ing which they display was accompanied by a most lovely person, with all the proportions and the graces that nature can throw into a work which she takes delight in accomplishing."

We shall translate one of these letters, which appears to us suf ficiently to announce the circumstances that produced it:

"I told you that I have seen M. de Remy a hundred times, and it is true. I did not say that it was during my disguised residence at Paris; and I think I have often repeated to you that M. de Rohan and some of his friends were the only persons whom I had seen, and that, if proofs were wanting of what I said, they might easily be adduced. But, Sir, an explanation ap: parently is not what you desire; where a sincere wish for a reconciliation exists, disputes are not raised on so slight a foundation: afflicting things are not written to a person so unfortunate as I am: times are not chosen as you have chosen this, and the hazard is not incurred of quarreling with the object of affection for a mere fault of memory. You, Sir, are satisfied; I enter into all your motives; and my pretended falsehood [menterie] joined to the publicity of your journey hither, and the necessity which I impose on you of caution in regard to my interests, are too powerful obstacles to the continuance of our intimacy. Let us here break off an engagement, which can no longer be agreeable to you, after you have conceived so bad an opinion of me; nor to me, since you have made me thus acquainted with your ca. price. Had it pleased you to prolong it for

some months, I should have had less reason to complain of you: but without making reproaches, from which (I solemnly protest) I expect no good consequence, I confess to you that I placed so little reliance on my own constancy, that I have some pleasure in finding you the first to violate our sworn engagement, and to liberate yourself by a cruel manœuvre of which I should have thought you were incapable. I enclose to you a letter which I had written to you yesterday, to justify my conduct up to this time. Send me nothing more hither, for I shall immediately depart. I will inform you if I stay; and, if I go, I will tell you

where I shall be."

This artful letter is followed by another still more acrimonious in its

terms, and by a billet which concludes with expressing her fears that she may "lose her patience, and that the pleasure of being always innocent may not support her for ever against the vexation of being so of ten insulted." The next letter, however, asks pardon of " her poor Boulay for the cruel things which she had written to him, and for the pleasure which she feels in having thus discovered his sensibility to her menaces;" and her poor Boulay, after this, becomes more enamoured and devoted than before!

The marchioness had letters of introduction to Gregorio Leti at Gesition from the duke of Giovinazzo, neva, who received a formal requithe Spanish ambassadour at Turin, to state what he knew of this distinguished lady. His answer is conveyed in four pedantick letters, full of extravagant admiration; in which he compares her mouth to a pearlfishery, her eyes to stars, and her neck to the milky way: but one passage is marked by uncommon naiveté. He declares that, when he was first dazzled by her charms, he ❝insensibly took leave of all his books and papers:" but she soon attracted the notice of magistrates, counts, marquises, and lords; who dressed in all their finery to please her, and whose gold and silver hilted swords were ever ascending and descending her staircase; "till at last," says he, "she thought no more of me; and I was obliged to resume my pen, and continue to write in my study the life of the prudent Philip the second."

We are in this volume unexpectedly presented with a "notice sur la vie" of this voluminous Gregorio; which imparts the consolatory conviction that Paris has its book-makers as well as London. But, altogether, this publication is curious and entertaining. Yet how can we recommend it to our fair readers, since it so unanswerably proclaims, Frailty! thy name is woman !”

he has universally been considered to deserve, at least, the second place in the history of his time; and as a man, he certainly excelled the rival of his military fame. His life furnishes, therefore, a rich fund of materials for an instructive and a pleasing history. Instructive, because it throws some light on a most eventful part of the last century, with which the future historian will intimately connect the changes which render the close of that century and the commencement of the present, so memorable:-and pleasing, because it is always highly gratifying to contemplate elevated stations in society, when occupied by persons of corresponding qualities of mind and heart. The biographer has, in such a case, no very difficult task to perform; fidelity and simplicity, in his account, will be sufficient to se cure the reader's attention: but, if he will deserve to excite gratitude as well as approbation, he must endea vour to lay open to view the leading principles, or main springs of action, in such great characters, and not conceal the faults and weaknesses which are intimately connected with every distinguished quality.

