managed to revive for a season this style of style. That style is vivacious, spirited, emidrama, half Spanish, half Venetian. His life nently French. It is that of a man who is as curious as his works; and they are of a would rather be daring than dull, flighty kind which Italy no longer relishes, and the than ponderous, paradoxical than commonmemory of which, says M. Chasles, is fostered place. He is fond of a dashing epithet, a by Germany alone, that country ever enamor- graphic simile, a bold comparison. Burke he ed of the fantastic; as in fact it is the drama- calls the Peter the Hermit of a new cru tic tales of Gozzi, full of faery and adventures, sade against republican France. He des which served to inspire Tieck, Hoffmann, cries a sort of Talleyrand bourgeois in that Lenz, and the whole school of Goethe, in their Franklin "whom Europe accounted a new productions of a similar kind. Spartacus." Locke he calls Sieyès, ShaftesThe "Studies" illustrative of life and liter-bury the Mirabeau, of their time. Richardature in early and medieval Christendom, com- son's Lovelacet he dubs the "Satan of pribine the results of much hard reading with vate life," and the Grandison novel " a kind the attractions of a picturesque style. A sur- of Imitation of Jesus Christ" for the use of prising amount of information is often con- Gentlemen. Knox attacking Mary Stuart veyed in a narrow compass, and in the easiest from the pulpit, is a Bossuet-Marat. Shaksway; insomuch that some readers of the peare is a Moliere-Eschylus. Johnson is "a lighter sort may incline to flatter themselves walking dictionary, a moralist in folio. Shelthat there is, after all, a royal road to learn- ley "a dithyrambic Spinozist." And so on. ing, and that they are travelling by it right Knowles's play, "The Wife," reminds him of royally. In a note to his essay, entitled "The one Boucher's pictures, where you make no Interior of Guttemberg's Workshop," the last complaint of the trees being painted sky-blue in the series, M. Chasles remarks that it and the cottages violet to correspond;-it is "would require a volume to establish all the a fiction embroidered upon silk, and passingfacts and all the assertions" of his text. The ly well shaded. Panurge, Pantagruel, and remark applies to most of the other essays, Gargantua, making sport, "in their colossal and is indeed a main characteristic of his au- facetiousness," remind him of a herd of seals thorship, which is distinguished by tact in sum-at play in the North Sea. The Rockinghams ming up, in presenting a clear digest of mul- and Butes whom he reads of in Horace Waltifarious topics, a lucid compendium of widely-pole, remind him of a select society of mumranging details. It applies to the review of Josephus-whom M. Chasles, considerably to our satisfaction, regards as an unprincipled knave, a selfish parasite, a heartless renegade; and treats accordingly. It applies to the notices of St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, and Sidonius Apollinarius, to the historical survey of the Lower Empire, the claims of which to modern respect and gratitude are shown to have been unjustly depreciated, and to the essays on the influence of Aristotle, the rise of the M. Chasles is not what is emphatically stylChristian drama and the modern romance, the ed a reflective writer-which, in the view of career and writings of Dante, and the character the commonalty, is often synonymous with a of Neo-Platonism in its Italian development. proser, twaddler, and sermonizer extraordinaIt will apply moreover to the leading chapters ry. But though he does not stop by the way devoted to ancient Greece and Rome; parti- to indulge in long intervals of "reflection," he cularly to the preliminary essay on the phases does reflect as he goes along, and occasionally of literary history and the intellectual influ- drops a fragment of thought en passant, which ences of race; and in various degrees, to the you may stoop to pick up without prejudice sketches of Euripedes, the character and in- to the "cause of progress." With two or fluence of Cicero, Virgil, his life, genius, and three specimens of the manner of them, we translators, Woman in ancient Greece, etc., wind up our accounts, but too irregularly kept, the last including an excursus in honor of for the present month. Hypatia, whom M. Chasles styles an Alexandrian Madame de Stael, and the vain, pretentious Anna Comnena. But it is time to close these hasty notes on our lively and suggestive essayist. One of our Quarterlies has called him a tedious writer, who can't find time to write with brevity and point. This will hardly occur to nine readers out of ten as an accurate report of his mies, enveloped in their old intrigues as if in faded wrappings which exhale, as one unrolls them, a churchyard odor. Shakspeare's marvellous skill to turn to account any subject he took in hand, reminds him of that Spanish painter, taken prisoner by the Moors, who, having neither marble to cut nor Madonna to worship, withdrew a billet from his hearth, and made of it a Blessed Virgin-Etc., ejusdem generis. * Rather daring, and eminently French, is such a passage as: "Jamais le poete par excellence, Dieu qui." etc.