passages that we can afford to extract; and even these few must be given unaccompanied by the full commentary which their merit would entitle them to claim. The following description of the knights and ladies must be admired; though perhaps it was not quite fair to mention as a defect in the gentlemen, that they had not attained to the accomplishment of driving stage coaches. Had stage coaches then existed, we would have resigned the reputation of the knights to its fate: but to blame them for not doing what it was impossible to do, is an harshness which the sternest arbiter elegantiarum could scarcely approve.

"Their manners were refined and perfect-saving

Some modern graces, which they could not catch,
As spitting through the teeth and driving stages,
Accomplishments reserved for distant ages.
"They looked a manly, generous generation;

Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick,
Their accents firm and loud in conversation,

Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,

Show'd them prepar'd, on proper provocation,
To give the lie, pull noses, stab, and kick:
And for that very reason, it is said,

They were so very courteous and well bred.

"The ladies look'd of an heroic race

At first a general likeness struck your eye,

Tall figures, open features, oval face,

Large eyes, with ample eyebrows, arch'd and high;
Their manners had an odd peculiar grace,

Neither repulsive, affable, nor shy;

Majestical, reserved, and somewhat sullen

Their dresses partly silk, and partly woollen."

The first appearance of the giants is characteristic both of them and of the work.

"Sir Gawain tried a parley, but in vain

A true bred giant never trusts a knight-
He sent a herald, who return'd again,

All torn to rags and perishing with fright;
A trumpeter was sent, but he was slain-
To trumpeters they bear a mortal spite:
When all conciliatory measures fail'd,

The castle and the fortress were assail'd.
"But, when the giants saw them fairly under,
They shovelled down a cataract of stones,
A hideous volley, like a peal of thunder,
Bouncing, and bounding down, and breaking bones,
Rending the earth, and riving rocks asunder;
Sir Gawain inwardly laments and groans,

Retiring last, and standing most exposed ;

Success seem'd hopeless, and the combat closed.”

The fury of the combatants has evidently communicated asympathetic ardour to the imagination of the poet; for, in one and the same breath, the stones are put into a shovel, become a cataract, are next a volley, and last of all, a peal of thunder. A reader of taste, who give the verse its proper cadence, will find in the line

"Bouncing, and bounding down, and breaking bones," an adaptation of the sound to the sense, as exquisite as any that Homer or Virgil affords. The concluding line,

"Success seem'd hopeless, and the combat closed,” has a wonderful dignity of expression, and flows with a solemn majesty, which is worth at least half the meaning.

The railings between Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad, are not managed with more attention to nature, when urbanity is lost in resentment, than the mutual salutations of our Tristram and the giants in the final and successful attack.

"The giants saw them on the topmost crown

Of the last rock, and threaten'd, and defied

'Down with the mangy dwarfs there!-Dash them down! Down with the dirty pismires!'-Thus they cried.

Sir Tristram, with a sharp sarcastic frown,

In their own giant jargon thus replied:

Mullinger!-Cacamole!-and Mangonell!
You cursed cannibals, I know you well-
"I'll see that pate of yours upon a post-

And your left-handed squinting brother's too-
By heaven and earth, within an hour at most,
I'll give the crows a meal of him and you-
The wolves shall have you,-either raw or roast-
I'll make an end of all your cursed crew.'
These words he partly said and partly sang,

As usual with the giants, in their slang."

Messrs. Whistlecraft are entitled to praise, not merely for the distribution of their matter, and for the poetical beauties with which they have adorned it, but for the subject itself. Poetry has of late been rambling over ground which formerly had not the reputation of classical. From the isles of Scotland to the plains of Hindostan, there is scarcely a region on which the footstep of the English muse has not been imprinted. The rude legends of our forefathers, and even the incoherent inelegant mythology of Brahma, have received fresh beauty from her hands. We have long wondered that she has continued so long insensible to the attractions of the giants and ogres, who have agitated, and still agitate, so many youthful hearts, and who have so large a share in producing the pains and the joys of the nursery. The poet, who shall celebrate them with worthy strains, will find

in the breast of every person, who in his childhood has followed Jack the Giant-killer through his marvellous adventures, a chord which will vibrate responsive to his notes. Such a bard Mr. William Whistlecraft in part was, and such we hope the surviving brother will yet prove himself to be. He will then be to giants what Walter Scott is to feudal chieftains; and as much as a giant surpassed the most brawny borderer, by so much may he promise himself that his fame will exceed that of the minstrel of the North.

ART. IX.-STATE OF MORALS AND CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE IN FRANCE.

1. Memoirs of Madame Manson, explanatory of her Conduct on the Trial for the Assassination of M. Fualdès: written by herself, and addressed to Madame Enjelran, her Mother. Translated from the French, and accompanied by an Abstract of the Trial, and a concise Account of the Persons und Events alluded to in the Memoirs. 12mo. pp. 276. Baldwin and Co. London,

1818.

