ladies who had also recanted, and who, together with himself, were constantly planning means of escape. They converted their estates into money, but at length when an arrangement had been made for a passage to England by sea, they changed their minds, and determined to attempt to gain the frontier.

After many dangers and perplexities, a Dutch vessel was secured, and a rendezvous was appointed for eighty passengers at Pampin, a house within a short distance of the shore, about a league from La Rochelle.

"The cold was insupportable; the night extremely dark, and in consequence of heavy rains the roads were inundated and nearly impracticable; and even, if it had not been so, we should have been obliged to avoid the regular path to prevent being arrested in our flight. We traversed consequently meadows which were become quagmires, or went through vineyards whose borders were very high, and the ground so soft that we could not advance a step without sinking almost to the calves of our legs. We frequently trod the brinks of precipices, the frightful depth of which we had then no conception of, brinks which in the-day time we should have carefully avoided, and which nothing but the hand of a gracious God could have guided us safely through, in the midst of darkness and ignorance. I had afterwards occasion three times to go over the same ground, and when I inform you that I did not consider it safe, in broad day-light, to proceed a single step without much care, and sometimes with a great deal of hesitation, my horse and myself trembling at the sight of the abyss below us, you may form some adequate idea of the perils we incurred, as well as the sufferings we endured, during that memorable night.

"We contrived, however, to reach the place of rendezvous. The darkness, the miserable weather, or rather the goodness of Providence, preserved, not our party alone from detection, but every individual who had repaired to this spot with a view to embarkation. A few, indeed, lost their way and did not arrive at the appointed hour. There were seventy-five persons assembled on the beach." P. 129.

"In less than a quarter of an hour, the arrival of the boat was announced. Every one hastened towards it, but the order of embarkation was neglected, and great confusion prevailed. I could not possibly be among the foremost, having Mademoiselle De Choisy in charge, as well as my six children. We lost our way with a dozen other people, and found ourselves in a vineyard, a hundred yards from the sea, from which we could not extricate ourselves, and where we expected to pass the night. There happened, however, to be in our party a woman whose husband had long been familiar with this part of the coast, and who, as soon as he had missed his wife, went in search of her until he found her in the vineyard. He conducted us to the boat, which we reached when it was about putting to sea with thirty-five persons. Of

course we were reduced to the necessity of waiting until the return of the sailors, which was not before six o'clock. I need not detail all our sufferings, during this long interval, arising from cold, fatigue, and anxiety of mind.

"The return of the boat imparted to me no consolation, for it was taken into a creek one hundred and fifty yards distant from the rock on which we were waiting, and which we had not quitted since the first embarkation. As soon as we heard the cry of the sailors, every person (we were about forty) hastened to the place whence the voices proceeded: the most active, or the least encumbered gained the boat; and when five and twenty had entered it, the sailors refused to admit any more, having been, they said, nearly swamped the first trip; but they would return a third time and take in the remainder.

"It became soon very evident that our passage was lost. The day dawned before the boat could well have reached the vessel, and the returning light discovered to us two launches that we immediately recognized to belong to the dozen guard boats established at La Rochelle since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and which justified all the caution that attended every plan of emigration. Our kind and judicious superintendant had employed during ten successive mornings persons to observe a long range of coast, and the whole seemed to be guarded, excepting the part where we agreed to assemble. The delay of only half an hour in the arrival of the second boat might have led to the detection of the present scheme, and subjected the persons who left the shore to imprisonment, perhaps perpetual imprisonment, and every individual by whom that scheme had been promoted to a trial upon a capital charge." P. 133. -.

This disappointment occurred in the middle of January, and it was not until Easter that Migault succeeded in escaping. He was conveyed to Holland, and there the narrative terminates.

If this narrative be authentic it is an interesting memorial to its owner, who is stated to be a poor man, lineally descended from its author; but it has little in it which can attract or detain the public eye. The enormity of the persecution which attended the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, can be extenuated only by those who would find palliations for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We consider those who planned and executed it, to be quite as detestable as they are held to be by the profound editor of this volume; but we are in less alarm than he seems to be as to the probability of a revival of such outrages; and in looking over the face of Europe at present, we do not quite coincide with him in a belief that there is "a disposition in neighbouring nations to perpetuate the despotism" of 1685.

ART. IX. May You like It. By a Country Curate. 2 vols. 12mo. 14s. Boys. 1823.

MAY you like it! We do like it, and we trust our readers will do the same. In order, however, that their liking may be founded on some reasonable basis, as we trust our own is, we must in all fairness and justice, both to ourselves, in defence of our opinion thus expressed, as also to our readers, and moreover to the author also, enter a little into the reasons which have induced us to form that opinion; if reasons they may with propriety be termed, when we have been pleased without always knowing exactly why, or being able to trace and analyse with accuracy the current in which our pleasurable sensations flowed. This circumstance, however, we cannot but regard as in itself constituting a very good and solid reason for our approbation; for in truth to what cause can we attribute such spontaneous and undefinable gratification but to some close and intimate connexion subsisting between the images which the magic power of an author conjures up, and certain sentiments and predilections existing within us; a connexion which, because unperceived and incapable of being defined, is only so much the more natural; and asserts so much the stronger empire over our sympathies and associations, because the precise laws by which it exerts its power are unknown to us.

