language. It may be recommended as an agreeable variety in the usual routine of school-books, both in academies and private classes; forming a pleasing relief to their monotony of reading, which is generally too much confined at the outset to subjects of a purely instructive and historical character, and is therefore likely to weary the young mind by requiring so much unremitted attention. The effusions of M. de la Voye, on the other hand, are for the most part of very moderate length, and of a mixed description;-epistolary, narrative and poetical; - many of them displaying much spirit, united to considerable ease and humor. A few are in the form of letters, detached fragments, portraits, descriptions, and adventures, with hasty sketches of life, which correspond with the title of the work, and may be taken up at any 'Spare Moment.' Several, however, assume a rather loftier style; particularly the poetical portion, in which are some forcible and touching descriptions, adapted almost to any age. CORRESPONDENCE. If J. S. S. will re-peruse, and with more attention, the article to which his letter refers, he will perceive from the context that the passage criticized by him is not intended to bear the meaning which he has attached to it; and consequently his argument is without a basis. Solus, also, we think, is unfortunate in his cogitations. Let him quit his solitude, and learn the opinions of others, to counteract his own crude notions. We agree with Dramaticus that the circumstances, which prevented the representation of Mr. Shee's tragedy of Alasco, are worthy of full notice from the public; and we are sorry that we have not had it in our power in the present Number to pay adequate attention to them, and to the merits of the play itself as it now appears in a printed form. The Editor has transmitted to his coadjutors several letters from correspondents, to which he has not yet been furnished with replies. He is not, therefore, chargeable with the delay, or the apparent neglect. The APPENDIX to this volume of the Monthly Review will be published with the Number for May on the first of June.. ART. I. Mémoires des Contemporains, &c.; i. e. Memoirs of ART. II. Mémoires des Contemporains, &c.; i. e. Memoirs of FROM ROM the nature of this publication, it bids fair to be of interminable extent: for, although the pages of our Journal have recorded a hundred histories of the French Revolution, the subject is not and perhaps never will be exhausted. Death, indeed, has laid his impartial but inexorable hand on the greater number of those who took a prominent part in effecting it, or in counteracting its progress: but many others are yet living, and have been spared to record events in which they were themselves concerned, as well as to collect the narratives of their companions in peril and misfortune. If it be the evil of contemporary biography that it is prone to indulge in the flattery of a patron, or in the vituperation of a rival obnoxious perhaps for his political or religious creed, so it is one of the evils of contemporary history that it is necessarily tinged more or less with the passions, prejudices, and party-feelings of its author. The reader of contemporary history looks at events as tourists sometimes look at landscapes from the banks of Windermere APP. REV. VOL. CIII. Gg or or the heights of Skiddaw, through Lorrain-glasses of various tints furnished them by their guides: the green gives a melancholy, cold, and moonlight aspect to the view, even under a July sun at mid-day; while the bright yellow deprives the forest of its gloom, and the deeper orange throws a momentary warmth even on a snow-scene. In a work of this sort, which is to collect the narratives of detached events relating to Republican and Imperial France by individuals unconnected with each other, as little or no attention can be paid to the chronological order of events, so it appears that equal inattention will be given to regularity in publication. The volume before us is the fourth livraison, while the third is merely announced for publication in the course of next January. The first contains "Memoirs of General Rapp;" the second consists of the "Manuscript of 1814, prepared under Napoleon's Order by his Chief Private Secretary, Baron Fain;" the third is to include "Memoirs of M. L. G. Gohier, President of the Directory on the 18th of Brumaire, relative to the Events of that Day;" and the fifth is to present us with "Memoirs of the Literary, the Public, and the Private Life of Mirabeau," &c. &c. All this does not comprize the whole extent of plan contemplated; for the editors devote a portion of their work to Foreign History, and we have the pleasure now to introduce to our readers a production of peculiar interest at the present time, relating to Greece. The subject of the fourth livraison, however, has lost much of its interest, for it is the history of certain unfortunate emigrants who were wrecked on the coast of Calais in November, 1795, and of the proceedings which were instituted against them as prisoners. The account is extracted from some unpublished Memoirs by the Duke de Choiseul, who was one of the sufferers, and had been a personal and devoted friend of Louis XVI. On the night preceding the 12th of August, 1792, when that hard-fated monarch was imprisoned in the Temple, the Duke found himself, by an order, separated from his master: at the frightful period of the September massacres, he was outlawed; and the offer of a reward for his head was posted on the walls of Paris. His mother had already fallen a victim to grief and terror; his father, and his near relatives the Duchess of Grammont and the young and beautiful Princess de Monaco, had all