In the final suppression of the Janissaries in 1823, it is computed that 20,000 of those insolent mercenaries were put to the sword or sent into exile.

†The Victorious Sultan-one of his many titles. See Sir Grenville Temple's

Among the many reforms effected by the vigorous and grasping intellect of Mahmoud, not the least important was his proscription of the old cumbrous military costume, and adoption of the European uniform, the wearing of which he rigidly enforced.

Sound the trump for the Mighty!
He died ere the tramp
Of the terror-horsed Tartar

Who dash'd from the camp,
Stay'd his soul with the tale
That his dastardly hordes
Lay reap'd upon Nekshib,

7.

Where sickles were swords!
And the Lords of the Spears'
Haughty kingdom has past
To the Rebel and Hun!
And the death-song is done:
But thy praise shall not perish,
Lost Mahmoud the Last!

INSCRIPTION IN THE NEW EDITION OF MRS HEMANS'S WORKS.

BY B. SIMMONS.

HIGH be their meed who here, at last, have heap'd
The flowers long scatter'd from THY gleaming crown-
Here breathes each page thy tenderest fancy steep'd
In lovelier hues than purpling eve brings down;
-O holiest Sister! at whose bright departing,
Tears, whilst we shed them, into triumph died—
One mingled torrent through our bosoms starting
From separate founts of sorrowing and pride.
Sainted of Song! God's timbrel-sounding Daughter!
The exulting music of whose choral lays
Shook us, like Miriam's over Egypt's water,
When rose thy poeans in Jehovah's praise :-
How should we prize-in these disastrous years
Stunn'd with each tale, in sickly fiction cloak'd,
That pedant woman to the public ears

:

Babbles of sufferings which herself provoked-
How should we prize the glorious proofs bequeathed
By thy meek life that Virtue's not a name-
That there are Spirits 'mid the laurel-wreathed
Can hymn of holiness yet feel its flame!
Long be thy lucid memory a spell

To test their truth who mock the minstrel art,
Impostors of the faith thou kept'st so well-
Bright heartless hypocrites affecting heart!

FRENCH LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

BY VILLEMAIN.

PART II.

We have traced, in a former article, the outline of French literature during the first or creative portion of the eighteenth century, when it was illustrated in different departments by the eloquence of Buffon, the ingenuity of Montesquieu, the fervid enthusiasm of Rousseau, and the universal talent of Voltaire. Of these, the three last impressed the deepest and most durable traces on the literature and the mind of Europe: Montesquieu, by the novelty and occasional sagacity which he mingled with much false taste in style, rash assumption of facts, and hasty generalisation in reasoning ; Rousseau, by that semblance of conviction, that passionate exaggeration of sentiments and principles, derived from his own morbid propensities, which gave to his studied essays the appearance, and something of the influence, of unpremeditated popular orations, in which all Europe was his forum; and Voltaire, by his power of popularizing the most abstract discussions, insinuating philosophy into the fugitive literature of the day, making wit subservient to argument, and lending to every thing he touched the charm of a style conspicuous for its finish and simplicity. This portion of

the eighteenth century was the period of original and independent production, when France, instead of receiving the rules of taste or the models of composition from other countries, imposed her own laws on them, impressed the stamp of her habits of thought upon all Europe, and enjoyed a literary supremacy more absolute and universal than any which had existed since the age of Augustus.

The unhesitating and enthusiastic reception at first accorded to the French philosophy of the eighteenth century by the rest of Europe, now appears to us matter of astonishment. Under all the disguises of humanity, literature, zeal for improvement, removal of prejudices, and banishment of superstition, with which the aim of the French philosophers was studiously invested, the principle of determined hostility to monarchy, to the privileged classes, and to that religion by which the existing state of things was cemented and upheld, now appears so palpable, that we wonder how it could have been overlooked by those whose interests were so deeply involved in the change. To us it appears evident that the doctrines thus eagerly embraced by princes and nobles,

Were silently engendering of the day
That should unpeople many palaces,
And hew the highest genealogic trees
Down to the dust, with all their bleeding fruits,
And blight their blossoms into barrenness.

