of renown as the terror of husbands, and the disturber of families, would have satisfied about any twenty modern fine gentlemen, put in practice the most ridiculous stratagems to magnify his exploits : "il usoit ainsi d'addresse, et toujours avec succès, soit en amour, soit dans ses autres négociations. Il quittoit ses amis en leur disant qu'il alloit au rendez-vous chez la dame qu'il designoit. Il donnoit ordre à son cocher de sortir le soir à l'heur indiquée, un de ses gens derrière la voiture, come s'il eût été dedans; elle attendait quelques heures près de la porte de la dame, et rentrait ensuite à l'hôtel. Cette comédie recommençoit le lendemain pour une autre belle; et le duc pendant ce temps était renfermé chez lui, invisible pour tout le monde."-Vie privée du Maréchal de Richelieu.

According to our author, the duchess of Burgundy had no tendresse for this gallant cavalier, though his boasts of the advances he had made in her favour caused his first confinement in the Bastille. Richelieu, in his memoirs, however, police des gardes leur ordonnent de les suivre de la part du roi, & laissent peine à Stéphano le tems de remettre son habit qu'il avoit ôté. Il se réclame de M. le duc de Richelieu, dit qu'il est son valet-de-chambre, demande qu'on le conduise à l'hôtel; mais la seule réponse est de le traîner dans un fiacre qui s'arrêta au grand Châtelet pour y déposer la malheu reuse Aimée: Stéphano se voit écrouer au Fort l'Evêque.

"Dans le premier moment, il ne sait à quoi attribuer son malheur ; il n'a rien fait pour se l'attirer mais réfléchissant que son maître est altier & vindicatif, il ne peut plus douter qu'il ne soit victime de sa vengeance. La rage dans le cœur, il n'ose encore s'en plaindre ouvertement; il veut le quitter & s'engager: mais les recruteurs sachant qu'il est attaché à Richelieu, n'oseront pas lui donner d'engagemens. Enfin après cinq ou six jours; il voit arriver Desnoyer dans la prison, qui lui dit qu'on le cherche par tout, & que le duc en est fort inquiet. C'est à sa recommandation, ajoutet-il, qu'il doit sa liberté.

"D'où venez-vous donc, lui demande Richelieu en le voyant? Monseigneur, vous le savez; je ne me plains pas pour moi; mais il est affreux, répond Stéphano, de faire enfermer une fille qui ne vous a fait aucun mal; faites-la sortir de prison, je vous en supplie.

"Le duc furieux le chasse, & ajoute que s'il entend parler de lui, il le fera conduire dans son pays (en Italie) pieds & mains liés. Le malheureux se cache quinze jours chez Desnoyer, sans oser paroître. Pendant ce tems le duc fait transférer sa maitresse à l'hôpital, malgré le pardon qu'elle lui demande par écrit. Elle n'avoit pu faire parvenir ses plaintes à M. de Panche. Stéphano l'instruisit de sa situation par une lettre anonyme; mais ce trésorier qui gardoit des ménagemens avec sa femme, & qui redoutoit encore plus le crédit du duc, n'osa faire aucune démarche en faveur de cette infortunée qui fut victime du pouvoir. Elle passa dix-huit mois à l'hôpital, & n'en sortit que parce que Richelieu, qui alla en ambassade à Dresde, l'oublia. Elle n'avoit plus rien, ses meubles avoient été vendus, & son refus de consoler les desirs d'un grand, lui valut la misère. Stéphano fut obligé de demander pardon pour rentrer chez son maître, dont fut long-tems à oublier l'indigne traitement.

states nothing that would actually compromise the character of the dauphine so far as he was concerned, but insinuates that the death of the princess robbed him of the conquest: as for his imprisonment, he ascribes it not to his own boasts, but to the scandal of the court, which breathed on the reputation of the dauphine, and compelled Louis, though persuaded of the innocence of the parties, to punish the man who had attracted public suspicion to so delicate a matter. When we advert to the character of the duchess of Burgundy, so glowingly eulogised in history, it is, however, by no means extraordinary that slander should have taken liberties with her actions. mother of the regent gives the subjoined account of the education, habits, and manners of this princess, whose signal reformation in leaving off sack and living cleanly we have already noted:

