completion of Sismondi's "Histoire des Français," and wrote the thirtieth and last volume, which has recently been brought out in a separate and improved form, under the title of "Louis XVI. et sa Cour." This volume forms a strange contrast to Sismondi's manner. The other volumes are Genevese; that is to say, full of information, but without colour, life, or warmth. The last is Parisian; that is, piquantly witty, at times even brilliant, always lively, and admirably written, for Renée is what Sismondi never was in the higher branches of literature. He also varies greatly in his mode of handling his subject: he is not a Protestant, like Sismondi, and consequently more free from the influences of the eighteenth century. With him history is before all personal, and he considers that enough has been done when correct likenesses of the characters are given. From the Great Century to the times of Louis XV. seems but a step, and that step has been taken by M. de Capefigue, at the present day the most daring adulator of the eighteenth century, and author of a great number of historical works, which find a ready sale, at the expense of good taste and healthy discrimination. Capefigue treats history like a huge Bologna sausage, from which he cuts off slices to serve up on publishers' counters. His treatment of history is indubitably piquant and highly spiced, and his views are so strikingly novel that he stands alone among historians. This was specially the case in two of his recent works, one in a sky-blue wrapper, entitled "La Marquise de Pompadour," the other in white, with a rosary upon it, and the title "La Comtesse du Barry." The interior of these books harmonises exactly with their exterior: that periwig age which persons have hitherto fancied concealed in a dense cloud of powder, M. Capefigue sees in the most brilliant light, and what ordinary mortals regard in this age as rouge, falsehood, and impotence, is in his sight nought but nature, truth, and energy. He very bitterly upbraids the immorality of all the historians who have treated of the reign of Louis XV. before him, and zealously attacks the philosophers, parliaments, Montesquieu, Dalembert, Voltaire, but, above all, Diderot, "the epicurean swine from the herd of Encyclopædists," who insulted the charming marchioness and countess, and deferred the hour of their canonisation. At the present time M. Capefigue is engaged in collecting materials for the lives of the French royal mistresses of the sixteenth century, having already produced those of the mistresses of the Grand Monarque in his "Mademoiselle de la Vallière." Alexandre Dumas fils, as dramatic author and writer of romances, is of mental affinity with Capefigue as historian, and they are both on the same road to immortality. And here we must break off for the present, though our subject is far from exhausted. In fact, space has forbidden us touching on the legion of books referring to the first French revolution, but we propose to make them the subject of a separate article. Our object having been to point out to the student of French history the more important works he shoul 1 consult, we have necessarily omitted many, but the works to which we have alluded may be regarded as trustworthy. NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. THE OLD DOMINION. VIRGINIA, the slave state in which American hostilities are apparently destined to commence, is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania, on the north-east by Maryland, on the south by North Carolina and Tennessee, and on the west by Kentucky and Ohio. According to last year's census it contained 1,097,373 free whites, and 495,826 slaves, or a proportion of nearly two to one. Through its population Virginia occupies the first, through its superficial area the second, rank among the rebellious states, and as it contains an old aristocracy, should the confederation endure, it must become the leading state, in the same way as in the several states the landed aristocracy will assume the power. At any rate, it will lay claim to the premiership, and probably its only opponents for that honour will be the more enterprising South Carolina and the equally pretentious Georgia. Our readers are, of course, aware that the larger cities of the Yankees, and also the States, have certain sobriquets, which are not at all employed in jest. Thus, New York is the empire city; Philadelphia, the Quaker city; Baltimore, the monumental city; Buffalo, the queen of the lakes ; and Boston, the city of notions. In the same way New Orleans was christened the crescent city; Cincinnati, Porkopolis; and Saint Louis, the city of tombstones. The inhabitants of Kentucky are known as corncrackers; those of Ohio, as buckeyes; of Illinois, as suckers; of Indiana, hoosiers; of Missouri, pukers; of Wisconsin, badgers; of Iowa, hawkeyes. In the same manner Pennsylvania is the Keystone state; Kentucky, "the dark and bloody ground;" Massachusetts, the Bay state; Louisiana, the Creole state; Texas, the Lone Star; while Virginia is universally hailed as the Old Dominion, or the mother of the presidents. Both names are justifiable, for Virginia is one of the earliest colonised states, while it gave the Union no less than four presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and a considerable number of other prominent politicians, among whom we need only mention Patrick Henry Randolph, John Marshall, and Henry Clay. So long as the Union only consisted of the old thirteen states, while the east was undeveloped, Pennsylvania's iron and coal wealth not yet opened up, New York not yet the empress of commerce, and the primeval forests and prairie of the north-west not yet converted into inexhaustible corn-fields, Virginia was undoubtedly the most important state of the Union; and, thanks to its copious resources, could have easily retained that position, had it only yielded to the principles of free labour to the same extent as the North did. In the way matters have gone on, Virginia may be comAug.