some; that is to say, of that noble and manly beauty which is seen in the inhabitants of the south of Europe, and which served as models for the fine statues of the ancients. The modern Germans are what Tacitus describes their ancestors to have been they are almost all pale and insipid, and their mind has not the energy to be expected from their strength and tall stature. In consequence of the progress of civilization and concentration of power, they will certainly acquire, says M. Marcel, more vivacity of mind, and more vigour of character.-Amongst the projects conceived by Joseph II. that of ameliorating the treatment of the insane is worthy of distinction: he gave considerable sums for the establishment of an hospital, where the insane might receive all necessary assistance; and this hospital is supposed to be better regulated than any in Europe. Though the Germans travel a good deal in the interior of their

country, there are not so many con veniencies for travelling as in England,or even in France. TheGermans, who do every thing negligently, are never quick enough for travellers; besides the roads are not well kept in repair, nor are the post-horses good enough for expedition. The proper time for travelling is when the snow is on the ground, and the sledges can be used; then all obstacles disappear, and the severity of the cold obliges the guide to second the impatience of the traveller. It is not uncommon to go a league in twenty or twenty-five minutes, and sometimes in less; in these sledge-journeys it is very essential not to give way to sleep, which softly steals through the veins. If the traveller sleeps the cold overpowers him, and he perishes a victim to the severity of the climate.

In this analysis we have only men. tioned the principal objects; the work itself offers many other very interesting details.

Dr. Rudge is the minister of St Anne's, Limehouse, and evening lecturer of St. Sepulchre's. His defects as a reader are numerous, some of them are physical, and, therefore, irremediable, while others are merely the consequence of bad taste and mattention. His voice is sufficient to fill the church of which he is the evening lecturer, and I am inclined to believe that there are but few larg er in London; while the obstacles, which the dense mass of human be ings, with which it is always crowded when he preaches, presents to the conveyance of sound, must considerably increase the difficulties of the clergyman's duties. Dr. Rudge's voice, if every other quality was equal to its power, might satisfy the most fastidious, but it is monotonous and harsh; yet for these imperfections no blame is attributable to Dr.

Rudge; industry itself cannot accomplish impossibilities. His reading frequently degenerates into a drawl; in the pulpit, however, he is tolerably exempt from this defect. There is great room for improvement in his pronunciation, which I am convinced is partly the result of carelessness, as he often pronounces the same words correctly and incorrectly on the same evening. The aspirate he sometimes places where it had no previous existence. Another of his bad habits is the use of action in reading, which, to say the least of it, is unnecessary. Besides, Dr. Rudge suits the action to the word, both in the desk and in the pulpit; for instance, if he is speaking of heaven, he will point upward, and, if he is describing the emotions of the heart, he will place his hand upon his breast. These errors may be consi

dered by many persons as trivial, but as a breath will sully the lustre of a gem, so inconsiderable faults will sometimes impede the development of real talent. Of levity or inattention it is impossible to accuse him, he is solemn and devout while reading, earnest and impressive while preaching: some may even be of opinion that he is unnecessarily so, but this extreme is infinitely preferable to the other, as it usually owes its origin to the excess of religious feeling.

His sermons are not distinguished either for their beauties or defects; they are usually practical, and contain earnest exhortations to the discharge of the different moral and religious duties, scriptural expositions of the doctrines of christianity, and vivid representations of the pernicious results of a deviation from rectitude. He never dazzles by the brilliancy of his style, or the splendour of his ideas. As a theologian he is not remarkable either for the depth of his researches, or the novelty and ingenuity of his illustra

tions. He rarely interests the feelings, or displays what may properly be termed eloquence. In passing over such a mind as Dr. Rudge's, the critic must only lament its near approach to sterility, for, where the principal weeds are carefully eradicated and the soil refuses to produce or nourish many flowers, the sunshine and the storm are equally unnecessary. He evidently does not restrict himself to the study of theology only, the good effects of this are visible in his sermons, which present a variety entirely unattainable by those who pursue an opposite course.

The highest praise to which Dr. Rudge can aspire is that of a plain, sensible preacher; he selects those subjects for discussion which have the most general application, and explains them in a manner perspicuous to the meanest comprehension; he is, therefore, to the poor and uneducated classes of society a valuable and instructive teacher.

Dr. Moore is the vicar of St. Pancras, London. His sermons are particularly remarkable for their inequality in merit. Some are original in their conception, beautiful in their execution, vivid in their deline ations, forcible in their arguments, and ingenious in their solutions. Others, again, mock the efforts of industry to extract any thing from them to admire or to praise: exempt from such gross errors as would expose them to a rigorous castigation, they supply criticism with no materials whatever. Those among his discourses, which are composed by the irradiating hand of genius, are not confined to any particular subject. He vindicates the truths of revelation by irrefragable reasonings from the calumnies and misrepresentations of infidelity; a selection of those arguments best adapted to strengthen his cause, and a felicitous arrangement of them, are the chief excellencies of this class of Dr. Moore's discourses.