:

The

It is not surprising that the dauphine, even when she was duchess of Burgundy, should have been a coquette. One of Maintenon's maxims was, that there was no harm in coquetry, but that a grande passion only was a sin. In the second place, she never took care that the duchess of burgundy behaved conformably to her rank; she was often left quite alone in her château, with the exception of her people; she was permitted to run about arm in arm with one of her young ladies, without esquire, or dames d'honneur, or d'atour. At Marly and Versailles she was obliged to go to chapel on foot and without her stays, and seat herself near the femmes de chambre. At Madame de Maintenon's there was no observance of ranks; every one sat down there promiscuously she did this for the purpose of avoiding all discussion respecting her own rank. At Marly the dauphine used to run about the garden with the young people until two or three o'clock in the morning. The king knew nothing of these nocturnal sports. Maintenon had forbidden the duchess de Lude to tease the duchess of Burgundy, or to put her out of temper, because then she would not be able to divert the king. Maintenon had threatened, too, with her eternal vengeance, whoever should be bold enough to complain of the dauphine to the king. It was for this reason that no one dared tell the king what the whole court, and even strangers, were perfectly well acquainted with. The dauphine liked to be dragged along the ground by valets who held her feet. These servants were in the habit of saying to each other, 'Come, shall we go and play with the duchess of Burgundy?' for so she was at this time. She was dreadfully nasty."

*

* *

Here we must stop; the escapades' of this princess will not bear narration.

We must now, take our leave of this work, which contains much that is curious-much that is amusing, and much that will be condemned as offensive to the scrupulous delicacy of our age. As it generally illustrates the manners and morals of

the times, it is a valuable production-but the structure of the book-a compilation of scraps of correspondence, snatches of a lady's letters, fragments of flying thoughts--together with a lamentable lack of dates, necessarily detract much from its worth in an historical point of view. Those who are sceptical, if any such there be, concerning the vices of the ancient regime, should read the French translation; after they have done which, we would entreat them to ask themselves the simple questiondid this country need a revolution? Our fair readers must, however, confine their researches to the English translation, which is generally decorous, but unfortunately almost univer sally defective.

We know of no men so truly remarkable as the generality of translators of the present day. Without any knowledge of the author's language, many of these gifted gentlemen, by the mere force of genius, penetrate his meaning, and convey it from one tongue to another; others more laborious sit down before a work, lay siege to it with grammar and dictionary, and blow the sense into the air, and convert the book into a heap of rubbish, with a success truly surprising; there are those again whose pen works more wonders than harlequin's sword; if they do but touch a passage, by a dexterous slight of hand it is changed into something the least to be expected and most ridiculously opposite to its original nature and purport. The translation before us, from the French of the Duchess of Orleans' Memoirs, furnishes examples of all these accomplishments, but as we have no disposition to say uncivil or uncourteous things to the author, we shall pass at once to a notice of the various blemishes that disfigure his performance, merely remarking that his genius appears too lively and inventive for the severe trammels of translation.

Page 53 of the French edition-" Deux en sont morts, et on dit publiquement qu'ils ont été empoisonnés." Rendered in the English, page 101-" Two of them died with her, and said publicly that they had been poisoned."

Any child three pages advanced in Chambaud's grammar would have known, that "'on dit" could have no reference to the two dead people, for setting all other grammatical reasons aside, the defunct are not ordinarily made to speak in the present tense. The meaning of the passage is clearly, "Two of them died of it and they say (that is, the world say, or rather it is said), that they (the two dead persons) had been poisoned."

The very next sentence is also incorrect. "La Fontange était une petite bête, mais elle avait un bon cœur, et était belle comme un ange de la tête aux pieds, elle était entièrement rousse. Translated-Fontange was a stupid little creature, but she had

a very good heart. She was very red-haired, but beautiful as an angel from head to foot." There is nothing in the French about" beautiful as an angel from head to foot." Has the translator no respect for a colon? As it is difficult to imagine a woman beautiful as an angel, a female Orson, entirely covered with red hair from head to foot, we conceive that "freckled" may be the meaning of the duchess.

