All

"An eye for an eye-the world is a mart Where only this is barter'd or exacted; But when the truth would seek a heart for heart, Man wends him round the busy earth distracted, And finds this pure exchange is only acted On Life's false theatre-the tone, the mien, May be the same, but not in faith compacted. There is no inward life-that which hath been peace before the world, is war behind the scene!" Zaddok has within him more, perhaps, of Puseyism than might be expected from a Hebrew wanderer. On his arrival in England, he quarrels principally with cruelty to asses-with pews in churches, and with their closed doors on week days, because, it would appear, he is withheld by a pine or oaken door, an iron bolt, or a patent lock, from prayer. When Zaddok wanders farther, perhaps, he may be taught that prayers are not confined to churches-that for them the whole earth has been sufficiently consecrated. But if he travels much farther, there is vigour enough in his pen to give the critics trouble. Ile will not write and perish unnoticed.

By H. Hardinge | Annesley; and other Poems. By Anna Harriet Drury.
London: William Pickering.

As this is but Canto I., and the author leads us to believe that there are to be several more cantos, we can scarcely express an opinion of the work, which, from its introduction, threatens to deal roughly with many different customs. Zaddok, it would seem, is to be a reli-provement of mankind rather than the acquisition of gious Childe Harold-travelling over the world like the Wandering Jew-but for the purpose of detecting error, although not for that alone. It is almost unnecessary for a character of this description, journeying aimless, that he should have known sorrows. Zaddok had drunk of sorrow's saddest cup :

The Lord's Supper. By the Rev. David King, LL.D., author of "The Ruling Eldership of the Christian Church." Edinburgh: John Johnstone.

THE author of this work is well known as one of the most able and influential of our Dissenting clergymen, who, amid the overwhelming pressure of congregational and public duties, has found leisure for the composition of two excellent treatises on the Ruling Eldership and on the Lord's Supper. The work before us is divided into seven chapters -The Passover-the Supper instituted by Christ while observing the Passover-probable reasons for instituting the Supper at that particular time-the Lord's Supper illustrative of the scheme of salvationa commemorative institution-a medium of fellowshipa seal of the covenant and its relation to futurity. These varicus topics are discussed with great ability and a thorough knowledge of the subject. It well deserves, and we doubt not will receive, an extensive circulation.

The Clergyman in the Gaol. An Essay on Prison Discipline. By George Heaton, A.M., Assistant Chaplain of Gloucester County Gaol. London: Houlston & Stoneman.

THIS small treatise consists of twelve chapters, which are devoted to the consideration of the following subjects: -Preliminary remarks; of prisoners before trial; a suggestion for a pro tempore treatment of untried prisoners; of convicted prisoners; officers of the prison; the chapel

in Egyptian tombs, apparently unlisturbed for 3000 years. * Vessels of Chinese manufacture have frequently been found They are supposed to have been imported through India, and the characters are the same as those used in China at the present day. A common motto upen them is that quoted in the sonnet above.

in the prison; on Divine service in the corridor; on the school-room in the prison; on gradations in prison discipline; on the mode, &c., of clerical instruction; on the causes of crime; on the prevention of crime.

The observations on these topics are, in general, judicious, like the author's conclusions. This is especially so with regard to the opinions he advances in chapters sixth, | seventh, and ninth. We cannot, however, speak so favourably of the author's style; it is defective in point of clearness and precision. But, perhaps, this want is compensated for by the fact that the matter of the work is the product of one who is practically acquainted with the important subject on which he writes-of one who has had several years' experience in a large county prison, and who has likewise had the advantage of inspecting and becoming acquainted with the system pursued in other prisons.

No one, on reading such a treatise as this, can refrain from drawing a contrast between our prisons, as they now exist, and as they existed several years ago, and at the same time rejoicing at the enlightened views and Christian sympathy manifested in the remarkable improvements

In

fold happen to be torn and mangled by the wolf, or driven
before the gaunter famine to the refuge for the poor.
ten years all these children will be strong enough to
commit any crime-be it our business to make them
wise enough to despise a theft-as we ourselves despise a
lie. The same education will produce a pro tanto effect,
similar to the one which we feel and acknowledge to be a
part of our moral existence. Once raise men to self-
respect, teach them to feel and remember that we are
all poor or rich by the rule of Providence, but that we
are all respectable and happy, or depraved and miserable,
by education, the strength to wade out of low and abo-
by our own choice. Make this plain, having given them,
minable meanness of character, and a whole string of
petty, shifty, low tricks will be swept out of the catalogue
of crimes. Many will fall, but it will be so that they
can rise again without the arm of the law. Some will
be rebellious, but it will be so that you may subdue them
on their own ground. In fact, you will have men to
deal with, while now the human face divine' comes
up strong as an animal and wilful as a creature of rea-
son, but mischievous as an evil spirit-inaccessible to
argument, prejudiced against conviction, deaf to entreaty,
and blind and deaf to all other nobler sentiments, the
principles of which were never implanted in their under-
standings. Men do not gather grapes off thorns, or
figs off thistles' "'

Angell James. London: 1847.

