in the morning before he can be persuaded to go to bed. In the mean time, the Princess gives great offence to the populace and the preachers of Bareith, by giving a sort of masked ball, and riding occasionally on horseback. Her husband goes to the wars; and returns very much out of humour with her brother Frederic, who talks contemptuously of little courts and little princes. The old Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, and writes billets-doux to his little lady, so tender as to turn one's stomach; but at last 1st, That the whole cortège of the Empress dies in an edifying manner, to the great satisfaction of all his friends and acquaintances. Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, to follow his example; for he is seized with a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and burst; and give out so much water, that he is obliged for several days to sit with them in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, he recovers, and goes a campaigning for several years after. seems to have given her the worst opinion of him, was his impolite habit of making jokes about the small domains and scanty revenues of her husband. For the two following years she travels all over Germany, abusing all the principautés she meets with. In 1742, she goes to see the coronation of the new Emperor at Francfort, and has a long negotiation about the ceremony of her introduction to the Empress. After various projets had been offered and rejected, she made these three conditions: should receive her at the bottom of the staircase. 2dly, That the Empress herself should come to meet her at the outside of the door of her bed-chamber. And, 3dly, That she should be allowed an arm-chair during the interview. Whole days were spent in the discussion of this proposition; and at last the two first articles were agreed to; but all that she could make of the last was, that she should have a very large chair, without arms The Memoirs are rather dull for four or and the Empress a very small one, with them! five years after the author's accession to the-Her account of the interview we add in her throne of Bareith. She makes various jour-own words. neys, and suffers from various distempers— has innumerable quarrels with all the neighbouring potentates about her own precedence and that of her attendants; fits up several villas, gives balls; and sometimes quarrels with her husband, and sometimes nurses him in his illness. In 1740, the King, her father, dies in good earnest; and makes, it must be acknowledged, a truly heroic, though somewhat whimsical, ending. Finding himself fast going, he had himself placed early in the morning in his wheel-chair, and goes himself to tell the Queen that she must rise and see him die. He then takes farewell of his children; and gives some sensible advice to his son, and the ministers and generals whom he had assembled. Afterwards he has his best horse brought, and presents it with a good grace to the oldest of his generals. He next ordered all the servants to put on their best liveries; and, when this was done, he looked on them with an air of derision, and said, "Vanity of vanities!" He then commanded his physician to tell him exactly how long he had to live; and when he was answered, "about half an hour," he asked for a lookingglass, and said with a smile, that he certainly did look ill enough, and saw "qu'il ferait une vilaine grimace en mourant !" When the clergymen proposed to come and pray with him, he said, "he knew already all they had to say, and that they might go about their business." In a short time after he expired, in great tranquillity. Je vis cette Princesse le jour suivant. J'avoue qu'à sa place j'aurois imaginé toutes les étiquettes et les cérémonies du monde pour m'empêcher de paroître. L'Impératrice est d'une taille au-dessous boule; elle est laide au possible, sans air et sans de la petite, et si puissante qu'elle semble une grace. Son esprit répond à sa figure; elle est bigotte à l'excès, et passe les nuits et les jours dans son oratoire: les vieilles et les laides sont ordinairement le partage du bon Dieu! Elle me reçut en tremblant et d'un air si décontenancé qu'elle ne avoir gardé quelque temps le silence, je commençai put me dire un mot. Nous nous assîmes. Après la conversation en français. Elle me repondit, dans son jargon autrichien, qu'elle n'entendoit pas bien cette langue, et qu'elle me prioit de lui parler en allemand. Cet entretien ne fut pas long. Le dialecte autrichien et le bas-saxon sont si différens. qu'à moins d'y être accoutumê on ne se comprend point. C'est aussi ce qui nous arriva. Nous aurions préparé à rire à un tiers par les coq-à-l'âne que nous faisions, n'entendant que par-ci par-là un mot, qui nous faisoit deviner le reste. Cette princesse étoit si fort esclave de son étiquette qu'elle auroit cru faire un crime de lèse-grandeur en m'entre enant dans une langue étrangère; car elle savoit le fra çais! L'Empereur devoit se trouver à cere visite; mais il étoit tombé si malade qu'on craignoit même pour ses jours."