day after day to shew the great end of its labours nearer and more near. That this would speedily be the case with all enlightened attempts to improve the state of prison-discipline in Scotland, none will doubt, who know the character of her population; and all who do so, would deeply deplore indeed the smallest carelessness and inattention to any of those sources from which may flow over the land a fastincreasing flood of misery and crime. MADAME KRUDENER. THE Continental newspaper-writers a wise and sagacious set of people, seem to have attached some degree of political importance to the character assumed by Madame Krudener, as a teacher of mystical theology. And the lady herself, if we are to judge by the tone of her followers, is not unwilling to afford an indirect testimony in favour of this supposition, at least so far as regards the obedience with which kings and princes are said to have listened to her exhortations. How far the conduct of state affairs might or might not be benefited by entrusting them to the management of old women, or whether symptoms of such management may or may not have been occasionally discoverable in modern his tory, it is not for us to presume to inquire; yet we think that posterity will entertain reasonable doubts whether Madame Krudener had really any great share in negotiating "the holy alliance," that celebrated treaty which has terrified so many of our contemporaries in the belief that a new kind of "Cesarean Popery" is about to be instituted in the world. This claim, however, is made on her behalf in a kind of demi-official article, inserted in the Quotidienne, and which occasioned the suppression of the number in which it appeared. The writer, who is evidently high in the confidence of Madame, asserts that (sans penser) she suggested the idea of the compact in question to the allied sovereigns.Many great events have been brought about by negotiators and statesmen, without their thinking any thing at all of the consequences which would ensue from the parts which they were acting, and Madame Krudener's eulo gist therefore feels that his qualifying parenthesis does not in the least detract from her substantial merits. He informs us, that she effected her intent, "not indeed by flattery, but by the energetic discourses which she addressed to the monarchs." She was unwearied in her endeavours" to prove that the successes and victories of Bonaparte were the punishments with which Heaven thought fit to visit the old dynasties of Europe," as a "chastisement for involving themselves in warfare, merely to gratify their own ambition and love of power." Besides which, as the writer says, "the religious and moral influence of Madame Krudener has wrought wonders in the mind of a certain great personage.— This monarch, who in so many respects resembles both our Henri Quatre and our Louis le Grand, was fettered by a Gabrielle, a la Valliere, but Madame Krudener, by the 'onction' of her discourses, succeeded in extinguishing the fires which raged in the bosoms of the royal lover as well as of his mistress," and, what is still more extraordinary, has been able to cause the most pure and virtuous friendship to succeed to this sinful passion. After this moral miracle, it would not have been difficult for Madame Krudener to have reigned triumphant in a certain powerful court, but she prefers proceeding on her pilgrimage through Switzerland and Swabia, defying the storms and dangers of the mountains, occupied only in teaching the doctrines of the Gospel to the crowds who follow her, but without entertaining any intention of becoming the foundress of a new 'sect."* "she We shall not trouble our readers by attempting to explain the innuendoes and allusions contained in the foregoing extract, but it must be remarked, that in delineating the character of Madame Krudener, her anonymous friend would have enabled us to appreciate it more justly, if he had added that there was a time when this powerful advocate of the cause of virtue was full as willing as the charming Gabrielle herself to make a most grateful return to the love, not indeed of a sovereign, because no sovereign present *This is not quite consistent with the Swiss accounts. EDITOR. ed himself, but of any mortal man possessing decent pretensions to the favour of such a lady as the French are willing to designate by the soothing paraphrasis of "une amè sensible.' The words may be easily translated with the help of Chambaud's Dictionary. But our grandfathers (let alone our