box the day preceding, and by false keys and seals had taken all the papers out of it, and replaced them by harmless and insignificant letters, which they had fabricated in the course of one day, to the amount of near seven hundred. The King, therefore, found nothing to justify immediate execution; but kept the Prince a close prisoner at Custrin, and shut the Princess up in her own chamber. His son and Katt were afterwards tried for desertion, before a court-martial composed of twelve officers: Two were for sparing the life of the Prince, but all the rest were base enough to gratify the sanguinary insanity of their master by condemning them both to death. All Germany, however, exclaimed loudly against this sentence; and made such representations to the King, that he was at last constrained to spare his son. But the unhappy Katt was sacrificed. His scaffold was erected immediately before the window of his unhappy master, who was dressed by force in the same funeral garment with his friend, and was held up at the window by two soldiers, while the executioner struck off the head of his companion. There is no :ecord of such brutal barbarity in the history of Nero or Domitian.

destiny pursues her. The fatal evening ar rives; and the Princess, with a train forty-five feet in length, and the spousal crown placed on twenty-four twisted locks of false hair, each thicker than her arm, enters the grand saloon, and takes the irrevocable vow!—and her mother has just put her to bed, when she hears that her courier has arrived, and leaves her in rage and anguish.

The humours of the rest of the family appear to no great advantage during the bridal festivities. In the first place, the Princess' sister, Charlotte, falls in love with the bridegroom, and does her possible to seduce him. Then old Frederic cheats the bride in her settlements, which amount to a gross sum of near 500l. a year;-and, finally, her brotherin-law, the Margrave of Anspach, rallies her husband so rudely upon his mother's gallantries, that the latter gives him a brave defiance in the face of the whole court; at which the poor Margrave is so dreadfully frightened, that he bursts out into screams and tears, and runs for refuge into the Queen's apartment, where he hides himself behind the arras, from which he is taken in a filthy condition, and carried to his apartments, "où il exhala sa colère par des vomissemens et un diarrhée qui pensa l'envoyer à l'autre monde."-Yet the good Princess assures us, that this reptile had "a good heart and a good understanding," -with no fault but being a little passionate; and then, in the very next page, she records a malignant and detected falsehood which he had vented against her husband, and which rendered him odious in the eyes of the whole court. Being dissatisfied with her settlements, she puts the King in a good humour by giving a grand dinner to him and his officers, at which they are all "ivres morts;" but having mentioned her distresses through the Queen, he is so much moved with them, that he calls for the settlements, and strikes off

After this, the family feuds about his daughter's marriage revive with double fury. The Queen, whose whole heart is set on the English alliance, continues her petty intrigues to effect that object; while the King, rendered furious by the haughty language adopted by the English ministry on the subject of the insult offered to their ambassador, determines to have her married without a moment's delay; and after threatening the Queen with his cane, sends to offer her the hand of the Prince of Bareith; which she dutifully accepts, in spite of the bitter lamentations and outrageous fury of the Queen. That intriguing princess, however, does not cease to intrigue, though deserted by her daughter-about one fourth of her allowance. but sends again in greater urgency than ever All this happened in autumn 1731; and in to England-and that court, if we are to be- January 1732, the Princess being far advanced lieve the statement before us, at last seriously in pregnancy, and the roads almost impassaafraid of losing a match every way desir- ble, it was thought advisable for her to set out able, sends off despatches, containing an en- for her husband's court at Bareith. She is tire and unqualified acquiescence in all overturned of course several times, and obliged Frederic's stipulations as to the marriage to walk half the way :-But we pass over the which arrive at Berlin the very morning of disasters of the journey, to commemorate her the day on which the Princess was to be so- arrival in this ancient principality. The first lemnly betrothed to M. de Bareith, but are village she reached was Hoff, which is on the wickedly kept back by Grumkow and the frontier-and has also the convenience of Imperial Envoy, till after the ceremony had being within three miles of the centre of the been publicly and irrevocably completed. territory: and here the grand marshal, and all Their disclosure then throws all parties into the nobility of the province, are mustered to rage and despair; and the intriguers are made receive her at the bottom of the staircase, or, the ridiculous victims of their own baseness in other words, of the wooden ladder which and duplicity. The indefatigable Queen, how-led to her apartments. However, various ever, does not despair even yet; but sends off another courier to England, and sets all her emissaries to prepare the King to break off the match in the event of the answer being favourable; nay, the very night before the marriage, she takes her daughter apart, and begs her to live with her husband as a sister with her brother, for a few days, till the result the embassage is known. But her usual

