miserable subsistence from those charms which had been the glory of royal circles-to sell for a morsel of bread her reluctant caresses and her haggard smiles-to be turned over from a garret to a hospital, and from a hospital to a parish vault? Have they forgotten how the gallant and luxurious nobleman, sprung from illustrious ancestors, marked out from his cradle for the highest honours of the State and of the army, impatient of control, exquisitely sensible of the slightest affront, with all his high spirit, his polished manners, his voluptuous habits, was reduced to request, with tears in his eyes, credit for half-a-crown, -to pass day after day in hearing the auxiliary verbs mis-recited, or the first page of Télémaque misconstrued, by petulant boys, who infested him with nicknames and caricatures, who mimicked his foreign accent, and laughed at his thread-bare coat? Have they forgotten all this? God grant that they may never remember it with unavailing self-accusation, when desolation shall have visited wealthier cities and fairer gardens ;-when Manchester shall be as Lyons, and Stowe as Chantilly;-when he who now, in the pride of rank and opulence, sneers at what we have written in the bitter sincerity of our hearts, shall be thankful for a porringer of broth at the door of some Spanish convent, or shall implore some Italian money-lender to advance another pistole on his George! Note on Niebuhr's Roman History. We have long been desirous of giving an account to our countrymen of M. Niebuhr's Roman History,-one of the most justly celebrated works of our times. But finding that the author was employed in preparing a Second Edition, so enlarged and amended as to be a new work, we postponed our criticism until its publication; and having since learned that a Translation from the Second Edition is now preparing, with the approbation and sanction of M. Niebuhr, by Messrs Hare and Thirlwall, of Trinity College, Cambridge, we think it better to defer the criticism till a version thus authorized shall be in the hands of the general reader. A translation has, indeed, appeared; but we understand it to be made from the first edition, and it would be sufficient for us to know, as we do, that it is disapproved and disavowed by M. Niebuhr. The English public are, in common fairness, bound to try him by the edition of this work which he offers as complete, and by the translation which he adopts as a faithful copy of the original. Mr Thirlwall is already known by his Version of Schleiermacher on St Luke's Gospel,-a volume which surpasses most original works in ability and learning. It has been said, but we believe most inaccurately, that the alterations of M. Niebuhr in his second edition, have a political purpose. No. XCII. will be published in October. Printed by Ballantyne & Co. ART. I. The Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Honour- II. 1. Die Poesie und Beredsamkeit der Deutschen, von Luthers Zeit bis zur Gegenwart. Dargestellt von Franz Horn. (The Poetry and Oratory of the Ger- 2, Umrisse zur Geschichte und Kritik der schönen Litteratur Deutschlands während der Jahre 1790- 1818. (Outlines for the History and Criticism of III. Six Discourses delivered before the Royal Society, at their Anniversary Meeting, on the Award of the Royal and Copley Medals, preceded by an Address to the Society on the Progress and Prospects of ART. VI. Spirit of Party VII. The History of Ireland. By John O'Driscol VIII. The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Sum mons, together with the Records and Muniments re- Page 415 433 . 471 IX. A Short Review of the Slave Trade and Slavery, with X. Journey from Buenos Ayres, through the Provinces of I. 1. Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existing 2. Animal Mechanics, or the Design Exhibited in the 490 497 515 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1827. No. XCII. ART. I.-The Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Honourable EDMUND BURKE and Dr FRENCH LAURENCE. Published from the Original Manuscripts. 8vo. pp. 332. London, Rivingtons. 1827. TH HE Letters contained in this volume are extremely interesting, as connected both with the literary and the political history of the last century. They were written in the unrestrained freedom of intimate friendship, without the most distant view of publication, by two men, both highly gifted with natural parts, almost equally distinguished among their most learned contemporaries for extraordinary acquirements; both actively engaged in the great scene of letters and of affairs which the close of the century presented; and if not both persons of the highest celebrity, yet one of them ranking among the greatest names in the philosophy and the history of the country, and the other his approved associate and familiar friend. The subjects upon which we are here presented with their most unreserved thoughts, are the passing events of a period, when every succeeding month was big with changes, each equal in importance to those that formerly used to distinguish one age from another. And those topics are here handled, not merely by near observers, but by actors in the scene, or by those, who, having just ceased to act, continue to counsel and guide their former associates. Great, however, as, on all these accounts, our desire naturally is to begin at once upon the important matter thus laid before us with no common attractions, we must pause for a while to say something more in detail of both the eminent VOL. XLVI. NO. 92. T |