moving anecdote of Princess Potoka, or by the charming influence of Princess de Beaufremont, but by the masculine form and the masculine mind, expression, and action of Madame de Stäel, who, in all she said, attempted to impose, and presented the phenomenon of a lady having her heart in her head.

Our dream was soon over. It passed away as rapidly as the reality, and as almost all the members of that distinguished and charming society which has left us the most lively recollections. The Marquis de Custine, though he survives, as well as the talented and modest Count Elzear de Sabran, is the only one we had well nigh forgotten; and, at the sight of his book, we naturally felt a predisposition in its favour, and anticipated a double pleasure; first, that of being interested and pleased by its perusal; and, secondly, that of paying, in some sort, a debt of gratitude in praising the merit of the author, and expatiating upon the worth of his work. We must confess that we were sadly disappointed; so much so that, at first, we imagined that a mistake had been committed; that the author was not the Marquis, but his first cousin, the Comte de Custine, from whom, (having read his work, 'Les Bourbons de Goritz, et les Bourbons d'Espagne,') we had no right to expect any thing worth reading. We felt relieved by the doubt; but we were too soon convinced that there was no mistake, and that both the Marquis and his cousin were engaged in one and the same conspiracy against right, truth, justice, and common sense. Indeed, the perusal of these three volumes was the most painful task we ever had to perform; a perpetual transition from indignation to disgust; from contempt to pity.

Had we yielded to the first impulse, the books would have been returned as unworthy of notice. Our second thought was to expose the delusions, the follies, the misrepresentations, and the inconsistencies, which form the matter of the work, and to inflict upon the author the severe castigation he so well deserves or to sink him under the foppishness of his extravagant performance, by retrenching from the three volumes the harassing repetitions which recur in every chapter, and by reducing them to their real dimensions-two sheets of extravagances, of contradictions, of pride and egotism, and of religious, monarchical, aristocratic, and patriotic cant-the whole dressed in the newest fashions of the style romantique. We felt encouraged, in pursuing this course, by a sense of our duty, not to the English public merely, but also to the general cause of truth, of freedom, of national rights; yet, at the conclusion of our labours, we saw that their only result was to make the Marquis an object of aversion and of ridicule; and, thinking that, in a review like ours, we ought to tend to a higher aim, we consigned our pages

to the flames, and set to reconsider both the work and the author, for the purpose of making them the subject of useful, we hope, not to say philosophical dissertation.

The very title of the work is deceptive; but such deceptions are now the admitted privilege of authors and publishers; and we mention the fact only to state what the title ought to be: 'THE MARQUIS DE CUSTINE IN THE EMPIRE OF THE CZAR.' This being understood, it naturally follows that we must-first investigate the subject; show what the Marquis is; then why and how he undertook and performed, and afterwards wrote and published his travels; finally, why such a silly production has been translated and published in English.

As to the first question, the work before us does not afford sufficient elements for its solution. M. de Custine indeed says something of his family, but with little regard for accuracy or even propriety, and only so much as suits his purpose. We therefore must have recourse to our own recollection and to public documents, to perform our task of exhibiting, not merely what the Marquis de Custine is, but also how he has been made what he is; how his birth, his education, his family connexions, and the political events that have occurred in his time, have all contributed to throw his mind into such a confusion as to render him unable to form an accurate idea of any thing whatever; not even excepting himself, or the signification of the words of his own language.

The Marquis de Custine is descended from an ancient family, which, however, is hardly mentioned in the historical records of the French monarchy. His grandfather furnishes the first and the only illustration of the name. When eight years old, he was made a lieutenant; and twelve years afterwards the Duke of Choiseul, first minister of Louis XV., created a new regiment of dragoons, to which he gave the name of Custine, and of which his young protegé was appointed colonel. When the French government declared in favour of American independence, Custine exchanged the command of his regiment for that of the regiment of Saintonge, in order to take part in the war; and he distinguished himself by his bravery under Marshal Rochambeau. Elected, in 1789, a member of the General States, he, with the minority of the deputies of the noblesse, joined the plebeian deputies, advocated in the constituent assembly the most extensive reforms, and showed himself an ardent friend of liberty. In 1792, he was employed in the army of the Rhine, and had the command of it, after the resignation of Rochambeau, and the departure of Kellerman to join Du Mouriez in the Argonne. Whilst Kellerman, according to the orders of his chief, followed in their retreat the Prussians discomfited at Valmy, General

Custine took upon himself to march upon Mayence, and towards Franconia. A series of disasters followed his rapid success. In his official correspondence he accused Kellerman, his equal in command, at the head of another army, and his own subordinate generals, of not having seconded him. The extreme ardour of his republican principles, however, and the support of the Girondists, maintained him in his command. When the Girondists succumbed under the attacks of Robespierre, Marat, and the Montagnards, Custine not only deserted their cause, but also, to show his devotion to the triumphant party, sent them the letters which his fugitive friends, preparing a movement in Normandy, and General Wimpfen, had written to him, to communicate their plans and claim the support of his army. Notwithstanding all this, the generals he had denounced accused him in their own justification, and the Convention sent three commissioners to investigate the matter and observe his conduct. Custine treated the commissioners, and especially Merlin de Thionville, with such hauteur that he made them all his enemies; and, on their report, he was summoned to Paris, to account for the events of his disastrous expedition, sent before the revolutionary tribunal, and sentenced to death. His last moments were remarkable for the weakness he displayed, in singular contrast with the undaunted courage of the generality of the victims.

