having died in the West Indies, as Commander-in-Chief, and one of the Judges at the Island of Antigua. The subject of the present memoir was born at Virginia, and sent into H. M. navy early in life. In 1791, having arrived at the rank of Commander, he was appointed to H. M. sloop Fairy, served in her on the Leeward Island Station for two years, and was then despatched to England with an account of the capture of the Island of Tobago. On the 5th June, 1793, Captain Laforey was promoted to his Post-rank, and shortly after had the command of the Carysfort, of 34 guns, and on the 29th May, 1794, captured the Castor, French frigate, of 32 guns and 200 men, 16 of whom were slain, and nine wounded. The Carysfort lost but one man killed and six wounded. The Castor had formerly been a British ship, captured by the French, regularly condemned, and re-commissioned in their service, yet the Navy Board put in a claim for her to be restored to the British service on payment of salvage; but, on the matter coming before the Admiralty Court, Sir James Marriot, the judge, decided she was a lawful prize, and the whole value was decreed to the captors. Capt. Laforey afterwards had L'Aimable, Beaulieu, and Scipio, in the West Indies in the latter ship he was very active, in conjunction with Commodore Parr, and Major-General Whyte, in the capture of the Dutch settlements of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, in 1795. Immediately on succeeding to the Baronetcy, Captain Laforey was appointed to the Hydra, and, while cruizing off the coast of France, in company with the Vesuvius bomb, and Trial cutter, he, on the 1st of May, 1798, discovered a French frigate, a corvette, and a cutter. After a long chase, the former was brought to action by the Hydra, who succeeded in drawing her on shore near Havre, and, with the boats of his small squadron, destroyed her. She proved to be the Confiante, of 36 guns, and a crew of 300 men, the greater part of whom got on shore. The corvette contrived to escape, but the cutter shared the fate of the frigate. After serv

ing two years on the Leeward Island Station, in the Hydra, Sir F. Laforey took the command of the Powerful, 74, and was employed in the Baltic, and afterwards under the order of Admiral Sir Charles Pole, in Cadiz Bay. In 1805, Sir Francis was appointed to the ship Spartiate, of 74 guns, and attached to the fleet under Lord Nelson, accompanying him to the West Indies, in search of the French and Spanish fleet, and in the memorable battle of Trafalgar had the good fortune to be engaged. The Spartiate sustained a loss of three killed and twenty wounded. Sir F. Laforey, with the other captains of the fleet, received a gold medal. He continued in the Mediterranean until promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, in 1810. He was for three or four years Commander-in-Chief on the Barbadoes station, with his flag in the Dragon, of 74 guns. On the increase of the Order of the Bath, in 1815, Sir F. Laforey was nominated a K.C.B. and on the 22nd of July, 1833, was promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Blue.

DR. M'CRIE.

It is with the deepest regret that we have to announce the sudden decease of this learned divine and celebrated historian, who was distinguished alike for his great talents and for his private virtues. He had, we understand, been complaining for some days; but was far from being seriously indisposed, as he went out on Tuesday to walk as usual. He was taken ill about five o'clock in the afternoon of that day; between ten and eleven he fell into a stupor, from which he never revived, and expired on Wednesday, about half-past twelve o'clock, in the 64th year of his age and 40th of his ministry. Christianity and Europe have thus lost, in the death of a Scotchman and fellow-citizen, one of the noblest defenders of the one, and one of the other's most illustrious ornaments. It is not easy, indeed, for those who knew him familiarly in Edinburgh, all at once to grasp the extent of their loss, or the probable duration of his fame. The

fame of other writers must be content to hang on the taste they bred or the taste they followed, but that of the historian of the Reformers of Scotland-of the martyrs of Italy and Spain, and of Calvin, must brighten with every fresh triumph of a cause destined in the course of time to embrace the whole earth. "The Life of John Knox" displays profound and accurate research, a keen and penetrating judgment, and a clear, vigorous, and simple style. It is an historical sketch of the first order, of unquestioned accuracy in its details, which are so skilfully thrown together as to exhibit with liveliness and force all the stern and peculiar features of those rude times. Dr. M'Crie did not affect the splendour of fancy and diction which belonged to the Roman historian, nor, perhaps, the comprehensive philosophy of Hume; but in plain, straight-forward, and discriminating views of human affairs and characters, he yielded to none. He seemed to catch, as if by intuition, the leading traits of the historical picture, which he exhibits with a fidelity and force of colouring that will ever give a peculiar value to his productions. His impartiality and candour, and his unaffected desire to investigate the truth, to whatever conclusion it may lead, inspires a confidence in his narrative, especially when this is contrasted with the strong prejudices under the influence of which other historians, of distinguished eminence too, seek to corrupt the truth of history, and to render it subservient to their views. Dr. M'Crie was born at Dunse, in the year 1772.

PROFESSOR REUVENS.