guns were fired off very successfully, and the chief nobility were invited to dinner. The Princess' description of these personages is really very edifying. They had all faces, she says, which a child could not look on without screaming;-huge masses of hair on their heads, filled with a race of vermin as ancient as their pedigrees;-clothed in old laced suits that had descended through many generation

such a condition, that the curtains fell in pieces whenever they were touched. Half of the windows were broken, and there was no fire; though it was midwinter. The dinners were not eatable; and lasted three hours, with thirty flourishes of the old trumpets for the bumper toasts with which they were enlivened: Add to all this, that the poor Princess was very much indisposed-that the Margrave came and talked to her out of Telemaque and Amelot, five or six hours every day

the most part in rags, and no way fitting their | damask all in tatters. Her bedchamber was present wearers;-the greater part of them also furnished with the same stuff-but in covered with itch;—and their conversation, of oxen. Immediately after dinner they began with the Princess' health in a huge bumper, and proceeded regularly in the same gallant manner through the whole of her genealogy; -so that in less than half an hour she found herself in the middle of thirty-four monsters, so drunk that none of them could articulate, "et rendant les boyaux à tous ces desastreux visages." Next day being Sunday, there was a sermon in honour of the occasion, in which the preacher gave an exact account of all the marriages that had happened in the world, from the days of Adam down to the last of the patriarchs-illustrated with so many circumstantial details as to the antecedents and consequents in each, that the male part of the audience laughed outright, and the female pretended to blush throughout the whole discourse. The dinner scene was the same as on the day preceding; with the addition of the female nobility who came in the evening, with their heads enveloped in greasy wigs like swallows' nests, and ancient embroidered dresses, stuck all over with knots of faded ribands.

and that she could not muster cash enough to buy herself a gown: and it will not appear wonderful, that in the very midst of the wedding revelries, she spent half her time in bed, weeping over the vanity of human grandeur.

By and by, however, she found occupa tion in quarrelling with her sisters-in-law, and in making and appeasing disputes between her husband and his father. She agrees so ill, indeed, with all the family, that her proposal of returning to lie-in at Berlin is received with great joy:-but while they are deliberating about raising money for this journey of two hundred miles, she becomes too ill to move. Her sister of Anspach, and The day following, the Margrave, her father- her husband, come, and quarrel with her in-law, came himself to meet her. This upon points of etiquette; the Margrave falls worthy prince was nearly as amiable, and not in love with one of her attendants; and in quite so wise, as the royal parent she had left. the midst of all manner of perplexities she He had read but two books in the world, is delivered of a daughter. The Margrave, Telemaque, and Amelot's Roman history, and who was in the country, not happening to discoursed out of them so very tediously, that hear the cannon which proclaimed this great the poor Princess fainted from mere ennui at event, conceives that he is treated with great the very first interview;-Then he drank night disrespect, and gives orders for having his and day-and occasionally took his cane to son imprisoned in one of his fortresses. He the prince his son, and his other favourites. relents, however, at the christening; and is Though living in poverty and absolute dis- put in good humour by a visit from another comfort, he gave himself airs of the utmost son and a brother-the first of whom is des magnificence went to dinner with three cribed as a kind of dwarf and natural fool, flourishes of cracked trumpets-received his who could never take seriously to any emcourt, leaning with one hand on a table, in ployment but catching flies; and the other as imitation of the Emperor-and conferred his a furious madman, in whose company no one little dignities in harangues so pompous, and was sure of his life. This amiable family so awkwardly delivered, that his daughter-in-party is broken up, by an order on the Prin law at once laughed and was ashamed of him. He was awkward, too, and embarrassed in the society of strangers of good breeding but made amends by chattering without end, about himself and his two books, to those who were bound to bear with him. Under the escort of this great potentate the Princess made her triumphal entry into the city of Bareith the next morning: the whole procession consisting of one coach, containing the constituted authorities who had come out to meet her, her own carriage drawn by six carrion post-horses, that containing her attendants, and six or seven wagons loaded with furniture. The Margrave then conducted her from the palace gate in great state to her apartments, through a long passage, hung with cobwebs, and so abominably filthy as to turn her stomach in hurrying through it. This opened into an antechamber, adorned with old tapestry, so torn and faded that the figures ut it looked like so many ghosts; and through that into a cabinet furnished with green

cess' husband to join his regiment at Berlin, and another order from her father for her to pay a visit to her sister at Anspach. On her way she visits an ancient beauty, with a nose like a beetroot, and two maids of honour so excessively fat that they could not sit down; and, in stooping to kiss the Princess' hand, fell over, and rolled like balls of flesh on the carpet. At Anspach, she finds the Margrave deep in an intrigue with the housemaid; and consoles her sister under this affliction. She then makes a great effort, and raises money enough to carry her to Berlin; where she is received with coldness and ridicule by the Queen, and neglect and insult by all her sisters. Her brother's marriage with the Princess of Brunswick was just about to take place, and we choose to give in her own words her account of the manner in which she was talked over in this royal circle.

