6

feverish interval. When summoned to the Tuileries on that occasion he had formed a resolution to resist the proposal. Napoleon was alone when he entered the closet, and said, taking him by both hands,In this crisis you will not refuse to take your old place in the ministry.' To some complimentary remark on the miraculous success of his return, the Emperor replied, ' Mon cher, the time for compliments is over. Ils m'ont laissé arriver comme ils les ont laissés partir'-an expression which proves the more correct estimate he had at length formed of the French character— his feeling, in short, that the vicissitudes of fortune to which he had himself accustomed that people must have prepared them for viewing with indifference any possible revolution-were it from the excess of freedom to the excess of servitude.

M. Mollien candidly acknowledges that as his principal object was to bequeath to the world a correct portrait of Napoleon, especially in those relations of life which fell under his own cognizance, so it is not without regret that he has recorded much to darken the fame of one who was to him an object not only of high intellectual admiration, but of grateful regard. He has steered clear of the servility of a Las Cases and of the malignity of a Bourrienne; and while others have depicted the policy and character of Napoleon from their personal motives of affection or of resentment, Mollien discusses them with reference to the fixed principles of public economy and of public morality, from which his own career never deflected. But though the narrator of these transactions has not sought to exalt his own penetration and experience at the expense of his master, and has displayed in a remarkable manner the versatility and application with which that extraordinary man governed his immense empire, he has entirely failed to raise our conception of Napoleon's real competency to deal with these abstruse subjects. In these pregnant volumes we have not met with a single idea originating with the Emperor himself on points of finance or political economy, which is not radically unsound. He seems to have thought on these matters as he did on the obligations of public morality, that a code of science and of duty could be framed to suit his own convenience, and that motives of State sufficed to cover every enormity. But he was eminently skilled in the choice of instruments, and his insatiable activity kept every department of the government in constant efficiency. The last mark of confidence he would bestow on those who really possessed it was the tacit adoption of their opinions, even when he had just before combated them. He was tolerant of contradiction when alone, but absolutely oracular when he held forth in the Council of State or in public. In reality he had no financial principles: the perpetual

recurrence

recurrence of war, the continental blockade, and his own crude notions of public credit prevented the formation of such a system at any part of his reign; and the last extravagant and destructive years of the Empire shook and well nigh obliterated the advantages resulting from the methodical reforms of the Consulate. Admitting therefore the extraordinary military successes and political energy which had extended that vast dominion over Europe, M. Mollien has failed to show that it possessed those sound and practicable financial views which are inseparable from the stability of governments and the contentment of nations. His own administration of the Treasury was a long struggle against incoherent projects and reprehensible expedients; and the ground he was continually endeavouring to strengthen and consolidate, was as continually cut from beneath his feet by the exorbitant demands of the military and political departments. His official duties were rather fiscal than financial, and he never had the power or the opportunity of altering the great springs of taxation that pressed, and still press, so injuriously on the French nation. No alleviation could take place in the condition of the people-no safe or permanent extension could be given to trade; and at length war, which had been the principal source of this misery and pressure, was resorted to as the easiest mode of palliating them. Austerlitz and Moscow were the projects of an insolvent gambler. The daring expedient was successful in the one case and ruinous in the next; for as this whole system of credit was stimulated and kept alive by victory, it collapsed at once under defeat. We will not here detain our readers to apply to the politics of France in the present day, the analogies which these facts can hardly fail to suggest; but if similar embarrassments should drive President Buonaparte to similar enterprises, that is to the vulgar resource of foreign spoliation, there is, we fear, no Mollien in the councils of the Elysée to resist and correct such lawless and self-destructive tendencies. Under the imperial administration at least the spendthrift vices of the present government were unknown, and indeed no one would have repressed them with more severity than Napoleon himself.

Little remains to be said of the later years of Count Mollien's life, for his official career terminated with the final fall of his Emperor, and he closes his own narrative at that period. But though he held no office of public trust under the Bourbons, he was placed by Louis XVIII. in the Chamber of Peers, where he continued, until the latter part of the reign of Louis Philippe, to treat with great superiority, and with perfect consistency, the financial questions of the day. In private life he was respected for the sobriety of his judgments and the steadiness of his

friendships;

friendships; nor would his character have been complete without the charm which his unvarying conjugal affection shed over it. Well were it for France if, amongst her men of wit and her men of action, there were more possessed of the reflection and composure which these volumes attest; or if, when such men are to be found, they were raised to a higher position in the State, so as to control the impulses of their countrymen. Sooner or later all governments are judged by their adherence to, or departure from, sound fixed principles; and the Empire of Napoleon himself was, as this narrative proves, tainted with the mortal disorder of financial embarrassment in the midst of its most brilliant achievements. The welfare and stability of nations require more homely virtues, and more provident care; of which qualities these volumes will perpetuate an honourable example and an unpretending picture.

ART. V.-1. Life of Lord Jeffrey, with a Selection from his Correspondence. By Lord Cockburn. Edinburgh, 2 vols.

8vo. 1852.

2. Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. By Francis Jeffrey, now one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. 4 vols. 8vo. 1844.

