spelled in one way, and the derivative in another, as, defence, defensive, &c., while in the modern method the spelling is uniform. Besides, these words are derived from Latin words, which contain an s, as defensio, offensio, &c. Of a similar character are the following spellings : 6th. Old method. Modern method. Connect, connection Reflect, reflection Inflect, inflection Deflect, deflection, &c. In the preceding three classess and their derivations, there are not less than one thousand words, in each of which we save a letter, and thus throw We will close this article by the addition of a out of our language at least one thousand letters, few words miscellaneously arranged, and leave it which are entirely useless. But this is by no to the candid reader, in view of the principles and means the greatest advantage of the plan. We illustrations presented, to determine which system avoid exceptions to rules, and thus generalize prin- is best adapted to the practical uses for which lanciples. The fewer the exceptions to any rule, the guage was intended, and for which it must, sooner easier it is to apply the rule and to learn the ex- or later, be thoroughly fitted. ceptions. If all words of a certain class end in or, it is much easier to remember the method of spelling them, than if some of thein end in or, and others in our. If, also, we know that in adding a syllable, as in travel er, duel-ist, harras-ing, the final letter is never doubled when not under the accent, as in remit'-ting, &c., we have a rule without exceptions. But by the old method we have smatter-ing and travel-ling, blossom-ing and harras 7th. Old method. Modern method. Gaol Jail CHARLOTTE CORDAY. HER BIOGRAPHY, TRANSLATED FROM THE HISTOIRE BY WM. BOULWARE, LATE CHARGE D'AFFAIRES OF THE U. S. No writer in the range of modern French Literature is better known than Alphonse de Lamartine and no character that appeared upon the bloody and crowded stage of the French Revolution is invested with so sad an interest as the beautiful, the accomplished, the devoted Charlotte Corday. We commend the following article, therefore, for the graces of the composition and the interest of the subject. The History of the Girondists is, undoubtedly, the greatest production of Lamartine and the elegance and fidelity of the translation we here present will be admitted by all who have read the original. It is rendered the more acceptable from the fact that the passage from the History, embodying the Life of Charlotte Corday, has never yet been laid before the public in an English version. Two volumes have been issued from the press of Harper & Brothers, reprinted from Bohn's Library edition, translated by H. T. Ryde, but they bring down the History no farther than the imprisonment of the Duc d'Orleans.-[Ed. Mess. I. and low, of which the fluted jambs were united at III. This house belonged to a poor widow without children, aged and infirm, named Madame de Bretteville. With her, there lived for some years a young But while Paris, France, the leaders and the ar- relation, whom she had received and brought up to mies of the factions prepared thus to tear in pieces sustain her old age and afford her company in the republic, the shade of a great thought passed her isolation. That young girl was then twentyover the spirit of a young girl and prepared to frus- four years of age. Her beauty, grave, serene, trate events and men, in casting the arm and the and collected, although brilliant, seemed to have life of a woman across the destiny of the Revolu- contracted the impression of this austere abode, tion. One might have said that Providence wished and of this retired life, even to the bottom of her to sport with the grandeur of the work, in the fee-heart. There was in her something of an appableness of the hand, and delighted in contrasting rition. The inhabitants of the quarter, who saw the two fanaticisms in the struggle hand to hand her come forth on Sunday, with her old aunt, to the one under the hideous features of the ven- accompany her to church, or who had a glimpse of geance of the people in Marat; the other under her through the door, reading for long hours in the the celestial beauty of love of country in a Jeanne court, seated upon the steps of the fountain in the d'Arc of liberty; the one and the other yet meet- sun, recount that their admiration of her was mining at the end in their wandering, at the same act, gled with prestige and respect. It may be, that it murder, and resembling unfortunately before was the radiation of a strong thought, which interity, not in the object, but in the means-not in timidates the eye of the vulgar; it may be, the atthe physiognomy, but in the hand; not in the spirit, mosphere of the soul diffused over the features; but in the blood! it may be, the presentiment of a tragic destiny which breaks out in advance upon the countenance. II. pos This young girl was of an elevated stature, yet without surpassing the ordinary height of the large and slender women of Normandy. Natural grace In a large and populous street, which crosses the and dignity marked as an interior rhythm her step town of Caen, the capital of Normandy, and at that and her movement. The ardor of the South was time, centre of the Girondin insurrection, was seen mingled in her tint with the coloring of the women at the bottom of a court, an ancient house with of the North. Her hair seemed black, when it gray walls, discolored by the rains and reft by time. was attached in mass around her head, or when This house was called the Grand-Manoir. A foun- it opened in two waves upon her forehead. It aptain