ture of Virginia; and he wants words any longer to express the feelings awakened in him. They reach the dialogue of the old man, and M. de St Pierre proposed to omit it, mentioning the effect which it had produced on madame Necker. Vernet, however, would not consent to omit any thing; he yielded it all his attention, and his silence soon became more eloquent than his tears or his praises. At last the book was finished. Vernet, transported, arose and embraced his friend; and, pressing him to his breast, cried "happy genius, charming creature, the beauty of your character is transfused into your work. You have produced a chef d'œuvre. Take good heed not to retrench the dialogue of the old man; it introduces a distance of time and place into the poem, separates the details of the infancy from the tale of the catastrophe, and gives an air of perspective to the picture. It was inspiration to introduce it. How charming too for its natural beauty is not this distant region; and how ingeniously is not the action combined with the character of the landscape. One not only seems to have lived with these sweet children, but to hear the chirping of their birds, to cultivate their garden, enjoy the beauties of their sky, and wander throughout the scenes they inhabited. My friend, you are a great painter, and I dare promise you a splendid reputation."

The Indian Cottage has not the romantic interest of Paul and Virginia, and is less valued by that part of the community who confine their studies entirely to such works as explain the development and effects of the tender passion. It is perhaps more pleasing to a different class of readers, from the very agreeable and satisfactory manner in which it treats some of the highest questions in philosophy. The discussion proceeds in the way of apologue, after the manner of the ancients. In this popular shape the author handles the great problems, where we are to search for truth, that is, for correct notions on the objects of life and the means of effecting them? Having satisfied ourselves, shall we communicate the result of our researches to others? What are the best instruments for prosecuting the inquiry? The answers to the two first questions are sufficiently plausible. We are more likely to ascertain the truth by independent examination of facts, than by implicit deference to authority, and sincerity is the only necessary instrument for carrying on this examination. But shall we communicate the result to others, at the risk of shocking all the prejudices and interests that may be connected with opposite opinions? The answer to this question is not quite so ration

al. St Pierre recommends that we should tell the truth to those who are well disposed to receive it, that is in substance, to those who knew it before: but conceal it from the interested and the vicious. He appears to found himself upon the passage in scripture-Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.' But the moral couched under this brief parable may perhaps be understood to recommend caution and prudence in the publication of unpopular truths, rather than the entire concealment of them, or the revealing of them to those only who <new them before, which appears to be a work of supererogation. The concluding apophthegm of the Indian Cottage serves as a general moral to the work, and has met with universal approbation, a man is never happy without a good wife. In this respect St Pierre may be looked upon as singularly Fortunate. At every period of his life he succeeded in conciliating the favor of the sex. We have seen already that, without being subjected to the tedious process of courtship and the repeated preliminary refusals that usually occur in hese cases, he had in his youth several opportunities of conracting an advantageous marriage. Where such occasions are neglected, it is not always that they return at a later period; out with St Pierre they continued to present themselves to he last. In a passage of his Studies of Nature he exressed a strong desire to obtain a suitable companion for life. le received in consequence a number of letters from differnt ladies making proposals for the situation; one in particuar, from Lausanne, the writer of which described herself as oung, rich, and handsome. Unfortunately, she was a protesint and could not bring herself to marry a catholic. Her retensions in other respects were sufficiently moderate. I rish my husband, she observed in her letter, to love me excluvely and forever. He must believe in God, and must serve im in my way. I would not be your wife, she adds, unless we uld go to heaven in company. St Pierre replied, that in der to enter upon the marriage state, with a fair prospect of › desirable a result, it was necessary that the parties should e and know each other first. The young lady attempted to ontinue the negotiation, through the medium of one of her male friends at Paris. The latter does not appear, however, have been a very accomplished diplomatist. Thinking to rry her point, as Hudibras with the widow, by force of logic;

she undert quoted a p observed, 1 in various soner, like

Sage was fa

equally agr his convers saying that like a thru Didot, the children we espoused in ly, mademo living. Hi as his youth but little affe political emp write a work consequence senators. T place of sen died in Janu A strong

the intellectu life; and the occasions, ga of the institut Here begin tion. Why can career without But the choice could tear this tents from our 'It was in th charged by the moirs which ha tutions are the All the writer known opinions he could not anxious to bring New Series,

she undertook to employ the argumentum ad hominem and quoted a passage from the Studies of Nature, in which it is observed, that the birds sing their hymns to the great Creator in various notes, but all equally agreeable. A practised reasoner, like St Pierre, could not fail to remind her that this passage was fatal to her own argument; that if all religions were equally agreeable to the Creator, there could be no motive for his conversion, and that he never meant to be understood as saying that a nightingale ought to change his note and sing like a thrush. Some years after he married mademoiselle Didot, the daughter of the celebrated printer, and their two children were named Paul and Virginia. After her death he espoused in second nuptials a very young lady of noble family, mademoiselle de Pelleporc, who survived him and is still living. His old age seems to have been as quiet and happy as his youth was restless and miserable. His tranquillity was but little affected by the revolution. He declined all active political employments, and when requested by Bonaparte to write a work upon the wars in Italy, he positively refused, in consequence of which his name was erased from the list of senators. This was not the sacrifice of a mere title, as the place of senator was attended by a handsome pension. He died in January 1814, at the advanced age of seventy-seven.

