bear their reverses well. In no instance could I learn that a single Castlereagh had cut his carotid.

"Much are the times altered since Forsyth spoke of the Neapolitan nobility as 'pure both in heraldy and opinion. Nothing degrades them," says he, but misalliance, commerce, or a hemp rope!' Until I read this passage, I confess it was quite unknown to me that they had been liable to the last of these drawbacks upon their purity. But as to the other causes of debasement, times must be indeed changed since Forsyth's day, as it is notorious that they will marry any women who has money, no matter what her birth, parentage, or education; and in respect to commerce, all the world knows what shifts they will make to turn a penny. Pictures are their staple commodity, and all sorts of bawbles, antiques, family relics, and furniture, to the very tawdry trappings of the beds their fathers reposed upon, nay, sometimes the bed itself, is sold for what it will bring to meet the demand of the moment.

"An advertisement which appeared in Galignani's Messenger will convey some notion of the difficulties to which they are reduced, as well as of the value which the order have come to set upon their honours. The notice runs in these terms: To be sold, an estate in the kingdom of Naples, producing a well secured revenue, and conferring the title of duke. The title and arms of duke will be transmited to the purchaser by the present owner, who will relinquish one and efface the other from his remaining bearings. For further particulars apply post paid.' One of the consequences of the dilapidated state of the finances of the nobility is a frightful number of scroccones, or men who live by sponging. But I must not be understood to ascribe the ruined circumstances of the Neapolitan nobility wholly to the change which has taken place in their government, though it is a principal cause. Several have been beggared by their profusion, of which Prince F. V. is an illustrious victim. He entertained in a manner that drew expressions of astonishment from the Emperor himself, and is now little better than a scroccone, daily dining upon his friends and renting a miserable chamber at about three or four carlins a day. Others have been reduced by the overreaching of their domestics. The late King Ferdinand was a dupe of this description, and had his family defrauded to an enormous amount by a favourite valet-de-pied, who had access to him at all seasons. This catiff laid siege to the royal heart in its last moments, and obtained the sign manual to a carte blanche which he filled up afterwards at his discretion. Our own nobles will draw from this a lesson in favour of the schoolmaster. Had Ferdinand not been brought up to despise the accomplishment of writing, this accident, had, most probably, been avoided.

"In the upper ranks the leisure of both sexes is divided between the gratifications of sense and the torpor of exhaustion. In the summer they lounge the whole morning in their dressing-gowns, with their casements closed and chambers darkened; at noon they dine en deshabille, or, if I may believe their compatriots, sometimes in a state bordering upon nudity, and always before any of the operations of the toilet have been thought of. If the weather be oppressively hot they pitch their exhaling persons on a sofa until about four, when the toilet becomes the serious occupation

of two or three hours to prepare for the corso. The theatre then entertains them till near midnight, after which the lounge is to finish at some trattoria, or to devour shell-fish in their carriages among the lazzaroni in strada St.-Lucia till perhaps 3 o'clock in the morning. A Neapolitan noble prefers spending a life such as this to residing upon his estates in the country, where with a moderate attention to his affairs, he might pass his days in comparative affluence. The sentiment of proper pride seems to be as much on the wane as their circumstances.

"During my stay at Naples one of these unhappy incurables got into a scrape with an English coachman in a common wine shop, and was threatened by John with a sound thrashing, which he very narrowly escaped and only escaped indeed by alarming his antagonist with an appeal to the British minister. The scuffle continued loud and long, and ended in John's getting off with flying colours, and all the honours of the whip untarnished."

