HUET, ARCHBISHOP OF AVRANCHES.

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individual of his age, with scholars, philosophers, and statesmen, could have told a great number of entertaining and striking circumstances, which would have introduced his readers to something like an humble acquaintance with a portion of that splendid society; a society, too, in which he passed so much of his time, as to make it altogether inconceivable how the remainder could be enough for his prodigious quantity of reading, writing, and philosophical experiment. But he does little more than name a considerable number of the distinguished persons, and his sketches of the rest are brief and dry; much in the manner of a man writing out a catalogue of books, and sometimes stopping to say that this is a very celebrated work, in great request among the learned on the Continent, the supposed source of some of the greatest improvements in philosophy, its first appearance forming an epoch in the history of science or literature, &c. &c.; and that this other article is a superlatively correct and elegant edition, having occupied so many years of the life of such or such a learned editor, the typography being the very finest performance of the unrivalled Elzevir press, &c. &c.

Though the number of remarkable facts in this memoir is indeed very small for a busy life of more than eighty years, it would be possible, if we had room, to extract a tolerable portion of entertainment; and as to profit, the whole history is one most dense piece of instruction on the wonderful effects of unremitting industry. Men of ordinary literary hardihood look over the dusty and solemn ranks of learned works in a great public library as an invincible terra incognita; they gaze on the lettered latitude and altitude, as they would on the inaccessible shore of some great island bounded on all sides with a rocky precipice. Huet gives the example of a man having no such submitting and retiring sensations at sight of the most formidable masses of literature. There was no point where he had the smallest fear of not being able to make an entrance and a lodgment, and to extend his researches and conquests rapidly on all sides, while the common tribe of scholars should stand gazing and confounded at a distance. It is not the question, whether this literary rivalship of the military projects of Alexander, this scheme of universal conquest, was a judicious plan of life. Whether

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it was wise or foolish, the marvellous effect of unrelenting industry in the prosecution of it may afford a valuable lesson to those whose ambition to accomplish something great and good is often repressed by the consideration of human imbecility and the shortness of life.

The fate which more or less befel the greatest part of the talent and learning in France, in the detestable though gaudy reign of Louis XIV., of being drawn within the vortex of the court, awaited Huet also, long after he had escaped from all the vortices of the Cartesian philosophy, in which he had taken a few whirls in his youth. In conjunction with Bossuet he was made preceptor to the Dauphin; and no doubt he performed, when in this situation and when out of it, his due share of that vile worship of the monarch, of which the collective literati of the country were proud to be the priests, with the noble exception of Tanaquil Faber, who dedicated a book to Pellisson, then an inhabitant of his Majesty's prison of the Bastille. Huet, however, had really not time to go far in this or any other species of fashionable vice for it was during his preceptorship, which involved a considerable. portion of official labour and duties of courtiership, that he performed his greatest work, "Demonstratio Evangelica." He has given a striking account, and not in an ostentatious style, of the labours of research required even for assembling together the crude materials for this monument of his erudition.

THE DELPHIN CLASSICS.

It was also during the period of his service at court, and of his employment on his " Demonstratio," that he undertook, at the earnest recommendation of the Dauphin's governor, the Duke of Montausier, the plan of publishing all the Latin classics, with that ample furniture of illustration which has made what are called the Delphin editions so well known throughout Europe; and this plan was executed within less than twenty years, to the extent of sixty-two volumes. Huet's office was to obtain competent editors for the respective authors, and to exercise a general superintendence, by examining, once a fortnight, the portions of work they had performed. And by degrees, he says, he became more of a workman himself than he had intended; the editors of some of the most obscure authors, as Manilius, applying to him for assistance.

THE DELPHIN CLASSICS.

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In this comprehensive plan for the facilitation of the royal studies, Lucan, much to his honour, as Dr. Aikin remarks, was not recognised as a classic. His most Serene Highness, the Heir Apparent, was evidently likely to derive far more valuable instructions on the principles of just government from the obscure astronomical futilities of Manilius, than from Lucan's manifestoes against tyrants. It is probable, however, that the benefit accruing from this hopeful source was about as great as that from the expedient suggested by the sapience of the royal father, of getting together a party of the most erudite men of the age, to talk their best on high matters of literature and science, in the presence, and for the advantage, of a boy, who was probably meditating on the philosophy of frolics one half of the time, and literally dreaming of them the other. The time came at last for this royal receivergeneral of wisdom to be a man, and to be married, for the good of the nation; and then, it should seem, by Huet's own confession, that, along with the governor and preceptors, he kicked away all the classics with a prodigious good-will.

