ART. VI.-Symbolic Illustrations of the History of England, from the Roman Invasion to the present Time, accompanied with a Narrative of the Principal Events, designed more particularly for the Instruction of Young Persons. By Mary Ann Rundall, of Bath, Author of the Grammar of Sacred History. London, Bath, Exeter, and Broxburne. 1815. 4to. THIS is, in its way, by far the most absurd work thas has ever fallen into our hands. It is in fact one of Mr. Newberry's little books grown into a huge quarto of 700 pages, and grown, with its growth, more than proportionably silly. The author acquaints us in her Preface, that objects which are seen make a more lasting impression on the mind than the mere recital of facts; it has been therefore her aim to embody in symbols, or hieroglyphics, the most striking incidents recorded in the annals of our country.'-(p. 3.) And this the good lady fancies that she has done in thirty-nine plates, which, with the assistance of 700 pages of letter-press, teach about as much of the History of England as might be comprised in one of the aforesaid Mr. Newberry's sixpenny abridgements. It is somewhat curious to find in a work composed on the principle of addressing not the ear but the eye, that thirty-nine pages only are for the use of the eye, while 700 are dedicated to the ear. Our readers will suppose, of course, that some representations of objects are to be submitted to the eye, which will be at once understood and retained more forcibly than the same ideas presented in words. No such thing: Mrs. Rundall's plates are, in truth, hieroglyphics, strokes, scratches and letters, perfectly unintelligible unless with the assistance of the 700 pages of explanation, and not very clear even with them. 'An English individual is designated by an upright line surmounted with an oak leaf; if a diagonal line crosses it, it is a knight or a noble.' "Princes and princesses have a small crescent reversed on the top of a perpendicular line.' An upright line, with a death's head, is an assassin-a horizontal line, with the symbolic head detached, shews a person dead.'-Key to the Symbols. This appears a curious mode of explaining that which words cannot make sufficiently clear, and we find, like Mrs. Dangle in the Critic, that the interpreter is the harder of the two.' We wish we could contrive to lay before our readers one of Mrs. Rundall's devices for 'making history plain,' but it would not be possible without the assistance of a plate. Our printer, however, has endeavoured to imitate a diagram given in the Preface, from which she she candidly confesses that her scheme is copied, and which her own diagrams very closely resemble. The following is the Diagram. It is thus explained.-A Convention was entered into, in Egypt, between General Kleber, on the part of the French, and the Grand Vizier, on the part of the Sublime Porte, which was approved by the Cabinet of London. The straight line, with the Crescent on its top, denotes the Grand Vizier, by its superior height to the perpendicular line, which is to represent General Kleber: the line drawn through the centre of this line, forming two acute angles, is intended for the To denote the Convention, two lines are drawn, General's sword. which meet together in the centre, and represent the shaking of hands, or a meeting. The Convention was formed in Egypt, which is signified by a Pyramid. The Cabinet of London is typified by the outline of a Cabinet on the right of the diagram. The Head of a Ship, placed in the square, denotes London, as it is frequented by ships more than any other port.-Preface. Our readers will judge, from this specimen, of the beauty and perspicuity of Mrs. Rundall's method of teaching history, and will join with us in wondering that the vanity of book-making can have blinded any human being to the laborious absurdity, the monstrous inconsistency of these Historical Hieroglyphics.' ART. VII.-The Monarchy according to the Charter, by the not only on account of the subjects it treats and the abilities with which it was written, but on account of the persecution which, together with the author, it has suffered from the soi-disant constitutional ministers of France; which may be considered as an indication of their views and a test of their principles. If any thing that happens in France could surprize us, we should be astonished at seeing ministers affecting to be, par excellence, the friends of the Charter and the constitution, taking the most arbitrary, the most illegal, the most furious and insane measures against a work which, though it opposes them individually, is, from the title to the colophon, a defence a defence of the Charter and a panegyric on the constitution. If M. de Chateaubriand's work had been of a different complexion, if it had been, as we have heard it called by those who had neither read nor even seen it, an ultra-royalist, anti-constitutional pamphlet, preaching up persecution and the old régime, it would have been very proper to persecute it; it might even have been proper, if it had been censured by the tribunals, to have inflicted some mark of the royal displeasure upon the author: but that, without judge or jury, without complaint, without trial, the police should contiscate the work, should put seals on the printer's presses, and actually shut up the shops of some booksellers to whose counters a few copies had been sent before the seizure, seems to us to decide the temper and spirit of this ministry, and we have no hesitation in saying, that with all their affected regard for the chamber and the constitution, this intemperate, illegal, and foolish step proves them to be as unsound in their principles as in their judgments: the matter and the manner of the proceeding are alike reprehensible, and they have done a thing which renders them odious for its violence and ridiculous for its impotence. But this is not all the chamber of deputies was to be dissolved and to strike terror into the ultra-royalist party, to which they supposed M. de Chateaubriand to belong, because he opposed the infia-royalist party, they had recourse to a measure, desperate to be sure in point of character, but safe and easy enough as far as regarded their persons, and