and practised pen; for a national injustice would be done by its being suffered to fall into common-place hands. Beginning almost in romance, the progress of this brave and intelligent man's life has been from one display of devoted intrepidity to another, through every scene of the revolutionary war, from the capture of Toulon to the descent of the British armies from the Pyrenees on the French soil, and the restoration of the Bourbons. The sketch of this brave nobleman is extremely well conceived; the venerable dignity of his aspect, his figure still manly though stooped with age, his thoughtful countenance, and the slow and subdued yet impressive style of his speaking, are all characteristic. Some of the " Scenes," for instance those of the conflict between Lords Brougham and Melbourne on the Premier's frequent attendance at the royal table; that of the tumult on Lord Maidstone's motion for a censure on O'Connell; and that ou Sir H. Hardinge's strong animadversions on the misery to which the British Legion were reduced, exhibit skill in the arrangement, dextrous development of the features of the question, and the unusual art of telling a long story without tediousness. The volumes altogether are highly amusing.

The Colonel. "The Fan-qui in China."-This is a valuable work by a man of sense and observation. Mr. Downing, the author, as a medical man, had peculiar opportunities of making himself acquainted with the habits and feelings of the Chinese; he has accordingly supplied us, in his very entertaining and varied volumes, with the most animated, as well as the latest, account of that most curious people of the globe.

The Rector. The pride of the Chinese is strikingly seen in even the title of these volumes, it being the name which they give to all foreigners, from the English who frighten them by their cannon, and astonish them by their arts, down to the lowest Lascar. Fan-qui bears two meanings the one is "barbarian wanderer," and the other, "outlandish demon;" the former we may presume applied when the popular heart is in a state of peculiar good humour; but to our European conceptions, neither too complimentary. Barbarism is evidently the grand stigma which Chinese civilization brands upon mankind. Even the British government, or perhaps even the British sovereign, escapes with no more favourable title than the "barbarian eye." Such are the absurdities of old nations, which time has turned into old women.

The Barrister. A Chinese dandy might be conceived an impossibility, yet fashion has its fools in China, as well as in more western countries. Mr. Downing observes, that one of the waiters at his hotel was an Exquisite. Instead of having his hair shaved in front, according to the national style for the last three thousand years; this original genius had it cut round the top of the forehead about an inch and a half in length. This thin semicircular ridge of hair was made to stand straight upright, and as each hair was separate, and as stiff as a bristle, the whole looked like a very fine-tooth combed turned upwards. This is the style of the beaux garçons, and is of course irresistible. It may be recommended to our irresistibles at home.

The Doctor. China is the most paternal of all governments, and as, proverbially," the parent who spares the rod spoils the child," there is more flogging in the "great family," than in any school-room on earth,

The rattan is the sceptre, and it is applied with impartial activity to the shoulders of every son of the "great father" of his people, from the prime minister down to the peasant. But the children have, like other children, tastes which defy even the rattan. The passion of the Chinese is for opium; they chew it, drink it, and smoke it in their pipes. In short, those Dutchmen of the East get soberly drunk with it in every possible way. The imperial father is outrageous at this failing of his children; he publishes a decree against the opium-houses once a week, declares the opium-ships to be confiscated, man and cargo, and threatens to cut the retailers into pieces as small as their own commodity. But, what are imperial decrees in any country, against appetite and avarice? Opium-shops are as thick in China, as gin-shops in England. They may not flame out in the gas-light splendours of our gin-palaces, nor put their customers to such sudden death; but the opium is imbibed with equal diligence; and the nation, in spite of flogging, philosophically swallows slow poison by circles of longitude and latitude.

The Barrister. This matter of rebellion comes from India; the quantity of opium smuggled into China is astonishing. About a thousand chests of Turkey opium also make their way into the land of the rod. Thus, the "Celestial Empire" is becoming more terrestrial every day, and the East India Company, if ever they should return to their old habits of conquest, may spare their cannon-shot, and take the whole realm by the help of a general dose of laudanum.

On the whole, these volumes are extremely valuable, especially to persons who require to have any intercourse with China. The state of the trade, the modes of living, the nature of the climate, the condition of European health-all points of the first importance to the merchant connected with the China market-are amply discussed, and in a practical and business-like style. To the general reader the volumes are animated and amusing.