-pp. 345, 346. After this she comes home in a very bad humour; and the Memoirs break off abruptly with her detection of an intrigue between her husband and her favourite attendant, and her dissatisfaction with the dull formality of the court of Stutgard. We hope the sequel will soon find its way to the public. Some readers may think we have dwelt too long on such a tissue of impertinencies; and Though the new King came to visit his sister others may think an apology requisite for the soon after his accession, and she went to re- tone of levity in which we have spoken of so turn the compliment at Berlin, she says there many atrocities. The truth is, that we think was no longer any cordiality between them; this book of no trifling importance; and that and that she heard nothing but complaints of we could not be serious upon the subject of it his avarice, his ill temper, his ingratitude, and without being both sad and angry. Before his arrogance. She gives him great credit concluding, however, we shall add one word for talents; but entreats her readers to sus-in seriousness-to avoid the misconstructions pend their judgment as to the real character to which we might otherwise be liable. of this celebrated monarch, till they have We are decidedly of opinion, that Monarchy, perused the whole of her Memoirs. What and Hereditary Monarchy, is by far the best form of government that human wisdom has yet devised for the administration of consider able nations; and that it will always continue to be the most perfect which human virtue will admit of. We are not readily to be suspected, therefore, of any wish to produce a distaste or contempt for this form of government; and beg leave to say, that though the facts we have now collected are certainly such as to give no favourable impression of the private manners or personal dispositions of absolute sovereigns, we conceive that good, rather than evil, is likely to result from their dissemination. This we hold, in the first place, on the strength of the general maxim, that all truth must be ultimately salutary, and all deception pernicious. But we think we can see a little how this maxim applies to the particular case before us. In the first place, then, we think it of service to the cause of royalty, in an age of violent passions and rash experiments, to show that most of the vices and defects which such times are apt to bring to light in particular sovereigns, are owing, not so much to any particular unworthiness or unfitness in the individual, as to the natural operation of the circumstances in which he is placed; and are such, in short, as those circumstances have always generated in a certain degree in those who have been exposed to them. Such considerations, it appears to us, when taken along with the strong and irresistible arguments for monarchical government in general, are well calculated to allay that great impatience and dangerous resentment with which nations in turbulent times are apt to consider the faults of their sovereigns; and to unite with a steady attachment and entire respect for the office, a very great degree of indulgence for the personal defects of the individual who may happen to fill it. Monarchs, upon this view of things, are to be considered as persons who are placed, for the public good, in situations where, not only their comfort, but their moral qualities, are liable to be greatly impaired; and who are poorly paid in empty splendour, and anxious power, for the sacrifice of their affections, and of the many engaging qualities which might have blossomed in a lower region. If we look with indulgence upon the roughness of sailors, the pedantry of schoolmasters, and the frivolousness of beauties, we should learn to regard, with something of the same feelings, the selfishness and the cunning of kings. In the second place, we presume to think that the general adoption of these opinions as to the personal defects that are likely to result from the possession of sovereign power, may be of use to the sovereigns themselves, from whom the knowledge of their prevalence cannot be very long concealed. Such knowledge, it is evident, will naturally stimulate the better sort of them to counteract the causes which tend to their personal degradation; and enable them more generally to surmount their pernicious operation, by such efforts and reflections, as have every now and then rescued some powerful spirits from their dominion, under all the disadvantages of the delusions with which they were surrounded. Finally, if the general prevalence of these sentiments as to the private manners and dispositions of sovereigns should have the effect of rendering the bulk of their subjects less prone to blind admiration, and what may be called personal attachment to them, we do not imagine that any great harm will be done. The less the public knows or cares about the private wishes of their monarch, and the more his individual will is actually consubstantiated with the deliberate sanctions of his responsible counsellors, the more perfectly will the practice of government correspond with its admitted theory; the more wisely will affairs be administered for the public, and the more harmoniously and