-Jeunesse etc., de Marie Stuart, p. 81. † Lovelace he elsewhere describes as less a man seducer: "a Cromwell playing the part of Lauof the world, or brilliant rake, than a systematic zun; a Mephistopheles turned into a Faublas."Etudes Politiques. The finest book in the world is but an incom- | synchronism alone can substitute light for dark plete fragment of human thought, a confused re-ness; this comparative anatomy of national liter flection of the man who conceived it. It is like ature dissipates all obscurities. What appeared the ruin of a ruin.* Again: isolated, unexpected, and without assignable cause, then becomes natural, necessary, and general. No longer have we to do with phenomena without antecedents and without correlatives, but with a body of facts which harmonize in one great system and explain its extent and tendency. The greater a man's superiority, the more are the difficulties presented to the vulgar eye by the complexity and eccentricity to which this very superiority gives rise. Manners and outward appearance are a criterion of character to a few "I am unfortunate enough," says M. Chasles, experienced observers only; they are frequently on occasion of the death of Giovanno de' Memore awkward, weak, and ridiculous in the su- dicis, “not to see the least proof of virtue or geperior man than in the common-place one. You nius in the esteem, the tears, the affection, the might have lived with Cervantes, Molière, or regrets of men. Nero was as much deplored as Montesquieu, without a suspicion that it was Marcus Aurelius. Cartouche was deeply bewailMontesquieu, Molière, or Cervantes you were ed by his brigands. The brigands of the Grand with.f Diable (G. de' Medicis) lamented the Grand Diable.T Again : Nothing can be more childish than to discuss the abstract merit of aristocracy or of monarchy; it were as much worth while to discuss the abstract merit of costume in different latitudes. They are worth much or little, according to the climate. Again: Restored monarchs have always in history a false and equivocal look, whatever may be their spirit and address. A restoration is generally brought out by little except the enthusiasm of very weariness, and repentance for having purchased a trifling advantage at a serious loss. Can anything be more sad than the acclamation of a people addressing its prince: "Take me again; I am tired of governing myself; this trade of yours knocks me up.** Study with attention every great social era, and you will invariably observe, on the one side, a parent idea, a dominant thought which mingles with all other ideas, circulates like the blood in the veins of society, animates it with its own life, and impels a general movement; on the other, a constant opposition fated to counterRemarking that posterity has overlooked the balance this dominating influence and to restore cruelties of Augustus, because Virgil has given an equilibrium ;-a law of reaction, inevitable him a place among the stars, and that the and everlasting. Now-a-days that society has frailties of Louis XIV. have been dignified by chosen utility for its foundation, the marvellous the verses of Boileau,-and the follies of Franbegins to resume its rights. When debased cis I. transformed to our eye by Margaret and Rome came to dream only of luxury and de- Marot,—and the crimes of the Medicis forgotbauchery, stoicism proclaimed its austere doc-ten in the éloges showered on them by Bemtrines. Petronius and Thraseus were contempo- bo, Pulci, Politian, and their fellows, -M. Chasles apostrophizes principalities and powers: raries. An ingenious and instructive comparison of the lives and writings of the Italian Folengo (Merlin Coccaie), A. D. 1491-1544), the French Rabelais, and our English Skelton, suggests the reflection, that— In history, as in the case of literary studies, THE GRASS-TREE. Not far off we saw the but white, and the florets resembling those of the grass trees, but only the dwarf ones, splendidly in water tussilago.-Howitt's Land, Labor, and Gold. flower. The flower is on a rod of two or three feet high, which rises perpendicularly from the centre VERBAL NAVIGATION. Disraeli calls one of of the grass-tree, and surrounds some half a yard Bright's long speeches against the War-"a Paof it in the manner of the flower of the club-rush,cific Ocean of words." - Punch. From The Spectator. THORNBURY'S MONARCHS OF THE MAIN.