The preservers of ancient relics may take a lesson from this discovery of the value of History to Archæologists.

"The Queen had graciously received the envoy of General Rochemann, and had invited him to dinner. At the hour fixed the aide-decamp arrived in full uniform, wearing at his side a sword, which he was not long in making us observe. It was his favourite subject; he said that this sword, which was a very old and handsome one, had belonged to Richard Coeur-de-Lion. It had been found, he said, after his captivity in Germany on his return from the Crusades, and had been preserved with great care as a precious relic of such a valiant and illustrious warrior. The aide-de-camp wore it as a remembrance of his ancestors, who had transmitted it from father to son.

"The Queen, who had scarcely listened to our conversation, asked in a careless manner to see the sword, which we were passing from hand to hand, accompanying it with expressions of the admiration it excited in

us.

The Austrian officer presented to her the weapon, on which was actually engraved the name of Richard. The Queen examined it with great attention, and then returned it, saying very quietly that it was very handsome, and had very likely belonged to a king of England, called Richard the Third, but could not possibly have been worn by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, for among the ornaments on the hilt was the device of the Order of the Garter, which was not instituted till the time of Edward the Third.

"The Queen did not observe the stupefaction of the poor officer. I believe I was the first to understand the whole extent of his annoyance. A single word had sufficed to ruin completely the importance of possessing so precious a weapon; he saw vanish at once the authenticity of a title to nobility, which had procured him much politeness from several great personages, and particularly the favourable opinion of Englishmen, who always feel great interest in all that concerns their national remembrances. This sword had got him invitations to dinner, great attentions, and once the offer of a considerable sum, which he now most surely repented of not accepting. He must have regretted this discovery the more as it was now evident that the sword could only have belonged to the wicked Richard, who is accused, not without foundation, of the murder of his two nephews."-vol. iii. p. 343.

The sword of Marshal Ney was productive of a more serious catastrophe

"Marshal Ney was arrested on the 11th of August at the Castle of Bessoines, the property of one of his wife's relations. These are a few particulars of his arrest: the marshal had been some days in this retreat, when a Bourbonist of the neighbourhood, at a visit he made to the castle, observed in a corner of the room a sabre, which, from its richness and military emblems, he imagined to belong to some great military personage. In his opinion, the owner of this sabre could be none other than either Marshal Ney or Murat. From this clue it was guessed that one or other of these two illustrious fugitives was concealed at Bes

soines ; official information was forwarded to Monsieur Locard, prefect of Cantal, and to the under-prefect of Aurillac, who, seconded by a captain of gens d'armes, had the castle surrounded, and took the marshal, whom they immediately conveyed to Paris.”—vol. iii. p. 346.

Of Lavalette we hear little, of his wife less of the former we are told

"When he knew who composed the jury summoned to judge him, he bent down his head and said in the ear of his counsel, 'I am condemned!' Monsieur Tripier, who had the greatest confidence in the goodness of his cause, would not give any credence to these sinister words; when, therefore, he heard the terrible declaration, he was so overwhelmed that he fell back on the bench, where, being a short man, he was almost out of sight. Lavalette, turning at the moment the words to the pain of death were being pronounced, gave him his hand, saying, 'After all, my friend, it is but a cannon shot.' Saluting with his hand the officers of the post who had appeared as witnesses, he said to them in the kindest manner, 'Farewell, gentlemen of the post-office.'"-vol. iv. p. 120.

Of Fouché as a dreamer the anecdote must be new; here is his letter to Mademoiselle Cochelet

"Dresden, June 5th.

"You have good reason to believe that you made a conquest of me; I dreamed that I had also made a conquest of you, and this dream is not without some reality, as you will see.

"We were walking together, last week, in the outskirts of Constance; the heat of the sun drew us towards the lake, and in an instant I saw you in the middle of the water, and, plunging in after you, brought you to the shore. As a good action always has its recompense, guess what will be mine!"-vol. iv. p. 196.

We conclude with two little anecdotes

"At the time of the marriage of the Emperor Jerome with a Princess of Wurtemberg, kings stood waiting in the anti-chambers of the Tuileries, which caused Monsieur de Montesquiou to say to the emperor, when the latter reproached him, generally so punctual, for being ten minutes behind his time, 'What was I to do, sire? in crossing the apartments, I was stopped by a crowd of kings, who all asked after your majesty's health."

"At this great epoch foreign kings and princes flocked to Paris; the primate was of the number; during his stay in the capital, he had contracted the habit of repairing every day to the house of the witty Fanny de Beauharnais, god-mother to Queen Hortensia; she was an old and esteemed acquaintance of his. He generally spent an hour there; he never took leave of her without pressing sometimes one, sometimes both his cheeks to her's. One day, when the separation had been more affectionate than usual, the primate went from Fanny de Beauharnais to the Tuileries, where he had been invited to dine with the emperor. He had scarcely entered when a footman, approaching respectfully, told him that his cheeks were quite red. His highness immediately remembered the farewell embrace of his old friend, and turning to a mirror, saw that

bis face was coloured by the contact with the rouged cheeks of Fanny de Beauharnais. Having remedied this disorder, or rather excess, of toilet, he causes himself to be announced to the emperor, of whom he asks permission to give a pension of 1200 francs to a valet of his majesty's, who, by a timely hint, saved him from a ridicule which could not have failed to attach to him; the primate then related what had happened at the house of the empress's relation. The emperor and the company laughed heartily; but he to whom the affair was the most agreeable and advantageous was the valet, who they say did not blush to accept the primate's bounty."-vol. iv. p. 325, 326.

We must however make room for one reminiscence of Talleyrand-.