securely both for the sovereign and the people. An adventurous warrior may indeed derive signal advantages from the personal devotedness and enthusiastic attachment of his followers; but in the civil office of monarchy, as it exists in modern times, the only safe attachment is to the office, and to the measures which it sanctions. The personal popularity of princes, in so far as we know, has never done any thing but harm: and indeed it seems abundantly evident, that whatever is done merely for the personal gratification of the reigning monarch, that would not have been done at any rate on grounds of public expediency, must be an injury to the community, and a sacrifice of duty to an unreturned affection; and whatever is forborne out of regard to his pleasure, which the interest of the country would otherwise have required, is in like manner an act of base and unworthy adulation. We do not speak, it will be understood, of trifles or things of little moment; but of such public acts of the government as involve the honour or the interest of the nation. (September, 1828.) History of the Life and Voyages of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 4 vols. 8vo. London: 1828. THIS, on the whole, is an excellent book; ness of all that it implies. We are perfectly and we venture to anticipate that it will be an aware that there are but few modern works enduring one. Neither do we hazard this that are likely to verify it; and that it probably prediction lightly, or without a full conscious-could not be extended with safety to so many as one in a hundred even of those which we praise. For we mean, not merely that the book will be familiarly known and referred to some twenty or thirty years hence, and will pass in solid binding into every considerable collection; but that it will supersede all former works on the same subject, and never be itself superseded. The first stage of triumph, indeed, over past or existing competitors, may often be predicted securely of works of no very extraordinary merit; which, treating of a progressive science, merely embody, with some small additions, a judicious digest of all that was formerly known; and are for the time the best works on the subject, merely because they are the last. But the second stage of literary beatitude, in which an author not only eclipses all existing rivals, but obtains an immunity from the effects of all future competition, certainly is not to be so cheaply won; and can seldom, indeed, be secured to any one, unless the intrinsic merit of his production is assisted by the concurrence of some such circumstances as we think now hold out the promise of this felicity to the biographer of Columbus. Though the event to which his work relates is one which can never sink into insignificance or oblivion, but, on the contrary, will probably excite more interest with every succeeding generation, till the very end of the world, yet its importance has been already long enough apparent to have attracted the most eager attention to every thing connected with its details; and we think we may safely say, that all the documents which relate to it have now been carefully examined, and all the channels explored through which any authentic information was likely to be derived. In addition to the very copious, but rambling and somewhat garrulous and extravagant accounts, which were published soon after the discovery, and and have since been methodised and arranged, Don F. M. Navarette, a Spanish gentleman of great learning, and industry, and secretary to the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, has lately given to the world a very extensive collection of papers, relating to the history and voyages of Columbus; a very considerable portion of which appears not to have been known to any of those who had formerly written on the subject. Mr. Irving's first design was merely to publish a translation of this collection, with occasional remarks; but having, during his residence at Madrid, had access, by the kindness of the Duke of Veraguas, the descendant of the great Admiral, to the archives of his family, and to various other documents, still remaining in manuscript, which had escaped the research even of Navarette, he fortunately turned his thoughts to the compilation of the more comprehensive and original work now before usin which, by those great helps, he has been enabled, not only to supply many defects, but to correct many errors, and reconcile some apparent contradictions in the earlier accounts. It was evidently very desirable that such a work should at length be completed; and we think it peculiarly fortunate that the means of completing it should have fallen into such hands as Mr. Irving's. The materials, it was obvious, were only to be found in Spain, and were not perhaps very likely to be intrusted without reserve to a stranger; while there was reason to fear that a Spaniard might not have courage to speak of the errors and crimes of his countrymen in the tone which the truth of history might require; or might not think it safe, even yet, to expose the impolicy, or canvass the pretensions, of the government. By