-VOL. CXXII. NO. CCCCLXXXVIII. 2 c pared to a gentleman of old family, who is satisfied with the tribute of honour paid him in return for the good services of his ancestors, and the ample estates his fathers have left him, and looks more to the enjoyment of his possessions than to their increase-till he suddenly wakes up to the unpleasant discovery that he has been gradually passed in the race of life by the hard-struggling and inventive people around him. In his house you find many virtues, elegant manners, and a pleasant sociability, but the spirit of the age is not visible there. His estate is backward, and even sinks in comparison with others. Virginia is among the North American much what Spain was in the European family, prior to the recent alteration for the better. Virginia, situated exactly between the North and South, combines the advantages of both. The Alleghanies, with their side-branches running from north-east to south-west, divide the state into an eastern and a western half. Eastern Virginia, broken up by the mouths of large rivers and bays, is, towards the sea, flat, sandy, and partially swampy; further inland, hilly. The centre of the state is mountainous, but rich in valleys adapted for cultivation; and Western Virginia is also mountainous, but richer in fine bottoms suited for settlement than the centre. The state possesses in its mountains an inexhaustible treasure of coals, a great deal of iron, some copper and lead, and excellent building material. Salt is obtained in large quantities, and the number of mineral springs is legion. The luxuriant meadow-lands in the west are suited for sheep-breeding, and in the forests, with which a considerable portion of the state is still covered, we meet, in addition to the trees of our forests, those of the farther South, such as the plane, the magnolia, the tulip-tree, and the chesnut. All sorts of game animate the forest regions of the mountains, nor is there any lack of fish. The climate varies according to the situation. In the east, while the summer months are hot and unhealthy, the winter months mild, in the mountain regions the weather is rather severe in the first half of the year, in the other temperate. The west has moderately cold winters; snow rarely falls there, and never lies for any length of time. The soil, with the exception of the mountains, which cover about one-twelfth of the country, and the sandy districts both in the east and west, is very fertile, though in several counties it has been weakened by the constant tobacco growth, and is hence of but slight if any value. A considerable portion of the southern border counties is occupied by the Dismal Swamp. The principal rivers are the Potomac, which forms the frontier to Maryland, the Ohio, the James River, the Rappahannock, and the York, the two latter being navigable for a considerable distance by vessels of some burden. The principal employment of the Virginians is agricultural. The exports, consisting chiefly of tobacco and flour, during the last ten years, averaged about three million dollars, the imports about 550,000 dollars. The former have fallen considerably in comparison with earlier times, while the latter have slightly increased. The great superiority of the exports over the imports shows that Virginia is no large market for foreign trade, and the shipping belonging to the state is insignificant. The manufactures, too, are but small, when compared with those of the New England states. The only important ones are the iron foundries, which, on the annual average, produce native, cast, and forged steel to the value of two and a half million dollars, the tar and turpentine distilleries, and a few tobacco factories. The woollen and cotton factories only produce coarse cloth to dress the slaves, while the gun factory at Richmond can scarce supply the wants of the state. The notes of the Virginia banks, so long ago as 1855, were only taken at a discount of one to two and a half per cent. : at the present moment the majority of the banks are probably bankrupt. A good deal has been done for the higher and lower schools, but the education of coloured people is severely prohibited, and indeed the whole scholastic system of Virginia is far inferior to that of the Northern states. The best portion of the state is what is termed "the great valley of Virginia," that is to say, the district between the Blue-ridge and Alleghany mountains, which contains about twenty counties. It is, however, not a real valley, but a plateau intersected by various chains of hills and rivers, whose waters flow partly into the Atlantic, partly into the Gulf of Mexico. The climate here is as excellent as the soil, which is more carefully cultivated than in any other portion of the state. The west is proportionately but slightly colonised, and the sixty counties, which extend from the