posed by Philip second Earl of Hardwicke, with the assistance of his brother Charles, afterwards Lord Morden, while studying at Cambridge. They were originally printed only for private distribution among friends, but were published in 1798, after the author's death. But the most popular work of the kind in the English language is Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, or Chinese Letters.

The censure which Chenier attaches to the works of Saint-Foix, appropriately introduces the praise which Sabatier gives it: "Ses Lettres Turques sont piquantes, même après les Lettres Persannes, auxquelles on les a jointes dans plusieurs editions." Indeed, the author's habits of thinking and speaking were too well suited to a work of this sort, to have failed entirely. But, unfortunately, in following the example of Montesquieu, he has also copied his defects, which in any case more easily imitated than excellences.† Like the Persian, his Turk expresses himself in the sceptical language of the day; though, as will be seen, the author became wiser as he grew older.

are

On the breaking out of war in 1733, Saint-Foix accompanied the army into Italy, as lieutenant of cavalry, and distinguished himself at the battle of Guastalla in the following year; but, not being able to obtain promotion, he left the service, and purchased the office of Master of Waters and Forests. In 1740 he settled at Paris, and from that time devoted himself to literature; supplying no less than twenty pieces to the theatre. Concerning these, La Harpe remarks, "Ce sont de petits tableaux de féerie ou de mythologie, qui sur la scène peuvent plaire aux yeux, mais qui n'ont rien de dramatique, et surtout rien de comique.' But Sabatier, whose profession would seemingly have led him still less to appreciate this sort of composition, has spoken in much higher terms. "Sa

The new French Dictionnaire Historique confounds the Earl of Hardwicke with Mr. Yorke of Erthig, author of

"The Royal Tribes of Wales."

The fatal facility of octosyllablic verse (as Lord Byron happily words it) has raised up innumerable imitators of Marmion and the Lay, and thus produced another race of Scotists.

petite comedie des Graces semble avoir été faite pour elles et par elles, de même que celle de l'Oracle paroît avoir été dictée par celui de bon goût. La Comédie-ballet qui a pour titre Les Hommes, est tout-à-la-fois le fruit du courage et de l'adresse. Jamais on n'attaqua plus fortement et avec plus de force, des vices consacrés par le pouvoir et la grandeur, et respectés par la flatterie et la fausse philosophie." The Abbé Sabatier was the determined enemy (and justly so) of the spurious philosophy of the last century; and therefore gladly caught at such an opportunity of expressing his sentiments. La Harpe observes, in his caustic manner, "Ces deux bagatelles (Les Graces et l'Oracle), et surtout la dernière, furent célébrées au-delà de toute mésure du vivant de l'auteur, par cette espèce d'hommes qui se plaisent à exalter les petites choses en haine des grandes." (Lycée, xi. 373.) La Harpe was latterly no friend to the philosophers, but perhaps both criticisms are just.

Sabatier further says, that of the twenty dramas which Saint-Foix produced, there was not one but what was applauded, and that deservedly. However, the silent decision of time has either pronounced differently, or has discouraged that class of dramatic composition. The only one of them admitted into the Repertoire du Théatre Français, is the Oracle, which both critics have mentioned particularly.

The principal work of Saint Foix is his Essais sur Paris (1754), originally published in separate volumes. These Essays present a picture of French manners from the time of Clovis to that of Henri IV. Their style is pleasing, but they want method. Sabatier, who seems to delight in praising the author, says, "Mille traits singuliers présentés avec adresse, y flattent la curiosité et saississent l'esprit du lecteur. Les réflexions en sont naturelles et quelquefois neuves; et si la critique n'en est pas toujours agréable." He is right in saying that exacte, le style en est continuellement the criticism in these Essays is not always just, for they contain much that is rash and erroneous, besides matters that have no connexion with the title. Of this the author was not

unaware, but by his effrontery he frightened into silence the critics who had ventured to expose his assertions and errors. He threatened them, cited them before the courts, and at length, as De Feller remarks, "il faisoit tout ce qu'il falloit pour rester en paisible possession de bavarder impunément; ce qui ne lui a que trop réussi."

This work closes with some historical disquisitions on the famous Iron Mask, whom the author supposes to have been the Duke of Monmouth, but fails of proving his opinion.

A continuation of the Essays was published in 1786, by the Chevalier du Coudray, but it did not satisfy the admirers of Saint-Foix. His nephew, Auguste de Saint-Foix, has since published "Nouveaux Essais sur Paris," 2 vols, 8vo. 1805.

Having studied the history of France, without some knowledge of which his Essays could not have been written, his proficiency in it obtained him the appointment of historiographer to the Order Du Saint Esprit. In this character he published its history in 1767, (2d edit. 1774, 2 vols.) a compilation of facts and anecdotes, relating to the eminent persons who had been decorated with its insignia.

