termined enemies. Monsieur Chateaubriand, the ultra, is more dangerous to the "right divine to govern wrong," than Citizen Chateaubriand, the republican, who measured the abuses of the French monarchy accumulatively by its duration: and Madame de Genlis, the eulogist of Ferdinand the embroiderer, betrays more of the secrets of the prison house, than the Madame de Genlis of the days of égalité would ostentatiously have displayed. The very title of such books as "Les Crimes des Rois" puts the reader on his guard, and begets a wholesome suspicion of the poisonous nature of their contents: but whatever escapes to the detriment of a cause, through the simplicity of its professed panegyrists and avowed partizans, is at once accepted as irrecusable testimony. The eulogies indeed of the French ultra writers forcibly remind one of that kind-hearted man, who when his friend was accused of not being fit to carry entrails to feed a bear, defended him à l'outrance, by a strenuous and noisy assertion that he was the most proper man alive for the performance of that office.

Thus it is with Madame de Genlis: with every determination to paint the court and aristocracy in the most winning colours, her whole life from the very cradle is a practical illustration of the bad habits, bad morals, and bad taste which an exclusive government never fails to engender. Though she loses no opportunity "in season and out of season," of ridiculing the Revolution, and of railing against the literary party whom she supposes to have contributed to its developement, yet it is impossible to read a page of her book without obtaining evidence of that corruption of manners, and that accumulation of errors and abuses,―moral, political, and economical, which rendered a revolution as salutary as it was inevitable. If any specimen were necessary to illustrate the spirit in which these Memoirs are written, we might refer the reader to the account of the author's visit to Voltaire, in the fourth volume, in which every trait that malignity could discover and ingenuity distort, is seized with the avidity of a sycophant, to ridicule the man who received her with courtesy and hospitality.*

The natural curiosity we felt to discover in what way a woman, situated like Madame de Genlis, would write of the many persons with whom she had been connected, was considerable. From one who had such liaisons in the successive courts,-royal, imperial, revolutionary and legitimate, we did not expect a rigid adherence to accuracy, and that expectation was but little increased by the strenuous protestations of candour and veracity with which the volumes open. According to Madame de Genlis, her contemporary memorists are universally dealers in scandal; and she herself the Quixotte born to redress all distressed knights and damsels whose characters are in the limbo of misrepresentation. Exempt from passions, and elevated above prejudices, she professes that it was an "object of her work, to refute calumnies, without regard to resentment or affection. Let us, however, perpend her own words.

*

Arriving at Ferney an hour before the appointed dinner-hour, she describes herself as interrupting Voltaire in his studies; and she adds, that it was some consolation to her to recollect that he no longer wrote tragedies. "I hindered him only," she says, "from putting down a few impieties, a few licentious lines the more!!"

"At sixty-six, when we have suffered much, and are worn out with many fa tigues, we see the inevitable darkness of the tomb approaching so near us, that there needs no great effort of imagination to fancy ourselves already enveloped in its gloom! There all mortal illusions disappear, all our little vanities sink to their true value, all our enmities cease . . . . From the depths of the grave a single cry has arisen since the beginning of the world; it implores for mercy! The Sovereign Judge replies to the cry but in these words, Hast thou forgiven?' 'Yes, O Lord! I have pardoned without reserve, and from the depth of that soul which thou hast created but to know and to love thee; of that soul formed for a love so sublime, and which every sentiment of hatred sullies and perverts I have pardoned, I take thee alone to witness; deign then to guide my pen, and suffer not a word of bitterness to escape from it; and if I have committed any injustice, recall it to my mind, that I may repair it in this book, and that thou mayest not hereafter lay it to my charge. Let candour and goodness of heart be preeminent throughout my work, and let every thing be pure, that it may be useful.'”

We are tolerably well acquainted with the exaggeration of French sentiment; but this exordium was, we confess, something too much for our nerves; and we were the better prepared by it for that determined hostility to certain men, parties, and things, which rises to the surface in every page of the work. Among other instances of the fairness of Madame de Genlis's political criticism, we may cite the eulogium on Charles the Second of England in the fourth volume, which she would fain palm on the Parisian badauds for history; because of this personage the merest English reader can judge. It is as follows:

"I then read over again all the English historians, and satisfied myself of a fact I had only hitherto imagined, namely, that there has been a general misapprehension of the high merits of Charles the Second, whose virtuous and unfortunate father perished on the scaffold, the victim of an abominable faction and odious revolution. After the Restoration, Charles the Second acted with a courage, wisdom, and prudence, that cannot be sufficiently admired; he reduced the taxes (which were enormous in Cromwell's time); knew how to ally firmness and clemency with great skill; and above all considerations, adopted many measures towards the restoration of religion. Order and peace were the results of these fortunate arrangements. He it was who founded the Royal Society of London, so celebrated at the present day; he solemnly promised to favour and assist all those who should devote themselves to difficult studies; he sent to the neighbouring countries to obtain information of sciences unknown in England; corrected the improprieties, anomalies, and neologisms of the national dialect, which in Cromwell's time had become almost barbarous; and made many other important improvements. Certainly these are deeds of great value, and not sufficiently estimated. An excellent book might be made on historical injustice, oversights, and misrepresentations.”

