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confirm narratives which may be found related elsewhere in similar terms.

XIV. Many charts (chartes) which assume to be anterior to the year 1000 are false; up to that period this sort of testimony is to be employed with extreme caution.

XV. From the year 1000, and above all from that of 1200, there exist certain means of proving the authenticity of archives which become in consequence the most fruitful source of historical instruction.

XVI. Trials, reports, bulletins, &c., when drawn up in presence of the facts, generally present the names, dates, and material circumstances with exactitude.

XVII. They have sometimes been altered by political interests; and they must, therefore, when possible, be confronted with particu lar narratives published at the same time, and on the same matters. XVIII. The most faithful reports of trials never give a perfect knowledge of the moral and political character of the events or

persons.

XIX. The confidence due to private memoirs written day by day is proportionate to that which the honesty and intelligence of the writer inspire.

XX. From the commencement of the seventeenth century, public journals and gazettes furnish with tolerable exactitude the dates and material circumstances of public events.

XXI. Such details as are recorded equally in various periodicals edited with freedom, and published in different interests and opinions, are to be credited.

XXII. The journals expressly avowed by governments are in general exact in what concerns external circumstances and visible results. XXIII. No sort of confidence is due to gazettes which a government directs without avowal; and the recitals they contain are to be held as worthless unless confirmed by those written with perfect freedom.

XXIV. The memoirs of a man respecting his own actions and affairs merit attention as those of one who knows his subject; but they merit scepticism as those of an interested party.

XXV. The memoirs of writers of every century upon the events which occurred during their lifetime, or a few years before their birth, compose one of the principal sources of history. The first care of the historian should be to ascertain whether these memoirs be authentic both as to time and person. The real author having been ascertained, it is then necessary to learn what value is to be attached to his testimony.

XXVI. His testimony would be valueless if it was discovered that he did not possess the means of verifying the facts he relates.

XXVII. Of little value if it was found that his narrative was dictated by personal interests; or to flatter his patrons and party. XXVIII. It is prudent to examine, not reject, the accounts of one who manifests a disposition towards satire.

XXIX. Such authors as accumulate miraculous recitals, and find in most facts some extraordinary circumstances, are to be ranked amongst romancers.

XXX. In suspecting the veracity of him who shows devotion to his sect or party, the other extreme must be avoided; nor must any more confidence be reposed in those chroniclers who enregister with apathetic indifference the enterprises and revolutions which they pretend to have witnessed.

XXXI. When there is a contradiction or diversity between original narratives, criticism must decide between them by the confronting of testimonies; but in this case the result can hardly ever be pronounced certain it has only more or less probability.

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XXXII. A negative argument is that founded on the silence of a contemporary, and it acquires great force when the author who remains silent is intelligent, judicious, and exact, and when he could not have been ignorant of the fact nor interested in concealing it.

XXXIII. In default of contemporary narratives, those written one or two centuries afterwards must be accepted; but subject to all the preceding criticism; and in general they can only furnish probable results.

Such are the principal rules laid down and illustrated in the course of the first volume, where the reader will find any further fuller information he may desire, as well as the answers to any objections which the abstract statement of these rules may excite. The second volume is, perhaps, less interesting. The several chapters on the usages of history were very needful for his audience; perhaps to juvenile students entertaining; but those who read for something more than reading sake we would advise to skim gently over these chapters, alighting only upon such passages as attract them. The second half of the volume is of importance; it is a review of all the geographical notions which from the earliest to the latest times have been entertained by writers and travellers. It may be called the history of geography. The third volume treats of chronology, and the art of writing history: the latter the author illustrates with abundant examples from the

ancient writers.

In taking our leave of this excellent work we must again express our opinion that it has few rivals: temperate and erudite rather than novel or profound; not so much offering new ideas or new methods as classifying what before was known; written with elegance and gravity rather than with animation and éclat, it remains, after all deductions, an admirable course of historical study.

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ART. III.-Fêtes et Souvenirs du Congrès de Vienne; Tableaux des Salons, Scenes, Anecdotiques, et Portraits; 1814, 1815. (Festivities, &c., of the Congress of Vienna.) Par le COMTE A. DE LA GARDE. Paris: A. Appert Libraire Editeur. 2 Tomes. 1843.

THERE were previous to the present year three Histories_of_the Congress of Vienna. 1st, the book of De Pradt; 2d, the History of M. de Flassan; and 3d, the Journal of a Nobleman at the Congress of Vienna, published anonymously in London. The book of the Abbé, and former Bishop of Mechlin, is lively, startling, and showy. In order to prove his honesty and originality-like our own Cobbett-he makes it a point with himself to differ from all the rest of the world, and it is therefore no marvel that he discovers that there is, after all, nothing so very wrong in the partitioning of Poland; that the aggrandizement of Prussia is necessary to the general equilibrium of Europe; and that the annexation of Belgium to Holland is the very perfection of wisdom.