Ax earnest treatise, by an earnest man, on a deeply momentous subject. We wish we could induce every minister, preacher, and student of divinity, attentively to read, and inwardly to ponder, the contents of this little It is written with great energy, clearness, and

volume.

that have been introduced into them. What would the benevolent, and devoted, and self-denied Howard think, An Earnest Ministry the Want of the Times. By John were he now to revisit our land, and enter our gaols and penitentiaries, and witness the reformation that has there taken place, not only as regards the improvements that have been made with a view to the bodily health and comfort of the prisoners, but especially as regards the provision made for accomplishing the great end of correction and prison discipline-even the intellectual and moral reformation of their unhappy inmates? Let us hope that the important subject discussed in this treatise will continue to receive that share of the attention and consideration of our statesmen, and of society in general, which it undoubtedly deserves, and that no expense will be grudged that shall be considered necessary for introducing those improvements that may still be called fornot only in our prison discipline at home, but likewise in our penal colonies abroad.

We subjoin an extract from the chapter regarding the prevention of crime :

"Of all political subjects, this (the prevention of crime) has always been most neglected. To track a man down to his cabin, bring him to justice, find him guilty, and punish him for his offence, is all well enough; but what should we say to the father that paid no attention to the education of his family, if we saw him engaged in a laborious and expensive process of inquiry into the case of some crime committed by one of his children? My good fellow, this is all very well; but are you not suffering for the truth of the old adage, A stitch in time saves nine?" Had you bestowed half the pains, two or three years ago, that child would have been a comfort instead of a curse to you, and would now be a profitable addition to your means instead of so grievous a burden, on your hands. Just this has been the way in which the world's fathers have dealt by the world's children.

"Education, then, in the fear and admonition of the Lord, is what is wanted for the rising generation, what must not be suspended when any of the lambs' of the

vivacity. No drawling, no simpering, no straining at effect, no refining away of bold statement and honest counsel, but plain, direct, downright, faithful dealing with both the head and the heart. The principles laid down are excellent, as respects the manner as well as the matter of preaching. The illustrations are copious and appropriate; and as for the style of the book, it is elegant, without being fastidious, perspicuous without being mean, and animated without being boisterous.

While approving of the whole, we set a special value on the author's remarks respecting the manner of preaching, the characteristics of the times in which we live, and the means to be employed in order to obtain an earnest ministry. We thank him, in particular, for his faithful condemnation of the practice of reading sermons, now becoming so unhappily fashionable with such as would be thought our best preachers.

We scarcely know how a benevolent person of wealth could confer a greater benefit on the Church of Christ than by taking steps to have this invaluable little treatise put into the hands of ministers of religion, and of young persons who are in course of training for the sacred office. Cordially do we thank Mr. James for this production of his pen; and we,devoutly pray that, through the blessing of God, his labours may contribute to secure what is certainly one of the greatest wants of our times—an earnest ministry.

THE PRASLIN FAMILY.

THE chapter of coincidences is one claiming more interest than is generally bestowed upon it. As the same dream will more than once haunt

the same pillow, so in life do we see names and places, after long intervals of time, again associated with the peculiar circumstances that before

made them remarkable, and the self-same acci- even at this present day; and in this manner dents befall the same families.

The grandfather of the hero of the most horrible tragedy of modern times, the late Duke of Praslin, also stained his hand with the blood of an innocent, a virtuous, a high-born lady, under circumstances, doubtless, of less cold-blooded premeditation, of less brutality, less revolting to humanity, inasmuch as the hapless victim was not bound to him by such manifold and sacred ties; he pierced not the heart that beat for him, and him alone, but one that was steeled against him by another affection. Still it was innocent blood ruthlessly shed, and which might have cast a deeper stain on the Praslin escutcheon, had not the ways of dealing out justice in those days been far different from our own.