The Rector. "Recollections of Caulincourt, Duke of Vicenza.”. The French, for the last three centuries, have had the reputation of being the best memoir-writers in Europe. Even the defects of the national character have assisted this superiority. Its lightness, fickleness, and eccentricity, have thrown into its narratives an oddity, an originality, and a sarcastic pleasantry, which, however galling to the individuals thus dissected, make them to strangers among the most amusing narratives in the world.

The Colonel. Caulincourt was a remarkable man, even in a period of remarkable men: a good soldier, like most of his compeers; a handsome fellow, which few of them were; and of a graceful address, which marked him for the courtier even in camps. He soon became a favourite with that grand distributor of fame and fortune in the French world, the Emperor Napoleon. It must be acknowledged that, fantastic as the gallant Duke undoubtedly was, he exhibited a fidelity which seldom seemed to sit easy on the bosoms of his fellow dukes, and adhered to the fallen honours of his master with something of a firmness which was not far from a virtue.

The Barrister. To this feeling we chiefly owe those two volumes of "Confessions," which detail to us the later hours of Napoleon's event

Recollections of Caulincourt, Duke of Vicenza.

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ful history in France; unfold the chief errors by which he accomplished his exclusion-for his fall was his own work-and display at full length the workings of all that in a Frenchman constitutes the soul.

The Doctor. These " Confessions" ' are presumed to be revealed in the shades of the very lovely country that surrounds Plombières. At that time, this once brilliant personage was evidently dying. The horrible complaint of which his master had died, a cancer in the stomach, was hourly destroying him; his hair was grey, his frame decrepit, and his spirit sunken. But the accidental revival of the scenes of his showy career gave him a partial animation. The Author of the Memoirs, a female, and a thorough Napoleoniste, touched adroitly and constantly upon the past pomps of the Imperial career; and Caulincourt, in the indulgence of her conversation, and his own eager remembrances, is represented as unfolding the anecdotes which form the material of these very striking volumes.

The Colonel. Interspersed with vivid pictures of the state of Napoleon's mind in the trying hours which followed his fatal Moscow retreat, there are traits of character which remind us of the elegance and piquancy of the old French Court. Count de Narbonne was an example of this revived nationality. "He was formed for an ambassador," is Caulincourt's observation; but it was for an ambassador on the French model. His grand secret of diplomacy was finesse. Straight-forwardness, sincerity, and manliness, seem to be regarded by the foreigner as vulgar principles of action, and he evidently thinks that the true triumph is successful swindling. The Count was an universal lover; and thus he took it for granted that he achieved his way to all the secrets of the State. His devotion to this principle cannot be doubted, for he wasa lover at sixty. However, let us have the polished Frenchman's own exposé of this rather late homage to the burlesque of the passions. Caulincourt, one day at Prague, rallying him on his perseverance

"My dear Duke," said Narbonne, "at twenty a man adores women for their own sakes, and he would load his back with the towers of Notre Dame to lay them at their feet. At forty, we love women for our own sakes; because, at forty, we grow selfish. At sixty, we do not love at all; in fact, we care nothing about women, except so far as they may be useful to us; because, at sixty, men are calculators, and nothing more?

"What an infidel you are, Count!" said Caulincourt, laughing.

Not at all!" was the reply." I am merely confessing that I am sixty years of age, and not in love! The truth is, that in paying my court to the fair ladies of Vienna, I find opportunities of forwarding my ambassadorial interests. We have a right to gain an advantage over the enemy by any means in our power."

The Barrister. Such means were unquestionably often as productive as they were profligate; but their use was the natural punishment of the morality of the foreign Courts. Where the private life of Sovereigns was disgraced by a succession of low scandals-where a French dancer, or an Italian Opera singer, had the power of selling the most important secrets of the State, we cannot wonder that they were sold; that a French ambassador, furnished with an Imperial purse, should be enabled to purchase them; or that, in consequence, the very fate of the Continental kingdoms should have been hourly at the disposal of France, and its fiery master.