grandmothers) were used to call ladies of this genus by quite another name in plain English, and a very ugly name it was. We do not use such words now-because we have become almost as refined in our phraseology as the French. Barbara Juliana, Baroness of Krudener, was born at Riga, in the year 1766, but she passed her youth at Paris, and at Strasburgh, where it is said that her talents excited universal admiration. The author of a biographical sketch*, from whence we collect our facts, praises her for "early piety and devotion," and he notices her steady resistance to the then prevailing infidelity of the French nation. He rests this assertion mainly upon an anecdote related by Madame Krudener to one of my acquaintances."-The sum of the story so told by Madame Krudener is, that in consequence of an invitation to a ball-she once omitted to perform her usual devotions, a neglect for which she felt so much remorse, that her health suffered greatly from the poignancy of her feelings. At the age of sixteen, Barbara Juliana became the wife of Baron von Krudener, whom she accompanied to St Petersburgh, and afterwards to Venice, the baron having received the honourable appointment of ambassador to the republic from the court of Russia.We have just heard of the sensitive feelings of the baroness, yet pious as she was, her " vivacity" (we translate the words of her biographer) was unable to withstand the temptations of the gay circles either of the northern or of the southern Sybaris, and, as the biographer says, "she was betrayed into innumerable indiscretions, which cast a shade over her youth; indiscretions of which she now always speaks with a warning voice of repentance." Easily yielding to those men who un * Der Einsiedler ein Fragment von der Frau von Krudener. Herausgegeben und mit einer Biographie dieser Merkwürdigen Frau befertigt von K. S. Leipzig 1818. derstood how to win her affections by their talents and accomplishments, the tranquillity of her domestic life was disturbed in a most melancholy manner, till at length these unfortunate occurrences occasioned a lasting separation between the baroness and her husband." After this event she returned to Paris, where various adventures befel her; she appeared in the character of a wit, a beauty, and became the "centre of attraction of a numerous circle of men of talent." Bernard de St Pierre was a very intimate friend of Madame rudener; "but Garat, the opera-singer, though wild and violent, possessed her heart." It was during this brilliant residence at Paris, that Madame Krudener produced a singular novel, entitled, "Valeria," * Madame is the heroine of her own romance. Young, lovely, and ethereal, she fascinates a protegee of the Count her husband, and Gustavus de Linar at length pines away and dies in hopeless passion, which he never ventures to declare. The catastrophe is fictitious, for happily there is not the slightest reason to suppose, that any of her numerous admirers ever found it necessary to die in that way; but her feelings, and especially those which she entertained towards the worthy dull husband to whom she was linked, are strongly expressed; the Baron, for instance, is certainly not described con amore in the follow ing family party.— "Nous recontrâmes le comte à l'entrée des lagunes, le vent s'etoit levé, et la barque commençoit à avoir un mouvement pénible. Je m'etonnois du calme de Valérie. Le comtè avoit été enchanté de la trouver, et de la voir mieux portante, mais il nous dit qu'il avoit eu un courrier desagréable. II paroissoit rêveur. J'avois deja remarqué qu'alors la contesse ne lui parloit jamais. Elle étoit assise à côte de moi; elle s'approcha de mon oreille et me dit. "Comme j'ai peur, c'est en vain que je tâche de m'agerrir pour plaire a non mari; jamais je ne m'habituerai à l'eau. Elle prit en même temps ma main, et la mit sur son cœur. Voyez comme il batte me dit elle. Hors de moi, defaillant, je ne lui repondis rien; mais je plaçai à mon tour sa main sur mon cœur, qui battoit avec violence. Dans ce moment use vague souleva fortment la barque; le vent souffloit avec impetuosité et Valerie se précipita sur le sein * Valerie, on Lettres de Gustave de Li nar, a Ernest de g***-Paris, 1804. de son mari. Oh que je sentis bien alors tout mon neant, et tout ce que nous separait ! Le comte préoccupe des affaires publiques, ne s'occupa qu'un instant de Valérie : il la rassura, lui dit qu'elle etoit un enfant et que de memoire d'homme, il n'avoit pas péri de barque dans les lagunes. Et cependant elle etoit sur son Sein, il respiroit son sonfle, son cœur battait contre le sien et il restait froid, froid comme une pierre! Cetre idée me donna une fureur que je ne puis rendre. Quoi me disoisje tandis que l'orage qui souleve mon sein menace de me detruire, qu'une seule de ses caresses je l'acheterois par tout mon sang, il ne sent pas son bonheur. Et toi Valérie, un lien que tu formas dans l'imprévoyante enfancie, un devoir dicté par tes parens t'enchaîne et te ferme le ciel que l'amour sauroit créer pour toi! Oui Valerie tu n'as encore rien connu, puisque tu ne connois que cet hymen que j'abhorre, que ce sentiment tiede, &c"-Valérie, vol. ii. pp. 11.