Those, which are intended to impress on his hearers the obligations

to moral actions, display the line of conduct he is advocating in the point of view most favourable to the development of its advantages. But there is no subject upon which Dr. Moore has delivered better sermons, than upon the sorrows incidental to mortality, those darker threads in the many-coloured web of human destiny. His descriptions of the woes, which renderexistence a desert, are replete with reality, interest and pathos. They are adapted to all the Protean forms of misfortune, and each individual may recognize the calamity which has preyed upon, perhaps destroyed his peace.

His eloquence is still more conspicuous in his consolatary addresses to the afflicted; deriving his arguments for resignation, from Him who bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows,' and borrowing for their assistance every charm of diction, every grace of language, he appears the delegated conservator of the heart from the inroads of despair.

In describing the characteristics of this gentleman's preaching, I

should be guilty of an omission if I neglected to mention the powerful

manner in which he sometimes excites and interests the feelings: this may partly be attributed to his impressive mode of delivery.

He is likewise pre-eminently distinguished for undaunted courage in the service of the cause he is engaged in. Though placed for years in the situation perhaps most dangerous to the independence of the preacher, (I allude to his employments at the Proprietary Chapels) he never for an instant sacrificed the freedom of his spirit, or yielded to the selfish admonitions of interest. Though he preached at one of the most fashionable chapels in the Metropolis, he was the untiring, unrelenting castigator of fashionable vices and follies in all their ramifications. He never wasted his eloquence in expatiating upon the enormity of those crimes, which the majority of his hearers had no temptation to perpetrate, but fearlessly attacked those delinquencies, which it was probable many of them were in the frequent habit of committing. For this trait Dr. Moore is entitled to the approbation of every one, who values independence or loves truth. To pass at once from the matter to the manner of his preaching. His sermons derive additional attractions

from the extreme gracefulness of his delivery. His voice, though monotonous and sepulchral, is full and powerful, and is so admirably modulated, that every sentence he speaks appears harmoniously constructed, and unincumbered with a single superfluous word. His action is elegant, his deportment solemn and dignified, his manner of speaking animated and energetic. He appears perfectly conscious of the high importance of the mission he is entrusted to execute, and deeply imbued with a sense of the dignity and authority of his office. Instead of limiting his exertions to merely reading his discourses, he commits a considerable portion of them to memory, and consequently approximates to that freedom from restraint, which constitutes so great a charm in extemporaneous speaking.

With a full-toned and well-modulated voice, a distinct enunciation, and correct emphasis, his reading must be good; but, in consequence of the increased latitude allowed by the pulpit to animation of manner, he is there heard to much greater advantage; in addition to this he reads too rapidly. Upon the whole Dr. Moore, as a preacher, is inferior to few if to any of his contemporaries, and is very superior to many of them.

CRITICUS.

S. R

THAT state of society and of literature, in which indiscriminate and excessive praise of Kings and Conquerors gave history the complexion of fable, has long past away; neither impunity whilst living, nor subsequent apotheosis, is the necessary portion of the hero; nor can his fame be permanently tarnished by the spirit of party, nor by popular ingratitude; the rulers of the earth are now weighed in the balance of intellect and virtue, and their fame is commensurate with the greatness of their exploits, and with the wisdom of their administration. The divine right of kings is now considered as the jargon of a barbarous era-Sovereigns and Conquerors are now but men and magistrates of the Commonwealth, each action is investigated at the bar of public opinion, and if the passions of the age soften offence or depreciate greatness, the page of history is the mirror which restores every thing to its natural proportions. The historian, therefore, contemplates even a mighty character like Napoleon but as a fellow-man, immeasurably elevated in point of intellect, but subject to the same specific standard of contemplation-a being of superior mind, but of his own passions, wants, and frailties, and whose biography is, therefore, of the utmost utility to mankind,

In writing the following memoir it is our desire to be scrupulously impartial and accurate, remembering that what is an error or a mistatement with contemporaries becomes a falsehood to futurity, and is a moral turpitude in the historian or biographer.

Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 15th August, 1769. The noble origin of the family of Bonaparte or Buonaparte is well attested by the records of the fourteenth century; and its more modern dignity might be estimated by the fact, that in 1776 Charles Buonaparte, the father of Napoleon, was chosen as the representative of the nobility of Corsica in the deputation which that island then sent to the Court of France. Eur. Mag. Feb. 1823.

The Buonapartes were orginally from St. Miniato in Tuscany, and Letitia Ranolino, the mother of Napoleon, was likewise nobly born; she was distinguished for beauty, for dignity of demeanour, and for great powers of intellect; she gave birth to eight children, of whom Napoleon was the second.

