master,-in the chambers, of which it formed the loudest if not the most eloquent portion,—and in the cafés and salons, where opposition to any existing government is the fashion, and the only fashion that never changes. Before the intrigues, the speeches, the libels, the songs of this party, the moderate, discreet, and truly constitutional ministries of Richelieu, Villèle, and Martignac had successively fallen; and it became as certain as any problem in mathematics that the existing forms and practice of the constitution were inadequate to its own preservation. The high-minded integrity and liberal policy of Richelieu-the financial success and internal prosperity that crowned the measures of Villèle-the conscientious candour and scrupulous constitutionality of Martignac's administrationhad obviously exhausted all that mere moderation and conciliation could do. A firmer purpose and bolder measures were the only experiment which remained to be tried; that consideration determined the appointment of MM. de Polignac and Peyronnet. They no doubt were firm and bold; and had they, to these qualities, added the most ordinary share of discretion and foresight, it is certain that they would have been successful in their first and immediate object, and it is probable that they might ultimately have reconciled the principle of popular representation with the stability of government and the due authority of the crown. But the rashness and imprévoyance of Polignac, the irresolution and blindness of Marmont, and the lamentable delusion and inactivity of the king and the dauphin, played the game of the disaffected, and gave to their hasty, though long premeditated, revolt the fatal character-and at last the irresistible force of a national revolution. 6 The king was dethroned; and, as if that catastrophe were not enough to satisfy the evil destiny of the elder branch, they were so deplorably ill-advised as to uncrown themselves and to crown their adversary by the double abdication. A sedition had dethroned them de facto-their own abdication confirmed it de jure. A theorist has said, and phrasemongers have repeated, that history is philosophy teaching by example.' Alas! such examples never teach. The utter and even ridiculous failure of Buonaparte's abdication if history could teach conduct-should have warned Charles and his son of the utter inefficiency of such a course for any good purpose. It forfeits de facto and de jure the existing rights without conferring one jot of authority on those of the intended successor. After all, it is perhaps fortunate that this weak device failed of its object; if the revolutionists had consented to accept the Duke of Bordeaux as a puppet king, they might, under his empty name, have done, without check or control, whatever their ignorance, their passions, or their ambition might have suggested; and it is impossible impossible to say what confusion might have arisen, and what atrocities might not have been committed in the struggle of parties to possess themselves of the authority of the phantom monarch. Instead of this, they have been obliged to submit to a sovereign who at least is a 'reality'-whatever his 'charter' may be; who has now no ulterior ambition to gratify; whose interest and wish it must equally be to preserve peace abroad, and good order and subordi. nation at home; and who, under the temporary popularity of an usurper, has been able to take measures of coercion for the present and of security for the future, which no legitimate sovereign could have ventured to imagine. The state of siege,' and the bold and bloody, yet necessary and justifiable suppression of the sedition in June, 1832, have quieted matters for the present; and the construction of a circle of fortresses round Paris-under the flimsy and disgraceful pretext of guarding against foreign invasion, but for the real and convenient (though not very constitutional) purpose of bridling that turbulent town-will transfer the national force from the populace to the army, and to him who can maintain an ascendency over the army. When Marshal Soult shall have finished the fourteen new Bastilles, for the erection of which the reformed chamber of France has voted so many millions, we shall hear of no more revolutions made by the Faubourg St. Antoine-or the gentlemen of the press' or the Elèves of the schools; and so weary is France of her forty years of liberty, that she not only consents to enormous pecuniary burdens to accomplish this astonishing tyranny, but she consents to it for a reason which in other times would have made every Frenchman's blood boil with indignation-namely, that foreign armies can, when they please, march unresisted to the very barriers of Paris! Another circumstance has had a very great effect in consolidating the present and perhaps the future power of the reigning dynasty we mean the insane incursion of the Duchess of Berri into France, and the lamentable frailty which the result of that incursion has detected. It is painful in the deepest degree to speak of a womau-of a woman in adversity—in terms of personal censure; but when a woman turns a political crusader, she voluntarily divests herself of that otherwise inviolable respect to which her sex is entitled: and when, by a political extravagance, she solicits the attention of all the world, it is doubly unpardonable that she should-in the most critical public circumstances, and in the moment most unfortunate, most ruinous to herself, her friends, her family, and her country-exhibit those personal frailties, which, blameable in private life, become scandalous when obtruded on the public. Attached as we are to the principles of constitutional liberty, and believing them to be safest under an hereditary monarchy, we hoped hoped and believed-nay, we still do hope and believe, that, if Henry V. shall live, France may at last find a resting place, from half a century of agitation, under his constitutional sceptre-with these sentiments, we deeply regretted, as did every sensible Frenchman, even of what is called the Carlist party-the premature and inconsiderate attempt of the Duchess of Berri. We saw that it was made too soon-on erroneous principles, and by an inadequate and improper agent; but while we disapproved as poli. ticians, we, as men, admired and respected the heroic devotion of a mother! When, however, the fatal denouement arrived-when we heard of the other motive which may have induced the unhappy lady to leave the pure and unsullied bosom of her own family to seek-not princely glory, but-personal obscurity, in the fastnesses of La Vendée We can go no farther-we pause in astonishment and sorrowin painful sympathy with the million of honest hearts in France, who have been crushed by this calamity, and with, above all, the other members of that admirable and august family, which, for fifty years, has suffered calumny, persecution, exile, torture, and death-but never shame before. ART. VII.-The Port-Admiral; a Tale of the War. By the Author of Cavendish.' 3 vols. London. 