La reine, à table, fit tomber la conversation

sur la princesse royale future. Votre frère,' me dit elie en le regardant, est au désespoir de l'épou

enough to recover, after breaking a bloodvessel by falling down stairs in a fit of drunkenness. At last she gets away with great difficulty, and takes her second leave of the parental roof, with even less regard for its inhabitants than she had felt on first quitting its shelter.

ver, et n'a pas tort: c'est une vrai bête; elle répond | mother, and the slights of her whole generaà tout ce qu'on lui dit par un oui et un non, action. Their domestic life, when these galas compagné d'un rire niais qui fait mal au cœur." were over, was nearly as fatiguing, and still Oh! dit ma sœur Charlotte, votre Majesté ne connoit pas encore tout son mérite. J'ai été un more lugubrious. The good old custom of matin à sa toilette; j'ai cru y suffoquer; elle exha- famishing was kept up at table; and immeloit une odeur insupportable! Je crois qu'elle a diately after dinner the King had his great pour le moins dix ou douze fistules-car cela n'est chair placed right before the fire, and snored pas naturel. J'ai remarqué aussi qu'elle est con- in it for three hours, during all which they trefaite; son corps de jupe est rembourré d'un côté, et elle a une hanche plus haute que l'au were obliged to keep silence, for fear of distre. Je fus fort étonnée de ces propos, qui se te- turbing him. When he awoke, he set to noient en présence des domestiques et surtout de smoking tobacco;-and then sate four hours mon frère! Je m'aperçus qu'ils lui faisoient de at supper, listening to long stories of his la peine et qu'il changeoit de couleur. Il se ancestors, in the taste of those sermons retira aussitôt après souper. J'en fis autant. I which are prescribed to persons afflicted vint me voir un moment après. Je lui demandai with insomnolency. Then the troops began s'il étoit satisfait du roi? Il me répondit que sa situation changeoit à tout moment; que tantôt il their exercise under the windows before four étoit en faveur et tantôt en disgrâce; que son plus o'clock every morning, and not only kept grand bonheur consistoit dans l'absence; qu'il me- the whole household awake from that hour noit une vie douce et tranquille à son régiment; by their firing, but sometimes sent a ramque l'étude et la musique y faisoient ses principales rod through the glass to assist at the Prinoccupations; qu'il avoit fait bâtir une maison et fait cess' toilette. One afternoon the King was faire un jardin charmant où il pouvoit lire et se promener. Je le pria de me dire si le portrait que seized with a sort of apoplexy in his sleep, la reine et ma sœur m'avoient fait de la Princesse which, as he always snored extremely loud, de Brunswick étoit véritable? Nous sommes might have carried him off without much seuls,' repartit-il, et je n'ai rien de caché pour observation, had not his daughter observed vous. Je vous parlerai avec sincérité. La reine, him grow black in the face, and restored him par ses misérables intrigues, est la seule source de nos malheurs. A peine avez-vous été partie by timely applications. She is equally unqu'elle a renoué avec l'Angleterre; elle a voulu fortunate about the same time in her fathervous substituer ma sœur Charlotte, et lui faire épou-in-law the Margrave, who is mischievous ser le Prince de Galles. Vous jugez bien qu'elle a employé tous ses efforts pour faire réussir son plan et pour me marier avec la Princesse Amélie.'" The poor Prince, however, confesses that he cannot say much for the intellect of his intended bride;-and really does not use a much nobler language than the rest of the family, even when speaking in her presence; On her return to Bareith, she finds the old for on her first presentation to his sister, find- Margrave quite broken in health, but extravaing that she made no answer to the compli- gantly and honourably in love with a lame, ments that were addressed to her, the enam- dwarfish, middle-aged lady, the sister of her oured youth encourages her bridal timidity ancient governess, whom he proposes to by this polite exclamation, "Peste soit de la marry, to the great discomfiture of the Prinběte!-remercie donc ma sœur!" The ac- cess and his son. They remonstrate with the count of the festivities which accompanied lady, however, on the absurdity of such an this marriage really excites our compassion; union; and she promises to be cruel, and live and is well calculated to disabuse any inex- single. In the mean time, one of the Marperienced person of the mistake of suppo- grave's daughters is taken with a kind of sing, that there can be either comfort or en- madness of a very indecorous character; joyment in the cumbrous splendours of a which indicates itself by frequent improcourt. Scanty and crowded dinners at mid-prieties of speech, and a habit of giving inviday-and formal balls and minuets imme- tations, of no equivocal sort, to every man diately after, in June, followed up with dull that comes near her. The worthy Margrave, gaming in the evening; the necessity of at first undertakes to cure this very troublebeing up in full dress by three o'clock in the some complaint by a brisk course of beating; morning to see a review-and the pleasure but this not being found to answer, it is of being stifled in a crowded tent without thought expedient to try the effect of marseeing any thing, or getting any refreshment riage; and, that there may he no harm done for seven or eight hours, and then to return to any body, they look out a certain Duke of famishing to a dinner of eighty covers; Weimar, who is as mad as the lady-though at other times to travel ten miles at a foot- somewhat in a different way. This prince's pace in an open carriage during a heavy rain, malady consisted chiefly in great unsteadiand afterwards to stand shivering on the wet ness of purpose, and a trick of outrageous grass to see fireworks-to pay twenty visits and inventive boasting. Both the Princess of ceremony every morning, and to present and her husband, however, take great pains and be presented in stately silence to persons to bring about this well-assorted match; and, whom you hate and despise. Such were the by dint of flattery and intimidation, it is general delights of the whole court; and actually carried through-though the brideOur Princess had the additional gratification groom sends a piteous message on the moraof being forced from a sick-bed to enjoy ing of his wedding day, begging to be let off them, and of undergoing the sneers of her and keeps them from twelve till four o'clock