We do not think that the French, in general, possess this comprehensive and philosophical conception of character; and it has often appeared to us that even some of their best writers skim lightly over the surface, satisfied with the motive which is most plausible at first sight. On the other hand, their style of writing is peculiarly adapted to this kind of composition, and imparts, to their delineations of persons, an animation which we have often sought in vain in similar productions of our own own country. It must also be added, that they have not, as far as we have been able to inform ourselves, yet adopted the method of swelling biographical accounts by a long series of letters, many of which have but little or no connexion with the fate or character of the subject of the memoirs.

The account of the life of prince

Henry of Prussia, with which we are now to make our readers acquainted, possesses the merit of a simple, though animated style, and of a lucid, unaffected arrangement of facts. The anonymous author also deserves credit for his evident desire of telling his story without partiality; and the great moderation which he preserves on political subjects, keeps his pages unstained by expressions of haughty contempt or of strong invective against those who have been obliged to submit to the will of a foreign conqueror. To a place among biographies of the higher class, however, this production has no claim; it manifests no great skill in the art of estimating the real value of the conduct of man; and it betrays too great a facility in passing over those parts of it which, though not the most striking in the eyes of the world at large, are yet truly characteristick, and very important to the attentive observer of human nature. We would not be too strict in our demands on the morals of princes, and would make every allowance which the disadvantages of their situation, in this respect, can claim: but, before we decide on bestowing praise or blame, we cannot help inquiring for certain qualities, even in royal personages, which often remain unnoticed by their friends, as if the possession of them could not add to their merit, nor the want of them derogate from their virtues. Praise in general terms, however, is so cheaply acquired by princes, when the question refers to private virtue, that it has lost its effect; and, rendered distrustful by experience, we entertain, perhaps unjustly, some suspicion, whenever a biographer contents himself with such compre hensive epithets of approbation. We regret so much the more that this is the case in the present memoirs, because several circumstances in the history of the prince of Prussia have a tendency to sanction such doubts. The retired petty court of Rheinsberg may certainly have been as

much the scene of dissipation and corruption, of some kind, as the more splendid court of Potsdam; and many persons, at least in this country, will be ready to suppose that the adoption of French customs and manners, the introduction of a French theatre, and the metamorphosis of domesticks into actors or musicians, neither bespoke nor contributed to purity of morals. We would, nevertheless, rather warn against, than encourage such hasty inferences, which are but too common, and rest frequently on a want of sufficient knowledge of the circumstances.

The works of Frederick II. and the various histories of his campaigns that have been published in French, have furnished the materials for the first part of these memoirs; but the author does not inform us whence he derived the rest, except that he hints once or twice at a personal knowledge of the prince, and mentions an unpublished correspondence of that personage, with several men of distinction in France, during the first period of the revolution, which fell into his hands.

We will now proceed to introduce our readers to a nearer acquaintance with the subject of this work.

Frederick Henry Louis, commonly known by the name of prince Henry of Prussia, was born January 18, 1726. Little is here said con, cerning the earlier years of his life and his education, probably because but little is known and still less is worth recording. Under the eyes of a father who was himself devoid of science and refinement, and despised what he did not posses or even know; prince Henry (his favourite) was early trained to military habits: which, while they impeded his mental improvement, preserved him from the corrupting insinuations of flatterers, and the dangerous intercourse with idle caterers of effeminate amusements; since, under the first three kings of Prussia, the military life was not a life of idleness, At the age of fifteen, he lost

his father, and in his sixteenth year he made his first campaign, as a colonel, under field marshal Schwerin. After having given proofs of talents and of valour in the two Silesian wars, he carefully employed the period of peace between 1745 and 1752 in supplying the defects of his earlier education; not only by studying the theory of war, but enlarging the sphere of his mind by general information: without which, he must have easily perceived, he could not creditably occupy a place at a court which was then the theatre of genius and polite literature. Respecting the success of his exertions, his biographer remarks:

