pervade the ranks of the veteran bands which Frederic had conducted to glory. It appeared as if the royal hero felt pride in exhibiting their admirable evolutions to the French observer. Those of the cavalry above all excited his astonishment; the columns, advancing in full gallop with incredible speed, were able to make an opening when they approached him, as if he had been some terrific gulph. Cool and intrepid in the midst of the dusty whirlwind, and charmed with a spectacle so instructive, he was alive only to admiration. He was at last persuaded to be introduced to the king. When in the presence, Frederic said, "They have informed me that you were desirous not to see me, though you do not hate me."-" Sire, I feared to look a great man in the face, and my littleness sought concealment." "These qualities do not belong to us. I am informed of your worth, and I would gladly be of use to you."-" With a strong mind, and few wants, your majesty is not ignorant that one enjoys the tranquillity of the sage."" Yes, but I know your situation. You are free; trust your destiny to me, and accept of a company of dragoons in my service.""Ah! sire, I fall at your feet with gratitude, but what would your majesty think of me, if after my education had cost the king my master ten thousand livres, I renounced his service? A younger brother from Gascony, I have nothing more noble to give him in discharge of my debt, than a devotion which knows no bounds, zeal, and courage." "These sentiments honour you in my estimation. Well, be at ease; I will obtain permission for you to remain in my service till you are restored to your rank." "The more your majesty abounds in generosity, of which it is impossible that I should be worthy, the more am I emboldened to state that I am prompted by real delicacy not to avail myself of your powerful in fluence. It is under the triumphant eagle of Prussia, under him who rendered it such, that admiration would fix me, if I were not a Frenchman: but born with this fair title, I ought to preserve it free even from suspicion." Frederic applauded this virtuous resignation. At the end of three weeks the chevalier one morning imparted to the French minister the low state of his finances. He had scarcely touched on this point, before the ambassador thus thought within himself: "Behold the pretended philo. sopher, like many others, is come to the end of his part; he is about to apply to my purse; let me deliver him from his embarrassment by opening it to him."-" Do you chance to be in want of money?" the minister suddenly asked him. "Money! Oh! no, I have yet twenty crowns, I have wherewith to support me for two months: but they will be gone, and then I shall have nothing. A year's pension is in arrear to me; can you write to the minister of war, and get it paid to me at Berlin? If this can be done, I shall be able to extend my travels to Russia; if it cannot, I must return to France."-" Why should I not pay it to you in advance, and wait to be reimbursed?"—" I return you thanks, but that would have the appearance of a loan, and I never accept any. If they do not pay me, I must return to France; that will be all the inconvenience." The ambassador wrote: and when the time necessary in order to receive an answer had passed, he feigned that he was ordered to pay it from the funds of the embassy; the chevalier received the small pittance which he claimed, and set out for the north. For the Literary Magazine. JERSEY. THE small island of Jersey, in the English channel, exhibits, in many respects, a most extraordinary picture of prosperity. In some points of view, its condition is no. less disastrous and deplorable; and this union of good and bad circumstances in its condition is that which renders it so worthy of notice. The isle contains twenty-five thousand acres, or a little less than forty square miles. Its inhabitants, in 1771, exceeded twenty-two thousand persons, which, of course, is five hundred and fifty persons to a square mile. Now there is no single county in England, except Middlesex, whose proportional population exceeds this. The populousness of Middlesex evidently arises from its containing in its bosom the overgrown metropolis of the whole empire. Surrey and Lancashire, which, next to Middlesex, are the most populous, contain little more than half the proportional population of Jersey, that is, their numbers are between three hundred and twenty and three hundred and fifty to a square mile. A great population does not always prove a district to have a good soil, or to be well cultivated; nor, on the contrary, does a small population argue, necessarily, a bad soil, or poor culture; because, in the former case, the people may bring their bread and meat from a distance, and, in the latter case, their produce may be sent abroad, and consumed elsewhere. Two districts equally peopled and of equal extent, and deriving all their bread and meat from their own soil, may not be equally cultivated, because in one may be raised such products, potatoes for example, of which one acre produces a larger quantity, with greater certainty, than of wheat or barley, which may alone be cultivated in the other. Jersey, however, must be much if not well cultivated; that is, a very large proportion of the whole soil must be in tillage, because wheat, barley, and oats are chiefly raised; because none of its corn is exported; and because they import, in good seasons, no more than the subsistence of one third of the people. The island, therefore, finds bread for more than fourteen thousand five hundred persons. The actual number of acres in tillage has been ascertained to be about eight thousand acres, so that, in favourable seasons, one acre supplies bread to two persons. The remaining seventeen thousand acres are either uncultivable sand, clay, rock, or fen, or fallow ground, or employed as pasture or grass land for cattle, or set apart for roads, buildings, thickets, or forests. As the island is in general fertile, it follows