pressed in a comparative essay between Richelieu and Pitt, by M. le Chevalier Gilibert de Mezlhiac. A peroration to the praise and glory of the Duc de Richelieu explains the author's motives for choosing such a subject; but it would augur ill for France, if the favour of a French minister were to be obtained by the publication of such absurd falsehoods, and the avowal of such bitter and rooted enmity towards England. It is declared in this book, that the world will one day be too narrow to contain France and England at once; and that one of the two must fall. Richelieu, it seems, foresaw this, and the whole of Mr. Pitt's policy proceeded upon a conviction of this truth! The author says that the name of Pitt excites more admiration in France than in England, and that the circumstances of the times are somewhat delicate for the avowal of such opinions, and he professes la plus grande estime for the British ministry, and in particular for the British nation, whose generous conduct in these latter times, he says, has delivered France from the most hateful yoke: but these considerations need not deter him from writing impartially concerning Mr. Pitt. So he assures us that Lord Chatham, perceiving that the ruin of England sooner or later must inevitably be accomplished by France, sought to prevent it by ruining France; and instilled into his son William, as Hamilcar had done into Hannibal, an implacable hatred against the French. In pursuance of his father's plan, Pitt conceived the hope of blotting out France from the map of nations, and making this destruction her own work, by internal commotions which would tend to a general subversion of all principles and all social order, and then leave to England the commerce of the whole world. Such a plan could only be carried on by the dark tortuosities of a consummate Machiavelism;' and having vowed in his heart an exterminating war to accomplish this end, he became the author and fomenter of jacobinical principles in France! No money, no artifices, no crimes were spared ;-the demagogues were encouraged and paid by him,-the Duke of Orleans was his creature, the revolutionary leaders his agents,-the Revolution his work. M. Mezlhiac does not go quite so far as the egregious General Sarrazin, who writes his last incomparable history upon the hypothesis that Bonaparte also was the agent of England, and that the battle of Waterloo was fought upon a plan concerted between him and the British cabinet, and lost upon his part according to agreement, by combinations of greater skill and greater exertions than he had ever displayed in gaining a victory; so much more difficult was it to be defeated with such soldiers, than to conquer with them-to play the losing, than the winning game! M. Mezlhiac is somewhat more modest in his theory; yet so little is he acquainted with the public and notorious transactions of the

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age concerning which he writes, that he praises the Prince Regent for having, at the commencement of his government, declared that he would never treat with France till the odious tyranny of Bonaparte were overthrown. The Prince Regent and his ministers deserve every praise for their conduct towards France-except this. Pitt's plans against France succeeded, because so many accidental circumstances favoured it. Such were the writings of the infidel philosophers who laboured so successfully to poison the morals of the French people; but as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, &c. &c. could not very conveniently be agents of Pitt, most of these persons having died while he was a child,-they were accidental co-operators: such was the decayed state of the French finances, the Chancellor of the English exchequer could have no control over them, but they were in such a state as accidentally to facilitate his projects: such was that Anglomania, puis qu'il faut l'appeller par son nom,' that caprice, that ridiculous madness which turned all the heads of France-a people who till then had served as a model for the rest of Europe, by the delicacy of their taste and the elegance of their manners, hastening to abandon that flattering empire, by denaturalizing their character in imitating the ton, and the rude and almost barbarous manners of their neighbours. In a word, Athens (to wit, Paris!) disdained the grace and politeness of Pericles and of Aristophanes to intoxicate itself with the Thracians, and to imitate the savage life of Sparta.' This also proves accidentally favourable to the atrocious plans of Mr. Pitt," which were assisted still more by the accidental consequences of the American war. Louis le Martyr, we are told, professed a declared and calm hatred of the English, and carefully pursued the great object of annihilating the British power; he found resources enough in the national energies to strike the terrible blow of 1778; and by a glorious, but fatal vengeance, deprived us of America but the destructive principles which were scattered abroad by that war took root in France, and thus also accidentally contributed to the success of Mr. Pitt! The feeling of national hatred must have been fostered till it acquired the strength of personal passion before a writer of common sense would utter absurdities like these. In reality, M. Mezlhiac hates England as heartily as General Pillet. Our Parliament, he tells us, is a ridiculous Colossus, raising its head in a civilized era, while its feet rest in the mud of barbarous ages: our Government is a paper government; our liberty consists in the vain privilege of saying and writing what we please, whether right or wrong, under an actual and unlimited despotism; and for our commercial prosperity and maritime power, the voice of ages raises itself to teach kings and people that of all scourges which men dread the most, that which inspires them with the greatest

horror-that which at all times they have combated with the greatest rancour, is—a commercial and maritime monopoly. As often as a people has sought to arrogate to itself this odious right, the cry of death and of vengeance has resounded among all its neighbours! the hatred of all nations has overwhelmed it,-its fictitious prosperity has vanished like a shadow. The formidable ramparts, the numerous fleets which protected the seat of its power, have been thunder-stricken and annihilated under the avenging blows of an hundred irritated nations. Opulent Tyre has not even left its traces upon the shores of Syria; scarcely can any ruins of the flourishing Carthage be found under the sand of the desert; and the sword of man seems to have engraven upon these deplorable ruins, that the Eternal created the ocean to be the common property of mankind. 'The system of England is so much beyond its natural and intrinsic strength, that it bears within it the germ of death, and its factitious resources for its self-preservation must vanish before the first well-directed attacks of French energy.' It might have been thought that the gratuitous restitution of so many and such important colonial conquests might have convinced France of the moderation of England, and silenced for ever the senseless cry concerning maritime and commercial monopoly ;-it might also have been thought, that if any Frenchman dared even to dream of the conquest of England, the recollection of Waterloo would have awakened him.

cate.

