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afraid that the patience of many readers is already nearly exhausted, and are conscious that those who would feel interested in General Sarrazin's military criticisms, will derive more amusement from the original work than from our translations. We shall only add a very few general remarks on that delineation of Buonaparte's character which is exhibited in the work before us.

From the title which that work bears, we had expected to find in it much sarcasm and ridicule, with very little of sober or rational criticism; but we have closed the volume with the impression that General Sarrazin has endeavoured to describe, and has described, without disparagement, the object of his avowed hostility. It seems to us, indeed, that he is actuated by some prejudices of which he is himself unconscious, when he represents Kleber as superior in military skill, and Soult as nearly equal, to the commander with whom Moreau alone has hitherto been put in competition; but the correctness of this statement is unimportant, since he candidly ascribes to Napoleon those powers of the mind, which have given him an ascendency over all his rivals, and which are even more essential in the conduct of war than the most perfect knowledge of tactics, and the most unerring application of its principles. That Buonaparte's plans of attack have occasionally been ill-combined; that, through his own fault, he has on some great occasions been baffled and defeated; that he was so at Eylau and at Essling; and that he narrowly escaped destruction at Marengo and at Wagram, can scarcely be denied: but, unbending under the pressure of defeat, he has always preserved the confidence of his army; has continued to intimidate the victors, until he has again collected the means of repairing his disaster; and has ultimately triumphed, because, in directing great bodies of men, it is of no less importance to command their passions, and to stimulate their exertions, than to apportion the power of the attacking mass to the strength of the opposing obstacle.

This is, we say, the impression under which we have risen from the perusal of a book, the avowed and dictating spirit of which was personal enmity to Buonaparte.

Nor do we mean to infer from this effect, (different certainly from that which we anticipated,) that General Sarrazin is not sincere in his hatred, or that he has not transfused into his work the sentiments with which he is animated against his late sovereign and commander. The impartial detail of Buonaparte's multiplied crimes and cruelties, the faithful delineation of the most odious parts of his character and manners, are, we think, sufficient guarantees of the intention with which the book has been published.

Neither do we object to the exhibition of the military and political talents of our enemy, in the strong light in which we think (whether

(whether intentionally or not) they are exhibited by General Sarrazin. It is good to see Buonaparte exactly as he is; it is good to gather from a correct representation of what he can do, as well as of what he wishes and what he dares, fresh incitement, not to enmity, which is a motive and not a mean, but to that patience under difficulty, and that perseverance in exertion, without which mere enmity would evaporate in menace or complaint, and lose the name of action.' From whatever feeling, or with whatever view Buonaparte is presented to us such as General Sarrazin describes him, it is useful to contemplate the bright as well as the dark side of his character; his genius as well as the passions by which it is perverted; his energy, as well as the ends to which it is abused.

The time is fortunately come when such a contemplation is no longer hazardous; when we can look upon his most splendid achievements without danger that admiration shall subside into fear. The period of fascination happily is past. The light of our own triumphs in the field enables us to bear without shrinking the full blaze of his military glory. It has perhaps been too much the fashion in political controversy, and it has given apparent advantage in argument to the opposers of the war, that the crimes of Buonaparte have been constantly brought forward in conjunction with his projects and with his power, to reconcile us to privations inseparable from a state of exertion such as we now maintain, and to animate us to a continuance of the contest. We do not blame the production of such topics. We have ourselves employed them, and shall, no doubt, employ them again. It is unavoidable in discussions of the conduct of the enemy, that we should mix the acts of the man with those of the warrior, and present to ourselves in one view, the qualities for which he is to be detested as well as those for which he is to be opposed. We say only, and say it as matter of self-congratulation, that in the present state and temper of the public mind, we could freely consent to give up all topics of inflammation, to admit to our opponents in argument that we are at war with the power, and not with the moral nature of Buonaparte, and yet should feel assured that upon the most dispassionate examination of the extent of that power, the calm judgment of the country would be for the necessity of continuing the war, and its confidence unshaken as to our ability to maintain it. It is enough that he is bent upon the conquest of this kingdom, and that he is indefatigable in his attempts to accomplish it. It is true that in addition to this he has in him all that can be depicted or imagined to make him odious in the moral estimation of mankind. But we can now afford to leave out of our contemplation this latter view of his character, and it is wisę occasionally to do so. So far from the

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argument losing any thing by being placed in this single point of view, we rather think that it gains in force as much as in simplicity. The appeals to our feelings against the atrocities of the individual might seem to imply that if he were not guilty of them, there would be no justifiable cause for opposing him. But we oppose him not only for what he is, but for what we are, and are determined to be; not because he is an odious tyrant, but because we are an independent nation; not from detestation of him as a conqueror, but from our determination not to be conquered. If he were a Titus or an Antonine; if instead of exceeding in ferocity the barbarian conquerors, the scourges of the human race, he were gifted with the endowments of all those heroes who enslaved, only to reclaim and polish nations;-if instead of degrading the character of ambition by avarice and cruelty, by unsparing extortion and mean revenge, he were an Alexander in generosity, and in clemency a Cæsar,still should we not suffer to be relaxed, by the contemplation of his virtues, that resolute resistance, which his vices are not wanted to sustain; still would it be no less our duty to ourselves and our posterity to use all legitimate means, to exhaust all practicable efforts for turning his attempts against the independence of our country, to his own confusion and destruction.