Sir A. B. Faulkner will not allow that the climate of Naples is healthy, but insists that it is quite the contrary. What then can induce such shoals of our country's most aspiring and professedly refined inhabitants to resort thither? Adhesion, we fear, to an irrational fashion, that cherishes and propagates a vile effeminacy, which annually gathers a cargo of demoralizing fruit, to be landed and scattered amongst the consumers at home-thus poisoning the public health-and yet all the while we are the dupes and the laughing-stocks of our degenerated tutors. We are far from arguing that mutual rational intercourse can retard the progress of civilization; and civilization we hold to be nearly synonimous with knowledge and virtue. But there is a wonderful disparity between the offices of a political, commercial, or literary community of feeling and interests, or the study of different institutions and manners, such as enlightened strangers have a right and take a delight to examine, and the absurd disastrous fashion of families spending seasons in foreign parts for acquiring the entire habits of a people, and even very generally with the purpose of having the young thoroughly initiated in the lessons of the same school.

The author's Ramblings might have served us with many striking notices on art, literature, and antiquities, which, to every cultivated mind, are so abundantly suggested in the route taken by him. In each and all of these departments he was quite at home when upon his tour. We are led to think from the discrimination and confidence with which he talks of music and musicians, that his knowledge and taste on these subjects are of a first-rate order. Regarding the arts of design, the antiquities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the condition of public libraries, &c., he is uniformly sensible and well-informed, without fatiguing the reader with commonplace or long-winded dissertations. But as the whole of the topics which we have now mentioned have been dwelt upon by every visitor to the countries in question, whether skilled or unskilled, it

is hardly possible to utter anything new, either in the shape of sound, orignorant, or extravagant, criticism; so that we have chiefly confined our summary and extracts to such matters and details as comparatively few of Sir A. B. Faulkner's predecessors have either had the opportunity, the ability, or the taste, to discuss. In conclusion, we cannot express a more favourable opinion of the volume than to repeat the opinion, that even Italy, trodden and threaded as it has been by myriads of our countrymen of late years, very many of whom have written ad nausiam of all that they have seen and of all that they have felt, has once more engaged our attention, so deeply and so instructively, that we could well accept two additional volumes from the same pen, and upon the same theme, to those we now part

from.

ART. VII.-Napoleon in Council, or the Opinions Delivered by Bonaparte in the Council of State. Translated from the French of Baron Pelet (de la Lozère), Member of the Chamber of Deputies. and late Minister of Public Instruction. By CAPTAIN BASIL HALL, R. N. London: Whittaker. 1837.

We learn from the Translator's Preface that Mons. Pelet's means of obtaining information upon the subject concerning which his volume treats, arose from his having been long a member of Napoleon's Council of State, and Administrator of the Royal Forests of the Civil List; and that in consequence of his marriage with the daughter of Mons. Otto, (who, it may be remembered, negotiated the preliminaries of the Treaty of Amiens, and afterwards filled various high diplomatic situations on the continent), he came into the possession of many other valuable official documents. In consequence also of the author's father, now a peer of France, having been a Councillor of State, and one who kept memoranda of its transanctions from 1803 to 1806, these documents have been much enlarged and enriched-the whole, without a question, not only when viewing the characters of the recorders, but the testimony of the translator, in reference to the author, being entitled to unlimited credence, in so far as fidelity in the narrating of what they actually and immediately were witness to is concerned.

The gifted writer, who has acted in the present intance merely as a translator, has, indeed, conferred a real and important benefit on the English public by putting Mons. Pelet's volume in an English dress; for, while he has thus brought to light a good deal that is new to the people of this country in the career, and especially as regards the opinions of the extraordinary man, whose life, conversations, and speeches form the theme of the work, he has also enabled us to become familiar with perhaps the most accurate, full

and intelligible exhibition that has ever come under our notice of Napoleon's principles and genius as a politician, or a member of civil society. To be sure there has been a multitude of writings concerning him, all of more or less authority, and containing some faithful sketches of some of his multifarious features of character. But most of these, as remarked by Mons. Pelet, are only military narratives, where he is seen merely in the capacity of a general, or, if we except the St. Helena memorials, he had in all the conversations so recorded much more regard to his future historical fame, than to make an undisguised and unbiassed disclosure of his natural feelings and habitual modes of thinking. Here, however, we have him engaged multifariously, and for years consecutively, in the organization and legislation which the internal government of his country required, and where he is to be seen combatting such difficulties as almost all other men must have found to be insurmountable, or in devising such schemes, the brilliancy, extravagance, or subtlety of which, one is not more at a loss how to characterise, than to calculate the dexterity, the boldness, or the effrontery with which he carried them into effect.