-14. The enchanting portrait which Madame Krudener draws of her own graces, when exhibited in dancing the shawl-dance to the music of the English lord, is equally in character. "Elle ceda aux instances; Lord Mery, prit un violon; Valerie demanda son schale d'un mousselin bleu foncée; elle ecarta ses cheveux de dessus son front; elle mit son schale sur sa tête; il descendit le long de ses temples, de ses epaules, c'est Valerie qu'il faut voir; c'est elle qui a la fois decente, timide, noble, profondement sensible, trouble, entrâine, emeut, arrache les larmes, et fait palpiter le cœur, comme il palpite quand il est dominé par un grand ascendant; c'est elle qui possede cette grace charmante qu'on ne peut s'apprendre mais que la nature a revelée en secret a quelques etres superieurs: elle n'est pas le resultat de l'art; elle a été apportée du ciel avec les vertus.-Ceux qui n'ont vu que ce mecanisme difficile et etonnant à la verité, cette grace de convenance, ceux la disje n'ont pas d'idee de la danse de Valerie, tantot comme Niobe elle arrachoit un eri, &c."-Valerie, vol. i. p. 107. 109. In the preface to the third edition" the novel is well puffed, either by the bookseller or by the authoress herself. Its success was unexampled. "Bien pen d'ouvrages out été accueillis avec une bienveillance aussi generale que celle qu'on a temoignée a Valerie; tous les journaux en ont parlé, l'opinion, qui ordinairement ne se prononce que lentement, meme pour les meilleurs ouvrages, paroit avoir été entrainée d'un commun accord; et le roman qui n'en est peutêtre pas un, comme l'a dit un de nos auteurs les plus celebres, a emporté de suffrages unanimes, et il jouit d'un plus brillant succês." We have given sufficient specimens of madame's style. It will be readily allowed, that Valeria is an apt imita tion of the German novels of the Wertherian cast. With all their truth and chastity of feeling, Madame Krudener ed "tout ce qui est reprehensible dans takes credit to herself for having avoidWerther." We shall not discuss her moral principles, which are somewhat ostentatiously enounced. Some of the descriptive passages are ably written; but the chief merit of her two volumes records of that " in duodecimo, consists in their being vivacity" of temperament which at different periods of Madame Krudener's life has taken such opposite directions. About the year 1815, Madame Krudener, whose " early piety" now regained its early ascendancy, entered upon her new vocation at Bâle, where she gained many proselytes, yet she was suspected of being a political emissary, and the magistracy expelled her from the canton. Aran next became the scene of her labours. She preached and she prayed; one Monsieur Empeytas, a young Genevan minister, officiated as the minister of her conventicle, and some of her dogmas were more clearly enounced. It was declared, that she could not fully approve of any of the existing sects of Christianity, but that her doctrines would be such as to be unobjectionable to all. In the summer of 1816 she passed again through Bâle, but fearing the police, she established herself just beyond the frontier, in the terriThe crops had failed, and the poor tory of the Grand-Duchy of Baden. were suffering greatly from dearth.Madame Krudener distributed large sums to the necessitous, and the lower classes flocked to listen to her rhapsodies, in which the rich were censured with more zeal than charity; her conduct did not escape the vigilance of the police of his Highness the Grand Duke, and Madame was driven from the Grand-Duchy of Baden. This treatment elicited an indignant epistle from Madame Krudener, addressed by her to her son-in-law, Baron Berkheim, the minister of the inmodestly enumerates the gifts which terior at Carlsruhe, and in which she qualify her for the mission which, as she says, she believes is intrusted to