The book of M. de Flassan, entitled 'Histoire du Congrès de Vienne,' and which first saw the light in 1829, is still more voluminous, though infinitely less readable, than the production of his apostolic and diplomatic predecessor. M. de Flassan had no doubt the most favourable opportunities of writing a correct and authentic work. He had long previously been employed at the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. He had been advantageously known as the author of a larger work in six vols., commenced in 1809, and finished in 1811, the Histoire Générale et Raisonnée de la Diplomatie Française,' so that his previous studies and researches had eminently qualified him for the task which his government had imposed. But although he was clothed in an official capacity, enjoyed the confidence of the actors in this great drama of the Congress of the Nations, and had moreover access to all the protocols and archives, there is not perhaps a more arid and colourless production in modern French literature than the 'Histoire du Congrès de Vienne.' Somewhat of this is owing, no doubt, to the dry, dogmatic, and formal style of the publication, a little perhaps to the nature of the subject, but most of all to the diplomatic drill which it was necessary the author's opinions should undergo before they were permitted to be given to the reading world of Europe and America. We have been told on good authority that M. de Flassan was forced to strike out all the really curious and interesting portions of his MS. The work as printed is but a dull and unanimated record of facts; an enforced and la

boured panegyric on the five powers and their plenipotentiaries, whom the author complacently and complimentarily describes as si supérieures aux jugemens humains'!*

The Journal of a Nobleman at the Congress of Vienna' may or may not be apocryphal; but in any event it is a work which could have been written by any valet or gentleman's gentleman; by the lacquey of Prince Metternich, or the page of the late Emily Marchioness of Londonderry.

The Congress of Vienna, like every other congress in modern times, presents two distinct aspects. The one public and patent to all the world—the other latent and unrevealed, unless to the kings and cabinets initiated. The secret letters and confidential communications of Lord Castlereagh to the Prince Regent, and to Lord Bathurst, from the beginning of October, 1814, to the commencement of January, 1815, and of the Duke of Wellington, who supplied the place of his brother plenipotentiary and friend at the congress, from February, 1815, to the moment of its close, would, no doubt, afford some of the rarest materials for anecdote, history, and memoirs; but it is not likely that any of these familiar and confidential letters will ever be made public; certainly not in our own day. There was yet another hand from which much might have been expected. It is well known that during the congress the most unreserved communication existed between Louis XVIII. and his adroit and pliant plenipotentiary. A scholar, a man of taste and erudition, Louis XVIII. was not only possessed with the mania and weakness of corresponding on all subjects, literary, political, and scientific, but his most Christian majesty was also desirous of learning, like all the branches of the elder Bourbons, the little tittle-tattle, the small gossip, and the secret scandal, of the rout of kings and rabble of ministers assembled in the capital of the soi-disant descendant of all the Cæsars.

Talleyrand was too good a courtier not to gratify this royal yet paltry propensity. There was not an intriguing adventure, not a royal and imperial amour, not a masked ball, not a dinner or supper, or Tanz Musique at the Redouten Saal, which the exbishop did not most unctuously describe for the pleasure and instruction of his royal master. If Alexander, in a fit of half-religious mysticism, or something still more mundane, flung himself at the feet of Madame de Krudener;—if Metternich dallied till the dawn of day in a secluded alcove with some pretty gräfinn;—if Castlereagh danced with imperturbable and relentless energy all night long, disclosing his

* Congrès de Vienne, par De Flassan, tome i., p. 219.

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thin and shapeless calves in tight pantaloons;-if Maximilian of Bavaria cracked a coarse joke;-or that Daniel Lambert of kings, the Colossus of Wurtemberg, surfeited himself with a Brobdignagian allowance of sturgeon and sauer kraut;—if the sly and insinuating Duchess of Oldenburg flirted in the guise of a grisette, for some politic and fraudulent purpose; or the exuberant humour of his Majesty of Denmark exuded in lively quips and cranks, savouring more of the cabaret than the cabinet; -if the brisk and insatiable vanity of Lord Stewart, his inevitable want of tact, and unmistakable want of temper, led him into scrape after scrape-all were noted down by the imperturbable and inexorable ex-bishop with point and precision. Nor did the other sex escape unscathed. The fan of this princess, the sable pelisse of that, the diamond stomacher of this duchess, the beautiful bracelet of that other, were all described and chronicled with the special science of a Storr and Mortimer; or, better still, with the glowing eloquence of a Laure (of the house of Maradan Carson); or, to speak synchronously, of a real Bourbonite bodice-maker and legitimate milliner, such as Victorine herself. It was after having received one of these pleasant missives, in which the dresses and costumes of emperors and empresses, archdukes and archduchesses, magnates and starosts, were graphically described, that the gouty and caustic monarch is reported to have exclaimed, 'M. de Talleyrand n'a oublié qu'une seule chose, c'est de nous faire savoir quel était son costume à lui, car il en a de rechange.'

But where, it may be asked, are all these confidential letters now? This alone is certain, that they are not among the archives of the affaires étrangères; for one fine morning, a quarter of a century ago, the Prince of Beneventum took the slight and superfluous precaution of removing the secret and anecdotical portion of the letters to his private hotel in the Rue St. Florentin. There remain, then, in the archives of France but the political and official correspondence, which is in every sense public property. The author of this portion of these materials for future history is the worthy and excellent M. La Bernardiere, previously to the first revolution a member of the congregation of the Oratoire, but who subsequently, on the suppression of his order, embraced the career of politics, and was ultimately employed as Chef de Division in the affaires étrangères. It is curious as well as instructive, at this distance of time, to reflect how many ecclesiastics were flung into the stormy career of politics by the revolution. Talleyrand, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron Louis, Minister of Finance, Fouché, Minister of Police, De Pradt, Ambassador to Warsaw, Sieyes, of Pigeon House memory, immortalized by the greatest of orators and the first of philosophic statesmen (Burke), and La Bernardière,