"It may be said that prince Henry was born with all those qualities, which others seldom acquire even after laborious and painful efforts. Gifted with an ardent imagination, with a mind the most correct and particularly addicted to reflection and calculation, with a firmness of temper always disposed also towards good, with a prodigious memory, and with dispositions equally happy, his progress could not fai of being rapid; and in fact, within a few years, he acquired such universal knowledge, that he would have been able to support a thesis on any subject. His curiosity, or rather that avidity for instruction which is the food of great minds, extended itself equally to the ornamental and the useful arts; and in the midst of the attention which he bestowed on all that could nourish and strengthen his intellect, he found time for acquiring the arts of musick and painting."

a

In 1752, our hero married princess of Hesse Cassel, and received from the king the small principality and castle of Rheinsberg.

Among the military exercises by which prince Henry prepared himself, during the calm of peace, for his future career, was what his biographer calls a war of pens between him and his elder brother Ferdinand. Supposing a war to exist between Prussia and her neighbours, they undertook the command of the. respective armies on paper; and, by regularly exchanging two letters in a week, they informed each other of

the movements which they had chosen to make: adding to these letters the necessary plans of their marches, camps, sieges, and other operations. This military pastime, whatever may have been its immediate advantages, proves at least that the celebrity, to which these princes attained as warriours, was in a great degree the fruit of their early and assiduous attention to the military science. They were, however, soon called from imaginary to real fields of combat; and the seven years' war gave full scope to the natural talents and acquired abilities of prince Henry. Those events of that contest in which he had a share are related in the work before us, with great clearness; and, as many readers will probably think, with too much minuteness: but the praise bestowed on the prince is perfectly sanctioned by the united voice of military men, who have expressed their opinion on his conduct. In the art of defensive warfare, the author considers him as equal to Turenne and William III. and his defence of Saxony in 1758 is termed " a career in which every step affords a lesson and every example supplies a model."

Prudence and vigour are qualities seldom united in a due proportion in one person; and the cooperation of different individuals, respectively gifted with them in a superiour degree, has more frequently secured success in every kind of warfare, The impetuosity of Frederick II. was often wisely corrected by the cooler calculations and more careful movements of his brother; but we may also justly conclude, though the present author would probably not agree with us, that prince Henry was more useful as second in command, than he would have been as the first; and it appears to us, beyond a doubt, that, under the circumstances in which at that time Prussia was placed, Frederick was the fitter and the greater general. The prince, however, rose undoubt

edly far above the king in the gentle and amiable traits of character, which so highly adorn the hero. The humane conduct of a hostile army, but particularly that of the commander, very soon gains the hearts of a people, and receives their willing tribute of gratitude and ready submission to unavoidable burdens We have ourselves heard, but a few years ago, the praise of prince Henry repeated in the country in which he had long resided as an enemy; and these praises, which have descended from father to son, have contributed to cherish among them a respect for the Prussian name.

After a review of the events of the seven years' war, we find the following parallel drawn between the two brothers; in which perhaps some allowance must be made for a little partiality, from the consideration that it is particularly prince Henry in whom the author wishes his readers to feel an interest:

"Frederick, active, bold and impetuous, throwing over every object the fire of an ardent and restless imagination, was dis posed to put all things to hazard, rested the fate of his dominions on that of battle, and seemed desirous of always provoking the destinies of fortune. Henry, less lively without ever being dull, charac teristically wise and moderate, and at the same time resoluto and determined upon principle, submitted every thing to calculation, and expected nothing from fortune, yet always enchained her in his plans. The one seemed to act by sudden illuminations, and to be guided by the influence of genius: the other never stirred but after deep re flection, and all his steps left traces of the most correct judgment and views. The former astonished and disconcerted his enemy, but often also roused and reani mated him; the latter always lulled, weari ed, and deceived him. Both by the wontalents surmounted the greatest dangers, derful resources of their courage and their and could equally profit even by the fickleness of fortune: with this difference, that` Frederick defied danger and precipitated himself into it, often without being aware how he should get out of it; and that Henry calculated it without fearing it, and a. voided it without running from it, and managed so well that he always escaped from it. Thus it has been seen that the one,