executed as well as could be expected. He has added little to his former volumes, except a gallery of portraits of the revolutionary heroes, which he has introduced at the beginning of his history of the legislative assembly. His sketches of the Feuillant chiefs are forcible and true, Brissot is well delineated and Condorcet hit off exactly as the self-constituted successor of Voltaire in the chair of philosophical Atheism, where "il punissait par l'ennui ceux que Voltaire avait rejouis par le sel de ses coupables railleries."

Monsieur de Barante, the second author upon our list, is Pair de France, Et ancien membre de la Doctrine; also an eleve of Madam de Stael. His first work was a translation from Schiller, in no way remarkable. The memoirs of Madame La Rochejaquelin were of his drawing up; but his most known work is his Discourse on the literature of the eighteenth century, perhaps the best compendium of literary history extant. His present attempt is one of bolder daring, and professes to be a history upon quite a new plan; and his Preliminary discourse is dedicated to its developement. "Ce discours," say the critics of Paris, "est ecrit d'un style tres vapoureux, et les idées serpentent avec peine à travers d'un style embarassé et pretentieux." M. de Barante, it seems, censures Hume severely for having written history, as he had done, philosophically, not picturesquely. This yearning of M. de Barante, towards pourtraying history, he sanctions by calling it classic. This is the solution of the huge problem he raises about the new mode of history-writing. Applied, however, to certain periods, the plan is attractive, and has been successful. Its idea, however, as well as perhaps its success, was owing, we have no doubt, to a perusal of "Quentin Durward:" M. de Barante there learned what an interesting work might be made of picturesque history, and he took the hint. When his concluding volumes appear, we may perhaps further notice the work, and give an extract or two of its lively, chivalric history. But for the present we pass to another work, written by an author of another country, a work long expected, desired and dreaded throughout the Italian peninsula, and from which all Italians look for complete vindication from their want of spirit, talent and virtue.

M. Botta, whose name has been most unjustly inserted in the Dictionnaire des Gironettes, was originally a physician of great respectability, and, we believe, in this capacity accompanied the French army into Italy, which gave him an opportunity of being present at the scenes he describes. A Piedmontaise by birth, he became, on the temporary fall of the Sar

dinian dynasty, one of the three governors of Piedmont, where he gained for himself universal respect, retiring poor from a situation almost of sovereignty. A contemporary journal says, that he retired poor and honest from a situation, in which Mr. Sommariva had on the contrary contrived to amass a fortune: the writer is not correct, Mr. Sommariva was simply secretary to the Cisalpine Directory, and made his fortune by banking. Soon after retiring from Piedmont, Mr. Botta published in Italian a history of our American war, much esteemed in Italy and America: it is nevertheless feeble enough, declaims instead of giving information, and coldly imitates the ancients in pourtraying and panegyrizing character. On the present history, a much more serious and important undertaking, the character of Mr. Botta must stand; and he has certainly produced a work that cannot fail to prove an interesting and a standard one. If it be ever superseded by cleverer writers as a general history, it will hold its ground as a contemporaneous one. Its faults are obvious enough, its style is exccedingly antiquated; its author has gone back to Livy for his manner, his sketchy detail of events, his set speeches, and sententious morality, and he has recurred as far back as Boccacio for his vocabulary, his terms being such as momentarily to drive the modern reader to Alberti. This affectation however is an annoyance, that will not be much felt here or in France, as the Italian edition was limited to an hundred or a couple of hundred copies, a French translation of it being published at the same time. All the French journals and in Paris the daily papers are the best reviews, speak highly of the work; espe cially the Journal des Debats, which in a long article, full of speculations, engendered by M. De Barante's new ideas, on the different merits of the histoire racontante and the histoire discutante guarantees Mr. Botta's veracity in all leading points, and more especially bears witness to his accuracy in accounts of military operations.

The work commences with a description of the state of Italy before the French revolution, very flattering indeed to that peninsula, but whose Utopian happiness and perfection, however affirmed by Mr. Botta, we beg leave to doubt even in these halcyon times. It is true, Leopold and Joseph must have ruled Tuscany and Lombardy with a benevolent sceptre, but extreme philanthropy beneficial as it may be on the part of a people, generally over-acts its part in the breasts of continental princes. We know how Joseph's philanthropic measures were received in the Low Countries, and that he could be as despotic in the prosecution of his liberal opinions, as ever Philip the

second was in support of his bigoted ones. But passing over this, and the polemic dissensions which this sovereign sowed in Tuscany-there is no denying that no royal house on the continent has produced two such liberal sovereigns as this one of Austria, in whose veins tyrannic blood is represented as necessarily running. Mr. Botta is not satisfied however with affirming their felicity, but asserts all Italy to have been equally fortunate-Rome and Naples he will have enlightened and happy till corrupted by French principles-Genoa and the Ligurians still preserving the remains of Roman constancy and valour→ Venice the wisest government the world ever saw all this, is remarkably calculated to excite doubt: we believe neither in the heroism of Genoa nor the wisdom of Venice, and think, that in the overthrow of European states which followed, these two eminently tyrannical and corrupt republics richly merited their fate both then and since.