In page 60 of the French we have" Madame de Montespan assistait une fois à une revue: lorsqu'elle vint à lorsqu'elle vint à passer devant les troupes allemandes, celles-ci se mirent à crier: Koenig's Hure, Hure (** *** du roi). Le soir, le roi demanda à Madame de Montespan comment elle avait trouvé la revue? elle répondit: • Parfaitement belle; mais je trouve seulement que les Allemands sont trop naïfs d'appeler toutes choses par leur nom, car je me suis fait expliquer ce que signifia leur cri.""

In page 109 of the English, the brains are knocked out of this story most successfully after the following manner-" She was once present at a review, and as she passed before the German soldiers, they called out Koenig's Hure! Hure! When the king asked her in the evening how she liked the review, she said, Very well, but only those German soldiers are so simple as not to call things by their right names, for I had their shouts explained to me!""

Page 40-French copy-" On ecrit qu'étant en Hollande, Louis 14th quitta cette conquête par générosité" &c. &c. &c. This is rendered-" It has been said, and believed, that Louis 14th retired from the war against Holland through pure generosity." The interpolation is the more whimsically impertinent, when we consider the extreme probability that the thing said was never believed!

Page 189 French. "Ce n'était pas l'eau chicorée de Madame que d'Effiat avait empoisonnée ; ce qui était un raffinement d'invention, car d'autres pouvaient goûter de cette eau, tandis que Madame seule buvait dans sa tasse." Nothing can be clearer than this. The author's object is, to prove that the particular cup, not the water, was poisoned. The translator, however, does not in this instance substitute one meaning for another, but is content to leave the sentence without any meaning whatever.

Page 268-English. "It was not Madame's endive water that D'Effiat poisoned; that report must have been a mere invention, for other persons might have tasted it, had madame alone drank from her own glass. "" Did it never occur to the translator that this is sheer nonsense? We recommend him earnestly to turn to his dictionary and to assure himself that

'tandis' in French has not exactly the force of had' in English. The next sentence in the French runs thus-" Un valet de chambre qui avait été auprès de Madame, et que j'ai eu ensuite (il est mort depuis), m'a raconté que le matin, pendant que Monsieur et Madame étaient à la messe, d'Effiat alla au buffet, et qu'ayant pris la tasse il en frotta l'intérieur avec un papier,"&c.&c.

In page 268 of the English-" A valet de chambre who was with Madame, and who afterwards was in my service (he is dead now), told me, that in the morning, while Monsieur and Madame were at mass, d'Effiat went to the sideboard, and taking the queen's cup, rubbed the inside of it with a paper" &c. &c. Where in the name of wonder did the worthy translator find any thing about the queen's cup'? He might just as well have called it the king's cup, or the pope's cup; we find in the French merely the words 'la tasse,' meaning, of course, the particular cup appropriated to Madame's use.

From these examples the reader may judge of the manner in which this translation is executed: if further evidence of its inaccuracy were necessary, it would not be difficult to produce it; but we have already given a sufficient portion of our space to this exposure, to prolong which might not be very edifying to the reader, and would be tedious and indeed painful to ourselves.

ART. VII. Histoire de la Régénération de la Grèce, par F. C. H. L. Pouqueville. 4 tomes. Paris, 1824.

Continuation de l'Histoire des Evènemens de la Grèce, par M. C. D. Raffenel. 1 tome. Paris, 1824.

Mémoires du Colonel Voutier sur la Guerre actuelle des Grecs. Tome 1°, Paris, 1824.

The Greek Revolution, by E. Blaquiere, Esq. London, 1824.

Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, par C. Fauriel. Paris, 1824. THE old adage, "it never rains but it pours," has been verified

by the literary fate of the present struggle in Greece. After three years' drought of information, our thirst for knowledge is suddenly quenched by a stream equally copious and palatable; and the year 1824 opens with the appearance of five works whose titles we have placed at the head of this article. We, of course, cannot pretend to give any thing like an abridgment, or even a synopsis, of such a mass of documents.

It is impossible to consider separately volumes narrating the same events, and whose value consists in their concordant testimony we must, therefore, skip in a rambling manner from one to the other; but we begin with M. Pouqueville's, as the most voluminous and the most important. Its chief merits are minuteness and interest. Indeed, so many mysteries are unfolded, and