and especially soldiery, are not awed or conciliated either by the milder virtues, or by what are usually called genius and talents. It was said, doubtless with great truth, of Bonaparte, in the certificate given of his conduct by the professors of the military college of Brienne, when he was about fifteen years of age, that "il est assez foible dans les exercises d'agrément, et pour le Latin, où il n'a fini que sa quatrième;" but in talents of another sort he certainly was not deficient. He, in this respect, greatly resembled Oliver Cromwell; neither of these men knew much of the "agrémens" of life, but both had an extraordinary power of diving into the minds of men, and moulding them to their purpose. The work before us developes some of the secret apparatus by which this effect was produced in the case of Bonaparte; "hypocrisy and terror are here recommended," justly remarks the editor in his preface, " as the most effectual means of governing the world." The book, therefore, whether composed by Bonaparte and his council,or not, is certainly consistent enough with the well-known principles of that “ great man."

The work begins, proceeds, and concludes with the most abject flattery to the Emperor-flattery so gross as renders the authenticity of the book suspicious; or at least would do so, if Bonaparte's far-famed catechism and other works, which undoubtedly had his sanction, had not been drawn up in exactly the same spirit and nearly the same terms. What could even Napoleon himself say to the following passage with which the volume commences?

"In the empire exercised by God over kings the principles ought to be found, which shall regulate the education of the princes of the blood of Napoleon, formed at once to obey and to command. It is necessary they should yield obedience to him as to God, since it is God who conducts him.

"A king of the blood of Napoleon, proud of the genius to which he owes his royalty, ought to find no less gratification, in the being supported, directed, and governed by that genius.

"Under the influence of great conceptions every thing becomes great. Thou desirest to make use of my arm?' said a philosopher to Fate: Take it.-Thou desirest my son? There he is.-The philosopher knew, that Fate would either lead or compel him: and is it not equally manifest, that Napoleon compels whatever opposes him, and leads whatever submits to his will?

"This preliminary being settled, we shall next say, that he who has mastered the age in which he lives, so that nothing dares to resist him, may in like manner command the future, imposing the penalty of impotence on all those passions, by which the future might be agitated he alone is entitled to prescribe the political principles of the education of the princes of his blood.

"Nevertheless, as man is properly the subject that we must first

understand, and out of which must be formed man the sovereign, let us endeavour to collect the ideas, which appear the best adapted to raise the man to the elevation of the king." (P. 1—3.)

That Bonaparte, as the head of his own family, had a right to conduct the education of his children as he pleased, we are quite despotic enough in our principles to admit; nor do we doubt that he was well qualified to form a worthy successor to his "four planks of wood covered with velvet," as he himself once defined a throne. We must be allowed, however, to doubt how far "God conducted him," unless by that term be meant Jupiter. Jove, we know, on classical authority, had a very efficacious way of "conducting" men to their downfall, in much the same manner as Bonaparte was conducted in the latter stages of his career, in which the "dementat" and the "vult perdere" of that fabled deity seemed very closely allied. But the subject is too awful for a jest. "C'est Dieu qui le conduit!" Nay, not only does God conduct him, but even shares his adoration with him. Kneeling daily before God, and before the statue of the Emperor, he (the Liliputian prince) gives vent to his gratitude, respect, and love." (P. 38.) And again (same page), "Napoleon is the Jupiter who equally disposes of a blade of grass, and the most solemn award of justice, each in its due time;" but for the height, the extravagance, the Ultima Thule of impiety, blasphemy, and sheer nonsense, take the following parallel between Bonaparte and the Deity.

"From sixteen to eighteen every thing begins to unfold itself; every thing ferments in the young pupil, the mind, the heart, and the senses; whence arises a sort of indocile inebriation, that renders him hard to be taught. But God and the Emperor will calm this stormy period, if he have been taught from infancy to bow at their names.

