censures; but not more so than the occasion seemed impe riously to demand. If the instances we have alledged (and the multitude of similar ones we forbore to expose) of misinformation and inaccuracy, had been only secondary oversights, such as are incident to all writers in undertakings of great extent, we should have thought it uncandid to disparage a work in which they happened to occur. But they are of such a nature as indicate either extreme carelessness, or entire incompetency to execute accurately and faithfully the labour undertaken. In the present book-making age this is the besetting sin of authors. We are sorry to find a man of Dr. Thomson's reputation seduced by it. It would have been easy for him to have obtained adequate assistance in those departments of science to which he had paid but slight attention: and in that case we should most probably have found it our duty to recommend warmly, a work which we now hesitate in recommending at all.

Art. IV. Memoires de Frédérique Sophie Wilhelmina de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Saur de Frederic le Grand; Ecrits de sa main. Deux tomes. pp. 757. Price One Guinea. Colburn, 1812.

WE are seldom displeased with an addition made to the

stock of works of this class. They afford almost the only inlet through which vulgar eyes are enabled to penetrate into the mysteries and manners of courts;-and by disclosing, in their genuine colours, the characters of princes, ministers, and favourites, and the trifling impulses in which the far greater part of their counsels originate, they enable the historian, instead of the vague conjectures in which he is otherwise tempted to indulge, to trace to their true and proper sources the most important political transactions. It has been by the help of such disclosures that we have become possessed of so accurate a detail of the reign of Louis XIV.; and however some persons may lament this rude intrusion upon the privacy of royalty, we are inclined to think that the St. Simons and Montpensiers have upon the whole rendered good service to their country and mankind-though at the same time we are well aware that it is not every mind which can rise uncontaminated from the participation of their secrets.

The very interesting work before us, narrates with the utmost apparent candour and simplicity, and in considerable. minuteness of detail, the domestic history of the Princess Sophia, sister of the Great Frederic, during a period of thirty-six years. She was the daughter of William I. King of Prussia; and it may bespeak the interest of the English reader the more strongly in her favour, when it is recollected, that on her mother's side, she was grandaughter of George I.,

and but for the weakness of some, and the sinister interests of others, would have become, there seems little reason to doubt, the wife of his grandson.

As genuineness is not one of the least considerations in a work of this description, it may be proper that the reader should,. at the outset, be apprised of the manner in which the Editor, who does not think fit to disclose his name, states himself to have become possessed of the present memoirs. In a short Preface he says that

Various persons have read in manuscript the Memoirs that are now offered to the public: they are in the hand-writing of the Princess; the Margravine bequeathed them to the Privy Counsellor Hipperville, her first Physician, who had invariably refused to give them publicity. Upon his death, a highly respectable friend of the present Editor obtained possession of them, and did not interpose any obstacle in the way of their publication.'

This is certainly not very satisfactory; but their internal evidence of authenticity would abundantly atone, we think, for aq account even more suspicious than this.

The Princess was born the 3d of July, 1709. Her miseries, (of which we shall presently see she was destined to encounter a more than ordinary share) began with her existence. At the recommendation of Lady Darlington (here called Arlington) she was at first confided to the care of the daughter of an Italian monk,' (Vol. i. p. 5.) called La Letti, whom she describes as possessing

The characteristic mind and heart of an Italian-that is to say, very vivacious, very flexible, and thoroughly depraved. She was selfish, proud, and passionate. Hér manners corresponded with her origin. Her gallantry attracted numerous lovers, whom she was unwilling to disappoint. Her manners were Dutch; that is, very coarse; but all these defects she contrived to conceal under so fascinating an exterior, that she charmed all who beheld her.'

Such was the person to whom the education of the Princess was immediately confided; and the poison she was thus exposed to, was not likely to find a very efficacious antidote in the persons by whom she was constantly surrounded. Her father was avaricious, brutal, subject to fits of the most ungovernable passion, and a mere soldier; whose sole amusement, when not occupied in drinking or smoking, or abusing his family, consisted in disciplining his regiment of giants, and forming schemes for kidnapping accessions to it. While of her mother (who was still living when these Memoirs were written) she says, that though not destitute of some amiable qualities, her ambition is excessive, she is jealous to extravagance, of a suspicious and vindictive disposition, and never pardoning those who have offended her.'

The condition of the Princess was such, however, as would scarcely be imagined, even under the tutelage of such parents. Blows, famine, and bitter reproaches, constituted the principal ingredients in the life of this singularly unfortunate creature. La Letti,' (she says, vol. 1, p. 67) used to give me such violent blows with her fist upon the nose, that I sometimes bled like an ox.' So completely, however, had this fiend subjugated her mistress, that no complaints of the ill treatment she received ever passed her lips; and it was not till La Letti had herself expressed a desire to be removed from her situation, that the Queen was informed of the sufferings of her daughter The poor child,' (said Madame de Roukole to the Queen) suffers perpetual martyrdom; and I dread that some day she may be brought to you with her limbs fractured: for she is beaten like mortar, and is in danger every day of being maimed.'

She was at length rescued from the hands of this merciless persecutor, of whom, só far from resenting her cruelties, she speaks with remarkable forbearance. But though she was afterwards less beaten, she was not better fed. The work is interspersed with a multitude of passages lamenting the scanty and sorry fare afforded by her father's table. My brother,' (afterwards Frederic the Great) and I,' (she says) 6 were reduced to skeletons from mere inanition.' (Vol. I. p. 158.) In another passage she says,

The King left my brother and myself to perish with hunger. The King himself performed the office of carver: he helped every body but my brother and me; and when by accident any thing happened to remain in any of the dishes, he used to spit upon it, in order to deter us from touching it. We lived upon coffee and milk, and dried cherries, which entirely destroyed my stomach.' Vol. I. p. 171.