her. "It was necessary," exclaims Madame Krudener," that a woman who had been sure, should come to tell the poor that she brought up amidst every luxury and pleais happy when she sits upon a wooden stool, for the purpose of administering comfort te them. It was necessary that a woman should come, humiliated by her sins and indiscretions, who can acknowledge that she has been the slave and fool of the vanities of the world; a woman not deluded by false knowledge, but who can shame the wisest, by shewing them how she has penetrated into the deepest mysteries, by sighing and weeping at the foot of the cross. It was necessary that a woman should come, a woman of a strong heart, who has tasted of all the enjoyments of the world, in order to be able to declare, even unto kings, that all is vanity, and to overturn the illusions and idols of the saloons of splendour whilst she blushes when she recollects, that she once attempted to distinguish herself therein, by displaying her portion of wit and her poor talents!!" Banished from Baden, she proceeded to the interior of Switzerland, and in June 1817 she arrived at Lucerne; her familiars, as usual, sounded her praises in the newspapers. They compared her to John the Baptist in the desert, "She gives meat and drink to the soul, the heart, and the belly, (sie speiset und tränkt die Giester dieerzen und die magen); she is a refuge for every sinner. Dwelling in a wooden cottage, surrounded by a few unostentatious companions, and clothed in a plain blue gown, she is accessible to every one. She speaks with fervour and lofty dignity, exhorting her hearers to the practice of all Christian virtues, and she showers down benedictions upon benedictions." Unfortunately the council of the Canton could not be made to believe in her sanctity, and the police-officers politely accompanied her to Schaffhausen, intimating, that her mission in Switzerland had ended. In the autumn she made a fruitless endeavour to re-enter the federal territory, but her old persecutors, the police-officers, again repulsed her. After a short residence at Freiburg, (Breisgau) she was passed on by the police to Leipsic, through Baden and Wirtemberg, and the other intervening German States. Madame complained of indisposition at Leipsic, and she was allowed to continue there during a month, at the end of which a new escort conducted her to the Prussian dominions, where she arrived, accompanied by one only of her original coadjutors and followers-a M. Kollner, by birth a Brunswick er. We will not wrong poor Johanna Southcote, by comparing her to Madame Krudener, still less can Madame be classed with the rapt extatic virgins of the Catholic church, with a St Bridget or a St Catherine, a St Theresa or a Maria d'Agonda. This silly creature is not an honest ignorant enthusiast. Attempting to conceal her selfish passions beneath the mask of religion, vanity alone impels her, and she feeds the poor in her " plain blue gown," solely to attract a throng, because she can now no longer interest the company in a ball-room, by shewing her shapes in a blue shawl, whilst Milor Merry plays the fiddle. "PETER'S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK. OBSERVATIONS ON THOUGH it is said on the title-page that these volumes are sold by all the booksellers, yet, strange to tell, a single copy is not to be found among all the bibliopoles of Edinburgh. These gentlemen are really very remiss-and seem not to know their own interest. They seldom think of selling a new publication till it has become an old one; and if you bid them get it for you from London, it sometimes makes its appearance after the time usually occupied by a voyage home from Indiabut, generally, it never reaches our Scottish capital at all—and if inquired for some time afterwards, you are told that it is out of print. For our own parts, we are easy about this mode of carrying on business, for all writers of any eminence send their works instantly down "To the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine;" and as that well-meaning ill-used man reads but little, we Contributors have all these presentation-copies to ourselves, and have fitted up a snug library of our own in Gabriel's Road, as thou goest up to the land of Ambrose." There we make a point of meeting twice a-week, at` five o'clock to a hair-and, as Mr. Ambrose sends us in, on the most moderate terms, quantum suff of excellent pork-chops and London porter (a dinner which Mr Kemble used always to eat pre * Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk; being the Substance of some familiar Communications concerning the present State of Scotland, written during a late Visit to that Country. Aberystwith. 