sticklers for the old canons of criticism_; a lamentable instance of the
influence of authority, and of the spirit of party, on the judgments of
the most cultivated minds." This is a sample of modest assurance in
perfection. There is another "remarkable coincidence" in these volumes,
between the biography they contain of General Lafayette, and an article
about "the Nation's Guest" in a number of the North American Review for
1825. But we leave it to our contemporary to take her Ladyship to task
for this appropriation of his property.

In our foregoing remarks we have confined ourselves, in great measure,
to some of those portions of the volumes before us, which are most
susceptible of ridicule, though we have adverted to only a few even of
those--there are others, however, that would require a graver tone. The
sickly sentimentalism about Ninon de l'Enclos, La Valliere, Madame
d'Houdetot, and other strumpets--such "free" conversations as those
which are detailed at page 138, in the first volume, and page 108, in
the second; especially as they were held in the presence of a young
girl, her Ladyship's niece, who was doubtless one of the chief causes
why so many gentlemen came "_pour faire leurs hommages_" to the
aunt--and various expressions upon matters appertaining to religion,
deserve reprehension in no measured terms. But we have not space enough
at our disposal to bestow any further notice upon these, or to glance at
other parts of "France in 1829-30," although we have reaped but a small
portion of the harvest which it contains.

And this is the writer who pretends to enlighten the world upon the
"state of society" in one of the greatest countries of the earth! This
is the work by means of which she flatters herself that such an object
is to be effected,--and this too, (_proh pudor!_) is the kind of work
that can be republished in our country with a certainty of success!
Should the fact come to the knowledge of posterity, what will be thought
of the literary taste of this generation? We have, however, a cause for
consolation--if that can be termed consolation which ministers only to
selfish vanity, and is a source of pain to every better feeling--in the
assurance that the literary history of future times, judging from the
experience of the past, will present similar instances of depravity of
intellectual appetite. We wonder now, how our ancestors could have
relished what we regard with indifference if not with disgus