are 10,000 to 1 against any of his children being either blind or dumb. It will be objected, perhaps, that the parents when no longer burthened with the expense of maintaining a blind or dumb child, will be able to rear one more than they otherwise could, and that thereby population would be indirectly augmented. This is certainly true, but when it is considered that the parents could not without assistance educate a blind or dumb child, or put it in the way of earning a subsistence, and that by means of the Institution, the child grows up a profitable, and not an unprofitable consumer, it will be allowed, we think, that charity in this instance is not misplaced. Even this trifling evil might be guarded against, by requiring from the parents on the admittance of such a child, a weekly sum equal in amount to what its maintenance would cost them.

For the same reason, hospitals for the cure of wounds, fractures, or other serious bodily hurts, are good. Such accidents are naturally unexpected, and, therefore, it shows no great imprudence, or want of foresight, in the sufferers not to be provided with the necessary means for their cure. Great surgical skill, too, not to speak of accommodation, is indispensably requisite. If fractures and wounds were as common as the measles or rheumatism, it would then be necessary that the wages of the labourers should furnish them with what is essential to their treatment. No other effectual remedy could be applied. Such misfortunes would then be part of the ordinary lot of human nature; and to offer gratuitous assistance would be as indiscreet as to attempt to relieve the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, or the pregnant.

Hospitals for highly-contagious disorders are likewise beneficial; not only because these disorders are of rare occurrence, and because the best medical advice is desirable, but because they are attended with considerable risk to the community. To guard against such risk should at all times be the peculiar province of government, and ought not to be left to individuals.

We have thus selected some of the principal Institutions of this metropolis as practical illustrations of what, at starting, we pointed out to be the characteristic distinctions between a good and bad distribution of the means of happiness. Should any of our readers have the curiosity to know more on the subject of Charitable Institutions in general, we must refer him to Mr. Highmore's work, where they will find, in addition, numerous specimens of the pathetic and affecting appeals by which ignorant, though benevolent, persons, attempt to excite the commiseration of the public.

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To conclude, then; the promoters of many charitable institu

tions, however excellent their intentions, have hitherto, by overlooking the effects of charity in encouraging procreation, and in removing the inducements to industry and economy, been the occasion of more harm than good. And we recommend to them in future to provide gratuitous relief for those evils alone, to which the poor would otherwise be contented to submit, or for which no foresight on their part could afford a remedy. We have enumerated some of those evils; others will readily present themselves, if the principles which we have laid down are kept steadily in view. Above all, it cannot too often be repeated, that the education of the poor holds out a brilliant object for the exertions of all who aim at rendering effectual service to mankind. This attained, every other blessing will follow in its train. The best remedy for such evils as prudence and foresight may remove, is to give that education, of which prudence and foresight cannot fail to be the consequence.

ART. VI. Mémoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV, et de la Regence. Extraits de la Correspondence allemande de Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, · Duchesse D'Orleans, Mère du Régent. Paris, 1823.

Secret Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV, and of the Regency, extracted from the German Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans, Mother of the Regent. Whittaker. London, 1824.

IN noticing the Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans, mother of

the Regent, we labour under difficulties of a peculiar nature. The historical value and principal interest of the book consist in its unsparing developement of the utter corruption of morals that prevailed under the old French court; but this exposure is necessarily attended with a grossness and indecency that render it almost impossible for us to give the English reader an accurate idea of the contents of the work. The duchess of Orleans has been perplexed by no such scruples of delicacy; on the contrary, she seems to delight in calling things by their broadest names; she describes men and vices as she sees them, and by the least equivocal terms that language can supply. Far from appearing to consider her task as one of much nicety, she at once fearlessly and freely plunges into a very sewer of corruption as the natural element of the court of France, and from every dive into this loathsome sink of impurity she drags up a prince or princess, a duke or duchess, reeking with pollution and steaming from the stews. In justice to the author it must, however, be stated, that though she treats the vices with the familiarity of court acquaintances, they, nevertheless, seem to have been strangers to her own person; and we believe that her character

is entirely free from imputation, a phenomenon almost unparalleled at the period at which she lived, and in the debauched circle in which she moved. The mother of the regent, indeed, appears to have been a good kind of gross German, shrewd in seeing things, and more than sufficiently plain in giving them their just appellations. A princess palatine,* pride was her birthright, and the extremes to which she pushed her ultra-aristocratical notions, constituted her besetting sin: in all other respects she would merit the character of a woman of sound and simple understanding. The duchess, indeed, informs us of the signal chastisement which she inflicted on a certain spurious Countess Palatine, set up for the purpose of mortifying her palatine pride, by her arch foe, Maintenon, and the story is so illustrative of that particular feature of her character which we have just noted, and also of her very peculiar manner, that we shall give it a place here :—

She (Maintenon) had once two young girls from Strasburg brought to court, and made them pass for countesses palatine, placing them in the office of attendants upon her nieces. I did not know a word of it until the dauphine came to tell it me, with tears in her eyes. I said to her "Do not disturb yourself, leave me alone to act, when I have good reason for what I do; I despise the old witch." When I saw, from my window, the niece walking with these German girls, I went into the garden and met them. I called one of them, and asked her who she was. She told me boldly that she was a Countess Palatine of Lutzelstein. "By the left hand ?" I asked. "No;" she replied, "I am not illegitimate: the young count palatine married my mother, who is of the house of Gehlen." "In that case,” I said, "You cannot be countess palatine; for we never allow such unequal marriages to hold good. I will tell you, moreover, that you lie, when you say that the count palatine married your mother; she is a and the count married her no more than a hundred others have done; I know her lawful husband is a hautboy-player. If you presume in future to pass yourself off as a countess palatine, I will have you stripped; let me never again hear any thing of this: but if you will follow my advice, and take your proper name, I shall not reproach you. And now you see what you have to choose between." The girl took this so much to heart that she died some days afterwards. As for the second, she was sent to a boarding house in Paris, where she became as bad as her mother: but as she changed her name, I did not trouble myself any further about her.'

