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. London, Murray; Edinburgh, Blackwood.

THERE is something interesting even in the title of this little publication. Sovereigns and princes are so far removed from the observation of the rest of mankind, that public curiosity has always been directed with peculiar eagerness to their private history. We feel a very natural desire to enter within the vail," which ceremony interposes between them and their subjects; to see them lay aside the overpowering lustre, which prevented our near approach and our steady gaze; and to observe how far they, who never appeared to our imaginations but in the full meridian of felicity and of power, approach in their retirement the level of humanity, and are influenced by the common motives and feelings of men. The memoirs of princes, therefore, are always read with avidity, even though there be nothing very extraordinary in their details. We contemplate with interest any portrait, which exhibits the minds of such exalted personages without the disguise of court costume: we have a secret pride in comparing them with ourselves; and in observing how completely their superiority vanishes, when they are viewed apart from those external advantages, which threw around them an adventitious glare.

The abatement of admiration, however, which such memoirs generally produce, is amply compensated by the better feelings which they excite.We enter with full sympathy into the joys and sorrows to which we see royal hearts equally accessible with our own. The familiarity into which we seem admitted with them is repaid with a proportionate degree of amity.-Their faults, estimated by their temptations, are scanned with a very indulgent eye; and their virtues derive additional lustre, not only from the extent of their

influence, but from the difficulty of maintaining them amidst the innumerable facilities afforded to vice, by the obsequiousness and flattery of servile dependents. Their happiness appears so far above all ordinary competition, that we view it without envy; and over their miseries, perpetually contrasted in our minds with the brighter aspect of their lot, we shed a tear of unmingled compassion.

Never have the best of these feelings been more powerfully awakened in our own breasts, than by the perusal of this journal. Nothing, indeed, can be conceived more interesting than the circumstances in which it has appeared. It is continued to the day of the dauphin's death, and of course contains much information which Clery and Hue, in their journals, could not give. It is composed from notes, either made by stealth at the moment, with pencils which the princess had found means to conceal from her persecutors, or added immediately after her release from prison, and has therefore an air of simplicity and nature, which the feeling of the moment alone could impress. It was written without any view to publication, and therefore represents, without disguise or concealment, the miseries and the conduct of the ill-fated captives. It is written by the Orphan of the Temple, whose restoration to her former dignity affords some compensation for her protracted sufferings; and who, by her virtues and her heroism, has commanded the admiration of the world, and proved how much she had profited in the school of affliction. This interesting little work is not accompanied by any name, but it is avowed at Paris; and it is impossible to read one page of it, without being convinced that it is the genuine production of the illustrious personage to whom it is ascribed.

The narrative commences from the 13th of August 1792, when the king and his family were committed to the Temple. They were accompanied to this melancholy abode by the Princess de Lamballe, of the house of Savoy, widow of Louis de Bourbon, Prince of

she might learn the course of the trial, or if that should be refused, that the children at least might be permitted to see his majesty. The newspapers were refused; but the children were allowed to see their father, on condition of being separated entirely from their mother. To this privation, however, the king was too generous to expose her.

The circumstances immediately preceding and attending the execution of the unhappy monarch are known to all:- -we cannot deny ourselves the satisfaction of transcribing the tribute paid by his daughter to the greatness of his conduct during his rigorous captivity. During his confinement, he displayed the highest piety, greatness of mind, and goodness;-mildness, fortitude, and patience, in bearing the most infamous insults, the most horrid and malignant calumnies; christian clemency, which forgave even his murderers; and the love of God, his family, and his people, of which he gave the most affecting proofs, even with his last breath, and of which he went to receive the reward in the bosom of his Almighty and all-merciful Creator."

After the death of Louis, the persecutions of his family became every day more rigorous. A decree of the Commune, that the dauphin should be separated from his mother and the princesses, gave rise to a scene of affliction, which is described with the most touching simplicity.

"As soon as the young prince heard this sentence pronounced, he threw himself into the arms of his mother, and entreated, with violent cries, not to be taken from her. The unhappy queen was stricken to the earth by this cruel order. She would not part with her son; and she actually defended, against the efforts of the officers, the bed in which she had placed him. But these men would have him, and threatened to call up the guard and use violence. The queen exclaimed, that they had better kill her than tear her child from her. An hour was spent in resistance on her part, in threats and insults from the officers, in prayers and tears on the part of the two other princesses. At last they threatened even the life of the child, and the queen's maternal tenderness at length forced her to this sacrifice. Madame Elizabeth (the king's sister)

and Madame Royale dressed the child, for his poor mother had no longer strength for any thing. Nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him and delivered him into the hands of the officers, bathing him with her tears, foreseeing, possibly, that she was never to see him again."

