Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
tion , and that worts such as those of Du Beauchesne , while they add but little to our knoAvledge on the subject , are merely recalling to our minds a time of trouble and of wickedness which it may be just as well for humanity ' s sake to forget . We , however , beg to differ from so sentimental a conclusion . Painful and terrible as it may be , to be so constantly reminded of that monstrous succession of foul murders , useless cruelties , and ferocious madness , the record of the sufferings which individuals
• underwent is still useful , if it only serves to warn us against the kind of liberty which ignorance covets , and that tyranny which springs from power when in the hands of those who havo no other feelings or aspirations to gratify , but the grossest sensuality and the coarsest as well as most degrading brutality . We extract one paragraph as a special illustration of the intense thirst for blood exhibited by the population of Paris . It is descriptive of the scene that followed the murder of the beautiful Princess de Lamballe , the friend of Marie Antoinette , and is in Du Beauchesne ' s best style : —
" After having killed the friend of the queen with pikes and sabre-thrusts , they exposed her fair body for hours to the lascivious gaze of the spectators , and to brutalities at which cannibals would have blushed . Death itself became an insufficient guardian of modesty . Then cutting off her breasts , ber head , and other parts of her body , each of these bleeding remains was placed on a pike . Her left side was opened ; a man plunged his hand in , and drew forth the bleeding heart , which was also stuck on a pike , and , in like manner with the rest , to be paraded through tbe streets . Civilization , which separated itself from God , thus surpassed at one bound the fury of savages ; and the eighteenth century , so proud of its intelligence and humanity , finished by cannibalism . "
" Private Trials and Public Calamities , iu the Early Life of Alexandrine dcsEcherolles , " * is an autobiography of a . young lady whose misfortune it was to 1 IA * O in the midst of the scenes to which we have adverted . It is an interesting account of the numberless dangers to which she , and every member of her family , was exposed , and which proved fatal to most of them . Like every other work on the same subject , it calls forth one continued feeling of horror and indignation , and the more our attention is drawn to the utter abuse of anything like human feeling or human
kindness in the breasts of the chief and minor actors , the more intelligible becomes the necessity of the iron rule AA-hich now holds Prance in chains . Prom this sad tale we pass to the fourth volume of Miss Agnes Strickland ' s " Lives ofthe Queens of Scotland , aud English Princesses connected with the Boyal Succession of Great Britain , "*) - in which the life of Mary is continued -, and despite it being an oft and thrice-repeated tale , familiar
enough to the ears of every school-boy , it gains greatly from the pleasing and unaffected style iu which the author presents it to our notice . No matter from what source Miss Strickland gleans her information , or whether it is a very new or very old one , she deserves credit for her industry , and the evident desire to make her undertaking as perfect as unremitting labour can make it . With the industry , however , that devotes time , type , and paper to the
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Critical Notices Of The Literature Of The Last Three Months,
tion , and that worts such as those of Du Beauchesne , while they add but little to our knoAvledge on the subject , are merely recalling to our minds a time of trouble and of wickedness which it may be just as well for humanity ' s sake to forget . We , however , beg to differ from so sentimental a conclusion . Painful and terrible as it may be , to be so constantly reminded of that monstrous succession of foul murders , useless cruelties , and ferocious madness , the record of the sufferings which individuals
• underwent is still useful , if it only serves to warn us against the kind of liberty which ignorance covets , and that tyranny which springs from power when in the hands of those who havo no other feelings or aspirations to gratify , but the grossest sensuality and the coarsest as well as most degrading brutality . We extract one paragraph as a special illustration of the intense thirst for blood exhibited by the population of Paris . It is descriptive of the scene that followed the murder of the beautiful Princess de Lamballe , the friend of Marie Antoinette , and is in Du Beauchesne ' s best style : —
" After having killed the friend of the queen with pikes and sabre-thrusts , they exposed her fair body for hours to the lascivious gaze of the spectators , and to brutalities at which cannibals would have blushed . Death itself became an insufficient guardian of modesty . Then cutting off her breasts , ber head , and other parts of her body , each of these bleeding remains was placed on a pike . Her left side was opened ; a man plunged his hand in , and drew forth the bleeding heart , which was also stuck on a pike , and , in like manner with the rest , to be paraded through tbe streets . Civilization , which separated itself from God , thus surpassed at one bound the fury of savages ; and the eighteenth century , so proud of its intelligence and humanity , finished by cannibalism . "
" Private Trials and Public Calamities , iu the Early Life of Alexandrine dcsEcherolles , " * is an autobiography of a . young lady whose misfortune it was to 1 IA * O in the midst of the scenes to which we have adverted . It is an interesting account of the numberless dangers to which she , and every member of her family , was exposed , and which proved fatal to most of them . Like every other work on the same subject , it calls forth one continued feeling of horror and indignation , and the more our attention is drawn to the utter abuse of anything like human feeling or human
kindness in the breasts of the chief and minor actors , the more intelligible becomes the necessity of the iron rule AA-hich now holds Prance in chains . Prom this sad tale we pass to the fourth volume of Miss Agnes Strickland ' s " Lives ofthe Queens of Scotland , aud English Princesses connected with the Boyal Succession of Great Britain , "*) - in which the life of Mary is continued -, and despite it being an oft and thrice-repeated tale , familiar
enough to the ears of every school-boy , it gains greatly from the pleasing and unaffected style iu which the author presents it to our notice . No matter from what source Miss Strickland gleans her information , or whether it is a very new or very old one , she deserves credit for her industry , and the evident desire to make her undertaking as perfect as unremitting labour can make it . With the industry , however , that devotes time , type , and paper to the