Saint-Foix, on leaving the army, did not abandon his military habits, but maintained the unenviable reputation of a duellist, and his adventures in this way were numerous. From his irascibility and insolence, it may be presumed that he was generally in fault, and doubtless it is well for his fame that the stories concerning this part of his career are disappearing from memory. His quarrelsome temper caused him to be regarded as a bully. Not that he was devoid of rectitude, but he was harsh, unreasonable, and impatient of contradiction, so as to be frequently involved in disputes, even with his friends. In his company, it was impossible to praise such authors as he did not admire, and, even if they were the first among his countrymen, he could not refrain from shewing his humour. An anecdote, related by M. Delaporte, exhibits him as a nuisance in society, if he often behaved as he did in that instance. Being one day in a coffee-room, where some person was dining on a

bavaroise with a piece of bread, he exclaimed," What a wretched dinner!” and repeated the words till they drew the person's notice. A duel, as might have been expected, was the consequence, and Saint-Foix was wounded. Still he could not refrain from impudence. "I own (he said) that you are brave; but acknowledge, on your part, that it was a wretched dinner!"

Saint-Foix died at Paris, August 25, 1776. La Place has described his character in two lines, composed in the form of an epitaph.

"Hargneux, vain, inquiet, et ne sachant qu'écrire,

Ci-gît qui n'etait bon qu'à lire." His works are comprised in six volumes octavo, 1778. When Sabatier terms him ingenieux écrivain, dont le coloris vif et délicat a su embellir tous les sujets qu'il a traités," he has said enough in the way of praise, as far as the style is concerned, for the words are a counterpart of Johnson's eulogy of Goldsmith, Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. But it would be unjust not to mention, that the mind of Saint-Foix had greatly improved since he affected irreligion in the Turkish Letters. The following passage, (which occurs in the fourth volume of his Essays,) addressed to the philosophers of the last century, should be recollected in connexion with his memory.

"Petits aigles, qui planez si dédaigneusement au-dessus de vos chétifs compatriotes, nouveaux phénoménes dans la litterature, je prends la liberté de vous considerer dans votre apogée, et je crois m'apercevoir que les rayons de gloire ne sont composées que de paradoxes, d'idées singulières, de traits contre votre nation, et d'un vernis d'irreligion.

votre

Il me semble que la vieille morale de l'Evangile vaut bien celle de la nouvelle philosophie."

2. The elder brother of Saint-Foix was the celebrated advocate DuparePoulain, who was born at Rennes in 1701, and died in 1782. He became batonnier of his order, king's professor of French law, and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michel, and also obtained letters of noblesse. He published a

Otherwise Poulain-Dupare. His name was Augustin-Marie.

was instituted, than essays on Probabilities, the Integral Calculus, Dynamics, Equations, and Algebra in all its branches.

Such abstruse treatises, which have worked no profit save to the authors of them, will sufficiently account for the decay of the Society, and its gradual progress to extinction, in lending its name, and the little that attaches to it, to the avowed editor of an interminable biography, for the correction of the innumerable blunders of which, as regards the small specimen hitherto published, I would recommend the exercise by your learned Correspondent Mr. Bolton Corney, of his practised critical acumen.

But revenons a nos moutons,-to dilate on the inaccuracies of facts and inferences in the chapters on Russian polity and policy would occupy a larger portion of your columns than any occasional correspondent is entitled to claim; in a future letter I may be tempted to go more into detail, suffice it for the present purpose to point out the more general errors which pervade this professed view of the constitutional history of Russia.

The besetting sin of the author is his neglect or ignorance of almost every writer on the subject except Voltaire, whose life of Peter constitutes the staple of the information given, and one more false and fallacious, as well as mendacious, could not have been selected; while at the same time, by a singular but characteristic inconsistency, the author designates the memoirs of Peter as not among the most creditable writings of Voltaire, whose eloge, however, is comprised in a note, bolstered by the authority of Robertson, against whose judgment may be quoted the forty-head intellectual power of Johnson or of Warburton, the latter of whom designated Voltaire as the shallowest of scribblers.

Two dynasties only are represented as having reigned in Russia, viz. that of Ruric, commencing in 862, and succeeded in 1613 by the now reigning house of Romanoff; and repeated allusion is made to the supposed uninterrupted succession of the imperial crown for nearly eight centuries in the descendants of Ruric, when the more accurate supposition would have been GENT. MAG. VOL. XIX.

that each sovereign constituted a dynasty, the Russian throne of that pe riod being well designated by a French writer, as neither hereditaire electif, but as occupatif.

nor

The better opinion of well-informed historians now is, that Ruric, and his ten or twelve nominal successors, are of the same fabulous order as the seven Kings of Rome, and their hundred brace of consular successors, Ruric himself being a Romulus, but without a Remus, and, until this eloquent Useful Knowledge revival of him, without a Livy.