The "Annual Register" of 1768* gives the following account of the affair, under the head of an extract of a letter from Paris :

:-

"The new year commences with an account of a very tragical affair, that has just happened to our ambassador at the court of Naples; the fact is this: the Viscount of Choiseul, our said ambassador, unhappily casting his tender regard towards a young lady of that place, of a good family, before engaged to the Count of Conitz () (Kaunitz), the emperor's ambassador, and taking advantage of the Count's absence, pressed this fair Italian lady with the most ardent professions of love; and, to forward his suit, overwhelmed her with presents, but all in vain, she still proving inexorable. One day, in a fit of rage and despair, he drew his sword and plunged it three times in her body. Some say she died on the spot; others, that she is not yet dead, but mortally wounded. However, the king of Naples, informed of this shocking scene, dispatched a courier hither, and our king immediately ordered his said ambassador home, and he is since sent to the Bastile. This melancholy transaction has so affected the Duke de Pladin (Praslin), the Viscount's father, that he has been at the point of death with grief on this sad occasion, and is still unable to attend to any business, nor has been at court since the beginning of the new year.

The father of this Viscount de Choiseul, the then Duke of Praslin, was a man of very loose morality. Though married, he formed the closest intimacies with actresses; and we find several curious references to this Duke and his family in that curious work entitled "Memoires Secrets pour servir à l'Histoire de la Republique des Lettres en France, ou Journal, d'un Observateur," | printed in London, doubtless through motives of prudence, and which closely resembles, in form and matter, our Annual Register. In the year 1763, he introduced to the Parisian boards a protege of his own, a woman who afterwards gained a sort of celebrity by the very excess of her vices, named De Luzi, or Deluzi, for so it is indifferently spelled; and though we cannot presume to assert that there exists any connexion between that actress and the heroine of the late Duke's abominable tragedy, still there is plenty of room for the supposition that the latter may be the descendant of that person. The practice of retaining their own names along with those which marriage confers on them was always very general among actresses, as we see in the case of Mesdames Dorus-Gras, Viardot Garcia, and so many more

Vol. ii., 1768, page 73,

one might be justified in supposing Mademoiselle De Luzi to have come by the united names of Luzi Desportes. This is, however, mere conjecture. The fact of the Duke of Praslin, of 1763, having taken a tender interest in the Mademoiselle De Luzi of his own time, is better established; and certainly it cannot but be considered a somewhat strange coincidence that, after so long an interval of time, scandal should afresh connect the names of De Luzi and Praslin.

In 178, the death of this nobleman's wife gave rise to a protracted lawsuit, so curious in its nature as to deserve notice. That lady had throughout life exhibited a violent and most unnatural dislike for her children, in consequence of which she left the whole of her large fortune to an utter stranger, and one whom she had never even beheld, for the mere purpose of disinheriting those whose claims upon her were so direct. It would seem the Duchess had ever entertained a conviction that these children did not belong to her, but were the adulterous offspring of her husband and the celebrated and clever actress Mademoiselle Dangeville, which he had fraudu lently substituted for those she had lost in infancy. That this belief, which nothing could ever shake, was the root of that aversion which made her hate during life, and disinherit after death, those whom she was compelled to permit to call themselves her children, but never could bring herself to look upon as such, is cerbeen questioned, except with reference to her tain. As this lady's sanity never seems to have will, and as this conviction did not leave her even at the hour when the mist of prejudice or error generally fades from eyes about to turn away from all earthly objects, it is but fair to presume that some strange circumstance or other, to this day unexplained, gave rise to such cruel suspi cions in her mind-perhaps the dying confession of some repentant or malicious nurse-of one who wished to atone for past deceit, or, with her last breath, to avenge some long-remembered injury or slight-who can tell? So clear are the effects, the causes so obscure, in most family dramas.

The children and grandchildren succeeded in having her will annulled, under the plea that nothing but insanity could account for a mother's disinheriting her own offspring. The Prince of Guémené, the heir she had named, was nonsuited, and the Duchess only thought of as a lusus nature. But, perhaps, a less harsh judgment might have been passed upon one whose husband had devoted the better part of his life, and the affections which he had vowed to share with her, to one of the unworthy of her sex. The strong enduring passion of the Duke for Mademoiselle Dangeville might well have embittered the Duchess, and made her believe him capable of any, and every, unjustifiable and unprincipled action towards herself. And, again, when she saw her eldest son, the Viscount de Choiseul, render himself guilty of a deed of such brutal, bloody import, as the murder, or attempted murder, of the

THE PRASLIN FAMILY.

minor, his legacy must be claimed, which has given rise
to a suit-at-law. M. Boudet, advocate to the Viscount
de Choiseul, son of the Duchess de Praslin, insisted that
this will, though correctly drawn up, should be considered
as a testament, ab irato; and the judges thought so
This deci-
likewise, as it seems, since the minor Guémené has lost
his cause, and been condemned to the costs.
sion bears the date of the 2d of April, and was, it is said,

unanimous.