The Rector. Yet if the ambition of universal conquest should ever arise in the mind of man again, I know no better medicine that could be administered to the disease than a quiet study of these volumes. While the world regarded Napoleon as an idol inhaling only incense, a brilliant genius perpetually exulting in the splendours of his own prospects, or a lord of undisputed dominion enjoying all the sense of unlimited power, these pages exhibit him as continually suffering under vexations, oppressed by difficulties, and sinking into depressions of spirit that would make the palmiest positions of life only the most conspicuously wretched. It is certain that he more than once contemplated suicide. During his last German campaigns, he had been known to walk about his chamber for hours together when the camps were wrapped in sleep. Sometimes in the day he lay for hours on the sofa complaining of everything, foreboding evil to all, and declaring that he envied the lot of the common soldier, and even of the dead. On the announcement of Duroc's fall, he said to his attendant, "Ah, all then is over. He is released from misery. Well, he is happier than I." On one of his popular visits to the Lunatic Asylum at Charenton, he expressed this sentiment still more strongly. I shall never go mad," said he; "that is certain. My head is of iron (an expression which he often used). Despair, indeed, is another thing. I have fixed ideas upon that subject. Some time or other, Caulincourt, you may hear that I have deprived myself of life; but never that I have lost my senses.' And this was the language of the first chieftain, and first emperor of Europe.

The Doctor. Caulincourt says that Napoleon himself reminded him of those words, in what he names the "terrible night we spent at Fontainebleau in 1814"-the night when he was debating the question of abdication. "This idea," said Napoleon, "had occurred to me when I was at Charenton. I then felt convinced that it would be better to die than be an object of pity."

The Rector. The same feelings haunted every man of this crowd of showy personages, whom mankind idly presumed to be, like their master, revelling in all the indulgences of victory and vanity; the glittering, decorated, plumed race, who moved above mankind like so many meteors. "Moscow, Chatillon, Fontainebleau, and the Hundred Days," exclaims Caulincourt," are night-mares which incessantly haunt my restless couch." This feeling of ruin extended through them all. Before the battle of Bautzen in 1813, Duroc, seizing the Duke of Vicenza's arm, as they waited at midnight during Napoleon's conference with the Austrian Ambassador, exclaimed," My friend, this has been going on too long. We shall all be swept off one after another: and he (Napoleon), too, will fall a sacrifice. An inward voice whispers me that I shall never again see France." The inward voice was sufficiently true, for, within a few days afterwards, Duroc was torn to pieces by a shell almost in the presence of Napoleon.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

RUSSIAN POLICE AND ENGLISH PRISONS.

BY THE EDITOR.

It has been so frequently remarked that the romance of real life is more romantic than the romance of fiction, that it might be considered useless to add another word upon the subject, but it so happens that two cases have recently come under my knowledge which (each in its way) afford the most striking illustration of the axiom. Both these cases are genuine and authenticated, and, while considered as regards the romantic in real life, will at the same time exhibit to the reader traits of human nature in the present day, the existence of which the generality of readers would not believe. The first is derived from the official reports of the Russian criminal court of the district of Zaraisk in the government of Kazan.

It appears that for many months the district of Zaraisk had been infested by a formidable band of robbers, who, not satisfied with attacking travellers and relieving them of their property, were in the habit of carrying on their depredations in villages and even towns, where they committed the most horrible excesses; and to such an extent was this system carried, that the name of their chief, Kara Aly-meaning Aly the Black-had become the terror of all the inhabitants of that large and wealthy country.

For more than eight months this horde of brigands evaded the activity of the Russian police, and eluded the vigilance of the troops who were sent in pursuit of them in every direction. Nor did the promised reward of a thousand roubles for the capture of any one of the band, or the whole of them at the same rate, nor the still greater premium of five thousand roubles for the head of Kara Aly himself, produce any more satisfactory result; until at length, upon the earnest solicitations of the people, and with a view to dissipate their apprehensions, which were hourly increasing, the Russian government resolved to employ more efficient means to exterminate a system of plunder and terror which had so long existed.

In consequence of these extended arrangements and increased means, Theodore Trazoff, the Assessor of the district, succeeded in capturing the formidable chief on the 1st of November, 1837, together with five of his accomplices, and a young woman, who, in the report to the Minister of Justice, dated January 18, 1838, is stated to be either his wife or his concubine.

In Russia criminal cases are always investigated on the spot by a commission specially appointed for the purpose, empowered to examine July.-VOL. LIII. NO. CCXI.

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