We are no advocates for revolutionary violence; and though quite alive to the wisdom, as well as the wit of Quin's epigram of Charles "having been tried by all the laws he had left his people," we do not hold that kings are more properly the victims of ex post facto laws than their subjects; and we think that an application of the forms of law to revolutionary vengeances is but a solemn mockery of that justice, which ought to be held most sacred among men ; yet we no less firmly believe that the varnishing the errors, vices, and follies which have brought crowned heads to the scaffold, or driven them into exile, is not the best means of teaching their successors how to avoid a similar catastrophe.

Notwithstanding this unfortunate leaning in the author, it is impossible for the Memoirs of Madame de Genlis to lead a reader of any observation astray as to the general consequences to be drawn from their perusal. It is utterly impossible to narrate the facts of a life passed in the upper ranks of French society without furnishing the most damning proofs of the vicious foundation upon which the institutes of the old monarchy reposed. Whether she details the manners of domestic life or the usages of the court, whether she narrates the mode in which favours were distributed, and power and wealth doled out to the privileged few, or exhibits the varnish of a conventional politeness hiding the hollow rottenness of the children of corruption, the disclosure is equally unintended and equally instructive. Nothing, for example, can be more edifying than the sang-froid with which she relates her brother's being made a Knight of Malta in the cradle, and herself a canoness of the noble chapter of Alix when six years old. Her account of this last event is curious and amusing.

"The day of my reception was a great day to me. The evening which preceded it was by no means so agreeable: I had my hair dressed, my clothes tried on, and I was catechised, &c. At last the happy moment arrived; my cousin and I were dressed in white, and conducted in pomp to the church of the chapter. All the ladies, dressed in the fashion of the day, but wearing black satin robes over their hoops, and large cloaks lined with ermine, were in the choir. A priest who officiated as Grand Prior, catechised us, made us repeat the creed, and afterwards kneel upon velvet cushions. His duty was next to cut out a small lock of our hair; but being very old and nearly blind, he cut my ear a little, but I supported the pain heroically, and the accident was only discovered by the bleeding of the ear. After this, he put on my finger a consecrated gold ring, and fastened on my head a piece of black and white stuff, about the length of one's finger, which the canonesses called un mari (a husband). I was then decorated with the signs of the order, a red ribbon with a beautiful enamelled cross, and a broad girdle of black-watered ribbon. After the ceremony he delivered a short exhortation; we then went and saluted all the canonesses before leaving the church; and afterwards we heard high mass. The remainder of the day after dinner, excepting the hour of church service, was spent in entertainments, in visits which we paid to all the ladies, and in amusing little games. From this time I was called Madame la Comtesse de Lancy; my father being, as I have already said, lord of the manor of Bourbon-Lancy, was the cause of my receiving that name. The pleasure I had in hearing myself called Madame surpassed every other."

Madame de Genlis loses no occasion of bringing into evidence her love of religion, her sentiments of affection and reverence for the Deity; but not a word escapes her in detestation of this mockery of God, and robbery of man,-of this flagrant abuse of holy institutions, to the purposes of aristocratic selfishness. It is, however, in the details of domestic life that the most striking absurdities of the ancien regime are brought to light. If the evidence of Madame de Genlis is to be taken as applying to the whole caste, nothing can be more frivolous, heartless, and degrading, than the scale of their existence. The entire scope of life with them was confined to the acquirement and maintenance of the tone of what was called good society. Seeming, in every department and duty, absorbed or counteracted all effort at reality. Children, consigned from the hour of their birth to wet-nurses, were sent to the country to the care of peasants, or were committed to servant-maids. Husbands and wives, occupying distinct suites of apartments, visited each other more formally, and perhaps less fre

quently than casual acquaintances. Madame de Genlis piques herself on her love of children and her bias towards education; and we may reasonably give her credit for an attention to her maternal duties, considerably above the average of high life; yet her infants lived separately from her in a remote part of Paris, while she inhabited the Palais Royal.

Female education at this time was confined to a very summary and superficial acquaintance with the outline of the Catholic faith, the practice of the routine ceremonies of the church, and the acquirement of such shewy and trifling accomplishments as enabled their possessors to contribute something to the amusement of the peu amusables.