This handwriting on the wall, warning kings and princes that their dominion was departing from them, which presented to them but unintelligible characters, has become abundantly significant when read by the collected light of the past. For the French Revolution has furnished the commentary of reality upon all the delusive doctrines of human perfectibility, and taught us the folly of expecting the regeneration of mankind by means of an infidel philosophy, which, while it flatters the vanity, overlooks entirely the inherent depravity, of man. But to the eighteenth century a new El Dorado appeared to

NO. CCLXXXVII. VOL. XLVI.

be opened, exciting curiosity, inviting experiment, holding out golden hopes of social amelioration, universal disinterestedness and philanthropy, political equality and primitive simplicity; pregnant, in short, with all those delusive visions of improvement which are found to recur at intervals in the progress of society; and of which, it would seem, man can hardly be cured even by the lessons of a sad and often recurring experience. Long accustomed to contemplate human nature as its selfish and savage character had been tamed and moulded by the salutary restraints of a longestablished faith and settled govern

X

ment, no one appears to have calculated
the explosive force which would be de-
veloped when these barriers were re-
moved, or the singe-tigre aspect under
which the human character, left to the
guidance of its own wild impulses,
would present itself. The votaries of the
new philosophy flattered themselves,
that self-interest, rightly understood,
was a sufficient guarantee for the con-
tinued peace and happiness of society;
that as philosophy had raised the
storm, she could always allay it at plea-
sure; and that henceforth all mankind
were to be united under the peaceful
sway of the Goddess of Reason. No
one had foreseen the tempests which
were to close the day, of which the
morning had appeared so bright and
promising; nor, perhaps, could even
a deeper forecast have enabled any
one to conjecture that opinions, many
of which appeared so innocent, if
not beneficent in their application,
would result in the general corruption
of society, the subversion of all order,
the developement of a spirit of fero-
city, which the incessant employment
of the guillotine was unable to satiate
without the aid of the more wholesale
massacre of the Noyades, and the ex-
citement of a bloody war of opinions,
carried on under the revolutionary
watchword-Fraternity or Death.
"L'aimable siecle où l'homme dit à
l'homme,

Soyons frères-ou je t'assomme!"*

But to whatever causes we are to impute the supremacy of French literature in Europe during the whole of the eighteenth century, its universal diffusion and powerful influence in all quarters are incontestable. If the spirit of bold speculation in morals and political science, which had been so characteristic of the French literature of this period, had received its first impulse from England, it soon reacted, with no common energy, upon the literature of our own country. Against the irreligious doctrines of the French school, though advocated with all the subtilty of Hume and the learning of Gibbon, a noble and effectual stand was made, and sophistry refuted with those very weapons of reasoning, and appeals to common sense, which it had been the first to invoke. But our school of philosophical historians was undoubtedly called into existence by the example

of Voltaire; and if Hobbes, Shaftes-
bury, and Bolingbroke, furnished
hints for the Essai sur les Mœurs,
or the Age of Louis XIV., the obliga-
tion was more than repaid by the
breadth of views, the lucid arrangement,
the artful union ofreflexion with narra-
tive, the skill in character drawing, and
the elegance of composition, which the
study of French models imparted to
the histories of Hume, Robertson,
Gibbon, and Ferguson. The influence
of the French drama, again, over our
own, during the period which ranges
from the commencement of the reign
of Anne down to the close of that of
George II., appears in the declining
taste for the older writers, the compara-
tive unpopularity even of Shakspeare
himself, whom Garrick or Tate were
allowed to mutilate, not merely with
impunity but with applause, and the
growth of that so-called classic school,
in which Addison, Thomson, Young,
Phillips, and Murphy, were labour.
ers the school of Roman fathers
and Grecian daughters, and dis-
tressed mothers and rival brothers,
most of them avowed translations,
or slenderly disguised imitations of
Racine and Voltaire; in which the
want of simplicity and natural feel-
ing was retained, while the tender.
ness or dramatic point of the original
disappeared in the process of transla
tion. The other departments of poetry
were not less unfavourably affected by
French influence: for the return to a
less artificial taste in Thomson was
not followed out-wit, correctness, or
a certain stilted and pseudo-classic
tone continued to be the qualities aimed
at; and the accents of nature, once so
powerful in English poetry, like the
successive reverberations of an echo,
grew fainter and fainter, till they sunk
into silence.

