searching for the Rose, or the prize of Love. Evil-mouth and Danger prevent his access; Felony and Baseness, Hatred and Avarice, thwart him in the pursuit; all the vices and all the virtues of humanity are in turn personified and introduced on the stage; one allegory is linked to another; and the imagination is banded about between these fictitious beings, on which it cannot succeed in conferring a body. All interest is necessarily destroyed by that fatiguing conception,' &c. Nevertheless, in the age in which the Romance of the Rose appeared, the less it interested as a recital, the more it was admired as an effort of wit, a moral conception, and poetic fiction. The play of wit astonished at every line; the aim of the author was ever kept in view; and, from the moment at which poesy was considered by the French as a source of agreeable instruction, the Romance of the Rose appeared to accomplish this object because it seemed to contain it ingeniously wrapped in mystery. Our opinions, however, would be widely different from those of our ancestors: we could not permit the delineation of vice in all its impudence to be the medium of inspiring virtue, as Guillaume de Lorris has made it; we could not endure the cynical and insulting strain in which these authors speak of females; and we should be offended at that grossness which is so estranged from the idea that we entertain of chivalrous love and gallantry. Our ancestors were, without doubt, less delicate than ourselves, and no book has met with such prodigious success as the Romance of the Rose: it was admired not merely as a master-piece of wit, of invention, and of practical philosophy, but its readers attempted to find in it that which the author had not dreamed of inserting, and, under the first allegory, they sought a second. They pretended that Lorris had concealed under the form of allegory the most important mysteries of theology; they wrote learned commentaries, which are found annexed to the edition of Paris, (1531, folio,) in which the key was given to that divine allegory; and they referred the most licentious passages and pictures of terrestrial love to the grace of God. True it is that adoration for a profane, and, in many passages, an immoral book, at length drew down on it the animadversion of certain fathers of the church. Jean Jerson, chancellor of the university of Paris, and one of the most accredited among the fathers of the council of Constance, wrote a Latin treatise against this work; and from that moment a number of preachers thundered against it, at the same time that others of the fraternity cited from it passages intermingled and confounded with texts of Scripture.' M. DE SISMONDI proceeds to notice several works written in imitation of this soporiferous vision, and thence traces the origin of those fabliaux, originally of Norman invention, some of which have been happily translated into our own language by Mr. Way. Of these, without question, the most affecting is that of Aucassin and Nicolette, which, modernized by M. Le Grand, assumes the title of The Loves of the good old Times. The original is written in alternate prose and verse, with occasionally a few lines of music. The Lays of Aristotle, and of the Little Bird, are charming tales. The poesy of the Trouvères, Trouvères, however, was not exclusively confined to narration. Some stanzas are extant, by the Vidame de Chartres, of the antient house of Vendôme, which astonish us by the uniform polish and harmony of the verse: • Ecoutez, nobles chevaliers, • Ses cheveux blonds comme fils d'or Sous son front blanc comme le lys, Arcs triomphant du monde,' &c. Besides the two species of literature which have divided our attention in this article, the creation of the theatre was the work of France. At a time when the antient theatre was forgotten, the French first invented the representation of the grand events which accompanied the establishment of Christianity, or the mysteries of which it ordains the belief, or even domestic scenes of gaiety or delight, to amuse the leisure of the great. The pilgrims who returned from the Holy Land first awakened curiosity, by directing it to the representation of the objects which had occurred to them in their pilgrimage. As in early Greece, these dramatic representations were represented in the streets and roads; and, in the fourteenth century, a company of pilgrims, who had solemnized by a brilliant spectacle the marriage of Charles VI. and Isabeau of Bavaria, was established at Paris by a formal charter, and undertook to divert the people with regular representations. They were called the Fraternity of the Passion, from the most celebrated of their spectacles, which exhibited the mystery of the Passion. Four-and-twenty characters successively appeared in this Mystery; among whom were the three persons of the Trinity, six angels or archangels, twelve apostles, six devils, Herod with all his court, and several other characters created by the poet. Without detailing the musical and mechanical inventions, which appear to have been considerable, we will cite a passage as a specimen of the whole. After having baptized a number of persons who had followed him into the desart, St. John is required to baptize Jesus himself. Here the versification is not so remarkable as the notes, which almost carry us back to the times of these Gothic spectacles. • Here Here Jesus enters naked into the river Jordan; and St. John takes water in his hand, which he sprinkles over the head of Jesus: • ST. JOHN. Sire, vous êtes baptisé. • Here Jesus comes out of the river, and throws himself on his knees, naked as he is, before Paradise. Then God the Father speaks, and the Holy Ghost descends in the form of a white dove on the head of Jesus, and then returns to Paradise. Here be it remarked that the speech of God the Father must be very audibly pronounced, and well drawn out, in three voices; that is to say, a soprano, a counter-tenor, and thorough base, in good unison; and in this harmony must be pronounced what follows: Hic est filius meus dilectus, In quo mihi benè complacui.' Que bien me plaist, ma plaisance est en lui,' &c. &c. Besides characters drawn from heaven and from hell, allegories, &c. even the tenses of verbs were compelled to come forwards on the scene; and Regno, Regnas, Regnavi, are among the dramatis persona of one of the moralities. The entertainment not unfrequently lasted forty days; and, with all its defects, it passed from France to England, and to other courts in the vicinity of