There is another passage very characteristic of the usual habits of this illustrious Prince towards his royal consort and progeny, and which, though somewhat long, is well worth notice. The King asked one of his children in what way she would regulate her establishment when married:

She replied that she would keep a good table, well furnished with delicacies, and which shall be (added she) better than yours; and if I have children, I will not ill use them as you do, nor force them to eat what disgusts them.-What do you mean by that? said the King; what is there wanting at my table?-There wants (said she) the means of satisfying one's hunger; and the little there is, consists of nothing but coarse garden stuff, that it is impossible to touch. The King had been already enraged by her first answer: the last threw him into a complete fury but all his anger was vented upon my brother and me. He began by throwing a plate at my brother's head, who avoided the blow. next threw another at mine, which I avoided in the same manner. A volley

He

of invectives followed this commencement of hostilities: he railed at the Queen, reproaching her with the wretched education she had given her children; and then addressing himself to my brother, "You ought, (said he) to curse your mother," &c. Vol. I. p. 160.

The only intelligible cause of this matchless brutality towards the Princess, appears to have arisen, not from any misconduct on her part, for she seems invariably to have endeavoured to conduct herself with the most exemplary submissiveness and duty towards both her parents, but from the difficulties that fell in the way of providing a suitable match for her. The Princess's inclinations were of course not thought worth consulting: but unluckily for her peace, her royal parents, with whom the choice rested, could not agree in the selection, or at least in the degree of perseverance with which it was to be pursued. The Queen, who

As

it will be recollected was the sister of George I. 'exerted the whole force of her influence to bring about a double union, between the Princess and Frederic, and two of the children of the Hanover branch of her family. In this wish all of the parties whose interests are upon such occasions thought worth regarding, appeared to concur. a preliminary, however, to the accomplishment of this project, the King of England required that William should remove from his councils Grumkow, his prime minister, a condition which it therefore became of the last importance to keep from the ears of the minister. The Queen, however, though aware, and warned, of the importance of secresy, with a weakness that is much more easily paralleled than accounted for, communicated the fatal article to a perfidious female favorite, who without delay conveyed the intelligence to the minister. Grumkow, it will readily be conceived, lost no time in prejudicing the mind of the king against the proposed union, and in this he so well succeeded that the scheme was laid aside. By the pressing instances and intrigues of the Queen, the negociation was at several intervals renewed, but unsuccessfully: and the King becoming impatient, insisted that the Princess should marry either of two persons-the Margrave of Schwed, whom she held in utter aversion, or the Duke of Weissenfeld, who was a beggar and a drunkard. After being induced, by the menaces of the Queen, for some time, at the risk of her life, to keep these lovers at bay, another candidate for her hand was thrust forward-the hereditary Prince of Bareith to whom she was afterwards married, and who, by great good fortune made her, upon the whole, a very excellent husband. Like most other German hereditary Princes, indeed, he was pennyless. But so delighted was William

with the successful issue of the negociation (though he immediately afterwards found reason. to regret it *) that he promised his daughter she should meet ample remuneration for all her sufferings in the splendid revenue he designed to provide for her; an effort of liberality which prospered so well, that she found herself in possession, after her immediate expences had been defrayed, of a sum of eleven hundred crowns. It was not long, however, before his conscience misgave him; and after due deliberation and repentance of his extravagance, he struck off 4000 crowns from the capital destined for her portion. (Vol. I. p. 402.)

Some time after her marriage, to her great delight, she quitted Berlin. But her patience was still kept in exercise. Upon her arrival at Koff, a castle situated in the territories of her father in law, she was persecuted by the harangues and compliments of all the immediate nobility of the country: and as they appear to have been a variety of the species, of which we never before remember to have met with a specimen, we shall extract some part of the lady's account, or rather caricature of them.

All of them (she says) wore faces made as if it was their destiny to terrify little children: their visages were half concealed in odious tufts of filthy hair tortured into the shape of wigs, among which a progeny of vermin, boasting as remote an ancestry as their prey, had established their residence. Their matchless persons were decked out in habiliments, which in point of antiquity did not yield to the vermin; they were an inheritance from their ancestors, and had for ages been transmitted from father to son. For the most part, these tatters disclaimed all analogy to the shapes of their wearers: and the gold they had once boasted was so much bedimmed that its position could scarcely be recognized. They wore however their state dresses: and attired in their antient rags, they fancied themselves at least as respectable as the Emperor adorned in those of Charlemagne. Their vulgar manners did not disgrace their habiliments: they were not a whit above the lowest boors. As an embellishment to all their charms they were for the most part plentifully besprinkled with cutaneous eruptions. It was with the utmost difficulty I could refrain from laughing while contemplating these figures.' Voi. I. pp. 8, 9.

* On the morning of the day on which she was betrothed to the hereditary Prince of Bareith, dispatches arrived at Berlin, from Lord Chesterfield, containing the formal declaration of her marriage with the Prince of Wales, and without requiring any preliminary stipulations. These dispatches were delivered to Grumkow, who contrived to keep their existence from the knowledge of the King till after the Princess had been irrevocably omised to the Prince of Bareith. Vol. I. p. 348.