I do not too much admire the coxcombry of some modern travellers in their endeavours to adapt Russian words and names to English pronunciation; but the unaccountable misnomers in these treatises is truly ludicrous, and very absurdly so, because, without any approximation to the Russian standard, they are unreadable in English; as one of at least fifty instances, the chamber of nobles, Boyarski Dworetz, is metamorphosed into Boyarshir Dvortsh.

The tragical incident of Peter the Great's cruel treatment of his eldest son Alexis, for counteracting all his schemes of civilization, is more than once insisted on as a most unheard-of atrocity, and which would not have been endured in any other country in Europe; apparently quite forgetting that a similar but more unprovoked outrage on humanity was perpetrated by Philip of Spain, towards his son Don Carlos. By an extraordinary blunder, the transaction of Peter's causing the death of his son, is designated as leaving on the Czar's memory the stain of parricide.

After an exaggerated exposition of Russian policy, the author, with much naïveté, adds, “we are stating a plain matter of fact, and not merely giving vent to invective or flinging about sarcasms;" apparently unconscious that such little incidents do occasionally occur with the author, and that conscious innocence would have prompted no such disclaimer.

In utter ignorance of Storch's picture of Petersburg, and of subsequent authors and travellers, it is stated that the entire police force of that city, containing 600,000 inhabitants, consists of no more than 150 men; and on

G

referring to the unusually long list of errata, I do not observe any direction to add a zero to that number, and which would bring it much nearer the truth.

The number of exiles sent into Si. beria by the Empresses Elizabeth and Anne is grossly overstated; while the account of Catharine II. is couched in terms of virulence and rancour, and with a morbid feeling which might emanate rather from an exiled Pole, than a cool and unimpassioned historian. It was the fashion some thirty or forty years ago, among the great vulgar and the small of English society, to load her character and actions with the coarsest abuse. Since which period, her merits as a great and benignant sovereign have been better appreciated; like her prototype, Elizabeth, she committed no public crime but for the maintenance of her questionable position on the throne; and, in the too great indulgence of her private foibles, she never inflicted, as Elizabeth did, death, as the penalty of unrequited love. As Empress of Russia during a reign of upwards of thirty years, she conciliated the warm and devoted affection of her subjects of all classes, the unaffected homage of the universal republic of letters, and the respect of foreign nations to a greater degree than can be recorded of any monarch since Louis Quatorze.

Yours, &c. VASSILI VASSILOVICH.

MR. URBAN,

Walham Green, Dec. 19.

IN the year 1830, under the signature of Suthriensis, less frequently annexed to communications to your pages than that which I now append,

I was the first to call attention to the

proposed demolition of the Lady Chapel, St. Saviour's, Southwark : a little spark, struck out by an humble hand, produced eventually a great flame. I had soon the pleasure to see the preservation of the Lady Chapel made a matter of public importance, and, by the zeal and perseverance of Thomas Saunders, esq. F.S.A., aided by the public spirit of individuals of

*Gent. Mag. vol. C. part i. p. 103, and Proceedings of the meeting for preserving the Lady Chapel, Appendix, p. 37.

feeling and taste, the Lady Chapel was restored, and will now, probably, for centuries, remain an ornament to the metropolis, and a model for students in Gothic architecture.

The ancient buildings of our land, as the monuments of our history or our Christian faith, are the property of the nation: they cannot in these days be demolished or desecrated without exciting the warning voice of an enlightened, brave, and Christian people-a people who never forget the records of their history, secular or ecclesiastical, who look at the buildings erected by their forefathers as so many tangible witnesses of its truth.

With considerations like these, it gave me great pleasure to peruse, in the Bury and Suffolk Herald of Wednesday the 14th instant, the report of L. N. Cottingham, esq. architect, of the condition of the fine old gateway tower of the dissolved Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury, now used as a campanile or belltower for the church of St. James in that town, and popularly called "the Saxon Tower." Mr. Cottingham describes this edifice as a beautiful specimen of Norman architecture, erected soon after the Conquest. It has, it appears, suffered little in the lapse of seven centuries from the hands of innovators; neglect or injudicious repairs alone have reduced it to its present precarious condition, if we except the erection of some modern houses abutting on its western front, which have done some injury, their timbers being let into the lower portion of the tower. spected the edifice from the bottom to Mr. Cottingham has minutely inthe top, described its four stories, the

which are likely to be fatal to its stability; and concludes his elaborate report with an estimate that the whole effectually repaired for the sum of building may be substantially and 2,370l. A vestry of the inhabitants of Thursday the 15th instant, to take the St. James's parish was called on matter of the repairs into consideration; when not only has the undertaking, I hear, been strongly opposed, but the temporary measures immediately necessary for the present security of the venerable edifice withheld; so that should such counsels ultimately prevail, the ruins of this majestic tower

thickness of the walls, the defects