eloquence, and worthy of promoting a repeal of those intole rant laws of the French Republic, which have treated their conscientious heresy as a blasphemy inexpiable. If the wreath of triumphant liberty be worn with as exalted a generosity, as her dangers have been incurred with an unyielding courage, stain of cruelty may yet be obliterated, and the despotic interregnum of a Robespierre may yet be separated from the probable concomitants of a revolutionary period. The father of Count LALLY was of Irish extraction, and, for alleged misconduct in the East Indies, was condemned by severe judges. The pen of Voltaire gave currency to the arguments of his defenders; and the industrious piety of his son obtained a reverse of sentence. This care for a parent's memory procured for the young barrister (as he then was) much. attention and much interest, and elevated him, in 1789, to a seat in the States-General of France. Attached by sentiment to liberty and by gratitude to the king, it was natural that his conduct should tend to an oblique diagonal course. He every where seemed fond of the speculative doctrines of liberty, and every where reluctant to the practical application of them. With him, a sense of decorum appeared stronger than a sense of duty; and from a coarse proceeding of the mob, he grew disgusted with the cause of the people. Although desirous of equality, he wished not to hurt the privileged orders; although tolerant of republicanism, he cared not to offend his king. This gentlemanly nature cannot but secure to him the ultimate approbation, if not of the philosopher, yet of the polished and the sentimental: while the praise of Mr. Burke has illustrated and consecrated the desertion of his country. With this somewhat chivalrous but interesting cast of opinion, it is natural to speak of the several constitutions of France in the following terms: How superior this constitution of 1795 to that of 1791! a monstrous production, formed of heterogeneous parts, which did not comprehend one article that another had not contradicted; did not promise one good that it had not rendered impracticable; did not establish one authority that it had not rendered impotent; which absurdly pursued a balance instead of an union of powers, organizing anarchy and contriving dissolution! How superior to that of 1793; a code which it is impossible to describe in human dialect! a code which, in the name of society and of the law, domesticated every curse, to avoid which men confederate into societies, and shelter themselves under laws! How immense the advantage of a legislature divided into two branches, over those three single-bodied legislatures which contended against each other for the detestable superiority in tyrannizing over, desolating, ensanguining, and dishonouring France, during six years! • How How superior your present executive power to that phantom of a king, apparently preserved in 1791 only that there might yet remain in France a crime to commit! • How strong a curb is already imposed on that force which overleapt every barrier with impunity, and which, with inconceivable injustice, was called a committee of safety! The author farther characterises, somewhat unfavourably, the Girondists: You perhaps suppose, republicans! that I recollect with satisfaction the final destiny of these party-men. No. I would be just, even to Brissot. The Girondists gave me horror during the last stages of the monarchy: but, the republic once proclaimed, they excite my interest. One would imagine that, in deliberating together on the means of obtaining and the mode of using power, their chiefs had repeated the favourite axiom of Cæsar, Nam si violandum est jus, violandum est regnandi gratiâ; in cæteris virtutem colas :—but they, in order to reign, had a republic to found, not to destroy; and, as they knew that a republic must not be founded on immorality, they en-. deavoured to cast a veil over past and to resist present crimes. 6 • They boasted of the 10th of August; they execrated the 2d of September. They had filled Paris with pike-men, but they endeavoured to wrest from their satellites the inauspicious weapon. They had sent to Marseilles for troops, but these they dispatched with Dumouriez to the frontier. They were vehemently desirous that the Republic should not sully its infancy with those crimes which you must disavow, if you mean that it should endure. They had overturned the throne of Louis the 16th, but they strove to save his person. Even in pronouncing him guilty, they endeavoured to moderate his punishment to exile; and, after having heard the fatal sentence, they sought to evade it by an appeal to the people. Of these men, there were many whose natural sensibility triumphed over every temptation of political expediency; and who, when they beheld the execution of the sentence in which they had to concur, spent whole days and nights in torrents of tears and convulsions of despair. In two words, the existence of the Girondists was divided between the commission of crimes and plans of beneficence; between ebullitions of fury and overflowings of sensibility. Unpunished when criminal, they were sacrificed on ceasing to be so. Their misfortune was merited: but their condemnation was unjust. Their beginning was infamous, their end heroic. Their death, like their birth, was a public calamity." In a note (p. 167) the author asserts that, for 385 livres tournois, (about 16. sterl.) once paid. a national estate has been purchased which produces 40co livres yearly (about £. 170 sterl.); and having thus established the fact of the extremely low price of landed property in France, he proceeds to bewail the misfortune of a country in which all estates sell so disadvantageously. Let us for a moment suppose an extreme depreciation of all fixed property,-is this an evil? Is not the annual annual mass of produce, and the annual mass of labour, the true cause of prosperity? Does not their combination create every thing which can be distributed among the citizens-be consumed, enjoyed, or hoarded by them? Is not land a mere capital, the cheapness of which favours productive industry? Is it not advantageous to North America that estates sell there for less than a year's crop; and that rent forms there no component part of the price of food, or at least a very inconsiderable one? A hardship, no doubt, it is to a proprietor of soil, that he must turn yeoman for a maintenance: but is it, in a national point of view, a grievance ? The Count undertakes, at p. 320, a well composed dissertation on the utility of religion; which is rapidly becoming, with others of his countrymen, "the order of the day" (see our xxist vol. p. 496). He quotes Plutarch and Cicero among the antients, Mably, Rousseau, and Washington, among the moderns,-in order to prove the expediency of national belief. How is all this to superinduce it? Can his countrymen un-read Freret, Boulanger, and Voltaire, or un-learn the sophisms which they have impressed? Must not the magistrate, then, if he interfere at all with religion, look abroad for some new sect to patronize, against which the arguments of those writers have not been pointed? Must he not consent to drop catholicism, and let the venerable archbishop of Arles have been martyred in vain ?