6

We do not think that Napoleon's character will stand out in such fair lights, after he has been studied as beheld in the present volume, as many have since his death been in the habit of picturing him. But if we be right in saying that the representation is fuller and truer than any that has before been published, its appearance must be hailed as of vital moment to the interests of historic accuracy, and the dignity as well as beautyof heroic models; however much it may chastise the dreams of a fond partiality. The author says, "it may be asked, What impression will be produced on the reader's mind by the documents I here lay before him?"" And answers, that the public" will recognise in Napoleon's character a mixture of impetuosity and trickery, half French, half Italian, but in which impetuosity predominated; while it was modified by such a decided bearing towards absolute power, that it could not fail, on the one hand, to deaden all the internal energies of his country, and, on the other, eventually to rouse foreign nations into resistance." Ambition, absolute power, despotism, and the like, are terms which all are accustomed to apply to the man of whom we are now speaking; but we venture to say, that without having perused the work before us, no such definite and adequate ideas can be attached to these forms of expression as can individualize Napoleon, and hold him out with all the gigantic lineaments that belonged to him. Perhaps no one criterion can be instanced that shall so perfectly elucidate the strength and the cast of his despotic spirit and power, as is to be found in the fact, that the Council of State, and indeed all the constituted authorities in France, consisting of men of the greatest genius and talents that the empire could produce, were for years, VOL. 1. (1837) No. IV.

N N

little better or more than puppets and mere machines in the hands of one insatiable mind. The illustration of this circumstance shall be a principal object in the extracts which we are about to lay before the reader.

At the enthusiastic age of nineteen Mons. Pelet became a member of the Council of State, at which period and downwards, it may be presumed that he watched with avidity every word that fell from its presiding genius. And he may well exclaim-how much should we now give to have such notices recorded of Alexander or Cæsar! But, adds he, "Posterity, indeed, in the case of Bonaparte, has come much sooner than I had expected; and I venture to present it with a document which will aid essentially in estimating the character of one of the most extraordinary men who has ever appeared on earth, and whose catastrophe and melancholy end have placed their seal on what was wonderful in his history.' Such is the becoming and well-considered language with which the author approaches his task. He has not, however, deemed it his duty, in giving his work to the public, to express his sentiments much more particularly regarding the great subject of it. By thus refraining, assuredly he has shown a sound discretion, at the same time that he has done that which will much more effectually secure the attention and the enlightened judgment of mankind, than any commentary, whether leaning to panegyric or disparagement, could induce-tendencies, one or other of which it must ever be extremely difficult to avoid, when composing a formal discourse concerning any contemporary whose celebrity is of a surpassing order.

The work is divided into two parts-the former containing the reports of Napoleon's observations (often random and unpremeditated, no doubt, and therefore good evidence concerning the man, but more frequently, perhaps, premeditated, though wearing the garb of honesty and immediate impulse, and therefore when detected, not less illustrative,) in connexion with a narrative outline of the great events in his history which called them forth-the latter consisting exclusively of discussions which took place in the Council of State, classed under the respective heads of the matters discussed -certain explanatory links being introduced on the part of Mons. Pelet himself.

Before introducing the deliberations of the Council of State, however, the author lays before his readers an extremely interesting sketch of its structure, of the part which it played in the administration of affairs, and of the general appearance of its meetings. Some particulars contained in this sketch will materially assist in enabling our readers to comprehend the character of the Council, or rather of the prime mover and controller of all its performances -this body alone during the latter period of the Consulate, and the years of the Empire, possessing the character of a deliberative