The comparison between Genoa and Venice is, one of the best written passages in Mr. Botta's first book, but we have not room for its insertion here. The period of Italian history between the year eighty-nine and ninety-six when Bonaparte assumed the command there, contains little interest. The part immediately subsequent is of course little more than campaigning, a kind of narrative stuffed as the story of modern warfare is, with terms of art and unimaginable evolutions, worthy only of the gazette. Mr. Botta agrees with General Campbell's account of their campaign in many points, especially in denying, at least in strongly questioning, Bonaparte's adventure at Lonado, where he was said to have, by his presence of mind in summoning a division of Austrians peremptorily, made a large force surrender merely to himself and his état major. The "Histoire des Victoires, Conquetes, Revers &c. des Français," a work in the hands of almost every French soldier, and supposed to be drawn up chiefly by General Beauvais, an atrocious monument of prejudice and unfairness, and likely to prove in the minds of the French military a lasting source of both, is almost in every page enraged against what it calls the false statements of General Campbell: Mr. Botta has given these gentlemen another file to gnaw by his very impartial narration of their combats, in which he does ample justice to the Austrians who might have said after each defeat, with the Irish after the battle of the Boyne, "Change generals, and we'll fight you again." Bonaparte without Augereau at Castiglione to encourage him, would have retreated and would have been Jost for ever to fame; without a Venetian captain at Arcole, that picked him out of a bog-hole, his future laurels had been

but few; without the suggestion of his staff at Eylau, he would have abandoned the field and all his glories to the Russians.

But military events are those with which we are best acquainted, respecting Italy at that period; it is of political parties and personages, of the intrigues and springs of action there that we most need to be informed. Mr. Botta's account of the state of parties at Milan, and their hopes upon the conquest of the French is interesting. Bonaparte was received there with all the enthusiasm of the excitable Italian. "I buoni Utopisti quando lo vedevano, piangevano di tenerezza"-but this tenderness was turned to rage, when the robbery began: and the wretched populace, groaning under arbitrary taxes levied chiefly on articles of food, did not feel in the least more happy or contented, because they were nominally governed by poets and philosophers, by Parini and Verri, whom the French erected on the nominal throne of a directory.

But passing over all these repeated acts of violence and deceit on the part of the French, the sack of Pavia, the revolution of Genoa, of Bologna, of the Transpadane cities, in which we heartily join Mr. Botta against the disturber of his country's peace, let us examine the historian's account of the subversion of Venice, a city which he seems to regard with peculiar affection, and in recounting the fall of which he seems to lose his wonted acuteness and impartiality. We are not likely to stand up for Napoleon, but we cannot help being of opinion, that the irresolution, pusillanimity and at the same time the bad faith of this Republic drew down upon it from the French general richly merited destruction. In the early and patriotic leagues formed by the Italian powers against the French, the Venetians alone positively refused to join-neutrality was resolved on, and as it was said, the people would not bear more taxes, a disarmed neutrality also was resolved on. The war was not long in approaching the Venetian territories, whose neutrality was of course respected by neither party, the Austrians undoubtedly first violated it, and by occupying Peschiera and other fortified places of the Venetian state, whence they were driven by French bayonets, afforded a very fair pretext to the French to occupy such strong holds so won. That the revolution of Bergamo, Brescia, and Verona were excited by the French, or by their Milanese agents and allies, cannot be denied, but when the Venetian senate dispatched envoys to Bonaparte to demand his disowning the revolted cities, he replied, "Allow me, and I'll reduce them." The jealous republicans would not allow him, they were not able to reduce their subjects to obedience nor would they accept of French

aid for that purpose. And after the French had passed the Tagliamento, leaving the neutral state of Venice in their rear, the insurrection of Verona burst forth to the imminent peril of the French, an insurrection in which Venice had a notorious share. Bonaparte had every reason to be discontented with the Venetians, and that discontent he never dissembled. At length when his troops approached Venice, how did the sages of the republic act, even by their admirer, Botta's own account? Instead of taking either of the two alternatives, concluding a treaty directly with Napoleon, or else resolutely making preparations for defence, they entered into negociations with an individual- -a secretary of the French embassy certainly, but every way unaccredited at the time, the ambassador having withdrawn and actual war being declared. Yet with him, joined to some beggarly Venetian and democratic associates, did the Great Council of Venice conclude an agreement, in pursuance of which they were to dissolve the ancient government and erect a municipality-for no indemnification, independence, indivisibility of territory or any thing else did these impotent personages, stipulate, except what poor surety was implied in the title of Treaty. Even this Bonaparte would not allow; he naturally disowned the competence of the negociators, refused to sign the treaty, and never signed it. At Leoben and Campo Formio he said to Austria, You may take possession of Venice if you please ;-to the Venetians, he said, Defend yourselves, if you like. As to the occupation of Venice by French troops, they were called in by the Venetians themselves, at the time, in extreme terror of their own Sclavónian mercenaries... The robbery of its treasury, palace and churches, is a separate crime, from which no one will exculpate the French; but for the mere political death of Venice, no person can be accused; it was more a suicide than any thing else, committed not certainly with Roman courage, but in a moment of imbecile insanity, that well deserves the verdict of, "Died by the visitation of God."

We have not space to follow Mr. Botta through the very extensive meanderings of his history. The revolution of Genoa, so sanguinary and contested, is forcibly and we believe justly pourtrayed; the facts indeed bear out Mr. Botta's opinion, that the Ligurians are, of all Italians, the sole inheritors of the courage of the ancients. It is surprising, that such a power as Venice that for so many centuries, since its very birth indeed, had never seen a foreign soldier in its streets, nor knew what dependence was, should still be subverted without a struggle; whilst Genoa, that had so often bowed the neck to a foreign