-The Count justly prefers the Christian to every other religion, and observes that it has been found compatible in Florence, Switzerland, and elsewhere, with democratic republicanism. The concluding recommendation of peace deserves every praise for eloquence and sentiment. May it prove the harbinger of a complete reconciliation between the sufferers from tyranny, within and without France! May it obtain for the unfortunate absentees at least a partial restoration to the lands of their fathers! May it prepare the oblivion of every rancorous emotion, and induce the republican representatives at length to unveil the statue of Mercy! The style of Count LALLY TOLENDAL apparently imitates that of Rousseau, and like it is too uniformly eloquent. With an habitual back-ground of simplicity, his laboured passages might have appeared rapturous: but, by multiplying the artifices of the declaimer, by inuring the reader to effort, he every where appears to have done his utmost; and the want of variety seems to imply that he has no forces in reserve. On the whole, however, it is impossible to read his writings without conceiving a respect for THE MAN. ART. ART. VI. Voyages dans les Alpes, &c. i.e. Travels in the Alps. By HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE. Vols. IV.-VIII. 8vo. [Article concluded from the last Appendix.] HA AVING taken a general view of the preceding volumes of these entertaining Travels, it is now our task to give some account of the remainder of the work. Before we proceed, however, it may not be unnecessary to inform our readers that there is also published a quarto impression of this valuable performance, comprising the same matter in four volumes, each containing two of the octavo edition. On the road to Frejus, a little way beyond Esterel, M. DE S. says there is a pass rather dangerous for travellers. The high road there is bounded on each side by two eminences; which, commanding the interjacent track, are generally used by the robbers who haunt those parts as stations for their scouts. The banditti suffer travellers to proceed about midway between the two eminences, when they suddenly rush on them from the thickets and pillage them, while the centinels keep their lookout, watching the officers of the Maréchaussée. If, fortunately for the unwary traveller, the latter appear at a distance, a concerted signal apprizes the robbers of their danger, and they retreat into the woods; whither it is found impracticable to pursue them, as the trees not only form impervious fastnesses, but are interspersed with huge fragments of rock, through which the banditti alone know how to find an easy and quick passage. When M. DE S., in company with M. Pictet, travelled this road, they were shewn by the courier of Rome, who had joined them, the scattered remnants of a mail which had been taken from a courier a few days before. This wood, commonly known by the name of Esterel Forest, and rendered formidable by the frequency of these predatory accidents, consists of fir and oak trees, with various shrubs growing beneath. It extends as far as the sea-coast, and covers a plot of ground of between three and four leagues in length by two in breadth. The whole of this tract, lying totally uncultivated, serves as an asylum to the slaves who make their escape from the gallies of Toulon; the nursery of all the vagrants who infest the surrounding country. We cite this anecdote, chiefly to shew that M. DE S. can agreeably qualify the scientific information, which his volumes so amply afford, with remarks seemingly heterogeneous, but always useful and interesting. From several parts of this work, the author appears to have taken every opportunity of observing what he calls passes, where rocks of a different nature are supported by, or ranged on, one another. another. He justly deemed such spots best calculated for studying the causes of those revolutions, by means of which Nature, ceasing to produce mountains of a particular kind, brought forth others of a different sort. Thus he had been led to hope that, not far from Hyeres, he should meet with a mountain calcareous on the western and vitrescible on the eastern side :- but the authority on which he grounded his expectation being rather dubious, it is truly admirable to see in this instance, as in many others, the spirit and zeal with which he pursued his object, where any possibility of attaining it appeared. The mountain called des Oiseaux seemed to be that which exhibited the above phænomenon ;-we shall quote his observations: While ascending the summit, I perceived in the calcareous parts of the mountain a hemisphere of from 15 to 18 inches in diameter, composed entirely of calcareous spath, disposed in concentric strata ; which were severally formed by an union of spiral particles, converging towards the centre of the mass. At first, I imagined that this might be accident: but I observed, to my great surprise, as I proceeded to ascend, that the whole mountain, up to the top, was composed of bowls of spath, as it were, shaped nearly alike. Their circumference differs, the largest being about two or three feet in diameter, and the smallest two or three inches. There are also some of an oblong form, but they are always composed of concentric strata formed of parts which converge towards the centre or axis of the mass. Sometimes, these strata, though concentric, are undulating or scolloped. The bowls, both great and small, are often mixed and grouped in singular forms: yet altogether they are disposed in tolerably regular strata, somewhat inclined, and rising to the north or north-east. • The substance of spath of which they are formed is yellow, like honey, or of a transparent yellowish white colour, and its grain is very brilliant. The interstices are filled up with a less solid substance, which is often porous and of a coarser texture: but which, on the whole, does not essentially differ from the former. The effects of crystallisation cannot be mistaken in these forms. Stalactites, indeed, are often of a similar formation: but a mountain, entirely composed of an aggregate of such crystallisations, is a very extraordinary phænomenon." In visiting the Montagne de Caume, the author was surprised as well as grieved to observe the barrenness of that and the neighbouring mountains. It was a very striking spectacle to behold, from the summit of Caume, all the sea-coast lying under his view, encircled by a zone of the most beautiful verdure, extending about two leagues inland; and the back-ground composed of towering white rocks, which presented to the eye an image of the most dreary sterility. Yet it is asserted that these very mountains were once covered with forests, and that APP. REV. VOL. XXII. Nn antient |