the Revolution, was likewise the cause of those sudden and momentary returns to humanity which sometimes illumed the black est periods of its history. Some bold reply, some flash of heroism, struck the giddy minds of their murderous mobs, or more murderous juries, and gave them back for a moment to mercy, although not to common sense.

than her condemnation of Mr. Fox's dissipated life, and its fatal effects upon his public influence and his whole success as a candidate for the direction of state affairs. Yet are there such errors in the view of Mr. Pitt as cannot be ascribed to difference of political party, but must be set down to the 'The same habits of thoughtlessness came to score of mere mistake. Thus besides saythe aid of their oppressed victims. In the crowd-ing that he was prime minister at the age of ed prisons and houses of detention, where the fatal sledges came every day to take a part of their inhabitants to the certain death then implied by trial before the revolutionary tribunal, the remaining inmates diverted their attention from their own impending fate, and from that of their companions, by making epigrams on their persecutors, by music meetings, by singing, and every other amusement of which a large society was capable.

'This animal courage, for surely it deserves no better name, has been celebrated by their writers more than it would seem to deserve. One of their historians, the most devoted to what was then nick-named liberty, himself an agent and a victim of the demagogues of the day, after coolly reporting contemporary horrors, seems to be insensible of the character he imposes on his country, when he says, "Le peuple prisonnier, ou non, mais asservi sous une tyrannie épouvantable, sembloit jouir avec ses chaînes. On le forçoit, pour ainsi dire, â rire de son esclavage.* A nation which plays with its chains, and laughs at its own slavery,

twenty-three (vol. i. p. 343), whereas he was nearly in his twenty-sixth year, that is, he was within a month or two of being twentyfive complete, she represents him as never having seen anything of the continent, his travels being confined to the road between Downing-street and Holwood (ib. p. 345); whereas he had resided many months in France, where he and Mr. Wilberforce travelled together, visiting the court and the capital after a considerable sojourn at Rheims. He was then of matured age and faculties, having been in Parliament some years, and filled for some months the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Shelburne's government. No one can doubt that he was more likely, with his sober temperament and reflecting habits, in such circumstances to profit much more by his continental excursion than his great rival did by a longer residence in Italy, when only seventeen, and immersed in the dissipation begun at his first visit to the continent with his father when only fourteen, and before he had left Eton. But again our author is wholly wrong in supposing that Mr. Pitt was himself friendly to an anti-revolutionary war with France. It is certain that he dreaded the effects of that both there and here, nor would he have been driven to it but for the attrocious acts of the Convention in contempt of the rights of independent nations, combined perhaps, and co-operating with the all but universal feeling so strongly excited in this country, and espeAlthough in all other parts of her work cially in the upper and middle classes, of Miss Berry has cautiously avoided political naced by the anarchy of Paris. Whoever alarm for the safety of our institutions, mematters, she possibly may be thought to have studies Lord Malmesbury's Correspondmade one exception to this rule of abstience and Diaries' will concur in this opinnence imposed upon herself, in giving a sketch of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, of the pol-number of our Review. As for the failure ion we refer to a previous article in this icy which the former supported, and of the personal qualities and social habits of the of so many coalitions and plans of hostility fatter. This account is by no means to be against the new republic, surely the untried charged with partiality beyond what the nature of the crisis, in which Mr. Pitt conwriter's honest opinions would naturally, it exceedingly rash to pronounce that either sulted for England and for Europe, makes almost unavoidably occasion, for nothing Mr. Fox or any other statesman would have can be more free, indeed more severe, had better success; while all must admit that * Dulaure, Esquisses Historiques, tome iv. p. 69. | the policy of holding out against France and

has much to learn and much to suffer before it can be capable of freedom. Had we laughed at ship-money, and satisfied ourselves with epigrams on the five members of the House of Commons demanded by Charles I., he would have reigned in uncontrolled power. Had we taken Cromwell's major-generals and military division of the country as a joke, we, like France, might have been liable to the prolonged establishment of a military despotism. Had we trifled and diverted ourselves with the awkward strides of James to arbitrary power, we should never have attained the honor of resisting that power, which all but crushed Europe under the iron arm of Buonaparte.'-vol. i. pp. 327-329.