a happy concurrence of circumstances an elegant writer, altogether unconnected either with Spain or her rivals and enemies, and known all over the civilized world as a man of intelligence and principle, of sound judgment, and a calm and indulgent temper, repaired to Madrid at a time when the publica tion of Navarette had turned the public atten tion, in an extraordinary degree, to the memorable era of Columbus; and, by the force of his literary and personal character, obtained the fullest disclosure of every thing that bore upon his history that was ever made, to native or foreigner,—at the same time that he had the means of discussing personally, with the best informed individuals of the nation, all the points on which the written documents might seem to leave room for doubt or explanation. Of these rare advantages Mr. Irving has availed himself, we think, with singular judg ment and ability. He has written the history of the greatest event in the annals of mankind, with the fulness and the feeling it deserved; and has presented us with a flowing and continuous narrative of the events he had to record, far more luminous and comprehensive than any which previously existed, and yet much less diffuse and discursive than the earlier accounts, from which it is mainly derived: While, without sacrificing in any degree the intense interest of personal adver ture and individual sympathy, he has brought the lights of a more cultivated age to bear on the obscure places of the story; and touched skilfully on the errors and prejudices of the times at once to enliven his picture by their singularity, and to instruct us by their explana tion or apology. Above all, he has composed the whole work in a temper that is beyond all praise. It breathes throughout a genuine spirit of humanity; and, embellished as it is with beautiful descriptions and wonderful tales, its principal attraction in our eyes consists in its soft-hearted sympathy with saffering, its fearless reprobation of injustice and oppression, and the magnanimous candour of its judgments, even on the delinquent. But though we think all this of Mr. Irving's work, we suspect it may not be altogether unnecessary to caution our more sensitive and sanguine readers against giving way to certain feelings of disappointment, which it is not impossible they may encounter at the outset of their task; and to which two or three very innocent causes are likely enough to expose them. In the first place, many great admirers of Mr. Irving's former works will probably miss the brilliant, highly finished, and ryth- | suppose that the chief interest of the work mical style, which attracted them so much in must be exhausted by its completion. That those performances; and may find the less portion of the story of Columbus has always, artificial and elaborate diction of this history from obvious causes, been given with more comparatively weak and careless. In this amplitude and fidelity than any other; and judgment, however, we can by no means Mr. Irving, accordingly, has been able to add agree. Mr. Irving's former style, though un- but few additional traits of any considerable questionably very elegant and harmonious, importance. But it is not there, we think, always struck us as somewhat too laboured that the great interest or the true character and exquisite--and, at all events, but ill fitted of the work is to be found. The mere geofor an extensive work, where the interest graphical discovery, sublime as it undoubtedly turned too much on the weight of the matter is, is far less impressive, to our minds, thai to be safely divided with the mere polish of the moral emotions to which it opens the the diction, or the balance of the periods.- scene. The whole history of the settlement He has done well, therefore, we think, to dis- of Hispaniola, and the sufferings of its gentle card it on this occasion, for the more varied, people-the daring progress of the great discareless, and natural style, which distinguishes coverer, through unheard-of forms of perl, the volumes before us-a style not only without and the overwhelming disasters that seem at sententious pretension, or antithetical pretti- last to weigh him down, constitute the real ness, but even in some degree loose and un- business of the piece, and are what truly bring equal-flowing easily on, with something of out, not only the character of the man, but the fulness and clearness of Herodotus or that of the events with which his memory is Boccaccio-sometimes languid, indeed, and identified. It is here, too, that both the power often inexact, but furnishing, in its very fresh- and the beauty of the author's style chiefly ness and variety, the very best mirror, perhaps, display themselves-in his account of the in which the romantic adventures, the sweet innocence and gentleness of the simple races descriptions, or the soft humanities, with which that were then first introduced to their elder the author had to deal, could have been dis- brethren of Europe, and his glowing pictures played. of the lovely land, which ministered to their primitive luxury-or in his many sketches of the