its birth-place. The Avocat Patelin, the Medecin malgré lui, and a few other farces of the same stamp, remain to us from the merrier school, as proofs of the wit of a semibarbarous age. At length, Les Enfans sans souci formed a company for enacting farces, under the conduct of the Prince of Fools: satire and personal invective succeeded to religious dreams; and comedy then began to take its ordinary bent. With the trouvères began the true French literature; and with them originated the schools of romantic mythology, and the hint of those bright creations which were perfected by the poets of Italy. We re-trace them in the novels of Boccaccio, which are frequently old fabliaux; we re-trace them in Ariosto; and the majestic allegories of Dante are in part suggested to him by the Romance of the Rose. Lope de Vega and Calderon also in many instances remind us of the Fraternity of the Passion. Thus the schools of Provence and Normandy influenced and suggested the noble and finished specimens of the art which is the pride of Italy and the admiration of mankind. Our next Appendix will contain the conclusion of our remarks on these ingenious and learned volumes. [To be continued.] ART. ART. XIV. Mémoires présentés, &c. ; i. e. Memoirs presented to the Institute of Sciences, Letters, and the Arts, by various learned Men, and read at its Meetings. Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Vol. II. 4to. pp. 639. Paris. 1811. Im. ported by De Boffe. MEDICAL and CHEMICAL PAPERS, &c. ON the Nature of the Composition of the Muriatic and Acetic Ethers. By P. F. G. BOULLAY, Apothecary.-We are told in this paper that the author's opinion respecting the nature of muriatic ether differs essentially from that of M. Thenard. It produces none of the effects of muriatic acid on the application of the appropriate tests for this substance; yet, if it be burned, muriatic vapors are immediately formed. Now, does this arise from the production of the acid, as M. Thenard supposes, or is it then only disengaged? To ascertain this point, the present author subjected muriatic ether to the action of pure potash, ammonia, sulphuric and nitric acid, in succession; and he found that, in all these cases, muriatic vapors were disengaged: yet, as when the alkalies were employed, no oxygen was present; and, as the sulphuric and nitric acids were not decomposed, he concludes that the muriatic acid was only disengaged and not formed. Analogous experiments were made, with similar results, on the acetic ether; and M. BOULLAY deduces the three following conclusions: 1st, That muriatic ether is a simple combination of acid and alcohol, in proportions that I have not yet precisely determined, but in which the acid predominates. 2d. That acetic ether, and probably nitric ether, result from the same kind of combination. 3d. That two modes exist of forming these very combustible and very volatile productions, to which the name of ether is given; and that, under this relation, they appear to be divided into two classes: the one comprehending the phosphoric and sulphuric ethers, in which the acid determines the etherification without becoming an essential part of the compound; and the other containing the ethers, which are simply a combination of acid and alcohol, as, for example, the acetic and muriatic ethers.' Memoir on the Hymen; in which it is shewn that the Membrane bearing this Name in the Human Subject exists in many of the Mammiferous Animals. By G. L. DUVERNOY.-It is observed by M. DUVERNOY that this membrane is one of the few circumstances in which the human female has been supposed to differ from every other, according to the opinion of the most celebrated naturalists; and he details the very various opinions which anatomists have advanced respecting its nature and formation. formation. He afterward gives an account of the examination that he has made of a number of animals, and asserts that he has found, in several of the mammiferæ, a membrane which must be regarded as analogous. On the Action of Vegetable Bodies on Alcohol, with or without the Intervention of Mineral Acids, or a new Method of combining the Bodies with each other. By M. THENARD. -This celebrated chemist here refers to the experiments of Scheele, in which he formed an acetic and an imperfect benzoic ether, and observes that we are not yet in possession of a complete theory of the operation of these bodies in this process. In order to throw some light on the subject, he proposes to direct his attention to two principal objects, the action of pure vegetable acids on alcohol, and the action of a mixture of vegetable and mineral acids on this substance. He remarks that, when the tartarous, citric, malic, and many other vegetable acids, are distilled with alcohol, they are separated without any change: but that acetic acid, on the contrary, forms with it a true ether. A number of experiments are then related, in which some of the vegetable acids were united with alcohol, and formed into imperfect ethers, by the intervention of the sulphuric and muriatic acids. The same process was then practised with acetic acid; when it appeared that ether was formed with great facility, and in a larger quantity than without the intervention of the mineral acid. In using different mineral acids, it was found that their action was in proportion to their power of condensing the alcohol. M. THENARD concludes from his experiments that, except the acetic, no vegetable acid has sufficient strength to act on alcohol unless it be strongly condensed, and that this condensation is effected by the mineral acid. On the Formation of Phosphoric Ether by the Help of a peculiar Apparatus. By P. F. G. BOULLAY, Apothecary.-Scheele and Lavoisier attempted without success to procure phosphoric ether; and, although Boudet had accomplished the formation of it, he obtained it only in a small quantity. The present writer conceived that the obstacle to success arose from the difficulty of keeping the particles of the alcohol and phosphoric acid sufficiently in contact; and he therefore invented an apparatus, in which the alcohol is added drop by drop to the phosphoric acid while it is warm and liquid. An ether was formed in this manner in a considerable quantity; which, M. BOULLAY says, is more similar to the sulphuric ether than others of this class of substances. On the Plica Polonica. By ROUSSILLE DE CHAMSERU. — In this long paper, consisting of 50 pages, the object is to prove that many of the wonderful accounts recorded of this disease are |