people satisfied with themselves, but cold to the objects of their affections, were points which she affected not to understand. That degree of worldly prudence, and those duties of friendship, which substitute discretion for interest, and delicacy for sensibility, were to her detestable. The temperate atmosphere was in her opinion fit only for fools: she disliked even the calm which allows the understanding to act; the virtues which she valued in herself, and which she expected in others, were an entire abandonment to the feelings, a ready acquiescence in first emotions, an approximation to a state of nature, and to the simplicity and sincerity of savage life. To be amiable, and to please, were objects which she left for inferior souls: to love, and to be loved, was her aim: agitation, suffering, and feeling, were the food on which her mind subsisted; days of delight and nights of pain; the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell; such were the emotions in which her soul delighted to revel.

The character and talents of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse appear to have excited uncommon interest among the literati of her day: and certainly the letters before us do no discredit to their accounts of her. Amid illness, sadness, distraction, and desolation, they display an intelligence, an acuteness, and a wildness of eloquence, that are not often witnessed. In most people we see two stages of passion: they feel first, and reason afterwards: but Mademoiselle l'Espinasse displays reasoning and feeling at the same time; she suffers all the violence of passion, and analyzes it with all the penetration of a philosopher. Her vehemence is such, that the bon mot by which Voltaire characterized the fervid style of Rousseau, almost loses its extravagance when applied to her: her paper must have burned as she wrote. There is little variety, however, in her letters; as soon as you have found the key-note, (and a few pages let you into it,) all seems mere repetition: the same melancholy, the same reproaches, the same raving. The following specimens, taken nearly at random, will give a complete picture of her manner :

"You are not my friend; you cannot become my friend: I have no sort of confidence in you: it is you who have caused me the deepest and bitterest evil which can befall an honourable mind: at this very moment you rob me, and perhaps for ever, of the only consolation which heaven reserved for the few days that are left me: in short, what shall I say? You have completed every thing: the past, the present, and the future, offer me nothing but scenes of grief, regret, and remorse: well, my friend, all this I know, all this I am aware of: and yet I am drawn to you by a charm, by a feeling, which I abhor; yet which has the force of a cursed fatality upon me. You do well to take no account of it: I have no right to make any demands upon you: the most ardent wish I have is, that you were nothing to me." Vol. 1. p. 143.

"Yes, it is to you that I am indebted for the power of knowing and feeling that intoxication of the soul, which removes every sentiment of pain and sorrow. But witness, whether you deserve my thanks for it: the moment you quit me the charm vanishes, and on entering into myself, I find myself consumed with regret and remorse: the loss which I have sustained tears me to pieces. I was beloved, yes, beloved to a degree which staggers the imagination. All that I have read of was cold and weak when compared with the feelings of M. de M****; it filled, it supported his whole life: I leave you to judge whether it ought to occupy mine. A regret like this would, of itself, suffice to form the misery of a feeling mind. "Tis well: what must be my sensations, whose soul is weighed down with the additional pains of remorse: I see myself guilty; I feel myself unworthy of the happiness which I have enjoyed; I have been wanting to the most virtuous, the most sensible of men: in one word, I have been wanting to myself, I have lost my own esteem; judge whether I have any claim to yours; and if I cannot pretend to your esteem, can I be so blind as to believe that I have any title to your love?" Vol. 1. p. 188.

"Oh, my friend, how my soul is afflicted! Words I have none; nothing is left me but shrieks. I have read again and again, and will read a hundred times more, your epistle. Oh, my friend, what a compound of blessings and evils! What a mixture of pleasure and bitterness! All the agitations of my heart have been increased and redoubled by the perusal of this letter: I can compose myself no longer you have alternately transported and rent my frame in pieces: never have I found you more amiable, never more worthy to be loved; and never did the remembrance of M. de M**** cost me a pang so deep, so sharp, so bitter. Yes; the thought was very death to me: my heart was overwhelmed: all last night I was in a delirium: such violence must either annihilate me, or drive me mad. Alas! I fear neither the one nor the other: if the love I bore you were less, if the regret I feel were not so dear to me, with what madness, with what transport would I rid myself of this life, which oppresses me. Oh, never, never did creature live in such torture and despair." Vol. 2. p. 36.

The following extract is from a curious letter, which she addresses to Guibert, previously to his marriage:

"It is your wish, then, while I see you, while my senses and my soul are filled with the charm of your presence, that I should recount to you what effect your marriage will have upon me: my friend, I know nothing of the matter, positively nothing. If it had the effect of curing me, I would tell you of it; and you are candid enough not to blame me for it. If, on the other hand, it carried despair into my soul, I should utter no complaint, and my sufferings would last but a very little time. You would then possess sense and delicacy to approve of a conduct, which would cost you but a trifling regret; a regret which the pleasure of your new situation would soon do away.

I can assure you, that this consideration is a kind of consolation to me; I feel myself the more free for it. Do not ask me then any more what I shall do, when you have engaged yourself for life to another. If I were only vain and conceited, I should be much more enlightened, as to what my feelings would be: vanity is seldom mistaken in her calculations: her foresight is correct enough: passion has nothing to do with the future: when I tell you, therefore, that I love you, I tell you all that I know, and all that I feel." Vol. 2. p. 228.