1833. SOME few attempts have of late years been made to introduce a species of nautical novels into the light and popular literature both of this country and of the United States; but we cannot very highly compliment our authors, at least, on their success in this department. The truth is, they come forward under the great disadvantage of their readers being constantly reminded of something better, and compelled to contrast those original and incom parable productions of Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle with the comparatively feeble and spiritless compositions of the present day. The coarsest phrases of sea-slang, now nearly exploded, unseasoned and unmitigated with any portion of that genuine humour which Smollett so well knew how to infuse into an uncouth phraseology, so as to make it amusing to every class of readers, are stuffed into these modern productions in their naked deformity. Captain Marryat far outshines his rivals in this school; but his novels may in point of fact be said to be good, as novels go, in spite, rather than by reason of, their nautical dialogues. The shrewd sagacity of his general views of human nature is the real support of that hasty but vigorous writer. Having glanced into Cavendish,' one of the most vulgar and Were it selon les regles to criticise articles in contemporary journals, we should not have omitted this opportunity of saying something of the often admirable nautical sketches of Tom Cringle,' in Blackwood's Magazine, witless witless of all these new sea-novels, we should not have thought of wasting any time on another book from the same hand; but our eye chancing to light on the motto to the first chapter of this Port Admiral,' purporting to be a quotation from a letter of Sir Edward Codrington, we were curious to see what use a writer of this stamp had made of such a text from so great an authority. It is also possible that curiosity may have been whetted by our recollection of the author having, in his first work, given a new edition of the battle of Navarino;—of that unfortunate attack of the combined fleets of the three great maritime powers of Europe on a handful of miserable Turks-of that battle which, we are morally certain, will once more at least be fought over again, when, in, imitation of the 'god-like hero' of old, (pardon the profanation,) we may probably hear that Thrice he routed all the Turks, The motto is as follows: 'I am an enemy to slavery in any shape, under whatever name it may be disguised; and my blood boils when I contemplate the oppressions which are passed by under another designation. Is not a pressed man a slave to the will of a despot?'-LETTER OF VICE-ADMIRAL SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON. 6 The patrimonial and professional position of the gallant sugargrower gives this passage not only weight but pathos. Who must not pity the enemy of slavery in any shape,' who has been pocketing, for thirty or forty years, the proceeds of the Codrington plantation'? Who but sympathize with the author of the triumphant question Is not a pressed man a slave to the will of a despot?' when it is certain that he, the said author, acted throughout the great war of our time in the various capacities of midshipman, lieutenant, and captain, in the royal navy—and therefore must, it is but too certain, have often, per se aut per alium, enslaved his fellow whites, and acted the despot over them in their unjustly degraded condition! Our novelist's commentary on the text we have quoted occupies the greater part of his first volume-which indeed has hardly a thread of connexion with the story of the other two. The chief 'despots' whom he attacks are the late Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge, and his captain, Austen Bissell, both of whom unfortunately perished in the Blenheim, off the Isle of France,-a calamity that alone might have restrained any man of proper feeling from raking up the ashes of the dead, to say nothing of heaping the most cruel, calumnious, and utterly unfounded aspersions on their memories. That this is the ship, and these the men, whom he means to describe, he, however, is at no pains to conceal. Sir Thomas, as is well known, was the bosom friend of Lord Nelson Nelson and of Lord St. Vincent. In the battle off St. Vincent, when Nelson exclaimed for victory or Westminster Abbey, he was nobly supported by Troubridge in the Culloden. At Teneriffe, when Nelson lost his arm, and all who had landed were in imminent peril of falling into the hands of the enemy, Troubridge kindled a fire in the great square, assembled his people to the number of about two hundred and forty, and sent a flag of truce to the Spanish governor, who was at the head of eight thousand troops, to announce that if he did not immediately halt, and give a free and unmolested passage for his men to their ships, he would instantly set fire to the town. The governor at once acceded to the terms. At the battle of the Nile, Troubridge, in the Culloden, had the mortification of grounding, which prevented him from getting into action; on which occasion Lord Nelson said, Let us, my dear Troubridge, rather rejoice that the ship which got on shore was commanded by an officer whose character is so thoroughly established in the service as your own.' Nelson, after this battle, when under a depression of spirits, writes to Lord St. Vincent, ‘I feel that I must soon leave my situation to Troubridge, than whom we both know no person is more equal to the task.' He afterwards says,' I trust you will not take him from me. I well know he is my superior; and I so often want his advice and assistance.' On the capture of St. Elmo, Lord Nelson says, although the abilities and resources of my brave friend Troubridge are well known to all the world, yet even he had difficulties to struggle with in every way that have raised his great character even higher than it was before.' He was subsequently appointed captain of the Channel fleet, under the Earl St. Vincent, with whom he afterwards sat as one of the Lords of the Admiralty. On the late Lord Melville's succeeding to the administration, he appointed him to the command of the Indian seas eastward of Point de Galle. He had not long been there before he was appointed commander-in-chief at the Cape of Good Hope, for which place he sailed from Bombay in the Blenheim, in company of the Java, and the Harrier sloop, by the last of which the two former vessels were seen off the Mauritius, in a perfect hurricane and a tremendous sea, and were never heard of more. Sir T. Troubridge was a man of an anxious and ardent mind; full of devotion for the service, in which he raised himself solely by his own merit and exertions; he was kind to those who served under him, and was greatly beloved both by his officers and men. 6 The memory of such a man, it would be supposed, was not a fit subject for ridicule and defamation;-yet this brave and distinguished officer, now that a quarter of a century has passed by since his death, is here described as a monster in human shape |