dition. Often it would have afforded a much more genuine moral estimate of the warfare, and a much more vivid picture of some of its scenes, than those generals and historians had the perceptions or the sincerity requisite for displaying. How much there is in war of what is odious and melancholy, that finds no faculty capable of recognising it in the hardened veteran soldier by profession, or in the less war-worn and mechanical, but ardent adventurer for glory! Nothing less than the virtues of Sidney could preserve an undepraved sensibility through a career of martial achievement.

Besides, it is to be recollected, that women constitute half the human race; and not only having their general share of the evil inflicted on mankind by war, but being exposed also to peculiar and severe aggravations of that evil, they seem to require an historian representative of their sex, that the full malignity of war may be manifested, by shewing, with the vividness of the writer's direct sympathy with the sex, its additional malignity as affecting them. In this female historian's account of the war in La Vendée there are a multitude of striking and affecting circumstances, many of which could not have occurred in the experience of a man; and which, if they came within his knowledge, he would not have regarded and related with any thing like the true and adequate emphasis of feeling: they were, however, the natural occurrences of war as affecting the female sex. But then, could the history of the war, as written solely by men, have been complete-complete in the sense of displaying its full atrocity-while thus the miseries it inflicted on the more susceptible and unprotected portion of the species, would have had no due prominence in the representation?

Any reader of military history, and of the Memoirs, by military men, of the transactions they witnessed, may easily recollect how comparatively small and unconspicuous a portion of the tragical exhibitions consists (in most of those works) of the female sufferings; how generally a collective phrase or two suffice to throw into the account, in the gross, 'the women and children,' with their massacres, expulsion from shelter under all painful circumstances incident to the sex, and exposure to famine, inclemencies of season, and all forms of military licence and cruelty. Now and then, indeed, when the historian or military memoir-writer takes a fancy to be sentimental, and thinks he has a fine opportunity for what is called effect, he will somewhat enlarge on such a scene, with great rhetorical show, and plenty of tragical epithets; but for a simple display, as mere matter of truth and humanity, of this ample portion of the horrors of war,-a display forming systematically, as it ought to do, a grand component of military history,--we should ·

look into that history, through all its ages, in vain. History, therefore, besides all its other notorious delinquencies which have rendered it so miserable a moral instructor, has, through this signal deficiency, most inadequately and erroneously represented, in effect falsified in favour of evil, the character of that infernal thing which almost all the world has through all ages adored, and still adores,-and will adore, in spite of all it costs and inflicts, till the Infernal Spirit that possesses the souls of our infatuated race shall be dislodged by Almighty Power.

The consideration of the peculiar severity with which the miseries of war fall on the female portion of the population of the places tormented by it, might be expected to enforce on the reflecting part of that sex the sense of an important duty, which they have never sufficiently felt, especially the women of this country. The exertion of their influence in the various practicable ways, might do much to diminish the dire insanity which is perpetually driving nations into mutual slaughter. If they would assiduously endeavour to counteract in the minds of their sons, their brothers, their admirers, their husbands, the pernicious fallacies of military glory, and that not less pernicious superstition of blind deference, so general among mankind, to every dictate of the ambition and selfishness of whoever happen to have the uppermost places in the state,-if they were habitually to do this, by presenting the contrast between revelling in blood and the exercise of the Christian virtues, and between a servile fanatical devotion to the will of persons in power and a dignified independence of judgement;---if they would do this, they might contribute to render it far less easy for nations to be plunged into war. But we fear they are but little so employed. It is notorious that many of the youthful partof them are prompt to bestow their sweetest smiles by preference on gay coxcombs in regimentals; and that many of soberer age are delighted and elated by the military baubles of distinction with which their male relatives have procured themselves to be bedizened. And how many matrons have seen with a complacency which has in effect cherished in their boys that incipient passion for martial enterprise and fame, which has ultimately carried them into arms as a profession. We confess that when we have sometimes heard of the overwhelming distress of such matrons on finding the names of their sons in the lists of wounded or dead, we have felt from this reflection a very great repression of our sympathy.

But to return to the interesting personage who has suggested these observations. Madame de Larochejaquelein (it is the cumbrous name of her second husband) was the only daughter of the Marquis de Donnissan, gentleman of honour to Monsieur,

(now Louis XVIII.) her mother being daughter of the Duke de Civrac, and lady in waiting to one of the princesses. She was born at Versailles in 1772, and educated in the palace till 1789, amid the most gratifying luxuries and caresses of royal favour. She therefore grew up to meet, just at the commencement of mature age, the Revolution, with every imaginable predisposition to dread and abhor it. She saw in what manner its forinidable career was beginning; for she was in the carriage of the princesses in the train of Louis XVI., when, on the 6th of October, 1789, he made his melancholy removal from Versailles to Paris. She and her mother were permitted to retire to their family and estate, in that western department which became the scene of the most sanguinary civil war of modern times. About two years after this retreat she was married to the Marquis de Lescure, her cousin, for whom she had been destined, by the family, from her infancy; an appointment it is not strange she should, when grown up, very willingly ratify; since, if we may depend on her testimony in his favour (and it has every mark of sincerity) he was eminently estimable and accomplished. She thus describes him, after relating a very unusual act of voluntary justice with respect to his father's debts.

