on marble : Dominus Raymundus married Anne Carr, of Northumberland, 1769, with the following words engraved and died without issue. From henceforward, D. [Raymund] Roche, of Ballyndangan, assumed the title of Viscount de Fermoy, a Major in the army of the King of Sardinia, who was a very near relation to the forementioned Viscounts. (See Francis Nichols' Irish Compendium, London, 1735, p. 166). I know one D. Thomas Roche, of Dublin, who says that he is a very near relation." We now turn to the Supplement, where we find recorded the monumental inscription of him who last aspired to the title of Lord Viscount Fermoy :: "I saw (says Dr. Burke) the Epitaph of the celebrated Lord Roche, of Ballyndangan, in the Church of Saint Marcian of the Friars Predicants, at Tortona, in the Duchy of Milan, in the dominion of the King of Sardinia, on the 26th August, Dominus Ballyndangan, Ballinlogh, Carricdownan, Ordinis Militaris SS. Mauricii & Lazari Peditum S. R. M. Regis Sardiniæ Mortuus Quinto Kalendar. Junii MDCCLXII, Quere-Did Lieut.-General Roche leave any issue? If so, did they afterwards settle in Ireland? And, as the period is but short, who can claim a descent ?—I am, &c. RICHARD CAulfield. FRENCH HISTORY. The Monarchy of France, its Rise, Progress, and Fall. By William Tooke, F.R.S. THE position which French history occupies in the annals of modern Europe is as unique and important as the geographical situation of the country whose progress and developement it describes. Independently of the predominant influence of France upon the rest of Europe, not only during the last generation, but during the three preceding centuries; without reference to its situation, its wealth, and its resources, and the intelligence and bravery of its inhabitants, there is no country in whose story the distinguishing elements of European society, and the mode of developement of our modern civilization, can be studied so fully or so accurately as in French history. The various and often antagonistic forces which made up the life of the middle ages, and out of whose working modern society and government have arisen-monarchy, feudal or absolute, aristocracy, feudality, the towns, the peasantry-all these are more conveniently and advantageously observed upon the scene of French history than in that of any other nation. The same influences have moulded the destinies of England; but here their forces have been always more equally balanced, their characteristics less marked. The history of Germany wants that unity of cha racter which is afforded by that of more living and vigorous nationalities; and the peculiar circumstances of the two great southern peninsulas deprive their annals of much of that singular interest which arises from the applicability of history to illustrate events which touch us more nearly, and with which we are more familiarly acquainted. As certain historical personages may be selected as the "representative men" of the ages in which they lived, so France may well be chosen as the representative country of our European history. It is remarkable that this subject does not appear to have occupied the attention and the labour of English litterateurs at all in proportion to its interest and importance. If we may form any judgment from the paucity of published writings in this country upon French history, we should conclude that there is very little interest generally felt among our students upon the subject. Perhaps one of the causes of this indifference may be found in the unsatisfactory method in which the history of their country was treated until a recent period by French writers. A conscientious and intelligent research into facts, rare among the historians of the last century in every 66 country, was peculiarly rare in France; there no sacrifice was too great to be made to national or regal vanity. The Abbé Daniel fell into disgrace for depriving the royal line of four apocryphal kings of France," whom the Abbé Velly and his successors took care with due respect to reinstate in their ancient dignities. In no country did more various influences of race and of province, and of orders and of classes, require to be recognised and appreciated; in no country was history written from a more exclusive and central point of view. This is happily now no longer the case. The Revolution has in its sequel imparted a new life to the literary as well as to the political energies of France; Guizot and Sismondi, the two Thierrys, and M. de Barante have inaugurated a new æra in French historical writing. The new impetus which this study has recently received in France is, no doubt, connected with a general change of opinion and feeling as to the objects and province of history. The histories written for the past generation are not the histories for the present. Historical criticism may be said to be a new science, and the whole manner of treating history has been revolutionized. The philosophical history, as it was termed, of the last century has given place to a far more searching examination of facts, and a more enlightened and conscientious inquiry into their causes. That which Niebuhr has done for the history of Rome has been, or