It never seems to have struck the good lady that death was rather too severe a punishment even for the enormous crime of assuming the title of Countess Palatine; and, doubtless, had the second sister not wisely withdrawn from the legitimate wrath of

* The duchess of Orleans, daughter of the elector-palatine Charles Louis and the princess Charlotte of Hesse Cassel,

the duchess, she would have talked her to death in like manner, without ever suspecting that the retribution exceeded the offence. But this was not the only shock which Madame's German pride encountered. Stiff as was the state observed at the court of Louis 14th, it was too lax and easy for our author's ideas of propriety, and she complains bitterly that the captains, lieutenants, and sub-lieutenants, of the guard, were suffered to sit at the drawing-rooms, which so disgusted her with the salon that she declined attending it. It does not appear whether she exerted that species of eloquence on the captains, lieutenants, and sub-lieutenants, of the guard which proved so signally efficient on the unlucky pseudo-countess palatine.

The Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans are composed of extracts of a voluminous correspondence with the princess Wilhelmina Charlotte, of Wales, and the duke Antoine-Ulric, of Brunswick, compiled and prepared for the press by De Praun, at the instance of the court of Brunswick, and published at Strasburg, in the year 1789; the work before us is a French translation from the German of the Strasburg edition. The French translation has also been " done into English" omitting the offensive passages, the absence of which is marked by the frequent appearance of asterisks. As we hear objections often made to the custom of quoting in French what can be quoted in English, we shall, for the most part, though with infinite reluctance, take our extracts from the latter copy.

After what we have premised at the commencement of this article, it cannot be expected that we should give a very correct notion of the contents of this extraordinary production: all that we can attempt is, to convey to our readers some idea of the general scope and tendency of the work, and, in following the duchess through her pages, we shall pick our way with as much nicety as we may. Indeed, it is impossible to discover to the English reader the depths of depravity into which the French nobility were plunged under the ancient regime; their vices are unutterable, and their very enormity shrouds them from exposure, suffice it to say that the sixth satire of Juvenal applies about as justly to Paris during the regency, and the reign of Louis 15th, as to Rome in its worst day. Can we be surprised that a deluge of blood at length swept the land so long cursed and polluted by these iniquities? But while the pattern moralists and hypochondriac politicians of the age are never weary of dilating on "the horrors of the French Revolution," they are utterly silent as to the vices of the ancient regime. We hear a vast deal of the excesses of a day of the men without breeches, but not one syllable of the perpetuated enormities

of illustrious houses from generation to generation. An act of oblivion seems to have been passed respecting the iniquities of the aristocracy, while hourly proclamation is made of the crimes of the people. It would, however, be both just and instructive, to keep cause and consequence in view, and to place the lives of the French nobility in juxta-position with their deaths by the guillotine. If the comparison will not, as it cannot, excuse the blind ferocity of the revolutionists, it will at least go far to explain it. The privileged classes had for ages been poisoning the soil with their vices, and they at last reaped the harvest that might be expected from their toils. Indeed, when we read of the enormities perpetrated under the old regime by the higher orders, and reflect how peculiarly the creatures of example the French then were, we are only astonished that any virtue could survive amidst so general and so utter a corruption of morals. One would suppose the parc-au-cerf of that right legitimate, Louis 15th, sufficient alone to raise up a whole nation of regicides, and to make every father and husband an assassin whose soul was not sufficiently base to qualify him for a pander, but the long endurance of this people is as remarkable as their late and bloody excesses.

We must now, however, proceed with the aid and assistance of Madame the author, to rip up some of the worthless gewgaw puppets that figured in the show-box of the French court, and to discover of what wretched worthless stuff these glittering gaudy things were composed. But first it is but fair to let the Mother of the Regent give some account of herself, which she does in so pleasant a vein as must needs recommend itself to the reader. She describes herself as a German in morals, manners, taste, and constitution; with regard, indeed, to the last particular, as being possessed of a stomach of such peculiar Germanic delicacy as to be incapable of retaining broth, while "ham and sausages" were particularly acceptable to it, and were thrown in, it would seem, as tonics in all cases of disorder in that important organ.

"If my father had loved me as well as I loved him, he would never have sent me into a country so dangerous as this; to which I came through pure obedience, and against my own inclination, Where dupli city passes for wit, and frankness is looked upon as folly, I am neither cunning nor mysterious; I am often told I lead too monotonous a life, and am asked why I do not take a part in certain affairs; this is frankly the reason; I am old, I stand more in need of repose than of agitation; and I will begin nothing that I cannot easily finish. I have never learnt to govern; I am not conversant with politics, nor with state affairs, and I am now too far advanced in years to learn things so difficult. My son, I thank God, has sense enough, and can direct these