Italian lady, the thought might naturally enough suggest itself, that the blood of a profligate actress, and (for Mademoiselle Dangeville was not famed for being over-nice in such matters) that of some equally unscrupulous father, more probably flowed in the veins of this bad man, than that of a virtuous lady like herself, or of a man, weak and foolish indeed, but of an acknowledged mildness of temper, like her husband. The disgust naturally consequent upon the evil courses of both father and son, joined to other, and more secret, domestic occurrences, which latter must be mere matter of conjecture since she did not choose to reveal them, most probably led to the doubts she entertained as to the rights of her children to that title, and caused her to withdraw her affec-nuary, 1766, with the same evil sentiments which she tions from them.

"It is said that Madame de Praslin imagined her children were not hers, but that her husband had successively substituted for her own those of the same sex ho had with Mademoiselle Dangeville. Romantic and absurd as this supposition was, it had so thoroughly possessed the mind of that singular and vaporous lady that it inspired her with an enduring aversion for her posterity, on whom she never bestowed the slightest mark of tenderness. She had drawn up a former will, bearing date the 7th of Jaconfirmed in her second, dated 19th February, 1779. "Neither did Madame de Praslin love her husband; she only mentions him in her will to throw ridicule on him, by an absurd legacy :—‘I beg Monsieur le Duc de Praslin, my husband, to accept the model of the horse in brought from my castle of La Flèche.' bronze, on which is Henry the Fourth, which I have

Considered even as a mere groundless caprice, an idée fixe, based on the mere dislike of her husband and all that belonged to him, still it is strange that the name of Praslin should thus have been again connected with a certain share "It is, perhaps, the first instance on record of a of scandal before the tribunals of the country. mother and grandmother-the Duchess having seen even Some names are really unfortunate in France; her third generation-having conceived the desire of The disinheriting all her progeny, born or yet to be born, and such, for instance, as that of Castellane. well-known Marquise de Ganges bore it before of having executed her will, as far as lay with her, without any legitimate or apparent motive, with the coolness her second ill-starred marriage, and the Countess and clear-headedness of the calmest reason. of Entrecasteaux, whose murder by the hands of her own husband took place under much the same circumstances as those of the late Duchess Sebastiani Praslin, was a Mademoiselle de Castellane. How much more might be added, graphically and historically, to the chapter of coincidences-but the limits of this slight sketch of the antécédens, as the French call it, of the Praslin family, will not permit more than the following extracts, translated from the "Memoires Secrets," touching the will of the Duchess (greatgrandmother to the late Duke), and a reference to have may those irregularities of her husband, that warped her judgment and changed her heart :

"Another strange fact appears in this case; that, namely, of her not having happened to know the young Guémené named in default of the Prince of Soubise, and her having mentioned him in so vague a manner that bio-(there being two younger sons of that name) it would later have given rise to a suit betwixt the brothers, in

"11th April.*-The Duchess of Praslin, who died on the 27th December, 1783, has left an olographe testament, at once singular and unnatural, by which, although leaving children and grandchildren, she names as sole legatee a stranger to her blood, the Marechal Prince de Soubisse, and in case of failure, the youngest son of the Princess Guémené. The Prince of Soubise yielded up his claim at once; but young Guémené, being as yet a * Vol. xxv., page 222, of the "Memoires Secrets."

order that law should determine upon the real legatee. Madame la Duchesse de Praslin's name was Champagne, and she had brought her husband more than 150,000 livres a-year.''

The next extract records the Duke's connexion with Mademoiselle Dangeville, as follows :—

"16th November, 1785.-The Duke of Praslin is just dead; Mademoislle Dangeville is inconsolable for this loss. They had lived together for more than half a century. He was an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences. It is not known whether he leaves any memorials of his talents, but a million, one hundred thousand livres, in gold, were found in his possession at his death-at least so rumour says."

The Vicomte de Choiseul's attempted crime in Italy did not take place before 1768, two years later, so that her prejudice was even anterior to his transgression. + This was more than the present franc. Great-grandfather to the late Duke.

POLITICAL REGISTER.

THE CURRENCY.

THE currency will be discussed early in the next session, and under many disadvantages. The leading statesmen in the House of Commons are pledged to the present system. Two of the principal organs of opinion in the London press support it. The power of the monied interest in its struggle with industry is great, and increased by the ignorance prevalent on the subject. There can be no doubt that commercial distress exists. There can be no question that it is more intense

The

and severe than at any period for many years.
facts are plain, and their causos alone are disputed.
The organs of the London monied interest ascribe
the prevalent embarrassment to two causes. They
say that we have over-speculated in railways, and we
have been obliged to buy large quantities of corn from
foreign countries. And they add, that these form the
only reasons for the existing scarcity and dearth of money.

The same journals that ascribe our embarrassments to the corn speculations madly urged them. They pro