The son of the General, although very young, was a much superior man. His education had been attended to by his mother with the greatest care. At twenty-three years of age, he was entrusted with a secret mission, to offer to the Duke of Brunswick the command of the French armies against the coalition of Pilnitz. He failed in this foolish negotiation, and, in the following year, was appointed ambassador at Berlin, where he was not admitted. Immediately afterwards, he placed himself under the command of his father, accompanied him in his expedition, and went with him to Paris, where he conducted the defence of the General with a talent and an intrepidity which elicited the admiration of their enemies themselves. His intimacy with Condorcet and most of the Giroudists, to whom he remained faithful in their proscription, subjected him also to an accusation before the revolutionary tribunal. After hearing his sentence, he wrote during the night to his young and beautiful wife one of the most touching letters ever penned under such circumstances, and next morning ascended the scaffold with the serenity of a man sure of the admiration of posterity.

The lovely and devoted widow was shortly afterwards arrested, and remained in prison until after the fall and the execution of Robespierre; when, being set at liberty, she contrived to leave France with her son, and repaired to Switzerland, where she

met her mother and her brother, who had emigrated, at the beginning of the Revolution, and with whom she remained until the Republican Directory, yielding to the impulses of humanity, mitigated the laws against the emigrants, and allowed them to return to their country.

Our author was two years old at the liberation of his mother. Her tears, her mourning, were the first impressions made upon his mind during his infancy. She not only did not tell her son the causes of her grief, but also had commanded the subject never to be mentioned to him. The servants, however, scarcely ever spoke to him of any thing but the misfortunes of his family: so that his earliest intercourse with the world filled him with terror, and his 'first sentiment was that of a fear of life.' The circumstances of the family were not calculated to allay this feeling. His youth was passed in poverty. The involved and complicated state of his mother's affairs constantly kept them suspended betwixt fear and hope, and, meanwhile, struggling with want at one time, riches appearing within their grasp; at another, some unforeseen reverse, some chicanery of the law, depriving them of every prospect of improvement. And, what must have considerably aggravated the animosity of the litigation, and consequently confounded or obscured his notions of the bounds and duties of consanguinity, their principal adversaries were his own paternal relatives, who disputed with him the inheritance of his grandfather.

On the maternal side, another cause had opened another, though hardly less violent, source of discord. The young Marchioness of Custine had embraced the patriotic principles of her noble-minded husband, while the rest of the family, and all their acquaintances, were decided anti-revolutionists. The intole

rant partisans of the old regime detested a name tainted with liberalism. They could not forgive the Custines the part they had taken in the national struggle; and the misfortunes of the family did not seem to them a sufficient penalty for their desertion of the aristocratic cause. The Marchioness, therefore, was obliged to renounce the society in which she had hitherto passed her life, while, at the same time, she would not enter any other where she might meet with the murderers of her husband and of his father. Her highly endowed and tenderly affectionate mother, and her brother, were for a long time the sole companions and comforters of her widowhood. Thus is explained this sentence of the Marquis, one of the few worth quoting in his book: 'I felt from my infancy that my lot had been cast in a place of exile.'

It is easy to conceive that, in her isolated situation, all the affections of the unfortunate widow were concentrated in her

only son; that she hardly thought of anything but of him, and scarcely did anything but for him; that from boyhood the Marquis was constantly the object of her solicitude, and of that of his grandmother and of his uncle, as well as of the small but distinguished circle which they gradually drew around them; that his doings and his sayings were approved, admired, eulogized by all. Hence the egotism and conceit which the three volumes before us prove to be the characteristics of the author. This result would have been counteracted by the discipline of a public school, where, by mixing with boys of his own age and of all conditions, young Custine would have acquired a more accurate idea of his own value, and of the value of others; but his constitution was delicate, the discipline was severe, and, besides, the republican or imperial schools were not to the taste of the whole family. Thus he was deprived of the benefits of common education, and his instruction was limited to what, before the Revolution, it was generally considered sufficient for a marquis to know,-that is to say, how to speak upon everything with some readiness, or, as it is termed in the salons of Paris, effleurer tous les sujets, et tourner un vers. No wonder, then, if, not having been trained in a regular course of studies, in habits of serious meditation, in the pursuit of literary, historical, or scientific learning, he arrived at manhood, not only without the ordinary share of knowledge possessed by the generality of the young men of his own age, but also without the means and without even the desire of acquiring it, by subsequent application and perseverance.

Political events, and especially such as have taken place during the last fifty years, are full of the most useful lessons, and on many occasions have contributed more than all previous studies and all historical records to enlighten the mind, and to elucidate those great principles of social order for which all the nations of Europe are now contending against their rulers. But these events seem to have had a contrary effect upon the Marquis de Custine. He is completely ignorant of the causes, the purposes, and the effects of that revolution for which both his father and his grandfather fought and died. The range of his ideas is so confined, that he can hardly combine together a few principal facts, which, moreover, he generally reduces to his own dimensions; concluding on the whole, always with a most ludicrous inconsistency, often with the most malignant partiality. This, again, is the result of his education, and of his peculiar situation. The names of his father and of the General connected him with the Revolution, but these names were seldom mentioned in his youth; and he heard much more of St. Elzear de Sabran, the near relative and contemporary of