Much of the beauty of Italian scenery is owing to its southern latitude and fine climate, and our conceptions of it are formed, generally, from what we see in English authors, whose accounts are overwrought from a contrast with their own misty islands. In this country, or this section of it at least, we have skies as "cloudless, clear and purely beautiful," and air as bland and balmy, and sun-sets as gorgeous, as any to be felt, or seen between Domo d'Ossola and Reggio, or Otranto, Piombino and Ancona.

We agree with our author in thinking that it is in vain to seek for analogies between our institutions and those of Europe, It has always moved our quiet merriment to hear elaborate comparisons instituted, in reference to this our entirely newfashioned and experimental Republic, and those of ancient Greece and Rome, or modern Europe-as if any of them ever had newspapers, or the représentative main spring! Still there are causes, political, commercial, and physical, that must produce like results, though in different hemispheres, and under various influences; and local similitudes, however slight, readily bring about an association. Thus when we read in the novel under review, and other modern works, saddening relations of the prostrate and torpid condition of Venice, certain resemblances in her situation and history, with those of this once flourishing city, bring them home to us with a sharp adaptation. Having their origin in common from religious intolerance and persecution, the colonists who took refuge at Grado and amid the Lagunes of Venice, and the Huguenots who fled to these shores, have other points of assimilation in the site, fortunes and look of the cities they respectively founded. Beneath a southern clime and sunny skies, in a champain country, and with a choice harbour, the structures of their sanctuaries, as you approach from the water with Sullivan's Island, corresponding to the Lido, forcibly induce a mutual recollection-and when the moon has thrown its light around, as the solitary passenger, through the deserted and sepulchral streets of Charleston, meditates upon her time-worn, rusty and mouldering edifices, he is gloomily reminded of the blank, icy and desolate aspect of that other city afar; now manifestly “expiring before the eyes" of her inhabitants, and fast "sinking into the slime of her own canals."

In the language of our author, "men live among her islands in that state of incipient lethargy, which marks the progress of a downward course, whether the decline be of a physical or moral decay, and appear to have imbibed the character of their sombre city;" and in the words of a late spirited writer upon Ita

ly, they feel that "there is no position more wretched and more worthy of compassion, than the having been born under political combinations unfavourable to the acquisition of independence and the reward of ambition."

Once flourishing, galliard and hospitable, the resort of numerous strangers from all parts, it became a proverb that "Venice was always in the carnival”—but now the traveller tells of but three houses where the vestiges of these things, the wreck of her social splendour, are still faintly visible; and the far-famed "gentil uomo Veneto," has gone to the "tomb of the Capulets," or if he still lingers "far il Broglio," his predominating characteristic of the gentleman is, Ben Jonson's ingredient "melancholy." But, unless like Byron one has been "familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation," this is an ungracious theme, and it is time we should bid farewell to that city, whose "aspect is like a dream, and her history like a romance."

ART. V.-1. Memoir of the Life of Henry Francis D'Aguesseau, Chancellor of France; and of his Ordonnances for consolidating and amending certain portions of the French Law: And an historical and literary account of the Roman and Canon Law. By CHARLES BUTLER, Esq. Barrister at Law. Fourth Edition. London. Murray. 1830.

2. Euvres complétes du Chancelier D'Aguesseau, nouvelle édition, augmentée de pièces échappées aux premiers éditeurs et d'un discours préliminaire. Par M. PARDESSUS, Professeur à la faculté de droit de Paris. (16 tom. 8vo.) Paris.

1819.

IN the little volume placed at the head of this article, Mr. Butler has surpassed himself. Notorious as he is for a garrulous smattering in all things knowable, we did not think it possible he should put forth such a scandalous piece of book-making, on such a subject as the life of D'Aguesseau. We sent for his work with hopes which have been most cruelly disappointed. We have long thought a complete view of the services, the talents, the learning, and the character of the illustrious subject

of this Memoir, a desideratum in English legal literature. It struck us, too, that Mr. Butler was as well qualified for such a task as any English lawyer of whom we have recently heard, except the late Sir Samuel Romilly. But what are we to think of a miserable little compilation of some seventy or eighty pages octavo, with as much margin as text, recording of one, who, for sixty years together, filled by far the largest space in the eyes of the French nation of any other legal character since the Chancellor De l'Hospital, and who, for fuil half that period, was the very successor of that great man in the dignity, the duties, and we may add, the glory of the highest station in the judicature of France, very little more than might be learnt from his epitaph? We will venture to assert, that a more satisfactory account-and beyond all comparison more satisfactoryof D'Aguesseau is to be found in the notes to Thomas' Éloge, alone, than in this work of Mr. Butler. But if it is strange that the author should publish such a thing as this, what shall we say of the people that encourage him? It appears that this book has actually passed through four editions. Nor is this to be ascribed to the value of the "historical and literary account of the Roman and Canon Law," that accompanies the "Memoir." Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua caruina Mævi. A reading public which can patronise one of these enterprises is quite worthy of the other; and we confess, that taken together, the success of them gives us a very unfavourable notion of that part of the English reading public that is interested in the science and literature of law. Or shall we rather infer, that so impatient is its curiosity about such things, that rather than have nothing at all said about them, they are willing to look favourably even upon the drivellings of Mr. Butler?