Examining then, calmly and dispassionately, (with the aid of General Sarrazin,) the military means of Buonaparte, we see that he has the direction of an armed force to which no state in Europe can produce a counterpoise; and it is not from General Sarrazin's opinions, which may very probably be founded on prejudice, but from information which he incidentally affords, that we derive a consolatory hope as to the ultimate issue of the present struggle. If we may believe that the regular organization of the French armies was, in fact, very little injured by the revolution; and that their unexampled victories, when not owing to the folly or corruption of the enemy, have been the result of their superior numbers and audacity, aided by severe discipline; it may perhaps be doubted whether the real energy of France has not lately been diminished, by moral causes, in nearly the same proportion as her extent and physical power have been augmented.

During all the various changes of the republic, the whole strength of the country was applicable to military purposes; because, though the ruling factions usually supported their usurpation, as Buonaparte has since done, by means of violence, the instruments of that violence were a rabble, and not a regular armed force. The present tyranny requires and employs an army of police far more numerous, and infinitely more oppressive than the army of war; and has extended, beyond all bounds, that abusive system of which Louis XVI is said to have often complained, as compelling

compelling him to maintain the troops who were available against his foreign enemies, by means of a much larger body available only against his own subjects. It is true that the conscription, which, during the republic, was confined to France alone, is now inflicted on the population of a most extensive tract of conquered territory; but the numerical advantages thus obtained will probably be found to be fallacious, whenever the vicissitudes of war shall afford to these reluctant conscripts an opportunity of deserting to the enemy.

The French had been rendered, by the circumstances of their revolution, a military nation; and, whilst the republic continued to exist, were daily becoming more so from habit and from inclination. Carnot, Pichegru, Moreau, and other chiefs of the moderate party, were, like Buonaparte, Bernadotte, Augereau, &c. military characters; and a country where such men possessed the principal influence, was not likely to subside, from its long and violent ferment, into a state of permanent tranquillity and inaction. The aggrandizement of their empire, so flattering to the national vanity, tended to reconcile the republicans to a state of war, not only when they thought it unjust, but even when they feared, from its duration, the subversion of their liberties. The war is now considered, not less in France than elsewhere, as a devouring evil inflicted on the country for the sole gratification of an arrogant and odious individual.

The present master of the French, though he has engrossed the whole power of the nation, certainly is not, like the nation, imperishable: and this, at least, is one important benefit derived to the world from his success. Since his elevation, he has removed, and must continue to remove or to depress, all the rivals whose talents have rendered or may render them too conspicuous. We much doubt whether he will be inclined to entrust to his friends and creatures, such an extent of command as may be likely to awaken in them the latent seeds of ambition. If he is not so uxorious as the Parisians represent him to be, nor so much engrossed by parental affection as to divest himself of that craving ambition by which he has hitherto been actuated, or to subdue that constitutional restlessness which seems to have imposed upon him a life of unceasing exertion; it does at least appear that from some cause or other he is less anxious than heretofore for personal opportunities of acquiring plunder or glory. What is yet more important, the nations against whom his future efforts may be directed, must have learned, from experience, the safest and most certain means of resistance. We trust that they will practise them: and that, to whatever quarter he may hereafter turn his arms, he will be doomed to wage an obscure and harassing warfare, in which his well-disciplined columns will be

consumed,

consumed, not so much by the shock of opposing legions, as by a protracted struggle with fatigue and famine and disease; auxiliaries, to which Spain is already indebted for a partial liberation from his tyranny, and through which we confidently believe that, even if all other more active means of resistance should fail, she would ulti-, mately achieve her complete independence.

ART. III. A Treatise of the Ecclesiastical Architecture of England during the Middle Ages, with ten illustrative Plates. By the Rev. John Milner, D. D. F. S. A. &c. Ed. Svo. London, Taylor. 1811.

ONE of the most striking symptoms of the increasing curiosity

and intelligence that mark the present generation, is the attention paid to those noble specimens of church architecture, which, after many revolutions in taste and religion, yet remain in England. It is now little more than forty years since they ceased to be regarded with inattention or contempt. Evelyn, from his predilection for the arts of Italy, and Wren, perhaps from professional prejudices, decried the noblest remains of the middle ages, as barbarous and disproportioned, constructed on no principle, and monuments alone of blind zeal, and useless perseverance. The errors of these respectable men are properly yet temperately exposed by Dr. Milner in the work before us: but to the names of Wren and Evelyn we must add, with concern, one of elder and more venerable fame, who has escaped his notice-the accomplished Sir Henry Wotton.

As for those arches,' says this excellent judge of Greek and Roman architecture, 'which our artizans call of the third and fourth point, and the Tuscan writers de terzo e de quarto accuto, because they always concurre in an acute angle, and do spring from division of the diameter into three, four, or more parts at pleasure; I say, such as these, both for the natural imbecillity of the sharp angle itself, and likewise for their very uncomliness, ought to be exiled from judicious eyes and left to their first inventors, the Gothes and Lumbards, amongst other reliques of that barbarous age.'

So thought, on this interesting subject, an Englishman by birth, but an Italian by habit and inclination. And so has it come to pass from that day to the present: for scarcely any traveller has remained long in Italy without contracting some prejudice against the Tramontane architecture of his native country. It is, however, happy effect of travelling to render a man disgusted for life with objects which, on his return, he must daily behold; and after every concession to the pure architecture of classical antiquity, no impartial judge will maintain it to be so exclusively beautiful as that no other

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