* America, though the respective governments might be at peace in Europe, was just then rather hot on account of some highhanded THIS history of the Buccaneers is a better Spanish proceedings against French commerce, which led to the French fitting-out book than its bombastic title and a turgidly privateers. The natural strength and convepompous style at the opening would induce nient situation of Tortuga drew thither many the reader to suppose. Mr. Thornbury does adventurers besides the original Buccaneers, not take a very philosophical view of his sub- who were ready for freetrading or freebootject, or rightly appreciate its nature; but he ing. The settlement soon grew into imporhas examined, if not critically, such authorities tance. The Spaniards invaded the island, as exist respecting the origin of the Bucca- killed some of the inhabitants, hanged others, neers, the circumstances which induced them burnt property, and then sailed away. The to turn corsairs, the character and exploits of Chevalier de Poncy, Governor of the French the most remarkable adventurers, and the settlement of St. Kitts, then occupied Tortuhistory of their principal exploits. He has ga, and fortified the port. This was in 1640; also described that peculiar condition of West and though the Spaniards occasionally attackIndian life which rendered possible for half a ed the place with momentary success, it recentury the existence of so singular a body, mained a permanent colony of France, and and drawn some lively though florid pictures the head-quarters of the Buccaneers-that is, of West Indian scenery. The tone through- the place where they sold their booty, squanout is rather too rhetorical; particular adven- dered the proceeds, and fitted-out new expeturers are sometimes made too much of, and ditions. the story of the pirates who succeeded to the Before judgment is passed on the BuccaBuccaneers (necessary to a complete close) is neers, it should be considered that opinion pursued into too great a length, consisting as was very different then to what it is now. it does of mere felonry. The Monarchs of the Piracy on a large scale had founded states in Main, moreover, is vigorously written; is full Europe-Normandy, Sicily, probably Engof striking incidents and characters, though in land. The feudal right of private war accusthe main of a low and criminal cast; and af- tomed men to what would now be called fords many glimpses of the state of opinion in Europe and the West Indies during a large portion of the seventeenth century. It is the best book on a curious subject which has yet appeared. brigandage, long after private hostilities had ceased as a practice. Piracy, or more accurately, perhaps, private naval war, had been usual in the Channel throughout the middle ages-that is, till the accession of the Tudors. In the Mediterranean it was continued much rope, Everybody knows that the term Buccaneer is derived from an Indian word boucan, signi- later by Christians, and tolerated by Christian fying dried flesh. The Buccaneers were originally what would now be called "squatters," governments. It is only in our own day that and chiefly poor French settlers of Hispani- down. A healthier opinion grew up in Euthe Algerine corsairs have finally been put ola (Hayti). They lived on the flesh of the wild cattle they hunted, disposing of the hides land that growth was as early as Elizabeth; and among the upper classes in Engto trading vessels for arms, powder, and tri- for on the return of Drake from his great fling luxuries, (to their ideas,) of which brandy perhaps was the chief. With the spirit of Voyage the nobility at first looked upon him as little better than a pirate, he was only a cruelty, monopoly, and exclusiveness, that dis- hero to the Queen and the people. With anguished the Spanish domination in the New this change of opinion private war or piracy World, the Spaniards determined to clear the became transferred to the Tropics; and beisland of the cattle-hunters. For this purpose fore we wonder at its existence, we should a regular force was organized; the bouca- remember that in the last century the rineers, held as outlaws, were hunted like run- val East India Companies were often enaway Negroes, but offered a different kind of gaged in hostilities between themselves in Inresistance, and frequently defeated very supe-dia, though their respective Governments rior numbers. Whether the Spaniards were able to clear the island may be doubted; they drove away a good many Frenchmen, who took refuge in the smaller isle of Tortuga That irregular warfare which several European peoples waged against the Spaniards in the less-settled States, and even private citiwere at Peace in Europe. At this very time waging war, and are scarcely stopped. Even zens of America, practically claim a right of before the Buccaneers were at their zenith, the grandsons and nephews of British Kings Rupert and Maurice-exercised piracy upon a large scale, and required the determined energy of Blake to put them down. In reality, the Buccaneers were the last of a 66 Hunger, thirst, heat, and fear beset him round; and the voice of the sea, always on his right In these fourteen nights he must have literally hand, came to him like the hungry howl of death. tasted death, and anticipated the horrors of hell. tribe which had existed in Christendom, in | voices seemed to pursue him. His subsistence some form or other, for a thousand years. was the raw shell-fish that he found washed Had not the circumstances of the West In-among the rocks upon the shore, fresh or putrid dies, and the unsettled state of Europe from he had no time to consider. He had streams to circa 1650 to 1700 favored their development woods where the jaguars howled. Whenever he ford, dark with caymans, and he had to traverse as a species of organized freebooters, they came to a stream unusually dark, deep, and would have become, what their successors did dangerous, and where no ford was visible, (for in the early part of the last century, pirates he could not swim,) he threw in large stones as infesting every sea, a large portion of whom he waded to scare away the crocodiles that lurkended their career at the yard-arm or on the ed round the shallows. In one spot he travelled gallows. five or six leagues, swinging like a sloth from Mr. Thornbury says that the Buccaneers bough to bough of a pathless wood of mangroves, only needed a common principle of union never once setting foot upon the ground. His to have founded an aggressive republic, as At one river more than usually deep he found day's progress was often scarcely perceptible. wealthy as Venice and as warlike as Carthage. an old plank, which had drifted ashore when the One great mind, and the New World had seaman was washed off, and from this he obtainbeen their own." Neither union nor a great ed some large rusty nails. Extracting these mind was likely to be found among the sweep-nails, he sharpened them on a stone with great ings of various nations which formed the Buc- labor, and used them to cut down some branchcaneers; for if the middle class mind can rule es of trees, which he joined together with osiers states, it cannot found them; and the Bucca- and pliable twigs, and slowly constructed a raft. neers were scarcely of the middle class, as regards character or education. A few, as Morgan and De Lussan, were capable of planning and conducting an expedition; other few had touches of the cavalier about them; many were redeemed from vulgar felony by a sense of honor, a hatred almost fanatical of Spanish cruelty and tyranny, (though often cruel enough themselves,) and a sort of national feeling which the restriction of their attacks to the Spanish flag created. The best of them, however, were men of narrow education and experience, violent passions, and ungovernable will. The mass were low adventurers, without knowledge or character, whose life alternated between the excitement of excessive debauchery and the most appalling dangers and privations. An idea of what individuals sometimes underwent may be gathered from the escape of one Barthelemy, a Portuguese. He had been taken by the Spaniards, carried to St. Francisco, Campeachy, and the gibbet was erected for his execution. He stabbed the sentinel at the cabin-door, floated to land by means of two jars, and concealed himself in a wood for three days, till the first heat of the pursuit was over, living on yams and other roots. "Fortune favors the brave." He found a bug caneer vessel in the gulf, and he was saved. their cruelty continually shocks the reader. In reading the exploits of the Buccaneers, It should not be forgotten that it was a cruel age, especially in the West Indies. The treatment of the negroes in the last century was not worse than that which the French and vious century towards their own countrymen probably the English exercised in the prewho were in our phrase kidnapped, but whom the French called engagés: that is, persons who were persuaded to go out as indentured servants, but who found on arrival that they were practically slaves. The planters' engagés led a life more dreadful than that of their wilder brethren. They were decoyed from France under the same pretences that once filled our streets with the peasants Frankfort, or that now lure children from the sons of Savoy, and the peasants' daughters from pleasant borders of Como, to pine away in a London den. The want of sufficient Negroes Believing that the danger had now in some led men to resort to all artifices to obtain assistdegree decreased, the lion-hearted sailor deter-ance in cultivating the sugar-cane and the tomined to push for the Golpho Triste, forty bacco-plant. In the French Antilles they were leagues distant, where he hoped to find a bucca- sold for three years, but often resold in the inneer ship careening. He arrived there after four-terim. Amongst the English they were bound teen days of incredible endurance. He started for seven years, and being occasionally sold again in the evening from the seashore, within sight at their own request, before the expiration of this of the lit up town, where a black gibbet was term, they sometimes served fifteen or twenty still standing bodingly against the sky. His forced marches were full of terrible dangers and perils. He had no provisions with him, and