has to be, done, at a still greater cost of labour and research, for the history of all the countries of modern Europe. It was lately observed in a speech which made some noise in the country, that the history of England was still to be written. We are, however, disposed to think, that no modern writer can hope to attain to the authority and reputation as national historians which once attached to the name of Hume in this country, and to those of the Abbé Velly and of Anquetil in France. The truth is now generally recognizedMelius est petere fontes quam sectare rivulos, that a page of a contemporary chronicle, a verse of an ancient ballad, produces on the mind a truer, a more complete, and a more vivid picture of the period to which it belongs, than a chapter of Hume, or a dissertation of the Academy of Inscriptions. We feel that the local and individual colouring of the story is as valuable as the events themselves, and we reject the aid of the "philosophic" historian, who would translate the characteristic narrative into well-turned and monotonous periods with as little ceremony as the antiquary would expel a domestic who had evinced a taste for burnishing his Roman specula, or for giving to a stater of Antigonus the polish of a new-coined sovereign. We may even go further than this. The mode in which a fact is related is more valuable than the fact itself; and the same historical criticism which has destroyed our belief in the fables of early Latin history has given an additional value to the memorials of them which Livy has preserved, as reflections of the national traditions and of the popular sentiments of early Rome. Nor does this apply to remote times only. An eloquent historian has shown us the value of the poetry and works of fiction of the day in illustrating the history of our own country and of the seventeenth century; and we rise from the perusal of a paper of the Spectator, or a scene of The Way of the World, with a truer conception of the manners and the mode of thinking and living of the Augustan age of Queen Anne than can be gained from the pages of Rapin or of Smollett. The French historians of the last century were incapable of looking at their national annals except through the spectacles of their own age, and the chieftains and warriors of Chlodowig and Karl Martel assume in their scenes the language and gestures of le grand monarque and his courtiers. Augustin Thierry, in his interesting Letters upon the History of France, illustrates this unhappy propensity by tracing the several forms assumed by certain incidents of history or romance, as they are transferred from the original sources to the pages of the most distinguished modern historians. Their principal care, he complains, is to efface the popular colour and to substitute the air of the court, to spread with skill the varnish of modern grace over the rudeness of the olden time. We cannot resist borrowing from him an amusing instance of this process of varnishing. "Childerik," says Gregory of Tours, "being abandoned to an excessive licence, and reigning over the nation of Franks, began to abuse their daughters. They, indignant at this, drive him from the kingdom. But, finding that they further wished to kill him, he went away to Thuringia.” * This is the narrative of a writer living a century after the event. The following are the words of the Abbé Velly, who boasts in his preface of drawing from the ancient sources, and depicting manners and usages with exactness: "Childéric fut un prince à grandes aventures; c'était l'homme le mieux fait de son royaume. II avait de l'esprit, du courage; mais, né avec un cœur tendre, il s'abandonnait trop à l'amour: ce fut la cause de sa perte. Les seigneurs français, aussi sensibles à l'outrage que leur femmes l'avaient été aux charmes de ce prince, se liguêrent pour le detrôner. Contraint de céder à leur fureur, il se retira en Allemagne."† It was not for want of an abundant supply of authentic and original matter, that the French historians of the last century failed to present to their readers a faithful picture of past times. The noble series of historical monuments commencing with the Benedictine collection and since enriched by the publications of the Société de l'Histoire de France, together with the unrivalled succession of private memoirs, form a more complete and available mass of historical material than any other country can boast. With the abundance of original and interesting documents which industry and research have placed at the command of the modern historian, it becomes one of his principal duties to select and arrange his evidence, to distinguish authentic testimony from mere hearsay information, the narrative of the careful and impartial witness from the gossip of the prejudiced or credulous relator. In order to make his work at once trustworthy and interesting, it must be his care so to use his materials as to retain the graphic interest of the contemporary narratives, without abandoning the vantage-ground of histori cal criticism or abdicating the historian's office as supreme judge of the accuracy of chroniclers and of the probabilities of events. The genius of