keeping alive the sacred fire of national in- I would condescend to wear the livery of dependence in Europe, which he pursued another, and no servant in Paris would acsteadily under good fortune and under bad, company his employer, for the term of masnever cast down by multiplied reverses, nor ter had ceased, otherwise than by walking dispirited even by the defection of his well- at his side.'-Id. p. 46. subsidized allies whose battle he was fighting, merits the praise of the impartial historian, as it merited the success which finally crowned his system.

The Consulship and Empire are described faithfully and graphically. We have only room for one extract more, giving a curious account of society during the short and insecure, though necessary peace of Amiens. We the rather cite this, because it is the report of an eye-witness, and it describes a state of things now not believed to have survived the Republic, properly so called :

We have left ourselves no room to dwell on the accounts of the Bourbon Restoration, or the chapter on the Revolution of 1830, further than to point out a great exaggeration, the only one we have found in these pleasing and instructive volumes, where mention is made of the proceedings to which the reaction gave rise, after the Hundred Days had been closed with the fight at Waterloo, and the second occupation of Paris had been effected by the allied forces. It is marvellous to find such a statement as that which represents (vol. The exaggerated and impossible equality ii. p. 89) the Assembly of 1815 and 1816 of the democratical republic of 1793--the profli-' under its constitutional king as almost rigate and degrading manners of the Directo- valling the judicial cruelties of the revolury-the newly acquired power and efforts of tionary tribunals, and the agents it emBuonaparte to establish a better order of social ployed, their violence.' Almost' is cerlife-the remnant of the old nobility, who, in-tainly a wide word, and of very great powtrenched in the recesses of the Faubourg St. Germain, had carefully preserved every preer and application, if it can be used to judice, and (as has been justly observed) had bring the deeds of that Assembly, little as neither forgotten nor learnt anything; all these we are disposed to be its panegyrists, undiscordant elements, at the peace of Amiens, der the same class with the wholesale murformed strange and irreconcilable discrepan- ders of 1794, when fifty or sixty victims cies in society; while every party still believed were condemned to death in a day, and its force so nearly poised, that all had hopes of the Carrières, the Collots, the Billauds, reassuming the dominion they had successively lost. The Republican forms of language, and made the rivers flow with blood, and pointits calender, were still in use-were still those ed the civic artillery against the second of the Government, and of those employed by city of France. it. You were invited on a Quintidi of such a The Life of Rachael Lady Russell is the Décade of Ventose, or of Prairial, to a dinner, most important piece added to this edition; or an evening meeting; and you were receiv- it is a republication. The comedy of 'The ed in an apartment which bore no mark of Fashionable Friends,' acted for some nights change from former monarchical days, except- and withdrawn, is published now for the ing the company it contained :-the women in the half-naked costume of Directorial fashion, first time; as is the Defence of Lord Oror the Grecian tuniques and Grecian coiffures ford' (Horace Walpole) against the attacks of more recent days; the men in civil uni- of a critic in the Edinburgh Review,' forms of all sorts, and all colors of embroidery, whose knowledge of that celebrated perwith which the Directory (to separate them- son was as correct as his information reselves from the bonnet rouge and the carmag- specting the history of the sciences; reprenole of the Republicans) had thought proper to decorate themselves and all those put in ausenting the author of the best letters in thority under them. Among these figured the our language, one of its most powerful trabrilliant military costumes of the conquering gedies, one of its most original romances, generals, who had many of them risen from as a person, whose thoughts were made the ranks by merit which fitted them more for up of affectation, and would be reduced to distinction on the field of battle than in a draw-nothing were that taken away,' and asserting-room: the manners of their previous life

forsook them not in their peaceful capacity, ing as a thing admitted, that France reand the habits of a guard-room followed them ceived directly from us all great discoveries into the saloons of Paris.'-vol. ii. pp. 42, 43. in physics, metaphysics, political economy; the country of Lavoisier, Berthollet, ClairLet us add, what, with all that we before aut, D'Alembert, La Grange, Laplace, knew, or thought we knew of the subject, Quesnai,* having made none. The defence we confess was quite new to us. The father of the new system, to whom whatever his poverty or station in life, Adam Smith had intended to dedicate his Wealth