recommended to them perhaps by this double consideration, of advising the King of France to erase the name of M. de Chateaubriand from the list of his privy council. We beg leave here to take a distinction, well understood in England and strongly inculcated by M. de Chateaubriand, that in a constitutional monarchy the acts of the king are never personal to him; but should be treated, as they really are, as the measures of his responsible advisers: with the most sincere respect and confidence in the King of France, therefore, with the greatest esteem for his excellent qualities, his good sense and correct taste, his justice and his clemency, we must be allowed to say that a more violent, oppressive, and impolitic measure than this we cannot well conceive; it is only to be equalled by some of those ever-to-be-regretted compliances by which Louis XVI, in the first days of the Revolution, interdicted his friends from his person and service, and sought a fatal and short-lived popularity in the councils of his enemies. If we had been asked what was most needful for France, what principle it was on which the stability of the legitimate government most depended, and which it would probably be the most difficult to fiud, we should have said FIDELITY; twenty-five years of revo lution, lution, with a new constitution every year;- monarchy, democracy, oligarchy, consulate, dictatorship, empire, monarchy-and empire, republic, and monarchy again-have so unsettled men's minds, have so scattered their principles, have involved such multitudes in weaknesses and crimes, in inconsistencies and perjury, that of all virtues that of Abdiel would be, we should have thought, the most prized. 'Abdiel faithful found, Among the faithless faithful only he; Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth or change his constant mind.' M. de Chateaubriand followed the King into exile. Who at that hour thought that the King was so soon to return? At Ghent his grateful sovereign called him to his privy council-he advised with him in his adversity-the battle of Waterloo miraculously restored the King to his throne; M. de Chateaubriand, still faithful, attends the King in his restoration as he did in exile, but with a different fate; at Paris he is stricken out of the council to which he had been summoned at Ghent-and by whose advice is this, done?-not, we hope and believe, by that of the Duke of Richelieu, an emigrant of the old school, nor by M. Lainé or the Duke of Feltré, emigrants during the last usurpation, and who all three are looked upon as attached with equal sincerity to the king and constitution, and whose characters are, indeed, the only support which the present ministry possesses; but, if we may believe the public report of France and England, by that of M. de Caze, a young gentleman who had been secretary to her Imperial Majesty Madame the mother of all the Buonapartes, and who did not follow his legitimate sovereign into his exile. And for what offence is M. de Chateaubriand thus delivered over into the hands of M. de Caze?-for publishing, as a minister of state, the same sentiments which his sovereign had applauded in council at Ghent-for publishing, as a peer of France, au address to the country, the most temperate, the most just, the most liberal, the most constitutional, the most ably and heartily favourable to the strict maintenance of the Charter, the rights and liberties of France, of any publication we have yet had the good fortune to see. We declare we have not found one single principle, we had almost said one single expression, in this able production which might not have been advanced by an English whig of the best days of our constitution; and if any doubt, as we perused this work, rose in our minds as to the expediency of his advice, it was, whe ther ther France was yet fit for a system of government so liberal, s free, so British, as that which M. de Chateaubriand recommend A short summary and a few extracts from his work will spea more forcibly to the understandings of our readers than any gener assertions. M. de Chateaubriand begins by stating that under the legitimat sovereign of France there are but three possible modes of govere ment which could be thought of: 1. The old régime. 2. A despotism. 3. Constitutional monarchy under the Charter. 1. The old régime he declares to be impracticable, and, if pra ticable, impolitic. 2. The supposition of a despotism he dismisses at once, as al ridiculous and detestable. 3. And he therefore assumes, as the foundation and basis of his political opinions, that France must stand or fall by the Charter and he claims, with great zeal and eloquence, the Charter nothing but the Charter'-(pp. 2 and 3.)-the essence of which te justly states to be a representative government by king, peers, the deputies of the people. He then proceeds to state the principles that flow from this re presentative system: the first is the entire irresponsibility of the King, and the entire responsibility of his ministers. This is the part of his doctrine for which ostensibly he has been punished, because he is accused of raising doubts as to the King's private sentiments, as if in a constitutional monarchy the King could have any private sentiments, and as if it was a crime to see in the acti done in his name the measures of his ministers. But let us he how this furious and illiberal ultra expresses himself on this point: The doctrine of a constitutional royal prerogative is—that nothing is done directly by the King himself; that every act of government is in truth his ministers', though the thing be done in his Majesty's name, or the document signed by his Majesty's hand. 'Laws proposed-ordonnances-choice of men and of measures-for all these, Ministers alone are responsible. The King of a representative monarchy is, as it were, a divinity, placed beyond our reach, inviolable and infallible. His person is sacred, and his will can do no wrong. If there be error, it is the error of his servants. 6 We may therefore discuss public affairs without offence to the Monarch, and we may criticise measures which, though in his name, are the mere acts of his Ministers.' As a result from these principles, M. de Chateaubriand is led to disapprove |