upon the stage as having experienced a sudden change of heart, and become a convert, as by a miracle, to the ways of religion and virtue. The same preposterous reformation occasionally finds a place in compositions of modern date. The reasons which have induced many writers, by no means unskilled in the science of human nature, to construct their dramas on a plan so unnatural, are evident. Following the bent of his own contaminated mind, or solicitous only to suit the taste of a corrupted audience, the author conceived immorality seasoned with wit to furnish the most copious and attractive fund of entertainment. He formed his plot, drew his characters, and arranged his incidents, accordingly. His cata strophe was to turn on the usual hinge, marriage. But though he had, without scruple, exhibited his hero through four entire acts, and three quarters of the fifth, as unprincipled; yet in the final scene to unite him unprincipled as he was to the lady of his wishes, a lady too whom it had been found convenient to represent throughout the drama in a much more respectable light than her intended husband, was an indecorum too flagrant to be hazarded. For form's sake, therefore, it was necessary that an instantaneous reformation should be supposed to be wrought in his heart. Let the female sex be assured, that whenever on the stage of real life an irreligious and immoral young man is suddenly found, when on the eve of matrimony, to change his external conduct, and to recommend himself by professions of a determination to amend; the probability that the change is adopted, as in the theatre, for the sake of form and convenience, and that it will not be durable after the purposes of form and convenience shall have been answered by it, is one of those which approach the nearest to certainty.' Mr. Gisborne strongly admonishes his female reader against the iniquitous character of a coquette, in the following terms: To delude a young man by encouraging his attentions for the pleasure of exhibiting him as a conquest, for the purpose of exciting the assiduities of another person, or from any motive except the impulse of mutual regard, is a proceeding too plainly repugnant to justice, and to delicacy of sentiment, to require much observation. On such subjects, even inadvertence is highly culpable. What, then, is the guilt of her, who deliberately raises hopes which she is resolved not to fulfil ! We hope and trust that there are yet many women in this country, hitherto a favoured seat of the domestic virtues, to whom this work will be an acceptable present. In the collec tion of Greek letters published by Aldus Manucius, in 1499, those of Theano throw much light on the state of female character and accomplishment, in the most improved classes of antient society. May our author be yet more successful than. Pythagoras, and form his fair disciples to a yet higher culture of the character and the intellect } ART. ART. II. Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Re public, and of the eminent Characters, who have distinguished themselves in the Progress of the Revolution. 12mo. PP. 432, 5s. Boards. Johnson. 1797. T HIS very amusing collection of original anecdotes has anticipated by its sale the necessity for our tardy approbation : it will suffice if we select some passages, that are characteristic of the spirit of the work, and of such few men as are likely to preserve a perpetual importance after the foam of the revolu tion shall have subsided, The character of General Pichegru is accompanied with so much celebrity, that the following account of him cannot fail to gratify many of our readers: When hostilities with the Emperor were imminent, the want of Generals in France was matter of triumph to the aristocrats, and of despair to the patriotic party. The loss of Maillebois, de Broglio, and de Castries, was thought irreparable, and the fortune of the state entrusted to the driveller Rochambeau, to La Fayette, a partizan in the petite guerre of America, and to the stupid Luckner, who, after 30 years service in the French army, knew not enough of the language to return thanks for a compliment paid him by the Jacobins. It was natural, however, to suppose, that when the qualification of General was extended to the whole army, more would be found than when it was confined to a few individuals. And so upon experiment it proved. In every campaign we have seen private soldiers and even private citizens giving proofs of the highest military talents; and have often been astonished at receiving the news of a splendid victory along with the first mention of the successful General's name. Of these Generals, except perhaps Buonaparte, no one has gained greater renown than Pichegru. General Pichegru was born in 1761, at Arbois, in FrancheComté. His parentage was mean, but he received a good education, under the tuition of the monks belonging to a convent in his native town. Having made