'No man,

additional halfpenny in the pound for the pleasure of abusing the minister. And the plea showed a thorough knowledge of nature-at least of English human nature. We are, without dispute, a grumbling peoroast beef. Both are indigenous products of the soil-both grand characteristics of the people. Not that we are discontented Not that our grum

of her deceased and steadily attached friend by Miss Berry does honor to her heart. If she leans too exclusively to the favorable side, we cannot quarrel with that in the lady who herself will always form the most delightful feature in the retrospect of Ho- ple. We are as fond of a grumble as of race Walpole's career. His approbation of her is a grand redeeming point-it is in his letters to her that we have the most agreeable glimpses of his inner man. It is nothing of the sort. a passage in both their lives which beautifully exhibits the high sense of honor in the one, and may justly give pause to all who have thought with unmixed severity of the other, that when the Earl laid his coronet at her feet, she refused to be a countess because their ages were so unequal, and that he continued his respectful devotion to her after this offer had been declined.

bling is ill-conditioned-it is the nature of the animal. It is one of our prime wantsnot to say chief luxuries. We could not be perfectly satisfied with any state that afforded us no opportunity for indulging our favorite propensity. Every evil has a bright side-and the bright side of half our evils is the opportunity they afford to the grumbler.

It will be observed, that it is generally the mere petites misères of humanity which we grumble at. There is no grumbling at

The republication of the Life of Madame 'du Deffand leads us only to observe that the friendship for Lord Orford, that lady's oldest and most attached associate, also a great misfortune. We grumble the more, prompted this Essay in all probabilitycertainly blinded its amiable writer to many an unamiable trait in that clever, hard, selfish person's character, more especially to her detestable treatment of Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, of which no adequate defence, or even explanation, is or can be given.

We need not sum up our review of this interesting work by general reflections, having prefaced it with a general description of its merits. But the reader who may have honored us with a perusal of these pages will now be better prepared to admit that our eulogy was not founded on fanciful notions, or on any other ground than the great and rare merits of the book, as well as of its accomplished and virtuous author.

THE PLEASURES OF GRUMBLING.

BY ANGUS B. REACH. From the New Monthly Magazine. LORD NORTH Once excused the imposition of an additional duty upon some article of general consumption, because, as he said, nobody would begrudge the payment of an

of Nations. Miss Berry, however, is herself rather unlucky in classing Chaptal as a discoverer

(vol. i. p. 304), and in describing the analyzation of air, begun by Priestly and Black, as first applied to aërostation in France.' (ib.)

the more comfortable we are just because the intensity of the pleasure we enjoy excites a yearning for something more exquisite still. Refinement makes us sensitive. We should be much more likely to grumble for claret-were we put upon a regimen in which port formed the most delicate beverage allowed-than were we absolutely to be confined to Barclay and Perkins.

Again a man will grumble excessively should his boots be sent home a misfit, who would be a perfect model of resignation were his leg to be cut off. He will grumble more earnestly at the discomfort of his toes-than at their loss altogether. A gentleman tumbles into the river-he is fished out nine parts dead-and-if the light the Royal Humane Society is at such trouble in spreading upon the subject be not clear in the pericraniums of his savers, -he is hung up by the heels, as an antidote to the effects of his ducking. Suppose him to recover this course of treatment, he is as meek and thankful as a man can be. How he will grumble and sulk if he is caught in a shower of rain, and his new beaver damped.