great commander himself, now towering in paternal majesty in the midst of his newlyfound children-now invested with the dark gorgeousness of deep and superstitious devotion, and burning thirst of fame-or, still more sublime, in his silent struggles with malevolence and misfortune, and his steadfast reliance on the justice of posterity. Another, and perhaps a more general source of disappointment to impatient readers, is likely to be found in the extent and minuteness of the prefatory details, with which Mr. Irving has crowded the foreground of his picture, and detained us, apparently without necessity, from its principal features. The genealogy and education of Columbus-his early love of adventure-his long and vain solicitations at the different European courts -the intrigues and jealousies by which he was baffled-the prejudices against which he had to contend, and the lofty spirit and doubtful logic by which they were opposed,-are all given with a fulness for which, however instructive it may be, the reader, who knows already what it is to end in, will be apt to feel any thing but grateful. His mind, from the very title-page, is among the billows of the Atlantic and the islands of the Caribs; and he does not submit without impatience to be informed of all the energy that was to be exerted, and all the obstacles to be overcome, before he can get there. It is only after we have perused the whole work that we perceive the fitness of these introductory chapters; and then, when the whole grand series of sufferings and exploits has been unfolded, and the greatness of the event, and of the character with which it is inseparably blended, have been impressed on our minds, we feel how necessary it was to tell, and how grateful it is to know, all that can now be known of the causes by which both were prepared; and instead of murmuring at the length of these precious details, feel nothing but regret that time should have so grievously abridged them. The last disappointment, for which the reader should be prepared, will probably fall upon those who expect much new information as to the first great voyage of discovery; or The work before us embodies all these, and many other touching representations; and in the vivacity of its colouring, and the novelty of its scene, possesses all the interests of a novel of invention, with the startling and thrilling assurance of its actual truth and exactness-a sentiment which enhances and every moment presses home to our hearts the deep pity and resentment inspired by the sufferings of the confiding beings it introduces to our knowledge-mingled with a feeling of something like envy and delighted wonder, at the story of their child-like innocence, and humble apparatus of enjoyment. No savages certainly ever were so engaging and loveable as those savages. Affectionate, sociable, and without cunning, sullenness, inconstancy, or any of the savage vices, but an aversion from toil, which their happy climate at once inspired and rendered innoxious, they seem to have passed their days in blissful ignorance of all that human intellect has contrived for human misery; and almost to have enjoyed an exemption from the doom that followed man's first unhallowed appetite for knowledge of good and evil. It is appalling to think with what tremendous rapidity the whole of these happy races were swept away! How soon, after the feet of civilized Christians had touched their shores, those shores were desolate, or filled only with mourning! How soon, how frightfully soon, the swarming myriads of idle and light-hearted creatures, who came trooping from their fragrant woods to receive them with smiles of welcome and gestures of worship, and whose songs and shoutings first hailed them so sweetly over their fresh and sunny bays, were plunged, by the hands of those fatal visitants, into all the agonies of despair!-how soon released from them by a bloody extermination! It humbles and almost crushes the heart, even at this distance, of time, to think of such a catastrophe, brought about by such instruments. The learned, the educated, the refined, the champions of chivalry, the messengers of the gospel of peace, come to the land of the ignorant, the savage, the heathen. They find them docile in their ignorance, submissive in their rudeness, and grateful and affectionate in their darkness:And the result of the mission is mutual corruption, misery, desolation! The experience or remorse of four centuries has not yet been able to expiate the crime, or to reverse the spell. Those once smiling and swarming shores are still silent and mournful; or resound only to the groans of the slave and the lash of the slave-driver-or to the strange industry of another race, dragged by a yet deeper guilt from a distant land, and now calmly establishing themselves on the graves of their oppressors. We do not propose to give any thing like an abstract of a story, the abstract of which is already familiar to every one; while the details, like most other details, would lose half their interest, and all their character, by being disjoined from the narrative on which they depend. We shall content