1819. vious to his performance of Hamlet), no wonder that we write, during the evening, many taking and spirit-stirring articles. The volumes from which we shall now make a few extracts, appeared on our dissection-table on the 5th instant, and having drawn lots who should have them to read and to review, the longest slip of paper-(which was plainly discerned to be a shred of a not very old number of the Edinburgh Review-article-State of Parties) was found in the fist of us, Mordecai Mullion. By the way, this method of writing by lot ought to be more generally practised. Nothing can be imagined more delightful. "Custom cannot stale Its infinite variety." It was one of the happy thoughts of that "Cherub tall," Odoherty the standard-bearer and never shall we forget (we had almost fallen there in to the first personal pronoun) the fillup it gave all our spirits, one dull November day, soon after the Chaldee Manuscript broke out. We ourselves had uniformly discharged the duties of the divinity department, or in other words, had filled the theological chair. And the gentle reader may judge of our surprise, when called upon to undertake, on a moment's warning, "Miss Spence and the Bagman." Signifer Dohertiades had always had the charge of the list of deaths and marriages an office which sat with a peculiar grace on him who had more than once paid his vows to the altar of Hymen, and whose death-deeds, yet fresh in the recollection of the public, had, after deciding, in conjunction with the Anglo-Spanish troops, the Peninsular war, turned, along with the timely advance of the Prussian army under his friend Blucher, the fortune of the day, yet doubtful, at Waterloo. Him the lot elevated, for one month, to the "Literary and Philosophical Intelligence;" a department whose arduous duties he discharged not only with his characteristic promptitude and despatch, but with a happy knack of selection, wonderful in one devoted from his very cradle to war. But it would be useless to tell all the metamorphoses that thus ensued throughout the members of our body corporate. The happiest effects were soon found to result from this judici ous invention of the adjutant's genius. Nothing can now come amiss to any of us. A poem of Byron or Moore or a System of Political Economy, by James Grahame, Esq, (the AntiMalthusian)-a New System of Religion and Philosophy, by Francis Maximus Macnab, Esq.- -or a Report of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, from their hall, No 209, HighStreet-a plan for a new Academical Institution-or a Letter to the Conductors of the dying Edinburgh Review-Verses on a late melancholy event, by Peter Picken, cobbler in Falkirk —or, Observations on the Scope and Tendency of the Writings of Lord Bacon, by Macvey Napier, Esquire-for one and all of these, and others like to these, if other such there be, are one and all of us now and henceforth prepared. Each man boldly pulls out his slip from an old military cap, worn by the standard-bearer at the battles of Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Fuentes d'Honore, Vittoria, and Waterloo-and instantly addresses himself to the task enjoined—be it polities or poetry-history, sacred or profanemiscellaneous literature-or the abstract and severer sciences. Being friends to a free trade, we have scorned to solicit for a patentand (better late than never) most cheerfully recommend the adoption of Odoherty's plan, to the Editor of the Supplement. Had it been sooner adopted in the conduct of that illustrious work, what strange varieties might the world have seen-and no less sweet than strange. How excellent had it been to have perused the article "Chivalry," by that perfect gentleman J. R. Macculloch, Esq., while, on the corn laws, Walter Scott would in turn have written like a masterbaker!-The article " Dancing" would then have been entrusted to Professor Leslie, while the learned Editor himself would, on the same principle, have undertaken "Conveyancing." But we can go no farther, verbum sapienti. Dr Morris (for he is the author) has adopted a somewhat ambitious title to his letters-yet we must not rob Peter to pay Paul-and confess honestly, that the Doctor has given to the world two very amusing volumes. He performed his journey from Aberystwith, where, we understand, he is in very extensive practice as a medical |