intercourse, is kept up on the one hand by the extreme of strictness on the other. We have known English officers of some standing in the army receive a cartel from a Frenchman in the ranks; and were ourselves once favoured with an offer of being run through the body incontinent by a gentleman in blouse, who drove a cart; but, like inglorious Argives, we declined this eminent satisfaction in favour of a prior engagement, to dinner with another friend, resisting the temptation of the second invitation from sincere regard for our readers.

It may be a fair question whether this facility of redress has not been influential on the tone of French society in every class; and whether the rough Englishman, with his promptitude of fist, would not, if admitted to an equal advantage with the Gaul, feel the moral influence of the small sword and the bullet as principles in ethics, without requiring their physical development and operation to set at rest any bilious irregularity of his intestinal functions. A mathematical demonstration of the peculiar properties of these instruments of science would create a lively interest with our popular Institutes, and greatly edify the members by their practical application to any given point in Mechanics; the triangle of the one, and the circle of the other, satisfactorily attesting the curious felicity of their selection by our ancestors as the emblems of eternity.

Yet the case is better for them as it is, since evidently, from recent instances, none but a man of a certain rank has a title to "benefit of clergy;" which in such predicaments is exerted, not to save its object's life, but to reproach his safety when the danger is over. Late illustrations of this active care for the spirit in preference over the flesh of the delinquents, whilst they evince that our pastors conscientiously confine themselves to the "cure of souls," in their special vocation, yet have created certain uneasy suspicions in our minds, whether it would not be better for one of the privileged class to take at once his quietus from the evils of this mortal life, than, by persisting in retaining it, subject himself to stand as a quaintain, exposed to the united assaults of those spiritual champions immediately afterwards. "Massa," objected the negro, "if you preachee, preachee; if you floggee, floggee; but no preachee and floggee too." It is hard for a gentleman accustomed to good hours, and who has to rise at six in the morning to fight, if he is to sit up all night to study theology. We are by no means sure that this was the express meaning of the clause admitting to "benefit of clergy," but if so there can be no difficulty in understanding why reading, and writing too, were indispensable for its attainment.

But as it would be better to prevent a crime than to punish it, might not the legislature organize a spiritual "Preventive

Service" to this especial end-and divide it into two classes? At present, as a noble marquess insists, a man refusing to fight may be horsewhipped; but he might boldly refuse the first if provided with a proxy for the second, and allowed to name an obliging spiritual friend and pastor, to whom it could do no possible injury. The regular parish clergy have enough to do as it is, but numbers would come forward spontaneously no doubt, for we hear of thirty-six volunteers in one case.

The ordination of the second class should be for the purpose of preventing the sin before it is committed; instead of after, as at present. In this case the charge of having committed a crime to-morrow, would be novel and effective. Or if a member of the House of Peers has actually gone out, since he is beyond recall, why not lecture the others instead? We grieve to find that the Commons are not likely to benefit in any shape. Inferior parties, and challengers, have no need of improvement-they are, ipso facto, exemplary Christians. So also are all persons accepting challenges, from the shepherd David, who killed Goliah in a duel, up to the rank of viscount. Dukes also are exempt by their station, and perhaps their eldest sons. We would recommend the taking out a license for gentlemen going out to shoot their friends, the same as for other wild-brutes and birds.

So hopeful a system we should trust to see soon extended to other sins, which there is no reason should escape any more than this. The little peccadilloes to which flesh is heir, and which, like the former, are strongly recommended by the authority of David,-Why should they be uncultivated? Why should the "Preventive Service" hesitate to denounce the contraband amiabilities of Peer, or Peeress, to their face? Why not lecture the wife for the husband, the husband for the wife meditating such evil doings? Why not approach and save the intended delinquents, in the very crisis of their perdition? When, too, a single lecture would economize the virtues of both, and their own labour.

Why indeed not publicly address such parties even now? provided always the victims be of a rank to give a chance of desired notoriety to the lecturer. Such selections could not be more invidious than the recent. Why not come to face, to point Thou art the Man, or the Woman? There is Nathan's example for this at least, though he came a little too late. But our monitorial peripatetics are, we fear, as unlike to Nathan the Prophet as to "Nathan the Wise."

ART. IX.-Lexique Roman, ou Dictionnare de la Langue des Troubadours, comparée avec les autres Langues de l'Europe Latine. Par M. Raynouard. Tome Premier. Royal 8vo. Paris, 1838.

ON a former occasion we noticed the second volume (the first in order of publication) of this most important work. The volume then reviewed contained the commencement of the Dictionary of the Old Provençal Language, extending through the three first letters of the alphabet; and, considering how little had been hitherto done towards such an undertaking, we feel ourselves justified in saying that it is the most perfect work of the kind ever produced. Nobody can lament the loss of Raynouard more than ourselves; but it is some consolation to find that he had left the work of the greater part of his life in such a condition as, by the care of M. Just Paquet, his heir, we may expect ere long to see it complete on our shelves.

The present volume, with the exception of an introductory résumé of the Grammar of the Neo-Latin tongues, consists of a large body of ancient Provençal poetry, and contains the most important documents of that language. An idea may be formed of the extent of this collection from the circumstance that one of the poems which it contains, the Romance of Jaufre, printed closely in double columns, consists of upwards of nine thousand lines.