"What a resource in the education of our princes we have in two altars, and two majesties, that form the soul of it! a divine majesty, and a human majesty, invisible and visible at the same time, rewarding and punishing in time and in eternity.-To what a pitch will you raise nature, what will you not obtain from it, when you have such lofty means?

“We shall ere long have but one book, the Commentaries of Napoleon; not such, as if he would deign to write them himself, but such as fame has presented them to the admiration of mankind: and we shall learn it by heart, never to quit it.

"God and the Emperor will be the inexhaustible subject of our compositions: it is from these sources we shall derive the talent of writing things worthy of being read, till we acquire the power of doing things worthy of being written." (P. 47, 48.)

We thought, on first reading this passage, that by the "other majesty," was seriously meant the "Apollo Belvidere ;" and that the harlequin emperor, not content with being, as we have seen, a Jupiter Tonans, inclined to emulate his graceful rival of Parnassus. The way in which the work speaks of the Apollo

Belvidere, and the matchless lessons to be learned from it, naturally led us into this opinion. No sympathetic reader can peruse the following passage without feeling how deep an injury France has sustained by the restoration of such inimitable works of art, and without mingling his tears with those of the Parisians, who justly deprecated an event not less injurious it seems to the moral dignity and good government of the nation than mortifying to its pride.

"Dazzled with the sun, go and see the Apollo, and be not weary of admiring it: art has produced nothing equal to it in beauty.

"But before your pupil may be capable of exalting his mind to the height of this masterpiece, let him see it frequently, and allow the charm of the model to operate on the imitative propensity of the child: assist its influence, and you will soon see the infant placing himself in the attitude of the Apollo, and endeavouring to assume its noble air.

"But when age and your lessons have imparted to him a feeling of all this statue inspires, you may make him comprehend the great power of the turn of the head, of attitudes, and of forms; which the artist felt so profoundly, that he has surpassed all mortal beauty, and made of him a god. Do not forget the forehead, that beams encouragement on the good; the mouth, that repels the wicked with disdain, and the arm that punishes him. Divine whole! giving at once lessons of the sublime and graceful, of strength and majesty; ennobling in proportion as it is contemplated, and still affording improvement, could the beholder remain always admiring it.

"But if nature do not correspond to your greatness; if she refuse to model your frame, so as to render it consonant with the views of the fate assigned you by your birth; let your eyes be fixed on those divine lineaments, and endeavour to reproduce them." (P. 20-22.)

But we are anticipating; let us revert to the beginning of the work. "The first object," it is remarked, "of this education will be to know how to lose time judiciously;" by which oddly constructed assertion is only meant that the period of infancy and childhood ought not to be burdened with intellectual pursuits, but to be employed in "giving a healthy and robust frame by means of exercises and games." Napoleon, if he had any hand in the treatise, was certainly very wise in this article of his system, for a precocity of intellect is never favourable to the full and perfect developement of the powers, either of body or mind. The public is much indebted to Mr. and to Miss Edgeworth for their wholesome suggestions on this subject. It is an essential part of their system that a child should not outrun itself; that it should not read and converse fluently before it has ideas commensurate with its vocabulary, or unfold its infant mind in an exhausting luxuriance to the injury of its physical powers. "A man who during his whole life could never write any thing that was worth reading would find it but poor consolation to reflect that he was in joining-hand before he was five years old."

"The memory of the phenomenon of being able to read before other children can articulate," adds Mr. or Miss Edgeworth, would remain only with his doating grandmother."