It is our painful duty to record the death of Professor Reuvens, of Leyden, celebrated for his knowledge of Egyptian archæology and antiquities. This gentleman visited London very recently, to make purchases from the collection of the late Mr. Salt, and succeeded in carrying off the finest specimen of hieroglyphical papyrus, but at the great price of 160 guineas. He was in perfect health on the day of his departure for Leyden, on Wednesday, the 22nd July. On that day, however, he was seized with a fit of apoplexy, on board the Sir Edward Banks steam-boat, and expired on the evening of the following day. Every assistance that could possibly be rendered was obtained and given, but without effect. He died in the forty-second year of his age, leaving a widow and three young children to lament his loss. His death is a real loss to the literary and scientific world, and we fear that his labours to improve and extend the Enchorial Alphabet and Vocabulary are not sufficiently advanced, to admit of arrangement by any other hand. While in this country he consulted his friends, Mr. Wilkinson, Dr. Lee, Mr. Pettigrew, Mr. Davidson, and others, relative to his intended publication of a fac-simile of the celebrated Bilingual MS. belonging to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities attached to the University of Leyden, an account of which he published in 1830, under the title of "Lettres à M. Letronne sur les Papyrus Bilingues et Grecs et sur quelques autres Monumens Græco-Egyptiens du Musée d'Antiquités de l'Université de Leide." The Egyptian Museum of Leyden is particularly rich in papyri, there being no less than 147; and of GræcoEgyptian MSS. it has perhaps a greater number than any other collection. It was formed from the celebrated Anastasy collection, which was purchased by the Netherlands Government in 1828, and is enriched with the collections of M. de l'Escluze, of Bruges, and Signora Cimba, of Leghorn. M. Reuvens was connected with this museum, and was pursuing the subject of Egyptian literature with great ardour. His fitness for this most difficult pursuit may be judged of by the opinion expressed of his Lettres à Letronne," by the "Edinburgh Review" for June, 1831, p. 372, where it is said that "by a happy concentration of numerous scattered rays, scarcely discernible by an ordinary eye, he has succeeded in throwing a powerful and steady light on several points which were previously involved in mystery and darkness, and particularly in detecting the real

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source of those theosophistical extravagances which, ingrafted on Christianity, constituted the gnosticism of the first ages of the Church." Mr. Pettigrew has, in his "History of Egyptian Mummies," noticed the Bilingual MS. of which Professor Reuvens was about to publish a fac-simile. It is for the most part in the Hieratic character, but contains interlinear transcriptions in Greek letters of Egyptian words, according to the Demotic form of writing. Towards the end of the MS. there are several Demotic transcriptions of words in Hieratic, and in the body of the text numerous Demotic letters mixed with the Hieratic, and isolated words in Demotic in some few instances containing Hieratic characters. Mr. Pettigrew has stated that in no other known MS. has this mixture of characters been so extensively employed; and it is therefore to be hoped that some one will be found to succeed the Professor in this research, as it is one upon which Egyptian scholars stand so much in need of information and improvement.

PIGAULT Le brun.

The best of French novelists is no more. The gay, the witty, the amiable Pigault le Brun has expired at the advanced age of 83. The author of the inimitable history of" Jerome;" "Monsieur Botte;" "Mon Oncle Thomas;" "The Barons de Felsheim;" "Nous les sommes tous," and a score of other unrivalled novels, sleeps the last sleep.

Pigault le Brun was the French Fielding; he possessed the same humour, the same truth to nature, the same graphic powers of description, the same occasional coarseness, and a far greater richness of imagination. In his delineations of low life-for he rarely attempted to portray, except in ridiculing, the manners of the high classes-he stands unrivalled and alone. The rigid moralist may, perhaps, condemn many of his works, and prudery affect to blush at the homeliness of many of his expressions and characters; but take him for all in all, the good man's "failings leaned to virtue's side." His was the kindly satire and the laughing reproof which are often found to be more effective in putting vice to shame than the more elaborate and more bitter denunciations of natures less philanthropic. In all the novels of Le Brun we neither find a complete hero nor a complete villain-nothing either above or below the standard of humanity. He was an observer too exact and too patient ever to destroy the charm of his characters by departing in the least from the reality of nature. It is now sixty years since Pigault began to write. He was the best novelist of the day during the Revolution, and in his own peculiar department the best after it. Unmindful of the warfare of politics, and the dethronement of kings, he has pursued the even tenor of his way, scourging folly wherever it was to be found, and narrating in simple and unaffected language the loves, the sorrows, and the frailties of the poor. His Mademoiselle Javotte in the amusing "History of Jerome the Foundling," is, notwithstanding all her errors, a creature whom it is impossible not to love-as sweet a creation as ever was portrayed by the imagination of a poet. Corporal Brandt, in the "Barons de Felsheim,” is in nowise inferior, and quite as good in his way as the inimitable Caleb Balderstoun of Sir Walter Scott. His characters start upon our remembrance by dozens, and so vividly as almost to make us imagine that we had gleaned knowledge of them from the life, and not from the pages of fiction. Pigault Le Brun has died full of years and full of honour, and his mantle has descended upon another apostle worthy of so distinguished a predecessor. Paul de Kock is the writer who has cultivated with the greatest success the style of Le Brun ; and whose works, in their vigour and freshness, repay us for the sickly and morbid sentimentality of the majority of contemporary French novelists.

MARRIAGES AND DEATHS.

PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES

IN THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND, AND IN WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND.