the danger of hasty judgments upon what is foreign to our habits, as
of amusing the reader. The knightly Sir' first occurs to us, of
which it has been seen that M. Mézières deprives Scott, but by
no means him alone; Sir William Temple and Sir Robert Wal-
pole being similarly reduced to the familiar appellations of William
Temple and Robert Walpole; but then, in return, Squire Western
is gratified with the questionable honour of being designated as
Sir Western. Mézières considers Smollett as the novelist next in
favour to, if not the rival of, Scott at the present day; his Com-
modore Trunnion, it should seem, is a faithful picture of the living
commodores of England, while his and Sterne's gross indecency is
to us inoffensive. One notion, less properly belonging to our
subject, we must remark upon, before we turn to the German pro-
fessor, because it has of late been so incessantly repeated by French
writers, that we are weary of passing it by in silent contempt.
M. Mézières catches at an assertion of Sir William Temple's
respecting English impatience of privation, as confirming General
Foy's assertion that the courage of English soldiers depends upon
abundance of beef and superabundance of rum.
Now we appre-
hend that even Frenchmen scarcely possess the same physical or
mental energies when fainting with inanition as when healthfully
fed; indeed we know upon good authority that

"No Tartar e'er was fierce and cruel
Upon the strength of water-gruel,
Though nothing can resist his force,

If first he rides, then eats his horse :"

but we think the battle of Talavera might go far to prove that English soldiers, when nearly starved to death, fight quite as well as other troops in the same condition, and not much worse than well-fed Frenchmen.

Dr. Wolff's mistakes are of a different kind, and with the mention of one or two of them we conclude. This critic, after placing Lady Morgan at the head of English poetesses--above Joanna Baillie, we believe-tells us that her father Mr. Owenson (the actor) ruined himself by his passion for the theatre; that Wordsworth's poetry is admired by is admired by the million" and censured only by superior judges; and that Crabbe's Tales of the Hall are written in Alexandrines!

ART. VII.-Vie Politique de Maréchal Soult, par Alexandre Sallé. 8vo. Paris. 1834.

It is impossible to deny that the French are a vivid people, exhibiting from time to time extraordinary ardour and activity, and

singularly capable of exerting a beneficial, or a hazardous, influence on Europe, according to the direction of those qualities. But it must be owned, that the splendours of the national character are exceedingly periodical; that, if one age is dazzled by their cometary brilliancy, or thrown into alarm by their eccentric course, the cometary interval follows, and we have to look long, and long in vain, for the returning effulgence of the phenomenon. To the observer of France at the present day, no trace of the France of the preceding quarter of a century is discoverable. A universal mediocrity has usurped the space once filled by the wild but prominent and powerful forms of public character, under the stimulus of political change. The daring vigour of the Republic is gone, the stern but splendid ambition of her Empire has vanished on the winds. The memorials of both meet the mind in every recollection, institution, and feeling of the people. Yet no existing representative of either is to be detected among the living varieties of the national character. Is France one great Père La Chaise, where, in the midst of the monuments of conquerors and legislators, the walks are traversed by holiday groups come to amuse themselves with the sculptures and inscriptions; a region of the dead, where all that is high and historic is dust, and where all that still breathes the breath of life is frivolous, nameless, and formed only to be forgotten?

But, without urging this impression to any extent injurious to the good feeling due to a nation on friendly terms with our own, it is equally undeniable and curious, that, since the war, the production of remarkable public characters in France has been rare; or rather, that all those who can have any hope to be remembered are the fruit of the Republic and the Empire. Political disturbance, public pressure, and, above all, a national war, have been in all lands the great exciters of a national mind. Nature is impartial, and there probably is not much original difference in the abilities and nerve of any people of Europe. All depends on the time, the impulse, and the leader. Italy was once the great warrior of Europe. Spain then entered the field, and was the universal model of arms. Switzerland followed, and for her day was the unrivalled champion. The feeblest states in succession flourished in the front of European history. The languor, effeminacy and ignorance of the Portuguese were once activity, manliness, and knowledge. Under the inspiration of their Henries and their Albuquerques, their land was too narrow for their heroism, and they grasped alike at the empire of India and Africa. The empty and masquerading Venetians were once the lords of European and Asiatic commerce, the boldest navigators, the most enterprizing warriors, and the most profound and powerful statesmen

of their age. Even from the fogs and morasses of Holland a spirit rose, which, entering into the sluggish frame of the Dutchman, made him, for the time, the ardent soldier, the unwearied discoverer, and the sagacious and fearless patriot. The days of glory have come, and gone, over all in succession; but not as the sun ascends and goes down on all. A finer and more incalculable influence has regulated the greatness of nations. The shooting of a meteor, stooping suddenly from the depth of midnight, and pouring radiance over some peculiar region below; the sweeping of the gale over some peculiar tract of the measureless ocean, and rousing it in its strength, while none can tell "whence it came or whither it goeth;" the brilliancy of the aurora, at one while flooding the hyperborean world with light and colours dipt in Heaven, at another, deserting the north and kindling the equator with living glories; or any other image of fitful and fantastic power or lustre, that lives and vanishes by moments, awakened from what source we know not, and acting altogether beyond human direction, would be the truer emblems of the great influential causes of national renown.

The life of the eminent French soldier whose name heads this article, is written in the spirit of party, and with the palpable determination to break down, for his offences to party, the reputation which he has earned by a long life of public services. Without feeling any unnecessary respect for the habits, personal or political, of Marshal Soult, we may predict that this attempt will be altogether ineffectual beyond the hour. Party is always either blind or frenzied, either incapable of seeing facts in their true light, or wildly bent on fabricating them into the extravagant shapes, and dyeing them with the glaring and discordant hues, which a disordered imagination loves. But Soult's fame has been built on a foundation which, with every Frenchman on earth, is alone equivalent to immortality. He is the living representative of the glories, sad and fatal as they were, of the conquering time of France. Second was he only, if second, to Napoleon in military skill; and he will no sooner be laid where neither friendship nor enmity can break his slumbers, than all France will be weaving wreaths, sculpturing trophies, and making harangues, over the last and proudest name of her "grand army," the departed Genius of French war.

We shall give, as a matter of curiosity, a sketch of the really extraordinary, indefatigable, and brilliant soldiership of this remarkable personage. The time will come, when details of such a career may form some of the most interesting features of human history. If the world should have the wisdom to make peace the universal policy, the annals of a warrior like Soult will be regarded,

like the annals of a being of another region of existence, some spirit of restless vigour and vividness whose only purpose was to exhibit his faculty of distinction and destruction. Should the world, unwarned by the follies and miseries of the past, again plunge into war, such a career may show how long and how powerfully the glories of the field have been anticipated, and how feebly, after all, they protect their possessor from public ingratitude, and from the keen vexations that beset the declining years of him who has lived only for the breath of popularity. But in whatever point of view they may be taken, there can be but one impression of the talent, daring, and intensity of purpose, of which the human mind is capable, and of which the subject of this rapid memoir forms the example.

Nicholas Jean de-Dieu Soult, was born at St. Amand, in the district of Tarn, on the 29th of March, 1769, a year made memorable by the birth of the three greatest generals of modern times; Napoleon having been born on the 15th of the following August; and Wellington, the conqueror of both Soult and Napoleon, being also born in 1769. His origin was humble, but not degrading. He was the son of a steward, or village notary, who had served, and who, though he had not risen higher than the rank of a serjeant, seems to have been a man of education and integrity; at least possessing sufficient of both to be taken into the confidential employment of one of the neighbouring nobles, the Marquis de Dulac. Young Soult thus received probably more than the usual advantages of French education; but nature had destined him for a soldier. The army was the favourite path to honours in all times of France. Its popularity had become more striking since the American war, and in 1785 the son of the notary, who if he had remained in his village might have been a notary to this hour, set his foot upon the first step of that ascent which led him to the rank of Marshal of the Empire, Prime Minister, and, more eminent and envied distinction still, fixed him among the names that live in the light of French re

nown.

The activity and intelligence of the young soldier were no sooner called into exercise than they attracted notice. The war had scarcely commenced, when Soult was raised by Marshal Luckner to the rank of a regimental officer. In 1791, he was appointed second lieutenant of grenadiers in the battalion of the Upper Rhine. All was republicanism at this period, and republicanism was all clubs; the new officer saw his way, flourished in the club of the regiment, and declared his civic opinions in the first-rate common-place of republican oratory. "Let all Frenchmen stand together," was the sentiment," united by the

bands of the law, and the ties of fraternity. Let us remain under arms to defend the freedom which we have conquered. Let us remember that the tyrants would rivet our chains the faster for our having broken them," &c. concluding, of course, with," Let us live free, or die for the cause of the country." The sentiment was popular, and it gained its reward. The regiment appointed him, by acclamation, adjutant, which was soon followed by his promotion to a company. Soult now rapidly distinguished himself. His conduct in an affair against the Germans, next year, was so conspicuous that he was put into the temporary command of two battalions appointed to a difficult position in the hill country of the Rhenish frontier. Hache, a man of military genius, had no sooner put himself at the head of the army of the Moselle, than, with an evident sense of his value, he immediately attached Soult to his staff, and employed him to conduct the attack of one of the fortified camps of the enemy. The selection was justified by its success. The lines were stormed, the enemy's colours taken, and the chief part of the opposing corps made prisoners.

The French army had scarcely plunged into the Palatinate, when Soult was raised to a rank not only of the most confidential nature, but giving the fullest opportunity for the display of those talents which were to form the future marshal. He was ap

pointed head of the staff of the advanced guard of the army. A large portion of the first French successes was due to the rapid rise of the officers. Promotion was at once the cause and the effect. Intrepidity, intelligence, and ardour, were sure of their reward. The gallant son of a ploughman might aspire to the highest honours of the most dazzling life that ever inflamed the vanity, ambition, or patriotism of man. The son of the Marquis Dulac's steward was now in sight of the foremost prizes of military fame. Within five years, he had started from the ranks into the command of a division. Within the last of those years, 1794, he was successively lieutenant-colonel, adjutant-general, and colonel. In the celebrated battle of Fleurus, which broke the power of Austria in the Netherlands, the young Colonel made himself remarkable by an instance of that coolness of judgment, which is perhaps the rarest, yet the most important, of all qualities for command. As the day advanced, an Austrian division made a desperate charge on the battalions of the Ardennes, forming the detached corps of Marceau, whose death, some time afterwards, caused such general lamentation. The French gave way, and Marceau, though one of the most gallant men in France, was in consternation. The flight of the battalions had left the flank of the French line exposed, and all was visibly on the point of ruin.