Our French preceptor has, it seems, two mighty advantages in his system; for human nature we are there taught is, in the first instance, a spotless sheet of white paper, and on it may be written with the greatest ease the characters of perfectibility. "Il nous suffise que l'homme soit bon, perfectible. We could

almost fancy that this part of the system had been wrought in the loom of Mr. Owen, of New Lanark; with this difference, however, that Mr. Owen seems to think this natural goodness of heart universal, and without exception, whereas the French sage allows that "the good and the bad are, in their commencement, men happily or unhappily constituted by nature, or wisely or absurdly directed by their instructors." The original is more expressive; "Bien ou mal nés, bien ou mal gouvernés." But, says the book, and so say we, "Arrêtons ces généralités;" enough of these generalities; and, let us go on to the next page, where we find Bonaparte and his council moralizing in the most touching manner upon the amiable virtues. "Man, a creature with a thousand weaknesses, is never more strong," they exclaim, "than when he implores; his strength lies in his goodness, and his sympathy." "Two principles govern the world love and fear....... For ourselves (Bonaparte loquitur!) who incline to the principle of love, we shall say with the poet," &c. Amiable man! and his son, too, what an infant prodigy must" he have been to merit the following description: "It may be that nature has endowed your pupil with a genius above your force to direct it: it may be that instead of failing to your lot to excite and animate it, you may unfortunately bring it down to your own level." Oh, beware of committing an intellectual murder!"

As an illustration of a child rendered "hateful and hopeless" by injudicious treatment, the celebrated Duke of Burgundy is mentioned. The name of that Marcellus gives vibration to a string which has no unison with the key-note from which it was struck. It is quite refreshing to turn from the miserable jargon of wretched metaphysics and worse morality of this " Imperial Council of State," to the wise, manly, and Christian instructions of a Fenelon. Let the reader figure to himself the "Infant King of Rome," educated on the principles of this treatise, (happy for him to have been early removed from the contagion!) and contrast the pride, the ty ranny, the hypocrisy, which such a system of royal education was calculated and intended to foster, with the ingenuousness, the really noble spirit, and the Christian piety of that celebrated prince, whose premature death France never recovered. We are

astonished that the author or authors of the work before us could summon the effrontery to allude to a name which should put to the blush almost every precept in their pages. Did Fenelon teach the infant duke to worship "God and the king," or to gaze upon a statue to improve his moral principles? Fenelon found his pupil proud, passionate, tyrannical; so furious, says a French author, that "it was feared the very veins of his body would burst." "He looked upon men as atoms, with whom he had no similarity whatever." But how different his character when moulded by the Christian instructions of that eminent preceptor! The principles upon which he was led to act may be inferred from such of his letters as yet remain. He writes, for instance, to his tutor, in 1701, after four years' separation, caused by the intrigues of those who could as little relish, as dare to imitate, the piety of that apostolic divine: "At last, my dear archbishop, a favourable opportunity presents itself of breaking the silence in which I have remained four years. I have suffered many evils during that period: but one of the greatest has been the impossibility of telling you what I have felt for you during that time, and that your misfortunes only increased my friendship towards you instead of weakening it. I look forward with real pleasure to the time when I shall be able to see you again; but I am afraid that time is far distant. We must commit it to the will of God, from whose great mercy I am continually receiving new testimonies of his grace. I have been often unfaithful to him since I saw you last, but he has been always graciously pleased to recall me to him, and thank God, I have never been wholly deaf to his voice. For some time past I have, I think, kept myself with greater success in the path of virtue. Implore of him his grace to confirm me in my good resolutions, and not to permit me to become his enemy again, but to teach me himself to do his holy will in every thing." This was the approved old fashioned way of making good and great men, before the invention of the more compendious one of effecting it by the contemplation of statues. The duke writes two years after in the same strain: "I still preserve my desire of being devoted to God, and I think it grows fundamentally stronger, but it is thwarted by many faults and much dissipation. I entreat you, therefore, to increase your prayers for me; I have more need of them than ever, being still equally weak and imperfect. I feel it every day more and more. I look upon that feeling, however, as from God, who never wholly abandons me, though I often feel myself indolent and indifferent, which I must endeavour to overcome by means of his grace." Well might Fenelon exclaim, on receiving the news of the early death of his interesting pupil, whom he loved with the affection of a parent, "Every tie is snapped asunder; nothing now holds me to the earth."

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