But the reserve, like the main body, was soon hemmed in by skirmishers, and so thick a storm of shot was hailed upon them that they were almost blinded by the leaves and branches cut from some chestnut-trees above their heads. Margadel, conceiving that enough had been done for honour, now gave the signal for retreat. The Blues followed close, but a little nearer the town they were encountered by another reserve posted in a cemetery, which it cost them dear to dislodge. The very gate was the scene of a third heroic effort. A gentleman of Auray, M. de Molien, at the head of a few royalists, resolutely barred the passage of the Blues. Repeatedly was he borne to the ground, yet again and again did he rush upon their bayonets, till he fell senseless, and was left for dead in the street.

The place was carried, but the reserve kept together and formed a rallying point, to which the disconcerted Chouans soon repaired in sufficient numbers to form a fresh army. After one more engagement, however, in which a party of the Blues were seized with an unaccountable panic and rushed like madmen from the field, the struggle grew languid at the news of Waterloo, and was finally terminated by the second abdication of Buonaparte.

Amongst the most pleasing passages of the book are the meeting between the officers of the two parties at a sort of reconciliation festival, and the reception of the students on their return. The table-talk at the festival turned naturally on the stirring scenes in which the guests had been engaged :

They had too high an opinion of one another to avoid any subject of conversation. General Rousseau spoke of his campaign against the Chouans in a manner to excite a lively indignation amongst certain bourgeois, to whom his words were repeated, and who persevered in seeing in us nothing but rogues and brigands. He complimented De Sol on the fine bearing of our little army during the battle of Muzillac, and the heroism with which the students had defended their position. He then desired to know who commanded a certain battalion of peasants, who, towards the close of the action, had manoeuvred on his left flank, and induced him to beat a retreat. The Chouan officers to whom this question was addressed were standing round him, and prevented it from reaching the ear of a bald and infirm peasant, who was sitting by himself in a corner of the room, his head leaning on his breast, and his hands hanging between his legs, and who knew better than anybody of whom General Rousseau was speaking. The General, not receiving a satisfactory answer, repeated his question, which was then better understood, and his auditors, instead of replying to it themselves, indicated by looks and gestures the old man to whom this praise referred, and who was too modest to claim it. "How! is it you, then, who did me that turn?" exclaimed Rousseau, approaching Gamber, who, at Muzillac as at other places, had no notion that he had played

anything

anything but a very subordinate part. "Come, give me your hand; I swear to you that a colonel of the imperial army could not have done better."

Our military readers will remember the embarrassment into which the Duke of Wellington was thrown some years ago by the bequest of a thousand pounds to the man who showed most bravery at Waterloo, whom His Grace was consequently required to name. The royalist officer despatched to Vannes for the purpose encountered the same difficulty in naming a couple of students to receive the cross of the legion of honour; but he fixed at last on two who had been distinguished throughout the campaign as much by their friendship as by their bravery, and they were solemnly installed on an altar raised in the centre of the town. The description is thoroughly and charmingly French:

'An expiatory mass, with a chivalrous ceremony, at which the ladies were present as in the middle age, struck no one as out of keeping. As soon as the officiating priest had descended the steps of the altar, two elegantly-dressed women were seen ascending it, the sight of whom convinced the two friends about to be decorated that the memory of this day could not be equally sweet for both of them. The one who, in her quality of wife of the first magistrate of the department, occupied the right, was a venerable matron, full of feeling and dignity; but her companion, who figured in this ceremony with reluctance and out of deference to paternal authority, was an object of ecstatic admiration to all of us, less on account of her dazzling beauty than of an indefinable charm diffused over her whole person. That day the enthusiasm which pierced visibly through the embarrassment her part occasioned her, appeared to animate her naturally sad and subdued look. The officer who presided at the ceremonial, after whispering a few words into her ear, went to fetch the two champions, the youngest of whom was in consternation at the lot which his inferiority of age and college-rank portended. His joy may be imagined when he learnt that it was precisely the reverse; that not only was he to receive the cross of honour from the hands of Mademoiselle d'Olonne upon his knees, but that, in rising from this suppliant attitude, he would be privileged to salute her on both cheeks. It required all the Breton naïveté not to be a little startled at this noble kiss, given on the very steps of an altar. But our imaginations were pitched upon a key which made criticism impossible. When the pair-friends, brothers in arms, and fellow-pupils at onceadvanced to kneel before their ladies, applauses and cries of joy resounded from all sides; these redoubled at the most interesting part of the ceremony, and became deafening as the thunder-clap, when, deferring to the wish passionately expressed by the assembly, Mademoiselle d'Olonne, herself an object of enthusiasm, graciously returned the salute of her knight. As for him, he was in a state of intoxication which prevented him from hearing or seeing anything, not even the steps of the altar he had to descend. He was obliged to be held up by his com

rade

rade to prevent his falling. Never before was head so young upset to this extent by the fumes of glory.'

Mademoiselle d'Olonne took the veil, and died many years ago, so that her knight may record his feelings on the occasion without any risk of exciting the jealousy of Madame. The young hero, thus kissed and kissing, was M. Rio himself.