We are afraid that this last suggestion is altogether improbable. Some five and twenty years ago, when Mr. Evans published his translation of Pothier on Obligations, it is evident that even he had but just made the acquaintance of D'Aguesseau. The readers of that valuable work know that it is enriched by a dissertation on mistakes of law, from the pen of D'Aguesseau, and by two of his plaidoyers, when Avocal-Genéral. The translator himself professes to have come to his knowledge of those admirable productions, but a short time before the publication of his own book, and he is so enraptured at his discovery, that nothing prevented his imparting to the public a much larger share in his new acquisitions, but the painful conviction that the public had not the least desire to partake of them. The truth is, that if a man were called upon to name the sort of intellectual pursuit which were most at variance

with all elegance of taste, all literary acquirement, all comprehensive and profound philosophy, all liberal and enlarged views of science and of society, in short, with all that made D'Aguesseau-what he was-the most accomplished of advocates, of jurists and of magistrates, as well as of scholars and gentlemen-he would without any hesitation name the Common Law of England, as it has been generally studied by the practitioners of Westminster Hall. In a passage from Hotman, quoted by Mr. Butler elsewhere," Polydore Virgil is represented as having pronounced the jurisprudence of that country a mingled or chaotic mass of foolishness and captious subtlety, and Erasmus breathes a sigh over the fate of Sir Thomas More, constrained by circumstances to devote his elegant mind to the study of a body of laws, than which, nothing, in the opinion of the Dutch scholar, could be more illiterate.t We have more than once, in the course of our labours, had occasion to make the same remark, which we shall have now a fair opportunity more fully to develope and illustrate. We would not be understood to detract from the unquestionable and transcendant merit of the common law, whether it be considered in reference to its rules of property, its system of legal logic,‡ or the maxims of justice, of morality, and of sound policy which it is studious to inculcate and enforce. Above all, we do not mean to dispute its justly conceded pre-eminence, as a scheme of liberty a scheme of practical liberty-better, by far, than any other people, either of ancient or of modern times, have ever enjoyed. Our objection goes to form rather than substance, to the manner of teaching rather than to the things taught. With the exception of some men, who would be exceptions to any rule--such as Bacon and Mansfield-the lights of Westminster-Hall have been mere practical lawyers, with abundance of knowledge, and exact knowledge, but without one spark of philosophy. Take Lord Coke and Lord Eldon, for example-the two men, perhaps, of the greatest amount of legal acquirement, that have ever adorned the bench in England -whose very dicta are oracles, and who never touch upon a subject, however incidentally, without pouring out upon it a flood of curious learning. For all practical purposes, these great judges deserve the consideration they enjoy, yet it would be difficult to name two men who fall so miserably short of that

* Pref. to Coke-Littleton.-We remarked, in a former number, a ludicrous blunder of Mr. Butler, in translating the words of Hotman-a blunder unaccountable in a man of his education-or of any education.

+ Quibus nihil illiteratius. VOL. VIII-NO. 16.

Generally speaking, that is,

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elegant and finished model upon which the distinguished civilians seem to have formed themselves. If any of our readers doubt this, we recommend to their dispassionate perusal, the writings of Domat, of Pothier, and, above all, of the Chancellor D'Aguesseau.

The appearance of Lord Mansfield, as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was an era of signal improvement. That great judge was not a better magistrate than Lord Hardwicke. Perhaps, if, in the administration of the laws, preference is to be awarded to either of them, it is due to the latter, in whose person Wisdom herself, as Mr. Fox observed of him, seemed to deliver the responses of the Law. But his great rival had to work upon materials less tractable than the subjects of Chancery jurisdiction. He had to contend with more inflexible technical forms-and the yet more inflexible prejudices of technical men. This latter difficulty may be easily imagined from the disposition manifested by Lord Kenyon, on all occasions, to overrule or qualify decisions which, however agreeable to a refined equity, and even to sound principles of law, that narrow minded man, wherever there happened to be no case in point, naturally enough regarded as so many dangerous innovations. But the reputation of Lord Mansfield has increased with the progress of time-as the conclusions of enlightened reason must ever be confirmed by the voice of experience. He is admitted to have been, in some sort, the founder of a new school of jurisprudence-not that he invented any thing (which would have been rather a sinister glory in a judge or a jurist) but that he introduced a new method--that he pointed out connexions where none had been before observed, and simplified the science by comprehensive generalizations-in a word, that he did much to perfect the harmony and concordance of the law, and to shew that its seemingly arbitrary rules generally coincide with the dictates of right reason. Yet, great as Lord Mansfield's pre-eminence among English lawyers confessedly is, he is indebted for it, in no small degree, to the writings of the civilians. They were his masters and his model. In every branch of commercial law, they furnished him not only with ascertained principles, but even with express precepts and established precedents-and Mr. Evans* has shown by a very curious collation of the texts of the civilians, that even in laying down the rules which govern the action for money had and received, he adopted not only their doctrines, but their very words.

* Translation of Pethier, vol. ii. p. 379.