eastern base of the Blue-ridge to the sea, though formerly the most productive, have suffered severely from the cultivation of tobacco. If these districts are but slightly productive for export, the production of slaves flourishes all the better there. Many planters only breed slaves to sell them to the cotton states, much in the same way as large cattle-breeders export the superfluity of their herds. In no other state is this traffic carried on so extensively, and it is calculated that during the last twenty years at least one hundred and twenty thousand head of this produce have been sold from Virginia to the South. As a slave is worth, on the average, four hundred dollars, this would produce an annual revenue of two million four hundred thousand dollars. There are individuals almost in our immediate proximity, we are sorry to say, who consider this natural, and find in it a justification for Virginia's secession from the Union. We leave to them the far from enviable conviction that men can hold their fellow-men as property, and merely state that Virginians themselves have expressed the opinion how little profitable this property is to their state. Thus, for instance, the Richmond Inquirer wrote, in 1852: Virginia has an inexhaustible water-power, fine building materials, a healthy climate, a fertile soil, a favourable position for the cotton trade, and yet, for all that, has indubitably remained behindhand. At the acceptance of the Federal Constitution it had a larger fortune and a more numerous population than any other state in the Union, but it has fallen from its high estate to be the fifth in wealth and the fourth (now the sixth) in population. New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio (to which we may now add Indiana and Illinois) are superior to Virginia in the first point, and all, with the exception of Massachusetts, in the second. The population of the Empire City, with its suburbs, is larger than the whole free population of Eastern and Central Virginia. The wealth of the little state of Massachusetts (its superficial area stands to that of Virginia as 78 to 316), which would be unable to support its population by the produce of its soil, is more than 126 millions larger than that of Virginia. New York, a state, which at the Declaration of Independence stood so far beneath Massachusetts as Massachusetts did under Virginia, now possesses an amount of wealth larger than both those states. While, in 1850, the total wealth of New York state amounted to 1,080,309,216 dollars, that of Virginia was only 436,701,082 dollars. And yet the annual wealth of Virginia is larger than that of New York, its climate and soil are better, and the outlying land, with the same means of communication (the railway system of New York is nearly thrice as long as that of Virginia), offers similar advantages. Another paper published in the state, the Lynchburg Virginian, wrote also: The coal-beds of Virginia are the most extensive in the world, and the coal possesses the best qualities. The state is equally rich in iron, and there are splendid strata of lead and copper. And yet we are dependent on Europe and our North for every yard of cloth, every coat and pair of boots, for the hat we wear, the axe and the scythe, the tub and the pail-in short, for everything we require, save the meat and bread we eat. Were we ever to be separated from the North, we Southerners would be unable to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our trees, plough our fields, or mow our meadows. We should fall into a condition so low that we prefer not to think of it. The last-quoted paper exaggerates, for the sake of producing an effect, but we will now show that the statements of the former journal are not overdrawn, and that with the progress of time circumstances have grown even more unfavourable to Virginia. In 1790, Virginia had a population of 1068 to the square mile, while the adjacent Pennsylvania, almost similarly endowed by nature, had only 928. By the year 1850, however, the proportions had so altered, that in Pennsylvania there were 1730; in Virginia but 1372 persons to the square mile. The relative extension of cultivated land, and the value of the estates, stand in a ratio to this slower increase of population in Virginia; and on this head our reader can compare the following small table, after a glance at the size of the various states: It must be remarked that if the average quality of the land in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, be slightly better than in Virginia, that of New Jersey is considerably worse. The reason for this retrogression of Virginia, as compared with these and many other states, may be easily discovered. It is a slave state, and slavery is incompatible with manufactures and immigration, and the Northern states have essentially grown rich and powerful through those two elements. In the same way as in those countries where serfdom prevails, there is no middle class in the slave-holding districts of Virginia, or it is not sufficiently developed. The great Virginian landowner is, in every respect, a counterpart of the Polish nobility: he possesses all their virtues, and most of their vices. It is conceded that the population who work on their own account produce, by their industrial habits, the strength and prosperity of the world, and to their extraordinary predominance in the Northern states we must look for the extra |