Although we have endeavoured to compress this narrative, occupying nearly four hundred pages, within the limits of a moderate article, and although many of the incidental adventures which we have omitted are full of interest, we do not think M. Rio will suffer, on the whole, from being introduced to the English public in this manner; for he is often diffuse, and sometimes philosophical. He should have set down his facts and impressions at the time, before he had lost the fire of youth and acquired the trick of authorship,-when the Chouan rising was still, in his eyes, the grandest of recorded struggles for liberty. He now mentally compares it with other struggles, glances over the scenes of his boyhood with a calm, contemplative air, rounds a paragraph with a reflection, and spreads out or dishes up his incidents with a too obvious reference to effect. Still the bold, earnest, chivalrous character of the original man is observable throughout; and there cannot be a stronger proof of this than the manner in which all the poets who have come in contact with him are affected. Wordsworth, Milnes, Landor, Mrs. Norton, Brizeux,-no sooner have they heard his tale than they proceed to embalm some striking passage in verse. Mr. Wordsworth's contribution is entitled The Eagle and the Dove,' in allusion to the cognizance of the St. Esprit adopted by the royalist students, and the eagle of the imperialists :

'Shade of Caractacus! if spirits love

The cause they fought for in their earthly home,
To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove

May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.

These children claim thee for their sire; the breath
Of thy renown from Cambrian mountains fans
A flame within them that despises death,
And glorifies the truant youth of Vannes.

With thy own scorn of tyrants they advance,
But truth divine has sanctified their rage;
A Silver Cross, enchas'd with flowers of France,
Their badge, attests the holy fight they wage.

The shrill defiance of the

young crusade

Their veteran foes mock as an idle noise;

But unto faith and loyalty comes aid

From Heaven-gigantic force to beardless boys.'

VOL. LXX. NO. CXXXIX.

H

Mr.

Mr. Milnes avails himself of the opportunity to promote the pacific intentions of his friends M. Guizot and Sir Robert Peel: 'For honest men of every blood and creed Let green La Vendée rest a sacred spot! Be all the guilt of Quiberon forgot

In the bright memory of its martyr-deed!
And let this little book be one more seed,
Whence sympathies may spring, encumber'd not
By circumstance of birth or mortal lot,
But claiming virtue's universal meed!
And as those two great languages, whose sound
Has echo'd through the realms of modern time,
Feeding with thoughts and sentiments sublime
Each other, and the list'ning world around,
Meet in these pages, as on neutral ground,

So may their nations' hearts in sweet accord be found!
O France and England! on whose lofty crests
The day-spring of the future flows so free,
Save where the cloud of your hostility
Settles between, and holy light arrests;
Shall ye, first instruments of God's behests,
But blunt each other? Shall barbarians see
The two fair sisters of civility

Turn a fierce wrath against each other's breasts?
No! by our common hope and being, no!
By the expanding might and bliss of peace,
By the reveal'd fatuity of war,

England and France shall not be foe to foe:
For how can earth her store of good increase,

If what God loves to make man's passions still will mar ?'

ART. IV.-Animal Chemistry; or the Application of Organic Chemistry to the Elucidation of Physiology and Pathology. By Justus Liebig, M.D. Edited from the German MS. by William Gregory, M.D., Professor of Chemistry, King's College, Aberdeen. 8vo. London, 1842.

THE recent progress of Chemistry, especially of Organic

Chemistry, has been rapid and most interesting. Throughout Europe several distinguished men have for a good many years been assiduously devoted to its cultivation; and we are now beginning to reap the benefit of their exertions. In a late article we had to notice the masterly work of Professor Liebig on Agricultural Chemistry;' and already we have, from the same pen, a no less remarkable volume on Animal Chemistry.'

As

As his new theme, in one point of view, concerns us all even more nearly than that of agriculture, we shall endeavour to give our readers some notion of the kind and degree of light which our author's labours promise to throw on the obscure and difficult, but most important subject of physiology.

The readers of the Agricultural Chemistry' will remember that he has there developed, and, as we think, established by a very beautiful inductive argument, his theory of fermentation, putrefaction, and decay; or, to speak more generally, of chemical transformation or metamorphosis. In order to the understanding of the present work, it is desirable that we should state, very briefly, the nature of that theory, on which so many of its details are founded.

Professor Liebig, then, applies the name of metamorphosis to those chemical actions in which a given compound, by the presence of a peculiar substance, is made to resolve itself into two or more new compounds: as, for example, when sugar, by the presence of ferment or yest, is made to yield alcohol and carbonic acid.

There are various forms of metamorphosis. Sometimes the elements of the ferment, or exciting body, do not enter into the composition of the new compounds: such is the case in the fermentation of sugar. At other times all the bodies present contribute to the formation of the new products. Thirdly, in one form of metamorphosis, namely, that of decay, or eremacausis, the oxygen of the air is essential to the change: as when alcohol is converted into acetic acid, or wine into vinegar. When an inodorous gas is one of the products, the process is called fermentation; when any of the products are fetid, it is called putrefaction: but these distinctions are not essential; for putrefying animal matters will cause sugar to ferment, as well as common yest. The fetid smell of putrefaction is chiefly owing to ammonia; and hence it is observed not only in the fermentation of animal matter, but also of such vegetable bodies as contain nitrogen, and therefore yield ammonia.

Now the explanation given by our author of these and similar changes is this: that the ferment, or exciting body, is invariably a substance in an active state of decomposition. Its particles are therefore in a state of motion; and this motion, being communicated to those of the body to be metamorphosed, is sufficient to overturn their very unstable equilibrium, and to cause the formation of new and more stable compounds. The more complex the original compound, the more easily does it undergo metamorphosis. The Professor has produced, in support of this doctrine, an extraordinary number of facts, and has, by strict induction from these, demonstrated it almost mathematically.