The study of the Provençal language is one of the utmost importance in its bearing upon that of the other modern languages that have sprung out of the wreck of the Latin. It forms, in a peculiar manner, the connecting link between the pure language of Rome and its several descendants. The antiquity of the form of a language does not always depend on its position or its date. At the present day, the Spanish is older in form-advances nearer to the original Latin-than the Italian, which we might have supposed to have been the elder by its position. In the thirteenth century, to judge by the documents which remain, the Anglo-Norman language was older in form than the French of the twelfth century, although doubtlessly the latter had preceded it in the date of its formation. And so, to judge by all the monuments which remain, the Provençal, at the earliest period when its monuments are abundant, was much older in form than the Italian, or the Spanish, or the Anglo-Norman, or any other Neo-Latin tongue, and consequently in the stream of derivation it holds the first place after the parent language. It is thus necessary, for the explanation of many anomalies and variations in the others, which would otherwise seem altogether without reason.

The literature, however, of Provençe, does not occupy the same position with regard to that of the other people of the middle ages, as does its language. It neither forms a link between the Latin literature, and the French and Anglo-Norman; nor does it furnish us with the rude model of that which was spread throughout Europe in the thirteenth century. On the contrary, so early as the eleventh century, we find

the literature of the south of France exhibiting that gay lightness of character, that chivalrous form of gallantry, shaded off with the richest tints of gothic imagery, that high degree of refinement, which did not appear elsewhere till several ages later. It is a literature which, at that remote period, was peculiar in its kind.

Whether we turn to the early literature of France, of Germany, or of England, we find each going through regular gradations. First come the old romances, whose groundwork were still older legends of the purely national traditions-then come, later in relative formation, though often partly contemporary in their form with the preceding, the long, heavy, religious poems, and the saints' legends; these are followed, more or less immediately according to historical circumstances, by the poetry of a stirring and, in some measure, refined society, when the solemn chivalry of the heroic age, employed in feats of wild warfare, or dreaming in the mead-ball over the memory of deeds which had been perpetrated, and its successor, the period when medieval superstition ruled paramount over all, have both given place to the din and intrigue of political strife. Then, the spirit which has been infused into party song and satire, perpetuates itself in amorous chaunts, and finds its way into the whole body of the national literature. Every thing is moving and animated. The poet is neither the dependent bard who touched the strings of his harp at the festival, nor the cloistered monk; but the prince, the partizan, or the courtier.

When we turn, however, to the literature of Provence, we find a singular anomaly. We there fall at once upon the third of these periods, without any traces of the steps which in other countries led to it. In fact the national literature there appears not to have gone through the same gradations. There are no signs of the ages of romances, and religious poems, and metrical chronicles, but from the first we meet with songs and satires in their most refined shape; they are indeed the only purely original productions in the language. The romances and saints' legends are evidently adventitious, and of a later date; and the only metrical chronicle, that of the war of the Albigenses, by William of Tudela, was apparently produced in adoption of a faction which had long existed in the north. We may also observe that the romances and saints' legends are generally not written in pure Provençal, but in a northern dialect, and are the alteration of works of a still more northern origin to suit that dialect, perhaps in many cases by the scribe who wrote the manuscript in which they occur. So we find the originals of the romances of Fierabras, and Gerard of Rousillon, in the same words, allowing for various readings incident to manuscripts, in the northern French of the thirteenth century. And there can be little doubt, from their subjects, that the other three given by Raynouard once existed in the same form.

In the present volume Raynouard has published, in addition to the extensive collection given in his former Choix, a large number of songs, servientes, tensons, &c., by no less than fifty different poets, many of then distinguished warriors and lofty barons, who flourished at different periods from the eleventh century to the fifteenth. If we inquire the

reason of this strong characteristic of the literature of Provence, we may perhaps find it explained by the supposition, that the population of the south was in its composition more Roman-that the mixture of northerns was not sufficient to engraft upon it those old traditions, which they carried into other parts,—and that it did not possess in the same way a line of monarchs who prided themselves upon their descent in a direct line from the old fabulous genealogies, which was the cause that no indigenal romantic cycles existed there; but that the literature of the country sprang up under the political circumstances, which in other countries only produced a change in its character. Be this as it may, the Provençal songs belong to a class of medieval literature, which is most valuable on account of its intrinsic beauty; they are natural and original, full of life and vigour, and distinguished by a playful variety of rhyme and measure. The saints' legends in every language are dull and uninteresting; the French romances, with a few exceptions, are devoid of taste, trifling, and tiresome; but the songs, which have preserved to us the pure and ancient langue d'oc, are always elegant and pleasing.

Besides the whole or abstracts (with long extracts) of five metrical romances, and the collection of songs just mentioned, the volume, whose title stands at the head of our article, contains an abstract of William of Tudela's Metrical History of the War against the Albigenses (since published entire by M. Farinel), and lengthy extracts from various other poems, such as the Breviary of Love, a long philosophical and theological poem; a moral poem, entitled The Book of Seneca; the Life of St. Enimia; a poem on the Four Cardinal Virtues; the Lives of St. Trophimus, St. Honoratus, and St. Alexis; and metrical versions of the Apochryphal books of Nichodemus and The Infancy.