2. Procédure de l'Assassignat de M. Fualdès, devant la Cours d'Assises de Rhodez. 8vo. pp. 300.

THERE is a M. Jouy in Paris, who, as a member of the French Academy, is to be regarded as an author of considerable name and authority amongst our neighbours, and who has written eleven or twelve volumes of essays, expressly on "the Manners and Usages" of his native land. This gentleman, in the course of these essays, censures what he declares to be the well-known and acknowledged propensity of his countrymen to undervalue themselves and their country; and, to prove that he, at least, ought not to be included in the reproach, which may be justly brought against the Parisians and Gascons in particular, for this excess of humility and diffidence, he states his own opinion in the following clear terms:-"We are, whatever we may be pleased to say of ourselves, the best, the most social, and the most enlightened nation of Europe."

This sentiment, though it may seem rather abrupt, and somewhat singularly introduced, as it is stated with every appearance of sincere conviction, merits serious attention. It is a pity, we allow, that the French should undervalue themselves; and it is our duty to say this, because, on the other hand, we should not feel inclined, for particular reasons, which we shall probably specify in the sequel, to submit quietly to hear them

very much overvalue themselves. Least of all should we be inclined to submit to this, if the superiority were assumed, not in a burst of virtuous partriotism, or in the enthusiasm excited by some splendid manifestation of public spirit or principle, but in the supercilious repetitions of a presumptuous arrogance whose living impulse is levity, and whose daily food is licentiousness. The superiority we recognize should certainly consist in something which we can usefully imitate or honourably admire: the sacrifice of selfought only to be made at the altar of Greatness or of Goodness: when we practise mortification it ought to be with a view to improvement in moral worth and dignity. It would be infatuation in the last degree to consent to honour what we should be ashamed to be, or, still worse, to receive corruption in return for acknowledging others to be more deserving than ourselves.

Before going further, however, we must permit ourselves the pleasure of unequivocally recognizing the superior ingenuity of our neighbours. To claim with a boldness, which some may think approaches to effrontery, a triple superiority over all the world, and at the same instant to lodge a demand on that generous regard which most people are delighted to pay to merit when ignorant of its own existence, is a combination of opposite, and, as they have usually been thought, of contradictory pretensions, which probably no one but a Frenchman would have imagined, and which certainly none but a Frenchman would have had bravery enough to publish. Wonders, however, of this nature, are by no means rare in that happy country, where the sentiments of doubt and difficulty, that press so heavily on the rest of mankind, can scarcely be said to exist at all. M. Jouy's union of the edifying spectacle of national humility with the majestic display of national pride, is one of their most common feats of dexterity. "How comes it," says a critic in the Mercure," that we French are so unjust towards our historians, notwithstanding they are superior to those of any other nation? We persist in thinking that we have rivals in this department of literature, whereas nothing can be more evident than that Montesquieu is above Gibbon, and that Hume and Robertson must yield precedence to Voltaire, considered simply as a writer of history."-Who can help being prepossessed in favour of an amiable people, who declare to us that they are first in every thing, and that they are conscious of their excellence in nothing? It would surely be the height of injustice to refuse our acknowledgments to this double claim if we deny the merit, should we not yield to the modesty? and if we doubt the modesty, ought we not to be vanquished by

the merit?

But the total unconsciousness of the French as to those eminent virtues which they assure us they possess, has not hindered

them from exclaiming bitterly and vociferously against Lord Stanhope, because, as they express it, he has been base enough to accuse their national manners of looseness in regard to morality, and their national politics of a tendency to change, to disorder, and to aggression. One of their writers, a member of the Academy, has declared it to be an example of the extraordinary magnanimity of France, that Lady Stanhope was suffered to reside in Paris after these ideas of her husband were known; and there is not a bravo on their half-pay list who does not pretend that a British peer owes him a personal account for the opinion he has been unfortunate enough to form, and hardy enough to express in the British Parliament, clashing rather violently with M. Jouy's decision, quoted above. This puts us in mind of a note which Scudery added to one of his doggrels: "Should any one take it into his head that this poetry is bad, I wish to tell him that my name is Scudery, and that I wear a sword." A stripling of Paris, who writes political pamphlets in a style of suffocating bombast, having last year reflected very severely, as he thought, on England, magnanimously dispatched an intimation to Sir Charles Stuart, that he lived au quatrième in some street or other, and that he held himself responsible as a man for all he had said; but that if he was attacked according to the fashion of ambassadors, he had no protection against poignards or poison! Differing from Lord Stanhope, in thinking that the army of occupation should be continued in France, and anxious to take an opportunity of declaring, that we consider the attempt on the life of the Duke of Wellington to have been the isolated act of some madman or ruffian, such as might be found in any country, we must yet hesitate to admit that his Lordship has calumniated spotless innocence. M. Lafite, in an excellent speech, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, has recently indeed declared it to be villanous to distrust the pacific feelings of his nation; "for," said he, "the public wish pronounces itself loudly, that our politics may not for the future disturb any neighbouring people.' It may be so; but who has heard this loud expression, and where are the indications of such a wish? In the Minerve (lately the Mercure), a periodical work, which is the organ of M. Lafite's party, there have appeared, it is true, several bitter attacks on Lord Stanhope, for daring to affirm, that there are men in France hostile in heart to the Bourbons, and that the mass of disbanded soldiers, and officers on the half-pay, cherish an ardent desire to renew the work of plunder and aggrandizement. Certainly the Minerve ought to know the real sentiments of these people; but unluckily, in the same number with one of these violent vindications of the morality and good temper universal at present among the French, we discovered a song ad