It may be said that the infancy of Napoleon passed without sports and his youth without pleasure, although not without attachments. His nature seemed to press forward to the goal of manhood, and the precoce maturity of his mind, and the seriousness of his habits and of his application to studies, were remarkably in contrast with the usual dispositions of boyhood. He was sent to the military academy at Brienne by the Count de Marbeuf, governor of Corsica, where he continued to evince his disposition to study and deep reflection. Plutarch was to him a recreation after the military and mathematical exercises of the day were over; but in after life his delight was in works of the imagination, and Plutarch yielded to the poetry of Ossian. It was at the military academies of Paris and Brienne that Napoleon evinced the germ of that profundity of genius, and of that stupendous elevation of character, which are almost exclusively his in the page of history. early complexion of his mind appears to have been most extraordinary. He seems to have prescribed to himself some imaginary standard of heroism as the object of existence to himself, aud to have abstracted himself from dissipation, and even from the amusements of youth, in the ambitious contemplation of greatness and fame; even literature and the fine arts were discarded, and apparently wrapped up in the profundity of thought; even as a boy he was contemplated with admiration as one distinct and superior to his fellow-students. But these singular traits of character were unaccompanied by moroseness or malevolence, or by that arrogance and display of superiority which excite jealousy and engender hatred.

T

The

Professor Leguile said, in the report which he had to make of his pupils, entitled "The Academy of Brienne, statement of the King's Scholars elegible by their age to the public service, or to proceed to the Academy of Paris." "M. de Buonaparte, (Napoleon) born 15th August, 1769; height four feet ten inches, ten lines (or twelfths of an inch); has finished his fourteenth year, of good constitution, excellent health, obedient, well-behaved and grateful, regular in his conduct, and has always distinguished himself by his application to mathematics. He is moderately acquainted with history and geography, rather deficient in accomplishments and in Latin, in which he has finished only the fourth form; he will make an excellent Naval Officer, and deserves to be admitted into the school at Paris." This document is now in the possession of Marshal de Segur. The professor had added in a note " A Corsicanl by birth, and a Corsican in disposition he will be eminent if circumstances prove favourable."

The military career of Buonaparte began in 1785, when his examination for the artillery was so honourable to his talents, that he was appointed a sub-lieutenant in the regiment de la Frere. It is related, as characteristic of Napoleon, that a lady, about this time, reproaching the memory of Turenne for his destruction by fire of the Palatinate, Buonaparte replied, “Well, madam, what did it signify, if the conflagration was necessary to his plans.

Buonaparte was only 20 when the commencement of the revolution opened for him a field adapted to his great genius. At this period his correspondence with Paoli, then in England, breathed an ardent spirit of liberty, soaring almost to enthusiasm; but, unhappily for mankind, this spirit of freedom faded before the less hallowed flame of ambition and of personal glory. In 1792, Paoli was created a lieutenant-general in the French service, and appointed to the command of the twenty-third military divison. In the same year we find Napoleon, a lieutenant of artillery, appointed acting-commander of one of the battallions of National Guards, raised in Corsica. That Island was then agitated by the

party which had long resisted the domination of the Genoese, and which equally opposed the re-union of Corsica to France. Ajaccio was the focus of these partisans; and it fell to the lot of Napoleon, at the head of his battallion, to subdue by force the municipal troops of his native city. The tumult had taken place on Holy Thursday, 1792. Peraldi, one of the principal partisans, was an ancient enemy of the Bonapartes; and in Corsica hatred is hereditary and interminable to a proverb. Peraldi accused Buonaparte to the government, of having himself instigated the tumult, which he had suppressed by military force. Buonaparte was summoned to Paris, and triumphantly refuted the accusation. He was a witness of the horrors of August 10th in the French capital, and he returned to Corsica in the following month, impressed with the justice of the popular resistance against the persevering corruption and crimes of the government; and adopting, as a principle of duty, a devotion to the then incipient cause of freedom. His friendship with Paoli was at this time severed by his finding to his surprise, that that general was the secret source of these then considered treasonable plots to render Corsica independent on France. A design springing from unworthy motives in Paoli, although in itself patriotic and just, but too noble and virtuous to be practicable in the then, or even in the present imperfect state of human sentiments. A squadron under vice-admiral Truguel, being an expedition against Sardinia, at this time arrived at Ajaccio. Bonaparte was ordered to join this expedition, and was specially directed, with his batallion, to subdue the small islands situated between Corsica and Sardinia; but the expedition was unsuccessful. Bonaparte returned to Ajaccio. Paoli and twenty other generals had been proclaimed traitors by the French, and a price had been set upon their heads. With a view, therefore, to his personal safety, as well as to effect his favourite object of liberating his country, he raised the standard of resistance to France in May, 1793. He was elected by his partisans Generalissimo, and President of a Council which assembled at