nothing but a small calabash of water hung at his side. Hunger and thirst strode beside him, the wild beast glared in his path, the Spanish years before they could obtain their freedom. At Jamaica, if a man could not pay even a small debt at a tavern, he was sold for six or eight months. The planters had agents in France, England, and other countries, who sent out these apprentices. They were worked much harder than the slaves, because their lives, after the ex- he could earn he spent in this absorbing vicepiration of the three years, were of no conse- so tempting to men who longed for excitement, quence to the masters. They were often the were indifferent to money, and daily risked their victims of a disease called coma," the effect of lives for the prospect of gain. On one occasion hard usage and climate, and which ended in he lost 500 crowns, his whole share of some reidiotcy. Père Labat remarks the quantity of cent prize-money, beside 300 crowns which he idiots in the West Indies, many of whom were had borrowed of a comrade who would now lend dangerous, although allowed to go at liberty. j him no more. Determined to try his fortune Many of these worse than slaves were of good again, he hired himself as servant at the very birth, tender education, and weak constitutions, gambling-house where he had been ruined, and, unable to endure even the debilitating climate, by lighting pipes for the players and bringing and much less hard labor. Esquemeling, him- them in wine, earned fifty crowns in two days. self originally an engagé, gives a most piteous He staked this, and soon won 12,000 crowns. description of their sufferings. Insufficient food He then paid his debts and resolved to lose no and rest, he says, were the smallest of their suf- more, shipping himself on board an English vesferings. They were frequently beaten, and often sel that touched at Barbadoes. At Barbadoes, fell dead at their masters' feet. The men thus he met a rich Jew who offered to play him. treated died fast: some became dropsical, and Unable to abstain, he sat down, and won 1300 others scorbutic. A man named Bettesea, a crowns and 100,000 pounds of sugar already merchant of St. Christopher's, was said to have shipped for England, and, in addition to this, a killed more than a hundred apprentices with large mill and sixty slaves. The Jew, begging blows and stripes. "This inhumanity," says him to stay and give him his revenge, ran and Esquemeling, "I have often seen with great borrowed some money, and returned and took grief." The debauchery of the Buccaneers was as unequalled as their courage. (Exmelin relates a story of an Englishman who gave 500 crowns to his mistress at a single revel. This man, who had earned 1500 crowns by exposing himself to desperate dangers, was, within three months, sold for a term of three years to a planter, to discharge a tavern debt which he could not pay. A conqueror of Panama might be seen to-morrow driven by the overseer's whip among a gang of slaves, cutting sugar-canes, or picking tobacco. Another Buccaneer, a Frenchman, surnamed Vent en-Panne, was so addicted to play that he lost everything but his shirt. Every pistole that up the cards. The Buccaneer consented, more "Some Buccaneers," Esquemeling says, spend 3000 piasters in a night, not leaving themselves even a shirt in the morning. My own master," he adds, "would buy a whole pipe of wine, and, placing it in the street, would force every one that passed by to drink with him, threatening also to pistol them in case they would not do it. At other times he would do the same with barrels of ale or beer; and very often with both his hands he would throw these liquors about the street, and wet the clothes of such as walked by, without regard whether he spoiled their apparel or not, or whether they were men or women." Port Royal was a favorite scene for such carousals. From the Literary Gazette. Types and Figures of the Bible. Illustrated by the Art of the Middle Ages. By Louisa Twining. Longman & Co. use during what is called 'the dark ages,' before learning was diffused among the laity of Christendom. What biblical pictures do for children in our own time, these rude efforts of art effected in the infant civilization of modern naPICTORIAL representations of the types and tions. Wordsworth in his lines on the scripfigures of holy scripture occupy a large space in ture designs on one of the bridges at Lucerne the history of early art. In those centuries which in Switzerland, has poetically expressed the have been termed "the ages of faith," artists, true philosophy and practical benefit of this though rude in taste and feeble in skill, devoted department of early art :— their labors to the honor of God and the in struction of the people. Much error was in-One after one are tables that unfold culcated along with truth, but we must not undervalue the services rendered, both to knowledge and piety, by the pictorial teaching in The whole design of scripture history, |