that a much larger portion of the land than only one third, as at present, might be subjected to the plough or spade; that the sources of subsistence would be greatly augmented by the cultivation of potatoes, and other excellent roots; and that, instead of feeding only two thirds of its present population, comparatively vast as that is, it might conveniently maintain at least double the whole number. These islanders are said to suffer innumerable evils from a bad go. vernment badly administered. Despotism is constitutionally established; the people are deprived of all power in the choice of their civil and religious governors; their laws are absurd, contradictory, vague, and obscure, and their judges arbitrary, corrupt, and cruel: and yet the island overflows with people. Is it true, that a small or great population of a country has no connection with the form or spirit of its government? or what cause is it that makes this isle thus populous in spite of injustice and tyranny? The truth is, that the great population of Jersey is chiefly owing to the free tenure by which the land is holden, and the partibility of inheritances. Every proprietor may sell or divide his land as he pleases in his lifetime, and, at his death, it is divided among all his children or next heirs. The consequence of this is, that all large estates necessarily become small in a few generations, by being divided into many portions; that the whole commu nity are continually tending to the same level, in respect of property; and that marriage is powerfully and generally promoted, by every one's possessing some portion of real estate. This single circumstance has raised the population to its present height, in spite of an unjust and oppressive government. The population would proceed much further, a greater portion of the ground would be cultivated, a much larger product would be drawn from the same field, by the introduction of better modes of cultivation, and of more profitable objects of culture, such as beets, carrots, turnips, and potatoes, and by the application of a larger capital and stock to farming, if the government were more just, and the laws more equitable in themselves, and more impartially administered. At present, the people are discouraged and impover ished by excessive and pernicious taxes, by arbitrary fines and causeless punishments, by exactions without number, and by penalties without limit. They have no voice, direct or indirect, in naming the meanest officers of government, which is, in both substance and form, an attribute and consequence purely despotic. The land is sometimes divided into surprisingly small portions. In some instances, an estate of a hundred acres has, by incessant division, crumbled down to more than a hundred parts, consisting each of less than a single acre. On an average, however, the farms consist of ten acres, and various accidents continually occur to preserve them at this medium. What the thoughtless, the prodigal, or the rash fritter away into small parcels, the prudent, thrifty, and industrious collect together and amalgamate again. What a childless marriage preserves entire or augments, a numerous progeny divides: and these causes, operating alternately, keep things pretty much, upon the whole, at the same point. For the Literary Magazine. MILITARY STATE OF FRANCE. DURING the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII, France having no garrison towns except Metz, and no standing armies being maintained by any of the powers of Europe, the peace establishment was on a very small scale. When Henry determined to make war on the duke of Savoy, he had in readiness not more than 6 or 7000 infantry, 1500 horse, and six pieces of cannon. From 1600 to 1609 he had not more than 7000 men on foot. For the war of Cleves, for which he was preparing when he was assassinated, he was preparing an army somewhat under 50,000 men. In a reign of thirty-three years, Louis XIII was engaged in eleven wars, of which six were intestine, and he only enjoyed eleven years of peace. In time of war, this monarch had above 100,000 men in the field. Though the army was no more than doubled, the expences were quadruple their amount in the preceding reign; so great had been the depreciation of money during that period. At the peace of the Pyrenees, Louis XIV retained 125,000 men; and the peace establishment which succeeded the treaty of Aix la Chapelle was 6000 more. In the war terminated by the treaty of Ryswick, France had an army of nearly 400,000 men; and the peace establishment which followed did not exceed 140,000. After the peace of Utrecht, the exhausted state of Europe enabled the duke of Orleans to reduce the army to 132,000 men. In the successful war of 1733, the French force was little more than 200,000, the finest army which France ever had on foot. In the war of 1756, Louis XV had nearly 300,000 men in arms; at the peace of 1762 he retained nearly 160,000. In 1789, the army consisted of upwards of 163,000 men. At the be ginning of 1792, the nominal force did not amount to 140,000, while the disposable did not exceed 83,000. In 1792, above 120,000 Austrians, Prussians, Hessians, or emigrants, assembled in the Brisgau, the electorate of Treves, the duchy of Luxembourgh, and the Low Countries, and menaced the French frontier from Henningen to Dunkirk; which was defended by 40,000 men dispersed through the four camps between Laudau and Potentrui : by 17,000 encamped at Fontoi between Londwi and Thionville; by 18,000 men encamped near Sedan, whose commander, La Fayette, had just filed, leaving his army completely deranged; and by 18,000 more in the several camps of Maubeuge, Pont-sur-Samber and Maulde; in all about 93,000 men, and all agitated by the events of the times, enervated by four years of licentiousness, destitute of almost every means of carrying on war, commanded by new officers, and by generals without reputation, who were the objects of universal distrust. Dispersed along the Rhine, the