The only pleasure the queen now enjoyed was, seeing her child through a chink as he passed from his room to the tower at this chink she used to watch for hours together. The barbarity with which the dauphin was treated has no parallel. He was committed to a man of the name of Simon, a shoemaker by trade, then one of the municipal officers. To this inhuman wretch, the boy's crying at being separated from his family, appeared an unpardonable crime-and he soon impressed him with such terror that he did not dare to weep. Simon, to insult the miseries of the unhappy sufferers through the voice of this belov ed child, made him every day sing at the windows the Carmagnole, and other revolutionary songs; and taught him the most horrid oaths and imprecarions against God, his own family, and the aristocrats. "The queen fortunately was ignorant of these horrors. She was gone before the child had learned his infamous lesson. It was an infliction which the mercy of Heaven was pleased to spare her." While this unfortunate boy remained under the care of Simon, his bed had not been stirred for six months, and was alive with. bugs, and vermin still more disgusting. His linen and his person were covered with them. For more than a year he had no change of shirt or stockings! every kind of filth was allowed to accumulate about him, and in his room. His window, which was locked as well as grated, was never opened, and the infectious smell of this horrid room was dreadful. 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 surprising that he should have fallen into the most frightful atrophy.

But we must forbear to indulge farther in these melancholy details, earnestly recommending to our readers the perusal of the journal itself. queen and Madame Elizabeth, a prin

The

cess distinguished by her virtues and piety, were successively dragged from the Temple to the Conciergerie, and thence to the scaffold.-The dauphin, though originally of a vigorous constitution, fell a victim, at the age of ten years and two months, to the studied barbarity of his treatment.

We have to regret that these memoirs are not continued after the dauphin's death, though Madame Royale (now the Duchess of Angouleme) remained in the Temple six months after that event, exposed alone to the persecutions and insults of her enemies. She was released on the 11th of December, the seventeenth anniversary of her birth, to experience vicissitudes no less wonderful, though happier in their issue, than those through which she had already passed.

Whatever opinion may be entertained of the principles which led to the revolution in France, no diversity of sentiment can prevail with regard to the atrocities of the Revolutionists. It will ever remain a problem in the history of mankind, that a people distinguished by their refinement, should have become all at once equally distinguished by their barbarity;-that a people almost singular in their attachment to monarchy, should, under the reign of the best of their monarchs, have forgotten their loyalty and allegiance; and, in the wildness of republican frenzy, have sought to annihilate every thing connected with a government, for which, but lately before, they thought it all their glory to live and to die. The poison administered by their philosophists might, perhaps, vitiate the principles of the whole mass of the community; the corrupt example of a court might have diffused through all ranks its pernicious influence; but will these causes account for the violence of their revolutionary fury, unless we suppose, that the force of the revulsion, which burst asunder all their former political associations, tore up at the same time all the good principles of their nature, and drove them from the excess of admiration and devotion, to the opposite extreme of contempt and hatred?

The translation, conducted on the most correct ideas, combines, very successfully, the simplicity of the original with the purest English idiom. The translator has occasionally elucidated the text with notes, which will be

found very useful to those who are not intimately acquainted with the early history of the French revolution.

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. By DAVID RICARDO, Esq. Murray, London; Blackwood, Edinburgh. 8vo. 1817.

THE Science of political Economy owes its rise to the eighteenth century. Many facts, and several of the principles which now enter into treatises on that subject, had been previously ascertained, but it was reserved for Stuart, Turgot, Smith, and other eminent men of the last age, to combine them into one consistent and harmonious whole, and to analyze, in a much more accurate manner than had ever been done before, the sources of wealth, and the laws which regulate its distribution among the different classes of society. Since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, political economy has been greatly improved. great work, by shewing its infinite importance to our best interests,-by proving that no legislative measures could be adopted clashing with its principles, but what must be vitally injurious to the community at large,

That

and by successfully exposing many absurd theories, enactments, and practices, hitherto looked upon as the acmè of genius and wisdom, contributed in a very high degree to draw public attention to the science of which it still continues the brightest ornament. More lately, the profound and original inquiries of Mr Malthus have cast a new light on many subjects, which had either been entirely neglected, or only cursorily noticed by Dr Smith; while the extraordinary events of the last twenty years have enabled us in various instances, to try the deductions of theory by the touchstone of experience. The suspension of cash payments at the bank of England, with the subsequent depreciation of our currency, and derangement of the exchanges, rendered us much better acquainted with the theory of banking and money. And amid all the complicated evils arising from our general factitious system,-the orders in council, the corn laws, and such like measures, have at least served to bring under our view a variety of unprecedented phenomena in economics, and by interesting the public, and giving