in the morning before he can be persuaded | seems to have given her the worst opinion of to go to bed. In the mean time, the Princess him, was his impolite habit of making jokes gives great offence to the populace and the about the small domains and scanty revenues preachers of Bareith, by giving a sort of of her husband. For the two following years masked ball, and riding occasionally on she travels all over Germany, abusing all the horseback. Her husband goes to the wars; principautés she meets with. In 1742, she and returns very much out of humour with goes to see the coronation of the new Empero her brother Frederic, who talks contemptu- at Francfort, and has a long negotiation about ously of little courts and little princes. The the ceremony of her introduction to the Emold Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, press. After various projets had been offered and writes billets-doux to his little lady, so and rejected, she made these three conditions: 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 satis- should receive her at the bottom of the stairfaction of all his friends and acquaintances. case. 2dly, That the Empress herself should Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, come to meet her at the outside of the door to follow his example; for he is seized with of her bed-chamber. And, 3dly, That she a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and should be allowed an arm-chair during the burst; and give out so much water, that he interview. Whole days were spent in the is obliged for several days to sit with them discussion of this proposition; and at last the in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, two first articles were agreed to; but all he recovers, and goes a campaigning for that she could make of the last was, that she several years after. should have a very large chair, without arms; and the Empress a very small one, with them! Her account of the interview we add in her

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 nant dans une langue étrangère; car elle savoit le cru faire un crime de lèse-grandeur en m'entrete français! L'Empereur devoit se trouver à cette visite; mais il étoit tombé si malade qu'on craignoit même pour ses jours."-pp. 345, 346.

The Memoirs are rather dull for four or five years after the author's accession to the throne of Bareith. She makes various jour-own words. neys, and suffers from various distempers- "Je vis cette Princesse le jour suivant. J'avoue has innumerable quarrels with all the neigh-qu'à sa place j'aurois imaginé toutes les étiquettes bouring 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.

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 bes

form of government that human wisdom has yet devised for the administration of considerable 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 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 In the first place, then, we think it of ser- of rendering the bulk of their subjects less vice to the cause of royalty, in an age of vio- prone to blind admiration, and what may be lent passions and rash experiments, to show called personal attachment to them, we do that most of the vices and defects which such not imagine that any great harm will be done. times are apt to bring to light in particular The less the public knows or cares about the sovereigns, are owing, not so much to any par- private wishes of their monarch, and the more ticular unworthiness or unfitness in the indi-his individual will is actually consubstantiated vidual, 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 npon 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.

with the deliberate sanctions of his responsible counsellors, the more perfectly will the prac tice 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