THIS

HIS Life seems a good deal too big for its subject, but that fault is redeemed by features of less common occurrence. Though the septuagenarian Judge apologizes for himself as a young author, his readers will detect few signs of inexperience. His narrative is on the whole clear; shrewdness and sagacity mark many a sentence:-and a cordial affection relieves the exaggerated vein of eulogy in which it was perhaps inevitable that one Edinburgh Whig of the top flight would glorify another. Some wonder, no doubt, was excited by the announcement of the undertaking; for among Lord Jeffrey's eminent intimates hardly any one had been so little thought of in connexion with literary matters as Lord Cockburn; nor can we deny that the book presents a blank as to some subjects on which students of literature might have expected entertaining details. Jeffrey, we had always been told, conversed very freely on the topics which must have occupied the larger share of his attention- - yet Cockburn has nowhere made the least attempt to give us an idea of his style of conversing on such topics. Of course the bulk of his notions must have found a voice in his Review; but still a man does not talk to the public as he does to a friend, and there must be more in him, we imagine, than he ever puts

upon

upon paper. As to some minor peculiarities, we cannot concur in criticisms that seem to be current. To say that many uses of words, and especially turns of phrase, are not English, is merely to say that Lord Cockburn himself is before us in every page. To ourselves these idioms, like the intensely local prejudices everywhere projected, are among the charms of the performance. They give it individuality and force. Smooth, correct writing is common enough. Earnest sentiment and unaffected diction will do their work, in spite of worse transgressions than can be laid to this door.

In his first volume he interweaves sundry extracts from Jeffrey's letters,-the second consists of a selection from them ;— and we had already seen a good many in the Memoirs of Horner; -but it is evident, as might have been anticipated, that the most curious parts of the critic's correspondence have not yet been submitted to public view.

His early environments must have been in the main very like those familiarized to our readers by the accounts of Mackintosh, Scott, Campbell, and Horner. Old subjects, however, put on a new face when a new spectator is not afraid to give his own impressions: and after all, this is the first time that we have had the whole scene and system depicted by one of Jeffrey's immediate circle.

He was born in 1773, in an obscure corner of Edinburgh. His father, a solicitor, obtained ultimately a deputy-clerkship in the Court of Session-an office which, from some of the biographer's phrases (for he is usually above statistics), we must presume to have then been of slender emolument. Francis had one younger brother, John-a mild, calm creature, totally unlike himself, but always warmly loved by him-who spent the best years of his life in America under the wing of an uncle, long before settled there, and married to a sister of the famous John Wilkes. There were two sisters, both in due time respectably married; between whom and their brothers the most cordial affection is testified by the correspondence. The book leaves the impression of less agreeable relations between the father and his children. From a period not far subsequent to the death of their mother, which occurred when Francis was but thirteen, there appears to have been a growing discomfort. Lord Cockburn speaks of the old man as 'sensible and respectable,' but 'sour' and 'morose.' The sting comes behind—he was, it seems, a Tory. Owing his post to the Dundases, he was steady in his allegiance to that dynasty; and few things, we may believe, could have been more mortifying than certain early symptoms of liberalism in his bright son. It is probable that the younger branches adopted the views

of

of that oracle; and thus, perhaps, the whole grievance may be explained. What no one can contest is, that, in spite of all disappointments and disagreements, this sulky clerk acted uniformly in a very generous style as to his boy's education.

His final abode and that with which his children's young recollections were all connected was in the very heart of Auld Reekie -the crowning story or flat of one of those towering edifices on the Lawnmarket-scarcely matched even in the ancient marketplaces of Leipzig or Vienna. To this habitat Francis had a warm attachment. In his early letters he often refers to the 'dear retired adored little window of the Lawnmarket garret:'indicating equally, we feel, his tenderness towards his brother and sisters, and his satisfaction in the retrospect of many a midnight hour well spent in his own aërial citadel. About the last of the upper class who adhered to that vicinity was Boswell; and once, in his ladhood, the future critic had personal intercourse with this distinguished neighbour. Returning home after a supper, he was serviceable in lifting Mr. Boswell from a gutter, and carrying him safe to the convenient dwelling' in which he had once had the honour to lodge Johnson. Next day Boswell, informed of his obligations, stopped Francis in the street to thank him-a little conversation gave a favourable impression of the young Samaritan as a lover of his book, and the close was 'Go on :you may come to be a Bozzy yourself.' One other juvenile glimpse of a great man is recorded. Jeffrey, when about sixteen or seventeen, was struck by the stalwart appearance of a passing stranger, and stopped to take a better look of him. A shopkeeper, standing at his door near the Cross, said 'Ay, look weil, laddie, that's Robert Burns.' We recall the startled burghers when Dandie Dinmont first strode along that same street in search of Pleydell's hostelrie. Even Scott does not seem to have surpassed Jeffrey in affection for their own romantic town.' It is not only that he enjoyed enthusiastically, early and late, the general scenery-he evidently had a genuine love for the humblest locality associated with historical tradition. Even near the close of his life his letters mention long solitary walks, not merely about Arthur's Seat with all its unsurpassed variety of aspects landward and seaward, but up and down among the dingiest and most deserted alleys of the old capital itself. All this is very pleasingby us, we own, it was not expected.

6

He was never the dux of the High School-but his written exercises attracted the Rector's observation. Dr. Adams was a liberal-almost a republican; and possibly the depute-clerk ascribed something of Master Frank's political heresy to such an instructor. From whatever motive, at the close of the school