At seven years old Madame de Genlis was put into the hands of a Madame de Mars, who, according to her account, was singularly quali fied for her charge of education, by possessing, as she says, no profane learning. Her femmes de chambre taught her a little of her catechism, "and a prodigious number of ghost stories." She saw her parents only at their levée, and at meal-times. She taught herself to write. Music, and music exclusively, formed the business of her life, and the perusal of play-books its only amusement. Her success in these pursuits rendered her an early and an expert composer of little "comédies de société," of extempore verses and eulogies "d'occasion," while her passion for display found vent in acting proverbs, performing her own characters, and playing on the numerous instruments of which she was the mistress. In one word, devotion and the theatre, acting on the stage and acting in the church, formed the brief abstract and chronicle of her existence. It was accident, it seems, that led her from these amusements into a course of more serious study; and the most singular part of her story is her having risen above such an education, and enabled herself to become an interesting writer, a model of style, and a faithful painter of morals and manners. Passing from the "morale” to the "materiel," the education of her person was a fit counterpart to that of her mind; and its ridicule is too strong for even Madame de Genlis to resist.

"I had two teeth pulled out! I had whalebone stays which pinched me terribly ; my feet were imprisoned in tight shoes, with which it was impossible for me to walk; I had three or four thousand curl-papers put on my head; and I wore, for the first time in my life, a hoop. In order to get rid of my country attitudes, I had an iron collar put on my neck; al as I squinted a little at times, I was obliged to put on goggles as soon as I woke in the morning, and these I wore four hours. I was, moreover, not a little surprised, when they talked of giving me a master to teach me what I thought I knew well enough already—to walk. Besides all this I was forbidden to run, to leap, or to ask questions."

The social habits such an education (which seems to have been that of all the upper classes of French women) was calculated to produce, may readily he imagined: frivolity and idleness were its necessary results, and these inevitably led to an abandonment of principle and the practice of those vices, so ably and so severely satirised in the novels of Leclos and the younger Crebillon. Of the supreme

bon ton circle of that day, Madame de Genlis has given, with unusual vigour and candour, what may be called at once an eulogium and a criticism. Of its excellencies, "l'etiquette et les usages" were the essential basis; no virtues were required further than as they contributed to la bienséance, and the utterance of noble sentiments supplied the place of a performance of noble actions.

"But in a short time, the influence of these feelings scarcely appeared except in an elevated style, in a simple theory of delicate and generous conduct. Virtue was retained only from the remains of good taste, which still held in esteem its language and appearance. Every one, to conceal his own way of thinking, became stricter in observing the bienséances; the most refined ideas were sported in conversation concerning delicacy, greatness of mind, and the duties of friendship; and even chimerical virtues were fancied, which was easy enough, considering that the happy agreement of conversation and conduct did not exist. But hypocrisy always betrays itself by exaggeration, for it never knows when to stop; false sensibility has no shades, never employs any but the strongest colours, and heaps them on with the most ridiculous prodigality.

"There now appeared in society a very numerous party of both sexes, who declared themselves the partisans and depositaries of the old traditions respecting taste, etiquette, and morals themselves, which they boasted of having brought to perfection; they declared themselves supreme arbiters of all the proprieties of social life, and claimed for themselves exclusively the high-sounding appellation of good company. Every person of bad ton, or licentious notoriety, was excluded from the society: but to be admitted, neither a spotless character nor eminent merit was necessary. Infidels, devotees, prudes, and women of light conduct, were indiscriminately received. The only qualifications necessary were bon ton, dignified manners, and a certain respect in society acquired by rank, birth, and credit at court, or by display, wealth, talent, and personal accomplishments.'

"They felt that to distinguish themselves from low company and ordinary societies, it was necessary they should preseve the ton and manners that were the best indications of modesty, good-nature, indulgence, decency, mildness, and elevated sentiments. Thus, good taste of itself taught them that, to dazzle and fascinate, it was necessary to borrow all the forms of the most amiable virtues. Politeness, in these assemblies, had all the ease and grace which it can derive from early habit and delicacy of mind; slarder was banished from the public parties, for its keenness could not have been well combined with the charm of mildness that cach person brought into the general store. Discussion never degenerated into personal dispute. There existed in all their perfection, the art of praising without insipidity and without pedantry, and that of replying to it without either accepting or despising it ;-of showing off the good qualities of others without seeming to protect them; and of listening with obliging attention. If all these appearances had been founded on moral feeling, we should have seen the golden age of civilization. Was it hypocrisy? No-it was the external coat of ancient manners preserved by habit and good taste, which always survive the principles that produced them; but which, having no longer any solid basis, gradually loses its original beauties, and is finally destroyed by the inroads of refinement and exaggeration.

"In the less numerous circles of the same society, much less caution was observed, and the ton, still strictly decorous, was much more piquant. No one's honour was attacked, for delicacy always prevailed; yet under the deceitful veils of secrecy, thoughtlessness, and absence of mind, slander might go on without offence. The most pointed arrows of malice were not excluded, provided they were skilfully aimed, and without any apparent ill-will on the part of the speaker, for no one could speak of his avowed enemies. To amuse themselves with slander, it required to arise from an unsuspected source, and to be credible in its details. Even in the private partics of the society, malignity always paid respect to the ties of blood, friendship, gratitude, and intimate acquaintance; but beyond that, all others might be sacrificed without mercy. No one's reputation was branded-but the society held bad ton, vulgar and provincial manners, up to scorn, and ridiculed

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