Whenever, then, we meet with a work which exercises this influence over us, we are disposed on that very ground to consider it as containing something intrinsically good, even though we should be puzzled if required to point out the precise particulars in which it consists.

These simple narratives are distinguished by very little of romantic incident or dramatic interest. They please from the faithful delineation of nature exhibited in their simple touches. What we term nature in works of imagination, is in fact nothing more than an appeal to our own sensations. Ideas which have long been familiar to our own minds, we are pleased to recognize thus embodied by the skill of the intellectual artist; and images which have lain neglected, disjointed and confused in our imaginations, we all at once perceive (and are delighted at the perception), combined and associated by the power of fictitious description; and invested with a local habitation and a name,' by the magic influence of a writer, who, while he seems to do nothing more than we are apt to think we could have done ourselves, has, in exciting that very idea, fully proved his superior ability. The author is eminently pleasing in his descriptions of rural scenery, and shews a happy facility of bringing before

our eyes the simple beauties of a home landscape; witness the following passage (the Holme Farm, p. 68).

"I had one day strayed to some distance from home, wandering over an almost pathless heath; when, having reached its boundary on the farther side, I stood for some time looking over a gate into the depth of a very shady and sequestered lane, whose bright green borders of grass intermixed with blue bells, reminded me of Wharton's picturesque lines, when speaking of the simple pleasures of country life:

'On green untrodden banks they view

The hyacinth's neglected hue.'

The ruts, half choaked and concealed by flowering weeds, and the one single track in the centre, showed plainly that this lane was little frequented, and could lead to no public resort of man.

"I have always felt a great impulse to strike into such lanes as these; and often when whirled along on the top of a stage-coach, I have passed such green untrodden ways, I have sent my soul to wander there, long after the remorseless vehicle had carried my mortal part far away from them. In the present case, I was impelled by the additional motive of curiosity to leap over the padlocked gate on which I had before been leaning: for it appeared strange to me that, in all my rambles round the heath, I had never noticed this particular lane, having until now imagined that I had explored every one of the many solitary paths diverging from its outskirts,

"I advanced for a time, half fearing to be disappointed (as I frequently had been) by finding that any new discovery was merely a circuitous way of reaching some well-known spot; but soon I gave myself up to a very youthful feeling, a sort of vague expectation that I should meet with something very new, very beautiful, or very extraordinary. Pardon me, sober reader! I have always been in the habit of extracting a great deal of romance from the common incidents of life; every step I took certainly unfolded some new beauty in the valley down which I was sauntering. At every new turning I paused, afraid lest the next step should discover to me the termination of the unknown valley; but I had turned often, and yet no end appeared. It had often been a favourite freak of my imagination, to think how de lightful it would be to wander along a path like this without ever coming to an end, and without even the chance of meeting a hu man being. I had never before met with any thing so like the reality of my wish; but, just as I thought so, another turning dis covered to me the tops of some blue distant hills, with whose outlines I was provokingly acquainted, and which, seen through wider opening of the valley, threatened that too soon it would expand into a more level and less Utopian country.

"No, I will proceed no further,' I thought to myself; but I will turn up this pathway to the right,' I added in a moment afterwards, attracted by its more sequestered look, and by the appear

ance of a rustic bridge which enabled me to cross a bright and babbling brook that spread itself across the road. When I had done so, I came in sight of a large old-looking farm-house, elevated on a kind of natural platform in the valley; while on one side the copse-covered hill rose immediately above it, on the other it sloped down to the before mentioned stream; between which and the farm was an orchard and a perfect grove of venerable walnut trees."

Of those narratives which possess a more dramatic character, the most romantic and highly wrought in point of plot and incident, is that entitled, "A Tale of true love."

The tale opens with a scene of mirthful festivity and sumptuous revelry, at the palace of the young and beautiful Countess Bianca, on the event of her coming into possession of her estates. In the midst of universal gladness however, the mistress of the mansion, is the prey of secret and ill-disguised sorrow. Her betrothed husband, the young Ernest, distinguished as a brave defender of his country, has unfortunately been engaged in a duel, with his commander, who is dangerously wounded; and the young man, in consequence a fugitive from the arm of justice, succeeds in effecting his escape into a wild part of the country, where he is shortly after surprised and captured after a desperate struggle, by some banditti. Among them, while lying ill of his wounds, he is recognized by an old soldier, who had formerly served under him, and owing to whose attentions, and the respect his gallant conduct extorts from the rest of the band, he is invited to become their captain. This however he refuses, and in an unlucky moment, is taken in company with them, by the police. All his representations are of no avail; he is consigned to a dungeon, and condemned to death. His betrothed wife, who is a personal favorite of the empress, intercedes in his behalf, as also does the general with whom he had fought, and who has now recovered the effects of his dangerous wound. His sentence is commuted into a perpetual banishment to the mines of Idra. The countess on hearing this, forms the heroic resolution of being united solemnly to him, and partaking in his exile and labours. She is warned in a most affecting audience with the empress, that in so doing, she will, according to the laws of the country, forfeit all her estates, rank and titles. She still resolves to sacrifice every thing, and communicates her determination to Ernest in his cell; where a truly impressive, and striking scene, is admirably described, between the lovers, the count's aged mother, and the friar who attended to unite them :-for the description of this, and its consequences, we beg to refer our readers to the work itself.