"He had entered the military school at thirteen years of age, and left it at seventeen. Among the young people of his own age, none were better informed, more virtuous in every respect, more perfect in short; he was at the same time so modest, that he seemed ashamed of his own merit, and his endeavour was to conceal it. He was timid and awkward, and although of a good height and figure, his manners and unfashionable dress might not be prepossessing at first. He was born with strong passions, yet, notwithstanding the general example, and particularly that of his father, whose habits were irregular, he conducted himself with the most perfect correctness. His great piety preserved him from the contagion, and insulated him in the midst of the court and of the world. He took the sacrament every fortnight. The constant habit of resisting his inclinations and all external seductions, had rendered him rather unsocial and reserved; his opinions were strongly fixed in his mind, and sometimes he shewed himself pertinaciously attached to them. Meanwhile, he had the most perfect gentleness, and being entirely free from anger, or even impatience, his temper was always equal, and his calmness unalterable, He passed his time in study and meditation, from taste and not from vanity, for he only wished to enjoy what he knew; of which I will mention an example. One day at the Duchess de Civrac's, our grandmother, he had, according to his custom, taken a book, instead of joining in the conversation. My grandmother reproached him with it, adding, that since the book was so interesting, he ought to read it aloud. He obeyed-at the end of half an hour some one looking over him, exclaimed, "Ah, it is English! Why

did

you not say so?" He answered, with a disconcerted look, My good grandmother not understanding English, it was necessary

should read in French.'

I

Such a character could hardly be a more striking contrast to the contemporary young Frenchmen of rank, than it is to the generality of the young inheritors of fortune in our own country at this time.

This is the first, and perhaps it is on the whole the fairest, of the long series of portraits presented in the work. They are sketched always with great brevity, without the least formality or effort, and often with spirit and discrimination. She saw persons in times and scenes adapted to bring out the character in light and prominence. The breaking up of the whole etiquette and established economy of society, exposed persons in their own individual character. They were, besides, compelled by the commotion of the period, into an activity which brought their qualities to the test; and our Author frequently displays a character, by means of some one fact, more effectually than any mere description could have done.

When the rage for evincing loyalty by emigration had begun, our Author and her husband thought themselves bound to follow the example. But on their reaching Paris on their way out of the kingdom, their intention was arrested by the queen, and abandoned in compliance with her wishes;-a great effort of loyalty on the part of Lescure, as he foresaw, what happened, imputations and reproaches from the emigrants. He appears to have been a man fully capable of making the sacrifice of even his reputation to his sense of duty.

He and our Author remained in Paris till the memorable tenth of August. She states that the attack on the Tuileries was quite unexpected at the time by the court, though there was on the ninth a rumour of approaching commotion; in consequence of which her husband was, on the evening of that day, preparing to go armed from the hotel where they lodged, to the palace, to be ready among its defenders: but he was prevented by a visit from one of the king's most confidential officers, who informed them that the king had certain information that no attempt would be made before the twelfth. About midnight, however, there were alarming symptoms which rapidly augmented to dreadful tumult: Lescure hastened toward the palace; but too late for any possibility of admittance, which he earnestly sought at each of the guarded avenues. The vast and impetuous crowd was pressing on, and he narrowly escaped being so involved in it as to be irresistibly forced forward to the attack, a fate which befel some of the friends of the king. By the time he had regained the hotel the cannonade was heard, and he

felt the severest grief that he could not be at his post in the palace. In the evening he and his wife (who was now within two months of her confinement) were exposed to the utmost peril in seeking a more obscure lodging, in which they remained, in danger every moment, for a fortnight, at the end of which they made their escape, through various difficulties and hazards, from Paris, to retire into Poitou. It would have been impracticable but for the kindness of a democratic officer, who from respect to the virtues of Lescure came to their aid at the most critical moment, contrived to create for himself an official occasion for accompanying them through the most hazardous part of the journey, and displayed throughout a most admirable presence of mind. We cannot resist the temptation to go back to quote an instance of this rare quality in a Parisian grocer, who on the tenth of August saved, by an instantaneous turn of thought, the life of a royalist, M. de Montmorin.

'He (Montmorin) saw himself followed by four of the national guard, drunk with blood, who wanted to fight with him. He went into a grocer's shop and asked for a glass of brandy. The four guards furiously entered with him. The grocer suspected that M. de Montmorin had come from the palace, and, assuming the air of an acquaintance, said to him, "Ah, well Cousin, I did not expect you to come from the country to see the end of the tyrant! But come, let us drink to the health of these brave comrades, and the nation:"-and thus he was saved by the presence of mind of this good who did not even know him; but it was for a short time, for he was massacred the 2nd of September.'

man,

Though the Revolution had never been favourably regarded, nor its enactments and institutions fully complied with, by the majority of the inhabitants, the peasantry especially, of the departments where the civil war subsequently raged, there had as yet been no considerable disturbance. Before entering on the melancholy history, the Author gives an interesting description of the physical and moral state of the tract known since the civil war by the glorious name,' she says, ' of Vendée,' but previously, by that of Le pays du Bocage; comprehending a part of Poitou, of Anjou, and of the county of Nantes; a country differing by its aspect, and still more by the manners of the inhabitants, from most of the other provinces of France.' It is in general almost level, having scarcely any hill suf'ficiently elevated to serve for a point of observation, or to command the country.' It is woody, though without extensive forests. Each field or meadow, generally small, is fenced with a quickset hedge, and trees very close together,not high nor spreading, the branches being lopped off every five years, twelve or fifteen feet above ground.'