It is your well-fed, comfortable fellow who grumbles most. After Paddy has floored his friends from love at Donnybrook, he is as happy as a grig upon potatoes and aginative delicacy of potatoes and point. salt or the still greater because more imHe grumbles neither over the one or the other. The canny Scot changes his oatmeal for something better as soon as he

can, but even after the step is effected when rolls take the place of bannocks, and anchovy toast of porridge-he grumbleth not, nor turneth up his nose at the remembrance of his former fare. On the contrary, he lauds it-he proves it to be the very best sort of food a man can have set before him-he expatiates on its excellence-is eloquent on its thousand good qualitiesin short, he does every thing he can to establish its virtues-but eat it!

| forefathers when ochre was the rouge in use, and sheepskins the dress-coats. Instead of grumbling if any thing did not exactly suit their tastes, they probably dispatched the offender at once if they could -or were dispatched by him for the attempt if they could not. Savages cannot comprehend the pleasure of the civilized grumble-they only understand the warwhoop. Marvellously uncomfortable must have been our ancestors' steel garmentsYour true Englishman is a very different extremely unpleasant must it have been to sort of animal. Were he kept to herrings live like the genii picked up by the fisheror oatmeal-great would be the grumble. man-ensconced in an iron pot-or a seWhen he is promoted to something better, ries of pots and magnified steel-purses. he grumbles for another step-when he An existence more free than easy must it gets it, he is all agog for a still further ele- have been to scour over the country-fightvation—and at length were you to set him ing with every other unknown iron-bound down to the very best dinner in rerum na- gentleman you chanced to meet. But we tura, he would grumble at rerum natura warrant there was little grumbling among for not affording a better one. If he can- the crusaders, and a knight-errant would not grumble with his beef, it is hard if he lay himself down under an oak to ponder cannot be indignant with his mustard. " A upon the charms of his mistress-and probcapital dinner," you remark. "Capital-ably feel the charms of rheumatism withreally good-but the waiting-disgust- out a muttered syllable of discontent. ing.'

We maintain, that the more civilized we get, the more do we grumble for what we have not yet obtained; and, indeed, there seems little doubt that civilization and grumbling will attain their acmé together.

Now there is not a particle of carping, cynical ill-nature in all this. Nine times out of ten a man grumbles from habit. Did he think the muttered expression of his dissatisfaction would hurt a living being- Eating and drinking, as they supply us no one readier to give a gulp and swallow let spiritualists say what they may-with it. But, in fact, he grumbles without be- some of the pleasantest hours we enjoy, also ing dissatisfied. He grumbles not to in- give rise to the greatest amount of grumjure another-but to relieve himself. He bling. If there be any thing over which grumbles as a sailor swears, not that he more pathos is expended than another, it is means any thing serious by it, but because a bad dinner. An earthquake is talked of he rather likes it, and it is a style of ex- -an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, sweeping pression which every one around makes off half-a-dozen Neapolitan villages in the use of. He grumbles, too, not because a lava, like flies in treacle, and you reply, thing is bad, but because it is not better."God bless me-very melancholy-veryHe grumbles that the positive is not the hum-but ah, by the by, that reminds me— comparative-the comparative not the su- You should have seen, Snobbins, my boy, perlative and the superlative not something more superlative still. He grumbles because he has not something better than he has it—if he had it not at all, he would probably strive only to get it. He quarrels with his bread and butter, but if he had no bread and butter, he would not quarreland although he does quarrel with it-he takes care to eat it.

Viewed in this light, grumbling proves a high stage in civilization, as well as a peculiar phase of national character. Comfort begets comfort-refinement produces refinement, and grumbling is the process of their elimination. We suspect that there was very little grumbling among our VOL. V.-No. II. 18

the dinner that fellow Clumper gave us yes-
terday. Now, would you believe it, the
soup was more than half cold, and-he
might say what he liked-but I knew the
mutton wasn't Welsh. It's horrible to be
done in that sort of way—isn't it now?"