Moselle, the Meuse, and behind the strong places in the north, they were remote from those points of attack at which their presence was indispensible. A want of confidence prevailed between the commanders and the soldiers; officers, privates, and even whole regiments deserted their natal soil, and joined the standards of the enemy; and at this period, also, the Swiss troops were dismissed from the service of France. Such was the state of things when the duke of Brunswick published his famous proclamations of the 25th and 27th of July, the offensive style of which united all parties against the invaders. The royalists, not less than the revolutionists, indignant at this arrogance which was sanctioned by no success, began to fear if not a partition at least a dismemberment of France; and thus all parties, however opposite in other respects, were agreed on the necessity of opposing the Germans with their utmost energy, should they invade the French territory. This was the weak state of defence in which France was found, when the great powers of the continent threatened her on all the points of her frontier; this was the origin of that inauspicious struggle, which has ended so fatally for Europe; and such was the feeble commencement of that military force, which has since become so colossal. The turn which affairs took may partly be ascribed to the judgment and zeal of general Servan, minister of war: but the efficient causes were the enthusiasm of liberty which had possessed the multitude, and the just calculations of the sober part of the nation, which united all hearts and hands in resisting foreign subjugation. The folly and temerity which characterised the outset of the first coalition, have, unfortunately for the peace of the world, too much infected all their future councils and subsequent measures. When the convention first assembled, the French frontier was either assailed or threatened by hostile armies to the amount of 300,000; which were opposed by numbers somewhat superior, but consisting, for the most part, of raw troops and inexperienced officers. In 1794, France had under arms nearly 1,100,000 men. In the short space of a few months, the war of La Vendee swallowed up 46,000. In 1796, the French armies were somewhat short of 500,000, and they continued on much the same footing during the ensuing year. In May, 1798, Bonaparte set out for Malta and Egypt, with 32,375 men, the flower of all the armies. On the breaking out of the second revolutionary war, the French troops were in a very reduced state; the public enthusiasm had disappeared, and it was necessary to have recourse to compulsion in order to recruit them. In August, 1798, it was decreed by the two legislative bodies that, while the country was in danger, every Frenchman was a soldier; and that an indefinite number, from the age of twenty to that of twenty-five, in the way of military conscription, should join the armies, if the number of volunteers proved insufficient. Persons married, or widowers having children, were excepted. The conscripts were divided into five classes, each embracing those of each year. This measure has since been made a permanent law of the state. In 1799, the armed force of France did not amount to 300,000 men, including 60,000 employed in the interior, and the Egyptian army; the disposable force being only about 200,000. In August, 1799, the two councils passed a law, which fixed the number of land forces at 566,420 men; of which 483,000 men were to be infantry, and 76,000 to be cavalry. The army of Egypt was not to be included in this number. In 1800, France had in active service 414,732 men; and in 1805, she had on foot 414,125. For the Literary Magazine. ANECDOTE OF LOUIS XV. LOUIS the fifteenth, though a flagitious prodigal of public money on national occasions, was a niggard on all occasions which affected him individually. He could not even bear to lose at play with La Valliere and Goutant. When unfortunate, he perceptibly murmured, and, to conceal his ill-humour, he would eat the wax from the tapers. The minute attention which he paid to his secret finances, which were managed by Bertin, proves how much he was infected with this failing. A thousand traits show that nature had rather formed him to be an attentive farmer general, living in the midst of pleasure and abundance, than to be governor of a great empire. A friend of Piron very well described him in his parody of an epitaph made at the time of his death by a celebrated academician : Ci git Louis, ce pauvre roi, Here lies poor Louis; he was good, they say; Was he indeed? But good for what, I pray? For the Literary Magazine. ANECDOTE OF CLERMONT TONNERRE. CLERMONT TONNERRE, bishop of Noyon, was a man of unmeasurable pride, and pushed his claims beyond all bounds. When preaching in his cathedral, he was once heard thus to commence his sermon; Listen, thou christian mob (canaille), to the word of the Lord. At another time, disturbed by the whispers of the inattentive, while he was celebrating mass, he turned towards the assembly, crying out: Really, gentlemen, judging by the noise with which you fill the church, one would conclude that it was a lackey and not a prelate of rank who officiated.-It was this bishop who, when seized with a dangerous illness, sent for his confessor, and made known to him his fears of hell. The courtly priest replied, "You are very good, my lord, thus gratuitously to terrify yourself: but God will think of it twice before he damns a bishop, it is said, was well satisfied person of your high birth." The with the answer, and very much admired it. For the Literary Magazine. ON TRANSLATIONS OF HORACE. HORACE is generally considered as the most untranslateable of writers. His poetry is, more than that of any other author, distinguished by the curiosa felicitas, that grace of language, which it is so difficult to catch and fix in any other tongue. Hence nobody can hope to succeed in making a mere translation of Horace. Instead of trans |