"The members of the imperial family might have expected all sort of chicanery from him. It is stated that the animosity of this diplomatist against all that related to the emperor, arose from a misadventure he had had in consequence of the return from the island of Elba. He was then at Bern as French minister, and gave a brilliant evening party, at which several amateurs performed a comedy; he himself took the character of a miller, and in order to be more correct in his costume, he covered himself with flour from head to foot; he was white all over, clothes, hands, and face. As he was about to come upon the stage, and promised himself much applause, a secretary of embassy approached, and delivered him a packet. What did it announce ? The disembarkation of the emperor in the gulf of Juan. This was a thunderbolt for the ambassador. Without taking time to change his clothes, he dismissed the party, and, with his secretaries, occupied himself all night in expediting despatches to his court, as well as to the different cabinets of Germany. This engaged him till day-break; presently, some one knocked violently at the door of the house; it is opened; and in comes Monsieur **** ambassador from one of the German courts, who, absent from Bern since the day before, had returned in haste, and presented himself to his colleague to ask him the details of an event which was in every body's mouth. What was the astonishment of his German excellence, on entering Monsieur de Talleyrand's closet, to see him dressed as a miller. As the carnival had long been over, he thought that this disguise was the effect of a too early apprehension.

"This anecdote ran through the whole city, and since that time Monsieur de Talleyrand was never designated by any other title than of the ambassador-miller."-vol. iv. p. 96.

The style of these volumes is slight, and they are serviceable chiefly, as already observed by us, in displaying the general amiability of Madame Hortense, and the system of scandal so active and widely ramified through French society, where every report, however obviously impossible, obtains ample belief throughout its day. The details we have quoted assist our impressions, and give fair, though slight and incidental lights into characters for whom once all the world was a stage.

ART. III. A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing, by Peter L. Du Ponceau, LL. D.: to which are subjoined, a Vocabulary of the Cochinchinese Language, by Father Joseph Morrone, Roman Catholic Missionary at Saigon; with References to Plates, and Notes showing the Affinity of the Chinese and Cochinchinese Languages, &c., by M. de la Palun and, a Cochinchinese and Latin Dictionary, in use among the Roman Catholic Missions in Cochinchina. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1838.

THE short existence of the United States of North America as an independent nation, and the fact of that existence having been engendered in a high state of civilization, has naturally led, on the part of the American nation itself, as on that of its contemporaries in Europe, to a considerable degree of invidious comparison. The newly-formed people, conscious of individual intellect and civilization on the one hand, and of collective energy on the other, has been but too prone to forget that the first aim and business of nations, as of individuals, must be to assure the means of existence by internal exertion and increase of the necessaries of life; and thus progressively to concentrate such a mass of provision and its resources, of wealth, and of numbers, at home, as to render its commercial, and next, its political relations with other powers, an object of national interest abroad. The rapid progression of domestic colonization and agriculture, the ceaseless development of manufacturing and trading activity, and the eager spirit of enterprise and speculation thus generated and borne with avidity into foreign lands, have secured for America a broad basis of stability at home, and a weight and consideration amongst the ancient states of the eastern hemisphere totally unparalleled in the history of the world. But, comparing with honest and rational pride her actual growth and extraordinary development of resources, the American nation appears in some measure to have overlooked the fact that growth and maturity were necessarily successive; and that in the physical as well as political world the activity of the limbs impedes to a certain degree, though it cannot altogether prevent, the loftier efforts of the mind; and therefore, that the highest class of intellectual exertion, requiring the absorption and concentration of all the mental faculties for its own object and purposes, though likely to need an occasional stimulus from physical motion, was yet incompatible with a general system of movement. While foreign nations therefore, and England in particular, supplied the staple of American literature, the latter claiming,

and with justice, the earlier triumphs of British achievements as, equally with ours, her just inheritance of fame, yearned also for intellectual distinctions of her own; and felt and resented with a national and pardonable prejudice the apparent injustice when her writers in a common language were not admitted to the full participation of modern British literary glories.

On the other hand the rapid and eager development in America of energies and resources already alluded to as unparalleled in the pages of history, created in the older world, and most of all in Great Britain, a feeling of jealousy on some points, and a tendency to disparagement on all. England could not behold the successful rivalry in commerce of her own political offspring without an indefinite sense of doubt for the future and of mortification at the remembrance of a portion of the past. She was therefore no way disposed to grant to her forward child a single concession that could be fairly withheld from her; and to the claim for literary distinctions she replied, as Leonidas to the Persians' demand for arms- "Come and take them." Equally in either case the first assumptions of an untried power could expect no other answer.

But with nations as with individuals, a state of mutual distrust and irritation is less often the result of malevolence than of mutual ignorance. A freer inter-communication is re-knitting the ties which war and jealousies had broken asunder; and perhaps in the political as in the human frame, the union of the severed parts, if not carried on through precisely the same channels as before, may yet be confirmed and maintained by an increase of vessels at each point, multiplying simultaneously on both sides, and sympathetically and instinctively seeking and uniting with each other. The name and fame of Washington Irving in Great Britain were tangible evidences to the United States that no mean jealousy of her literary powers depreciated the merit of her writers amongst the English. The author in question, it is true, won golden opinions from ourselves by his eager and almost sacred veneration of this his ancestral land; but in all cases of irritation a generous concession on one side produces corresponding concession on the other; and our "nation of shopkeepers" rendered the truth mathematically demonstrable to their brethren of " the stores" by the irrefragable evidence of hospitality and money. The heads of houses vied with each other in their welcome to the stranger: the peers opened to him their doors; the booksellers their purses; and all was triumph and gratulation, from Melbourn to Murray.

If of all literature the wings of imagination were foremost in crossing the broad Atlantic, the praise which has since attended