Scott seized at once the value of the details and accessories of history as aids to the imagination; and his historical novels presented to the world a livelier picture of the periods to which they relate than history had previously exhibited. The lesson furnished by the novelist has not been lost upon the historian. There is no fear now of the writers of history neglecting those minutia which add life and interest to their narrative; the temptation is rather to exaggerate and misapply them, to study effect rather than truth, to transfer picturesque circumstances to characters and situations to which they do not belong, and to borrow from the novelist not only the use of characteristic details, but also the manner of employing the materials of history. Some of our own popular writers have not been altogether proof against this temptation. * Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc. lib. ii. p. 12. + Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 41, GENT. MAG. VOL. XLIV. At the present time the French have no reason to complain of the deficiencies of their historians. M. de Barante, in his history of the dukes of Burgundy, has succeeded in rendering the narrative of medieval history more interesting than it has been under the hands of any previous writer, and the work of M. Henri Martin, as a general aperçu of French history, appears to leave little to be desired. Mr. Tooke's "Monarchy of France" does not pretend to give an original view of French history, but only to be a depository of the commonly known and received facts. Moreover, as to its subject, it professes to be no more than that which the older histories of France, whatever their pretensions, really were-a history of the monarchy only, and not of the nation or of the provinces. The monarchy intended to be illustrated being that dynasty which found its period at the Revolution, the subject of the work would be properly terminated by the death of Louis XVI.; but the history is continued by a diary of the principal events of the Revolution, from the as H sembling of the States General to the creation of the first Directory, and by some useful tables, including an alphabetical list of the members of the States General, with a syllabus of the reactionary gossip and private scandal which was directed against the distinguished men of the Revolution. The affection with which the author regards his great subject, the French monarchy, has led him to treat the Revolution and its leaders with some acrimony; but in spite, or perhaps by reason, of this partiality the supplemental portion is not the least interesting part of the volume. It is, we presume, to be attributed to his exaggerated love of legitimacy that Mr. Tooke has repeated without suspicion the genealogical fable of the descent of Hugh Capet from the first race of Frankish kings, which even father Daniel only gives as an apocryphal compliment, and as a sort of pendant to Dante's equally unfounded sneer: Figliuol fui d'un beccaio di Parigi Quando li regi antichi venner meno.† We have observed two or three inaccuracies in turning over Mr. Tooke's earlier pages. For example, in p. 293, Otho Count of Burgundy, the father of Joan queen of Philip le Long, and of Blanche, the too famous wife of Charles le Bel, is confounded with the Emperor Otho IV.; and in p. 310, it is stated that King John of France acquired the duchy of Burgundy through his wife Joan, the mother of Philip de Rouvre, the last duke of the elder line, whereas that queen was not of the Burgundian house, and the heiress who brought that inheritance to the Crown was another Joan, the wife of Philip of Valois, and mother of King John. We do not know upon what authority it is stated that Charles le Temeraire was drowned before Nanci. The exact manner of his death was a mystery at the time, but it is agreed that on his body was found more than one mortal wound; and Comines conjectures, from the report of those who were present at the battle, that he was borne along by a crowd of enemies, by whom he was killed and stripped without being recognized. Mr. Tooke's work is arranged partly in a narrative and partly in a tabular form, and, considering the large and handsome type in which the principal part of the work is printed, it contains as much information upon the subject to which it relates as could well be compressed into the space of a volume. LETTER OF AARON BURR, THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON COLLEGE, NEW JERSEY. PRESIDENT AARON BURR, the writer of the interesting letter now subjoined, was a descendant of good Jonathan Burr, first of Redgrave in England, ultimately of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and the son of Chief Justice Peter Burr. He was a native of Fairfield, Connecticut, and was born there in 1714. His ancestry was famous in the colony. He graduated at Yale College in 1735. In 1742 he accepted a call to the Presbyterian congregation at Newark, in New Jersey. Here he early became preeminent as a scholar and a theologian. In 1748 he was unanimously elected the successor of the saintly Dickinson as President of the College established in Elizabethtown, but which