One extract more and I have done: the flight however is so much above me, that I scarcely know whether I translate correctly:

"Oh, how soothing are the delights, which a soul intoxicated with passion knows! My friend, I feel that my existence depends upon my folly if I were to become composed, if I were restored to reason, I should not exist twenty-four hours. Can you guess what my soul most requires, when it has been violently agitated by pleasure or pain? It is the pleasure of writing to M. de M****; I reanimate him, I recall him to life, I repose my heart upon his, I pour my soul into his soul: the heat, the rapidity of my blood, sets death at defiance: I actually see him; he lives, he breathes for me, he understands me; my head becomes elevated, and wanders to that degree that I have no more occasion for delusion; all becomes truth, pure, real truth: yes, you yourself are not a more present object to my senses than M. de M. has just been to me for a whole hour. Oh divine creature, he has forgiven me! he loved me." Vol. 2. p. 234.

These are doubtless the very dreams of madness; yet it is impossible to read them without emotion. To behold a woman of powers which would have dignified the most accomplished, and a sensibility which would have graced the most amiable; a woman full of exalted sentiments, and as capable of relishing all that is grand in the human character, as she was earnest in her detestation of all that degrades it; to see such a woman, after a life began in misfortune and spent in misery, wailing out her latter days in the agonies of a hopeless passion, and cleaving, with irresistible pertinacity, amid pain and exhaustion, amid the pangs of disease and dissolution, with death before her eyes, and suicide for ever in her thoughts, to an attachment that assailed her with the triple tortures of guilt, remorse, and hopelessness, is a spectacle that wrings the heart with pity, with humiliation, and horror.

The lady, however, probably did not see the matter in so serious a light. Her manner of dying is completely en philosophe, and utterly puts to the blush those softer countrymen of our own, who think that the only resource under a similar disappointment, is to besot themselves in night caps: to exhibit a strong contrast between their waistcoats and under garments, and become what is

called a character. The death of our heroine is more in the style of French philosophy; instead of sending for a confessor, she enlarges her dose of opium; in the place of prayer and penitence, she soothes herself with a calmant; like the characters in the Greek tragedies, she seems resolved to exhibit all her sufferings upon the stage, and with the symptoms of death upon her, arranges dinner parties for the week, fills her drawing room with company, and appears more interested about a box at the opera than her own approaching dissolution. Veritablement, as some French writer has observed, tous les hommes sont fous à commencer par les sages:-Truly the whole world are fools, and the wise are more so than the rest.

M.

An Elementary Treatise on the Mounting of Naval Ordnance; showing the true Principles of Construction for the Carriages of every Species of Ordnance, so as to obtain the Power of Working the heaviest Metal with the fewest Hands, with the least possible strain to the Ship. By Lieut. Col. William Congreve, A. M., F. R. S.

[From the Monthly Review.]

In the first section of this volume the author treats "on the great importance of adopting in this country the same spirit of the economy of labour in our military mechanism, which has so long signalized our commercial establishments," and chiefly directs the reader's attention to these two points, the manning of a greater number of ships than we have at present with a given number of seamen, and the employing of guns of such calibres on board of merchantmen as would enable them in a great measure to bid defiance to privateers. The second section contains an "enumeration of the different objects, which must be combined in every important improvement of the system of mounting ordnance for the sea-service, and of the general principles on which these advantages are to be accomplished." The objects are thus stated:

"I. To reduce the labour of working the ordnance, without increasing the bulk and weight of the carriage. II. To produce a smooth and uniform recoil; and further, to limit the recoil, without straining the breeching, to the least possible quantity required for loading the gun inside. III. To produce the least possible shock in bringing up the gun, and to apply the breeching so that it may in all positions of the carriage have an equal bearing. IV. To increase the power of traversing the gun, without increas

ing the size of the ports; nay, further, even to reduce the actual aperture of the port, with this increased quantity of traverse. V. To give greater security to the men in action. VI. To render the gun capable of better security in housing. VII. To present less surface to the enemy's fire. VIII. To keep the decks freer and drier than in the present mode. IX. And to combine these points without increasing the expense."

Col. Congreve rejects, and apparently with reason, what is vulgarly, though perhaps improperly, called the non-recoil principle, or the practice of keeping the carriage fastened to the vessel's side in such a manner that neither it nor the gun can recoil, as calculated to overstrain and injure the sides of even the strongest ships; and he contends for the propriety and advantage of dividing the mass of the carriage into two parts, and making the gun recoil with the upper and lighter on the lower and by far the heavier part, which is kept fixed. This method has long been used with carronades, as well as in gunboats and batteaux. A considerable part of this section refers to the traversing of guns on board of vessels: but sailors, particularly in the heat of action, generally fire right before them, without attending much if at all to the traversing of the guns, or to the adjusting of the breeching commonly called middling, which then becomes necessary; and the rudder is rendered subservient to keeping the ship in a position favourable for this expeditious mode of firing.

The colonel's method of making the breeching of each gun proceed from one point, equally distant from the sides of the port, is simpler, and, in various respects, better than the common method of making it proceed from two points in the ship's side; and, by assuming that point for the centre of traverse which is not only at equal distances from the sides of the port, but also half way between the outside and inside of it, the gun may be traversed to right and left in a greater angle than it can be when the point is taken in the side of the ship within the port.

Section three contains "descriptions of the different constructions of gun and carronade carriages, which have been made according to the principles laid down in the second." The lower carriage is prevented from recoiling when the gun is fired, by means of a strong iron arm which is fixed to it, swivelling on a bolt placed in the centre of the port, and thus causing it, when necessary, to traverse. The colonel would run the guns out by means of short levers, about two feet long, and holes in the peripheries of the trucks, which he places on the trunnions with interior rockets and teeth in which small palls are to work and prevent them from turning freely as the gun recoils; while they are allowed to turn as freely as possible when it is running out. This complex machinery will certainly lessen the extent of the