great progress in the abstruse sciences, he was sent by the good friars to teach philosophy, and the mathematicks, in a college belonging to their order at Brienne. This circumstance it was which gave rise to the ill-founded report of his having been a monk. He afterwards enlisted in the artillery, and soon rose to the rank of serjeant, the highest to which a plebeian could aspire; but when the Revolution came, and opened a road for untitled merit, he was promoted step by step to the command of an army. He had not been long in that eminent station, when in conjunction with Hoche, he marched to attempt the relief of Landau. Though it was in the midst of a severe winter, the attack on the Austrian positions was renewed day after day, with doubtful success. On the fifth Pichegru was seen in the front of the line, in the midst of a tre mendous fire, waving his hand and exclaiming, point de rétraite aujourd'hui, Cc 3 aujourd'hui, mes enfans! That day there was no retreat; and very shortly after Landau was relieved. At the beginning of the ensuing campaign, he was appointed to oppose Cobourg in the north; and ordered by Robespierre's committee to conquer. This imperious command, which plainly implied that the guillotine would be the reward of ill success, was accompanied by directions to press the Austrians in the centre, and to content himself with harassing them upon the flanks. Finding that the blood of his soldiers flowed to no purpose as long as he did so, he left Landrecies to its fate, and boldly ad vanced into the enemy's country upon Cobourg's left. The vic tories of Meucron, Courtray, and Hoogleden, justified this movement. Jourdan, who commanded the Sambre and Meuse army, under Pichegru's orders, being ultimately successful upon the right, Prince Cobourg was obliged to fall back with his centre, and abandon his conquests in French Flanders, as well as the whole of the Aus trian Netherlands. This campaign would have been still more decisive, if a plan devised by Pichegru and Carnot could have been put in execution. While a sufficient force was acting upon the front of the allies, and while fifty thousand men were guarding the passage of the Rhine, to prevent their receiving reinforcements, the army of the Moselle was to have fallen upon their rear. This plan, by placing Prince Cobourg between two fires, would have insured his total ruin, and have broken the sinews of the war at a single blow; but its execution was prevented by the necessity of incorporating the army of the Moselle with that of the north. Having thus rid himself of the Austrians, Pichegru turned to Holland, and availing himself of a seasonable frost, which gave his troops a free passage across the rivers and canals, pushed the British and Dutch army before him, and entirely over-ran a country, unconquerable perhaps in any other circumstance. In this long course of conquest, Pichegru made great innovations in the art of war. Contrary to the practice of other Generals, he never laid siege to a fortified place that was not necessary to secure his position. Instead of filling the enemy's ditches with the dead bodies of his best troops, he very wisely preferred driv ing their armies out of the field at much less expence of blood, and confident that the fortresses would afterwards fall of themselves.Pichegru was also the inventor of that system of incessant attack, which is so congenial to the temper of the French nation, and which so completely baffled all the deliberate plans of the coalesced powers. Of this system the value was well understood by the King of Prussia, who, in a letter to the Emperor, expressed himself in the following words :-"The French Generals pursue incomparable plans of operations, which disconcert and defeat all our projects." The official accounts that Pichegru gave of his victories, in which he seldom mentioned more than the result, formed a singular contrast with the rodomontade of the National Commissioners, who never * No retreat, my lads, to-day,' failed failed to call the enemy slaves and cowards; and to make thousands of them bite the dust, with the loss of some half dozen republicans. A great part of Pichegru's modesty is, however, supposed to have originated in a fear of exciting the jealousy of Robespierre and his associates. In spite of all this caution, a member of the mountain party reproached him at Brussels with the greatness of his reputation. Citizen Representative, answered the General, I perceive that aristocracy has only changed hands among us. Pichegru's humanity is no less honourable to him than his noble atchievements in the field. He constantly resisted the barbarous decree which forbad the giving of quarter to English or Hanoverians, as well as that which directed the execution of the Austrian garrisons of Valenciennes, Conde, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, if they did not surrender upon the first summons. This latter decree he meant to elude by not summoning them till they should be reduced to the last extremity; but he was over-ruled by the National Commissioners, to whom the brave Commandant of Le Quesnoy made answer, that he knew of no right one nation had to order another to dishonour itself. The mercy of the French Generals in sparing the lives of these devoted men, nearly cost them their own.