A strong sentiment of region was a prevailing feature in the intellectual habits of St Pierre during the latter part of his life; and the independence, with which he expressed it on all occasions, gave occasion to a very strange scene at a meeting of the institute.

Here begins one of the most scandalous scenes of the revolution. Why can we not here stop? why have we entered this fatal career without calculating what it would cost us to complete it? But the choice of keeping silence is not left us; and even if we could tear this page from our work, we could not efface its contents from our history.

It was in the year 1798, that Bernardin de St Pierre had been charged by the class of morals to make a report upon the memoirs which had been written on the prize-question, What institutions are the most proper to form the basis of public morals? All the writers had treated the subject according to the well known opinions of their judges. Dismayed at a perversity which he could not but believe affected, the author of the Studies was anxious to bring men back to views more just and consolatory, New Series, No. 7, 29

and he finished his report by one of those flights of inspiration in which his soul breathed out all the sweetness of the gospel. On the appointed day, he repairs to the institute to submit his report. The greater part of his colleagues were gathered round a minister, who kept in pay a band of mercenary scholars, directed to retrench from the Latin poets all that regarded the divinity, that they might be rendered fit manuals for the revolutionary schools. It was in presence of such an auditory, that M. de St Pierre began to read his report. The analysis of the memoirs was heard with sufficient attention, but at the first annunciation of his religious principles, a cry of fury was heard from all parts of the hall. Some jested, asking him when he had seen God, and what was his form; others derided his credulity; the most moderate addressed him with expressions of contempt. From ridicule they proceeded to outrage; they insulted his age, they charged him with dotage and superstition; threatened to expel him from an assembly of which he had made himself unworthy; and there were some, who carried the madness so far, as to challenge him to a duel, in order to prove, at the point of the sword, that there was no God. He vainly attempted to make himself heard in the tumult; they would not hear him, and the ideologist Cabanis, the only one we shall name, in a transport of rage, cried out, "I swear there is no God, and I demand that his name never again be pronounced within these walls." Bernardin de St Pierre would hear no more. He ceased to defend his report, and turning to this last opponent, said to him calmly, "your master Mirabeau would have blushed at the words you have uttered." Saying this, he retired without waiting for a reply, and the assembly continued to debate, not if there were a God, but if they would allow his name to be heard in their halls.

Meantime M. de St Pierre had entered the library. Dismayed at a scene without a parallel in the history of human societies, he felt that he ought to make a last effort, and hastened to commit to paper a few ideas, which should touch the minds of his auditors. This memoir was the work of inspiration; there are but a few words erased in the draft of it before us, and it was never copied. It is an affecting compound of sweetness and strength, and a model of the most lofty eloquence. He prays, he consoles, he seeks to reconcile-this was his only reply to the insults with which he had been loaded. He would not wrong himself by trying to prove that there was a God. He disdained to appeal to the works of nature; they would not be comprehended by men corrupted by the vices of society. But he sought to make them blush, by recalling to them the ephemeral laws of this period. He opposed to the deliberate Atheism of his colleagues the involuntary assent of the representatives of the people, men

ART. XI.

in five a THE Bar French trage

for, that it

causes was o

display of th character sh

every differe romance, bee conflict of th trayed? Wit by those in F or are now fo impossible, i mined in the there are oth when young,

covered with crimes, who yet dared not deny the God, whose vengeance awaited them. He carried this terrible argument so far, as to invoke that name, which no being can pronounce without a shudder-Robespierre-whose auspices the class of morals was claiming. Thus spake the just! And God granted that these lines, inspired by the love of man, should be superior to any thing that the author, who had produced so many eloquent works, had hitherto written, that posterity might behold in his finest page the record of his noblest action.'

St Pierre attached great importance himself to certain theories of his own in natural philosophy, particularly one, which refers the movement of the tides to the dissolution of ice at the poles. This object occupied his mind more and more as he advanced in life; but his views on the subject have not been sanctioned by the approbation of good judges, and it would be superfluous, even if we had room, to discuss them here. His business after all was more with the optic naiads, to borrow an expression from the friend of Gray, than with the nymphs of the ocean. The tides, whose principles of motion he had studied with success, were those, which swell the heart and gush from the eye.

John Everett.

ART. XI.-Marino Faliero Doge of Venice. A tragedy, in five acts, by Lord Byron. London, 1821, pp. 261. THE Baron de Grimm, in speaking of the decline of French tragedy, considers it as so obviously to be accounted for, that it was strange more than one explanation of its causes was offered. How is it possible, he asks, that any display of the influence of a single passion on the heroic character should yet remain to be discovered? Has not every different relation, in which love can be exhibited in romance, been described? Is it not hopeless to look for a conflict of the different affections which has not been pourtrayed? Without inquiring into the answers to this argument, by those in France where the theory is held, who were then or are now founding their hopes on what de Grimm considers impossible, it is clear that the English theatre has fully determined in theory if it has not successfully demonstrated, that there are other dramatic passions than love. What Pope, when young, attempted but suppressed, and what Addison