If we turn to Italy, we trace the ideas of Montesquieu and Voltaire, nay, even of Helvetius, in the political or moral speculations of Beccaria, Genovesi, Verri, and Filangieri. The reverence, indeed, with which Beccaria speaks of Helvetius and Holbach, appears at the present day not a little unaccountable. We see the principle of social, political, and even religious reform disseminated through the press, from Milan to Naples, "con licenza de superiori"-encouraged by absolute princes, and if not favoured,

Le Brun Pindare.

at least not discountenanced, even by the possessors of the chair of St Peter; and France subduing to her opinions the countries which she was at no distant period to subject by her arms. In the literature of Italy, too, the same powerful influences are perceptible. Though Maffei criticised severely some of the works of Corneille, his Merope (the best of the Italian tragedies before Alfieri) is composed entirely in the taste of the French school. Goldoni is, in his whole spirit, essentially French-latterly, indeed, he wrote for the French stage; and Alfieri, while hating the French nation, adopts the conventional limitations of its drama, with a rigour which even French critics themselves had hardly exacted.

Even Spain, with all its strong nationality, yields to the general infection, and submits its chivalrous drama and its oriental tastes, to the restraint of the rules and the studied decorum of French dramatic verse. During the 18th century that romantic theatre, so truly in unison with the national spirit, which Lope had created-to which the highest perfection of which its irregular character was susceptible, had been given by Calderon, and which, by the brilliant facility of its poetry, the picturesque and stately character of the manners represented, and the deep interest and curiosity which its plots awakened, had for a long time influenced the dramatic literature of all Europe, and strongly coloured that of France itself, as the Cid and Heraclius of Corneille, and Moliere's Festin de Pierre sufficiently show, was abandoned for lifeless imitations of the French drama, constructed on those principles of criticism which Luzan had borrowed, partly from the Poetics of Aristotle, partly from the prefaces of Corneille and Voltaire, until a feeble, and indeed unsuccessful, rally was made in 1778, in favour of the older drama by La Huerta in his Raquel. Even the political innovations of the French philosophers found a favourable reception at the Court of Charles III., and the policy of Aranda, Cam

pomanes, and Florida Blanca, both in its errors and in the advantages it conferred on Spain, may be traced to those theories of national education and reform of political institutions, to which the agitation of opinions in France had given birth; and thus Spain, with a singular contradiction, borrowed from that quarter at once the principles of political liberty and of poetical restraint.

Nearly the same state of things may be traced in Portugal under the reign of Joseph I. and the sombre administration of Pombal; who, filled with the ideas of French philosophy, advocated with a species of fanatical intolerance the doctrines of toleration, labouring, not to direct or restrain, but to subvert the power of the Jesuits, and to force upon the nation, by the unsparing use of arbitrary and oppressive means, the Utopian schemes of improvement which that philosophy had inspired.

In Germany, while the opinions of the French philosophers, so far as regarded religious indifference and experiments in government, found enthusiastic converts in Frederick the Great and Joseph II., and powerfully affected the policy of these sovereigns, the influence of French literature was far less felt. Frederick, imitating the sneer of Voltaire, was content to wish his countrymen more wit and fewer consonants; while he practically laboured to decry and discountenance his native literature and his native language. But, even under his military despotism, he could not render French literature "the order of the day;" his attempts to naturalize it in Prussia, only created a reaction which hastened the developement of that varied and inventive native literature which adorned in Germany the close of the 18th century and the commencement of the 19th.

Von des grossen Friedrichs throne,
"Von dem grossten Deutschen sohne,

Ging sie schutzlos, ungeehrt.
Rühmend darfs der Deutsche sagen,
Höher darf das herz ihm schlagen,

Selbst erschuf er sich den werth."*

Schiller. Die Deutsche Muse,
The greatest son of Germany,
Even Frederick, bade her turn away
Unhonour'd from his throne ;
Proudly the German bard can tell,
And higher may his bosom swell,
He form'd himself alone.