SPAIN.*

A FEW more sketches of Spain are acceptable from so sensible a traveller as Mr. Semple, notwithstanding the continual diminution of the interest recently excited in the fate of that most miserable country: and the more acceptable, from the consideration that it may henceforward be very long before an Englishman will again be able to survey the country by so interior a route. Not, however, that the loss of such a privilege may warrant any very loud strains of lamentation, any more than the locking up of some large cemetery, that should have been heretofore accessible to the curiosity of every idle stranger, and the repeated ingress of those who had already explored it. One or two attentive inspections and accurate

A Second Journey in Spain, in the Spring of 1809, from Lisbon, through the Western Skirts of the Sierra Morena, to Sevilla, Cordova, Granada, Malaga, and Gibraltar; and thence to Tetuan and Tangiers. By Robert Semple. 12mo. 1809.

descriptions of such a dreary repository, might fairly be expected to satisfy both the visitants of the place and the hearers of their report. They might reasonably conclude, that a gloomy sameness of appearance would long continue to rest on the objects in the subterraneous abode; and that there could be therefore no inducement, on the ground of curiosity, to a re-examination, for a long time to come,unless, indeed some strange convulsion, caused by natural or human violence, should throw the still figures and furniture of the region of death out of their order. It is true that a convulsion has been and is now disturbing the state of death, in which the human mind has so long reposed in Spain. But the report before us is enough to prove, that beyond a certain portion of mere physical ravage, the alteration is exceedingly small. There appears no symptom of discontent with the profoundest ignorance,-no perception of the superiority of neighbouring nations,—not the movement of a hair's breadth in recovery from any one prejudice or absurd custom,-not the faculty of even suspecting a defect in any one point of mechanism, agriculture, or policy, of which the uselessness, inconvenience, or mischief are palpably before the people's eyes every day; and an execrable superstition, the best security for the long continuance of this state of intellectual death, remains as unshaken as the most ponderous tombstone in the whole country. To talk of the deliverance, the liberty, the glory, and so forth, of such a nation, as things to be the result of a year or two of anarchy and fighting, does really seem to be transgressing the utmost license allowable even in the language of a lampoon or an Eastern fiction. And to expend, to a prodigious amount, the means, animate and inanimate, of a nation itself heavily pressed with burdens, in aiding the deliverance, as it is called, of such a people, without conveying the remotest hint of any measures corrective of barbarism, and tending to assuage the fury of fanaticism, would be quite worthy of a country where bigots and infidels should be contending for the political power. The mind seems sufficiently dead in Spain to ensure a protracted period of moral and intellectual sameness, a monotony of ignorance and superstition,—whatever may be the despot's name whose slaves the population are ultimately to become.

ENGLISH POLICY IN SPAIN.

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The historians who shall flourish, as the phrase is, in the latter part of the present century, and at remoter periods, will have to do the best they can to explain the policy on which the English nation has been acting during the last twelve or twenty years. And it would be worth while for a person, who, though yet in the somewhat earlier part of life, has been, we will suppose, an intelligent observer of the transactions of the last few years, to consider, if he were to live to be asked for information, or for his opinion concerning them, forty or fifty years hence, by some one then preparing in the seriousness of history to state them, and comment on them, how he would answer such questions as these-Did the English nation at that time, in spite of all their vaunted illumination, and pretended spirit of liberty, entertain a real partiality for despots as such, for superstitious and intolerant church establishments, and in short for that state of the whole social economy, which is at once the result and preserver of ignorance and desperate corruption? Or, in their terrified haste to secure themselves against the ultimate ascendancy of a great rival power, were they eager to ally themselves with any sort of government possessing the semblance of a ready-organized military force, however such a government might be hated by its subjects, rather than wait to assist any nation to acquire the knowledge and freedom which would create a truly noble and powerful ally?—as a person startled with the apprehension of an attack, will catch a loose rotten stick from a hedge, instead of taking time, when there is really time enough, to cut out and prepare a sound and elastic one: but in doing so, were the English nation besotted enough to believe that such allies could render them any effectual assistance? And did that nation, in allying itself at so many points with the vilest despotism, entertain no apprehension that its own government might contract some similarity? Or is the truth of the whole matter no other than this,-that there was but little connexion but that of power, aided by delusion, between the English government and the English people?

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL COMPARED.

We cannot help wondering why, when Mr. Semple is so hopeless of any good among the Portuguese, he is so sanguine