ourselves, therefore, by running over some of the particulars that are less generally known, and exhibiting a few specimens of the author's manner of writing and thinking. neither full nor meagre; his complexion fair and freckled, and inclined to ruddy; his nose aquiline; his cheek-bones were rather high; his eyes light grey, and apt to enkindle; his whole countenance had an air of authority. His hair, in his youthful days, was of a light colour; but care and trouble, according to Las Casas, soon turned it grey, and at thirty years of age it was quite white. He was moderate and simple in diet and apparel, eloquent and of an amiableness and suavity in domestic life, in discourse, engaging and affable with strangers, that strongly attached his household to his person. His temper was naturally irritable; but he subdued it by the magnanimity of his spirit; comporting himself with a courteous and gentle gravity, and never inout his life he was noted for a strict attention to the dulging in any intemperance of language. Throughoffices of religion, observing rigorously the fasts and ceremonies of the church; nor did his piety consist in mere forms, but partook of that lofty and solemn enthusiasm with which his whole character was strongly tinctured." For eighteen long years did the proud and ardent spirit of Columbus urge his heroic suit at the courts of most of the European monarchs; and it was not till after encountering in every form the discouragements of withering poverty, insulting neglect, and taunting ridicule, that, in his fifty-sixth year, he at last prevailed with Ferdinand and Isabella, to supply him with three little ships, to achieve for them the dominion of a world! Mr. Irving very strikingly remarks, courts in furnishing this expedition, it is surprising "After the great difficulties made by various how inconsiderable an armament was required. It is evident that Columbus had reduced his requisitions to the narrowest limits, lest any great expense should cause impediment. Three small vessels were apparently all that he had requested. Two of them were light barques, called caravals, not superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days. Representations of this class of vessels exist in old prints and paintings. They are delineated as and without deck in the centre, but built up open, Mr. Irving has settled, we think satisfacto-high at the prow and stern, with forecastles and rily, that Columbus was born in Genoa, about cabins for the accommodation of the crew. Peter Martyr, the learned contemporary of Columbus, the year 1435. It was fitting that the hemi- says that only one of the three vessels was decked. sphere of republics should have been dis- The smallness of the vessels was considered an covered by a republican. His proper name advantage by Columbus, in a voyage of discovery, was Colombo, though he is chiefly known enabling him to run close to the shores, and to enter shallow rivers and harbours. In his third voyage, among his contemporaries by the Spanish when coasting the gulf of Paria, he complained of synonyme of Colon. He was well educated, the size of his ship, being nearly a hundred tons but passed his youth chiefly at sea, and had burden. But that such long and perilous expedihis full share of the hardships and hazards tions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in incident to that vocation. From the travels vessels without decks, and that they should live of Marco Polo he seems first to have imbibed through the violent tempests by which they were his taste for geographical discovery, and to circumstances of these daring voyages." frequently assailed, remain among the singular have derived his grand idea of reaching the eastern shores of India by sailing straight to the west. The spirit of maritime enterprise was chiefly fostered in that age by the magnanimous patronage of Prince Henry of Portugal, and it was to that court, accordingly, that year Columbus first offered his services in the 1470. We will not withhold from our readers the following brief but graphic sketch of his character and appearance at that period: "He was at that time in the full vigour of manhood, and of an engaging presence. Minute descriptions are given of his person by his son Fernando, by Las Casas, and others of his contemporaries. According to these accounts, he was well-formed, muscular, and of an elevated and demeanour. His visage was long, and It was on Friday, the 3d of August, 1492, that the bold adventurer sailed forth, with the earliest dawn, from the little port of Palos, on his magnificent expedition; and immediately began a regular journal, addressed to the sovereigns, from the exordium of which, as lately printed by Navarette, we receive a strong impression both of the gravity and dignity of his character, and of the importance he attached to his undertaking. We subjoin a short specimen. "Therefore your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes, lovers and promoters of the holy Christian faith, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and heresies, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the |