with a margin of stone, grown green with moss, peared glittering with gold at the extremity of the occupies an angle of the court. A door, narrow tresses, as the head of wheat is more deeply col ored and more glittering than the stem in the sun. [ of the return of fortune, which prevented it at the Her eyes large and long even to the temples, were same time from lowering itself in manners and of a color changeable as the water of the sea, raising itself by labor. The land, which that which borrows its tints from the shade or from the rural nobility cultivated in small, inalienable dolight; blue when she reflected; almost black when mains, alone sustained it, without humiliating it by she was animated. Her eyebrows very long and its indigence. The nobles and the land seemed to blacker than her hair, gave something of distance have been espoused in France, as the aristocracy to her expression. Her nose, which was united to and the sea were espoused at Venice. her forehead by an imperceptible curve, was slight- M. de Corday united with this rural occupation, ly raised towards the middle. Her lips were clearly a political inquietude and literary tastes, then very delineated on her Greek mouth. The expression, much diffused in this learned class of the noble which could not be caught, floated between tender- population. He breathed from his soul a speedy ness and severity, equally appropriate for breathing revolution. He was tormented in his inaction and love or patriotism. The chin raised and separated in his misery. He had written some works, called into two, by a strongly marked furrow, gave to the forth by circumstances, against despotism and the lower part of her visage an accent of masculine right of primogeniture. These writings were full resolution, which contrasted with the exclusive of intellect, to be developed. He had in him a feminine grace of the "contours." Her cheeks horror of superstition, the ardor of a rising phihad the freshness of youth and the firm oval form losophy, the presentiment of a necessary revoluof health. She easily blushed and with equal ease tion. Whether it was the insufficiency of genibecame pale. Her skin was of a healthful white- us, whether inquietude of character, whether obness and marbled with life. Her chest large and stinacy of fortune which overwhelmed the beautia little lean, presented a bust for a sculptor, scarcely ful talents, he was not able to make his way through undulated by the rising developments of her sex. events. Her arms were muscular, her hands long, her fingers tapering. Her costume, conformable to her moderate fortune and the retirement in which she lived, was of a sober simplicity. She trusted to nature and disdained every artifice or caprice of fashion in her costume. Those who have seen her in her youth paint her always clothed in a dark robe eut "en Amazone," and her head dressed with a "chapeau" of gray felt raised from the sides and surrounded with black ribbons, as the ladies of her rank wore them at that time. The sound of her voice, that living echo which collects a whole soul in a vibration of air, left a profound and tender impression in the ear of those to whom she addressed her speech. Persons spoke still of that sound of her voice ten years after having heard it, as of a music strange and ineffaceable, which was graven on their memory. She had in that key of the soul some notes so sonorous and so grave, that to hear her, that was, they say, more than to see her, and that in her, the sound made part of the beauty. He languished in his little fief of Signeries in the bosom of a family, which increased every year. Five children,-two sons and three daughters,-of whom Charlotte was the second, caused him to feel more, from day to day, the sadness of want. His wife, Jacqueline-Charlotte Marie de Gonthier des-Autiers, died of these distresses, leaving a father to her daughters in early age; but leaving in reality their minds orphans of that domestic tradition and of that daily inspiration which death takes with the mother froin her children. Charlotte and her sisters still lived some years at Signeries almost abandoned to nature, clothed in coarse cloth as the daughters of Normandy, and like these, weeding the garden, making hay in the meadow, collecting the sheaves and gathering the apples from the narrow domains of their father. Finally, necessity forced M. de Corday to separate from his daughters. They entered under the auspices of their nobility and of their indigence into a monastery of Caen, of which Madame de BelThat young girl was Charlotte Corday d'Ar-zunce was Abbess. That monastery was called mont. Although noble in blood, she was born in a L'abbaye aux Dames. That abbey, of which the cottage called le Ronceray, in the village of Sig-vast cloisters and the chapel of Roman architecneries, not far from Argentan. Misfortune receiv-ture had been constructed in 1066 by Matilda, wife ed her in life, whence she was to depart by the of William the Conqueror, after having been descaffold. IV. Her father, Francois de Corday d' Armont, was one of those provincial gentlemen whom poverty confoundedal most with the peasant. That nobility preserved of its ancient elevation only a certain serted, degraded and forgotten in ruins up to 1830, has been magnificently restored since, and forms at this day one of the most beautiful hospitals of of the Kingdom, and one of the most splendid public monuments of the town of Caen. V. Charlotte was then thirteen years old. Those respect for the name of family and a vague hope convents were at that time true Christian Gynecea, VI. At the moment