It is indeed manifest that in the French writers of the present day, the feeling which generally prevails concerning England is not less hostile than that which was proclaimed from the tribunes of Robespierre and bureaux of Bonaparte. Waving, however, for the present, the reflections which would naturally occur, some estimate may be formed of the power and judgment which these writers possess, by observing the general accuracy of their knowledge respecting the country whose secret policy they affect to understand, and whose downfal they are so willing to prognostiIt may amuse the English reader to be informed that physicians wear long swords, and are always dressed in black; that our gentlemen who walk the streets on account of the accommodation which our pavement affords, wear boots and spurs in the winter; that sugared meat appears regularly at our tables; that the Lord Mayor has whole turtles served up in their shells; that on Christmas-day every person has at his table a potage détestable, composed of dry raisins and boiled prunes; that in the Bacchanalian exercise of toasting,' the lover gives his mistress, the merchant his correspondent, the clergyman his bishop, the bishop his primate, and the primate the Protestant cause,-et l'on s'enivre ainsi de la façon du monde la plus polie; that when you dine at an Eng

lishman's house, you know his politics by his dinner :-a ministerial man gives you French rolls; at a patriot's you get only stale bread: the ministerialist gives soup in his first course, and madedishes; at an oppositionist's table you have an enormous piece of boiled beef, flanked with carrots boiled in water, and with cabbages seasoned with the same sauce!--a huge hare, with gooseberry sauce, is an excellent patriotic dish: ministerial men drink French wines; an oppositionist and a friend of liberty would be disgraced were he not to prefer Port to Claret or Burgundy; and a good republican ought to get drunk with nothing but what is of home manufactory. The Presbyterians and malcontents dine always upon calve's head on the 30th of January, at the sign of the John the Baptist. Every body knows the fondness of the English for pugilistic exercises: ces sortes de combats s'appellent boxes; women, as well as men, crowd to see the box. The author of the Quinze Jours witnessed one of these exhibitions, at which many welldressed women were present. It is, however, due to this author, to say that he sets down nothing in inalice, and has no other object in his inventions, (for such many of his adventures are,) than to excite a laugh. The box is an indispensable part of educationfathers and mothers make their children fight in their presence; the professors do the same at schools and at the English colleges; and the boxers begin by butting like rams. Highway robbery is so common, that a purse is regularly prepared for the highwayman; about twelve guineas is the common sum; it is a sort of duty which custom has established in favour of the robbers. The highwaymen, however, are well bred and gallant; and a handsome woman is usually franked for a salute. Chaises full of policeofficers set out almost every evening from London on a cruise, and the robbers, if taken, are hung upon the spot where the crimes were committed, fastened to the gallows, and left to figure there in their perukes and full dress; for, gentle reader, every person who is hanged in England must be well shaved and dressed for the operation he must have a peruke bien-frisée, a pair of white gloves, and a nosegay in his hand! They usually go drunk with spirits to the gallows! but every criminal has the right of presenting a petition in person to the king!

What the crebs are, at which Englishmen ruin themselves and their families by enormous bets, we cannot guess. The amateurs outrés of horse-racing, or ultra-men of the turf, are called blacklegs, from the colour of their boots, which they never take off; and the Bond-street loungers derive their appellation from that light repast in the middle of the day which they take in the eating shops, and which is called lounge. The patriots in England are called les anciens Wigths, or, according to another authority, les Wighs.

This, however, is less curious than the accuracy of the French journalist, who quoted the Independent Whig by the title of La Perruque Indépendante. L'ile de Wiggh (from whence, perhaps, the patriots take the name) is the Cythera of the English, and the place of resort for stolen marriages. But the reader will by this time be disposed to cry Ohe jan satis! and we may say with the poet,

'So of enough, enough ;—and now no more.'

The Journal' of the French traveller has no blunders of this kind, no illiberality, no hostile feeling, and fewer prejudices of any kind. The writer indeed being born in France, having resided twenty years in America, and married an Englishwoman, was so connected with the three countries as to have the strongest moral reasons for wishing the prosperity of all. He spent two years in England without any other object than that of seeing the country: and few travellers have seen so much of it. His book has appeared under some disadvantages in England; it was ushered into the world with a pert, puffing advertisement, and is disfigured with paltry prints containing some of the very worst representations of noted places that we ever remember to have seen. There is also a self-sufficiency in the writer detracting something from the respect to which his general good sense largely entitles him; he has no relish for Handel, none for Raffael or Niccolo Poussin, none for Milton; and he speaks contemptuously of the greatest musician, the greatest painter, and the greatest poet, without suspecting any deficiency in his own ears and eyes and intellectual faculties. But in the main, the book bears marks of an observant, candid, and intelligent mind; to other countries it will impart much information respecting the real state of England; in this it must necessarily be read with less interest than elsewhere; but it is one of those works which derives value from time, that which conveys no knowledge, and imparts little amusement to the present generation, may communicate both when this age shall have past away, and its momentous annals become a tale of the times that are gone.

Coming from New York, and accustomed during so many years to American society, M. Simond compares what he saw in England rather with America than with his native country. He praises the comfort and cleanliness of his lodgings at Falmouth, one of the last places where an Englishman would find either; but such accommodations, he says, would cost more in the smallest town in America, or in fact could not be had. He finds the servants not only more obliging and industrious than those in the New World, but as looking better pleased and happier than persons of the same station in the land of political equality; where indeed the ostentation of what is as substantially enjoyed in England serves only to excite