perished on the scaffolds of Robespierre; and his two young children were now bereft of the common means of subsistence. Finding that France no longer afforded him protection, or even personal safety, he quitted his country on the 20th of September, 1792, and came to England, with the intention of raising a regiment, and of going to India; having obtained such permission from the British government, who were then at war with Tippoo Saib, and were on the eve of attacking Seringapatam. The neutrality of Hanover was recognized at the latter end of the year 1795; and the English troops there, together with some foreign corps raised on the Continent, received orders to embark at Stade. The Duke de Choiseul's regiment consisted of 1200 men; and he had also at the time of embarkation, under his command, some squadrons of new raised regiments, with a corps of chasseurs of Lowenstein, about 1400 strong. On the 12th of November, the fleet, consisting of more than eighty transports, two frigates, and two corvettes, set sail; the English, bound for their native shores, reached them in safety: but the troops under the Duke's command, and destined for the East, were overtaken by a dreadful storm on the night of the 13th; and the Calais Gazette announced that forty vessels were driven on the coast, of which thirty-seven had got off, but the remaining three had stranded. About 200 men perished: of those who were saved, a number of emigrants were recognized; and among the latter 66 one Choiseul" and " one Montmorency." The troops thus shipwrecked were suspected to have been destined to co-operate with the royalists in La Vendée, and the destitute sufferers were now regarded as emigrants taken with arms in their hands. It was a question of great interest at the time, how these prisoners were to be considered and treated and the various proceedings on it, which, during more than four years, occupied the attention of the Directory, the different tribunals, the Council of Five Hundred, and the Council of Antients, are here brought together. The poor wretches had been flung on the waves at midnight, literally naked, by the wreck of a neutral vessel (Danish), on board of which they were. Mercy was not the order of the day in France at this time: but, as individual sympathies were never more strongly excited than at this period, so never were more numerous and more touching instances exhibited of individual devotion; and the Duke de Choiseul experienced at Calais, from some of his old comrades in arms who had served under him, traits even of a dangerous degree of interest in his welfare. The English government also took a very active part in endeavoring to effect the liberation of the Duke and his companions: for they sent over commissioners to the Directory, offering in exchange a prodigious number of French prisoners; and they exhibited certificates to testify the terms on which he had engaged in the British service, namely, that he should never directly Gg 2 directly or indirectly serve against France. All would not suffice, however; and pleadings and counter-pleadings, the transfer of the cause from one tribunal to another, and of the sufferers from one prison to another, were adopted for the plain purpose of inflicting punishment at all events, whatever might be the ultimate course taken. A decision was at one time obtained from the Council of Five Hundred, so far in favor of the sufferers, that an order was issued for their re-embarkation and transport to a neutral country, viz. Hamburgh: but, before this order was carried into effect, it was frustrated by the Directory; and the poor creatures were now doomed to privations more inhuman and imprisonment more horrible. The tri-consular government of Bonaparte and his colleagues at last shed a beam of light on the frightful fortress of Ham, where M. de Choiseul was confined under the vigilance' of a savage, called General Pill. The Duke contrived to write a letter to his aunt, the Dowager-Duchess, representing the atrocious conduct of this person; and, by folding it round a stone, he was enabled to throw it over the ramparts, trusting his fate, as it were, to the very winds. It was picked up by a kind-hearted female, put into the post-office, as directed, and happily reached its destination. On reading it, the Duchess instantly repaired to the house of Madame Bonaparte, where she found the Minister of Police, Fouché, and M. Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely; and in a short time afterward the First Consul entered the apartment. The indignation expressed by Bonaparte was participated by his ministers: not an hour was lost on the very next morning, an order was sent, signed by Fouché, and was published in the Courier Universel, requiring the Commissioners of the Department to examine into the truth of the prisoner's complaints. This was followed in a few days by a consular decree, declaring that these emigrants had been shipwrecked on the coast of Calais, and that it was contrary to the laws and usages of civilized nations to profit by such a melancholy and inevitable accident. The prisoners were accordingly once more ordered to be conveyed to a neutral country. There is often as much grace in the manner of doing a kind action as there is kindness in the action itself. As soon as the decree of liberation was signed, Bonaparte ordered M. Maret to communicate the fact to Madame de Choiseul; and he paid every possible respect to the rank and station of the Duke himself, placing him under the protection of one of his aides-de-camp, General Platel, who executed his commission with the utmost delicacy and liberality. Madame Bonaparte, likewise, with her accustomed kindness, communicated the |