The weather is, of course, an inexhausti-
ble topic for the grumbler, and verily our
climate seems to have been given to us to
encourage our national propensity. But a
true Englishman grumbles as much under
Italian skies as groping in a London fog.
If he does not find the sky too thick, he
may very well quarrel with its clearness.
In fact, he would come down several pegs
in his own estimation-and very high he

No day so good, but knows some touch of badness, saith the grumbler. Was there ever such a thing as an Englishman found acknowledging that the weather was faultless?

stands in that were he to acknowledge to] of abomination; the constantly recurring himself even that he can find no cause for omelette his gorge rises at; he compares grumbling. There is a philosophy in find- mules with locomotives, and muleteers with ing evil as well as good in every thing-and railway-conductors, and his contempt breaks there is still more philosophy in enjoying forth-still he travels. In Italy he grumthe one while you make the other condu- bles at macaroni; in Germany he is indigcive to your enjoyment by grumbling at it. nant at sourkrout. Every where out of his No beast so fierce, but knows some touch of pity, and the animals that run on them worseown little isle of the sea, he finds roads bad, saith the poet, and hotels execrable, and the animals that run in them more execrable still. Yet he travels, like the prince in the fairy tale, "further, and further, and further than I can tell;" and, if it be not for the pleasure of abusing nine-tenths of every thing he meets, one very much wonders why he travels at all. Any less grumbling people, finding less comfort abroad than at home, would naturally stay at home. Not so John, he finds more to grumble at abroad than he does at home, therefore he naturally goes abroad. Were he seated amid all the gods on high Olympus, with Venus to flirt with, and Apollo to chat with, and Momus to laugh with, he would complain of the unNow all this time Peterkin and Thomson pleasantness of lying in damp clouds, and are enjoying the weather lustily; they only start grave doubts as to whether the nectar want to excite some sort of sympathy for above was better than the old crusted port themselves, in order to add to their stock of below, of course giving the preference as pleasurable sensation, and they do it by pre-naturally to the latter as on this "dim speck, tending to suffer inconvenience arising from which men call earth," he would award it the very source of the enjoyment. They to the former, for the precise reason that would be apparently much more contented here he can't get it. in a simoom in the desert, or a snow-storm in Nova Zembla.

"A fine day this, eh, Peterkin?" "Yes; but the evenings are chilly." Magnificent night, ain't it, Thomson?" "Yes; but it was so hot all day." "That breeze now-how fresh!" "Yes; if it wasn't for the dust." "Well, we shall have a shower soon to lay it, I hope."

Yes; and to wet us-I wish you would not talk such nonsense."

We have all of us heard of being

Lull'd in the rack of a too easy chair, some of us, moreover, may have felt the torture. The line expresses in a breath the doctrines we have been attempting to lay down. The inconvenience, the complaints, result from the very easiness, the very desire, to do away with inconvenience and complaint. We admire comfort, and the liberty of grumbling we rank as the very essence of the comfortable.

And sometimes the very deficiency in the one is made up for by the license thereby given to the exercise of the other. John Bull goes a-travelling; in France he declaims against dishes-like man-"fearfully and wonderfully made," and against wines, which it is his special delight to characterize as vinegars; his very boots turn up at the toes with indignation at treading on brick floors instead of sinking in Brussels and Kidderminster. So in Spain, John loathes garlic; olla podrida is to him a mass

One source of grumbling not to be lost sight of in this grave treatise, is that which is supplied by our own feelings of self-importance, and innate dignity. People think it beneath them to be too easily pleased; they are not the sort of folks that any thing will do for-not they, and they seek to prove by grumbling at what they have, the superior quality of what they ought to have. How many are there who are nothing if not critical, but it is not their discernment that makes them spy faults, it is the wish to be thought to have discernment. Talent is proved in their estimation by fault-finding: they grumble over a work of art, not so much to show what a stupid fellow the author is, as what clever fellows they are for having found out his short comings. Goldsmith taught a golden rule to the art-grumblers. "Say that the picture would have been better painted had the painter taken more pains." Safe and sure, no criticism enunciated, no theory advanced, but a grumble successfully achieved. The grumbler thinks that if he professes too much pleasure with a picture