of the suppression of the monasteries, Charlotte was nineteen years of age. where the women lived apart from the world, but this supposition and every thing refutes it. If the at the same time hearing all its rumors, and par- revolution had only cast into the heart of Charlotte ticipating in all its movements. The monastic life, horror and resentment for the murder of a lover, full of gentle practices, of intimate friendships, she would have confounded in the sam ame hatred all seduced for some time the young girl. Her ar- the parties of the republic; she would not have dent spirit and impassioned imagination cast her embraced as far as to fanaticism and death, a cause into that dreamy contemplation in the depth of which had mingled blood with her souvenirs and which it is believed that God is seen; a state of covered her future life with mourning. mind which the affectionate importunity of a superior and the power of imitation change so easily, in childhood, into faith and exercises of devotion. The iron character of Madame Roland herself was kindled and softened at that fire of Heaven. Charlotte, more tender, yielded to it still more easily. The distress of the paternal house had increased She was for some years a model of piety. She with years. Her two brothers, engaged in the serdreamed of closing her life, scarcely opened, at vice of the King, had emigrated. One of her sisthis first page, and of burying herself in this se- ters was dead. The other governed at Argentan pulchre, where, in the place of death, she found re- the poor household of their father. The old aunt, pose, friendship and happiness. Madame de Bretteville, received Charlotte into her house at Caen. That aunt was without fortune, as all her family. She lived in such obscurity and silence as scarcely permitted the nearest neighbors to know of the name and existence of a poor widow. Her age and infirmities deepened still more the shade which her condition cast over her existence. One lone woman performed the service of her household. Charlotte assisted this woman in her domestic cares. She received with grace the old friends of the family. In the evenings, she accom But the stronger her mind became, the more quickly she examined to the bottom her own thoughts. She had a glimpse beyond her domestic dogmas, of other new dogmas, luminous and sublime. She did not abandon God nor virtue, those two first passions of her soul; but she gave to them other names and other forms. The philosophy which then inundated France with its glimmering lights, passed over, with the books in fashion, the grates of the monasteries. There, the philosophy more profoundly meditated in the reflec-panied her aunt into the noble society of the town, tion of the cloister and in opposition to the monastic littleness, formed its most ardent adepts. There, young men and women, saw above all, in the triumph of the general reason, their own chains broken and adored their reconquered liberty. which the fury of the people had not yet altogether dispersed, and where it was permitted still to some old relics of the ancient regime to draw near together to lament and console one another. Charlotte, respectful towards these regrets and these superstitions Charlotte strengthened at the convent the tender of the past, never opposed them by words. But predilections of childhood, like to relationships of she smiled within herself and nourished within her the heart. Her friends were two young daughters heart very different opinions. Those opinions beof noble houses and humble fortune as herself-came, from day to day, in her, more ardent. But Mademoiselles de Fandoas and de Forbin. The the tenderness of her spirit, the grace of her feaAbbess and her assistant, Madame Doulcet de Pon- tures, the child-like character of her manners, left tecoulant, had distinguished Charlotte. They ad- no suspicion of a secret thought concealed under mitted her into society a little mundane, which her good humor. Her gentle gaiety radiated over usage permitted the Abbesses to entertain with the old mansion of her aunt, as the rays of the their connections from without, in the enclosure morning of a day of tempest, so much the more even of their convents. Charlotte had thus known brilliant as the evening shall be wrapped in denser two young men, nephews of these ladies-M. de darkness. Belzunce, Colonel of a regiment of cavalry in The domestic cares fulfilled, her aunt accompagarrison at Caen and M. Doulcet de Pontecoulant, nied to the church and brought back to the house, officer of the Gardes du Corps" of the King. Charlotte was free in all her thoughts and in all her One was soon to be massacred in an insurrection hours. She passed her days in playing in the court of the populace of Caen; the other was to adopt, and in the garden, in dreaming and reading. They with a moderate firmness, the revolution, enter the did not restrain her, nor direct her in any thing, in Legislative Assembly and the Convention, and un- her liberty, her opinion, or her reading. dergo exile and persecution for the cause of the religious and political opinions of Madame de Girondins. It has been pretended since, that the Bretteville were habits rather than convictions, too tender souvenir of the young Belzunce, sacri- she preserved them as the costume of her age and ficed at Caen by the people, had caused Charlotte, time; but she did not impose them. Besides, phiwidow of her first love, to swear a vengeance which losophy had sapped, at that period, the basis of behad awaited and struck Marat. Nothing confirms lief in the minds even of the noblesse. The revo The |