was transferred to Newark immediately after his appointment. In 1757, a short time before the death of Burr, it was removed to the subsequently famous Princeton; a name likely to be long illustrious, as well from its teachers as its many distinguished alumni. The names of its after presidents, Edwards, Davies, Finley, Witherspoon, and others, brought additional fame to the "Log College," which soubriquet, by the way, Dr. Archibald Alexander has rendered classic by adopting it as the title of his delightful" Memorials of Princeton." President Burr died Sept. 24, 1757. Few need to be told that he married a daughter of Edwards; or that the famous-infamous Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, was his son. Fewer still need to be told that Princeton still retains its ancient note. Together with the Theological Seminary (often confounded with the * Histoire de France, tome ii. p. 316. + Purgatorio, canto 20. College) adorned by a Hodge and an Alexander, it stands in the front-rank of educational institutes. The illustrious secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, Professor Henry, is still its Professor of Natural Philosophy. Among other letters of this excellent man which are in my possession, is the following, addressed to Mr. Hogg, merchant in Edinburgh, a man "of a thousand" in his" day and generation." It sheds light on the early history of Princeton College; and, moreover, gives expression to the feelings of the nation while passing through the eclipse of Braddock's defeat. By the way, it must be permitted me to waft across the Atlantic an earnest desire that a History of Princeton may be given by one or other of her numerous gifted sons. Many schools, calling themselves "academies," and even "colleges," have their bulky octavos, while the venerable Princeton, so far as is known to me, has only casual and incidental" Notices." I should be glad to place considerable materials at the service of one competent to the task. A. B. G. DEAR AND WORTHY SIR, * Your most obliging favour of August 28th came safe to hand a few days ago, which I read with much gratitude and pleasure. It brought us very agreeable news about the Scotland collection, which has exceeded our expectations at least 300 pounds; as my good friend Mr. Erskine † wrote me some time ago that he did not think it would amount to more than 7007. We are sensible how much we are indebted to you and your worthy son for our success in this affair. May the Giver of every good and perfect gift reward you a thousand-fold with spiritual and temporal blessings in Christ Jesus! Liberty for drawing bills comes very seasonably, as the exchange is just now higher than it has been any time since ye last war. Our bills will not reach Mr. Belchiers till some time in January, as none will be of earlier date than this letter; so there appears no danger of their coming too soon. Enclos'd you have a copy of Mr. Belchier's account,§ as also Mess. Tennent and Davies¶ with the trustees, that you may see how Divine Providence has smiled upon our undertaking; and I hope you will help us by your prayers to give God the glory. We have begun a building at Princeton, which contains a hall, library, and rooms to accommodate about an hundred students, tho' it will not any more of it be finished than is absolutely necessary at present-with an house for the President. We do everything in the plainest and cheapest manner as far as is consistent with decency and convenience, having no superfluous ornaments. There was a necessity of our having an house sufficient to contain ye students, as they could not lodge in private houses in that village where we have fix'd the college; which, as it is the centre of the province, where provisions are plenty and firewood will always be cheap, is doubtless the fittest place we cou'd have pitch'd upon. The buildings prove more expensive than we at first imagin'd, from the best computations we could get; but by the smiles of heaven upon us we shall be able I think to compleat what we design at present; and have at least a fund left of 1,600l. ster[ling], which, with the other income of the college, will be sufficient for the present officers and a little more, as money here will readily let for 7 per cent. interest with undoubted security. This fund will be encreased by what we get from Ireland, and a little more we expect from South Brittain [i. e. England]; and we hope by the help of some generous benefactors here and abroad to be able before long to support a Professor of * The Kirk of Scotland enjoined collections to be made in every parish in behalf of the college of New Jersey, afterwards called Princeton. + Dr. John Erskine, clarum et venerabile nomen in Scotish theology. This is probably a clerical mis-rendering of " Belcher," a banker in London, son of the estimable governor of Massachusetts and New Jersey. § The inclosure has disappeared, Gilbert Tennent, the compeer of Whitfield. He accompanied Davies to Scotland as a deputy to plead for the College. The excellent Rev. Samuel Davies, of Virginia, whose "Diary," while in Scotland along with Tennent, appears in Dr. Foote's masterly "History of Virginia." |