-The ruffian Robespierre denounced Pichegru, Moreau, and some others the very day before his fall, and would certainly have pursued them to the guillotine, if he had not been brought to it himself. Holland being subdued, Pichegru took the command of the armies upon the Rhine; and made considerable progress in Germany in the following campaign; but at the end of it, the tide of war turned and drove him back upon the French frontier. This was the end of his military career. He was removed from his command, and offered the embassy to Sweden as a compensation. He thought proper, however, to refuse it, and retired to his native town in such narrow circumstances that he was obliged to sell his horses and camp equipage for his support. -- From this poverty, neglect, and privacy, he was rescued by his fellow Citizens, by whom he was elected a member of the Legislative Body in the present year 1797. When he took his seat, the whole Council of Five Hundred rose, as a mark of respect, and unanimously appointed him their first President. In the senate Pichegru was invariably in opposition to the Executive Directory; and continued to abet all the plans that were brought forward to favour the return of the emigrants and priests, till he was arrested as a principal conspirator in a supposed plot to produce a counter-revolution, and ordered by the Legislative Body to be transported without a trial! Pichegru is stout, athletic, and well fitted by nature to encounter the fatigues of war. Upon a first acquaintance there is something austere about him; but this roughness wears off with a little intercourse. Though by no means of a phlegmatic disposition, he is always cool and deliberate in his conduct. The extent and versatility of his talents were fully shewn by his taking the lead in the senate as well as in the field. In a word, though Pichegru may be a great traitor, it cannot be denied that he is a very great man.' Cc 4 Syeyes, Syeyes, we here find, is by no means in favor with his contemporaries. His indifference to individuals passes for contempt of mankind. He is said to have a pliancy of character which forfeits esteem, and an obstinacy of opinion which unfits him for party-co-operation. Unambitious of practical control, he covets intellectual dominion. He resigns, with monkish indifference, the riches, the places, and even the formal honors offered to him, but never relents in forcing a principle into practice, nor in carrying a theoretical dogma into effect. In a word, he is the high priest of political philosophy. Such men are the natural dread of statesmen, whose arbitrium they coerce, whose compromise with circumstances they condemn, and whose clumsy energies they reprobate, as deficient in that ideal neatness with which the imagination can drill and dişcipline a people to submit to any peculiar institutions. Statesmen, therefore, willingly cast on such men a vindictive obloquy, and vent in personal abuse their secret impatience of the invisible but useful bondage, in which they are held by speculations of disinterested benevolence. Syeyes has suffered by this instinctive enmity: but, when the number of radical ideas, of far and long branching plans, which he planted in the hot-bed of the revolution, shall be separately pointed out by future historians, he may expect from posterity a colossal elevation and a progressive gratitude. In the account of Gregoire, (p. 119,) no notice is taken of his meritorious exertions in behalf of universal toleration, nor of his very useful volume on the physical, moral, and political re-generation of the Jews. Lequinio (p. 144) is mentioned with undue tenderness. His conduct, when commissioner of the Convention, displayed that compound of audacity, cruelty, and lust, which is so common among the pupils of his opinions. We have heard enough of the arguments of this philosophy, to be aware that they are sufficiently plausible to collect a sect; and to produce complete conviction in those, who shut their ears to the doctrines of the rival schools-but, when we seek among its followers for an honest and good man, we want at noon-day the lantern of Diogenes. The inference from experience, against the tendency of mortalism and atheism, is not less glaring in modern Europe than in antient Rome. Some account of Madame La Fayette occurs at p. 198. This real heroine is a pupil of the Christian school; and she has exhibited, in circumstances the most trying, a fidelity to duty, on which the sainted shades of Eponina and of Lady Rachel Russell may look down with admiration: • When |