Sad Things. By R. R. Madden.-London Court
496 Journal.

637 Trade of England.-New Monthly Magazine.
Tremordyn Cliff, Trollope's.-Court Journal.
110 Tours in America.-London Quarterly Review.
202 Thirlwall's History of Greece.

William Porwin

AUTHOR OF THOUGHTS ON MAN

AN

MUSEUM

OF

Foreign Literature, Science, and art.

From Fraser's Magazine.

wealth is a failure; it in reality is not superior to the school-boy histories which he published under the name of Edward Baldwin,-in one of which (that of Rome) he was so careful as to omit the defeat of the Cimbri by Marius.

WILLIAM GODWIN, ESQ. Yonder walks William Godwin! The marks of age press heavily upon him; but there gleams His personal history is not fortunate. He was out of that strange face and above that stranger figure the eye of fire which lighted up with the originally, we believe, a preacher in some heteroconceptions of Caleb Williams and St. Leon.dox sect; but when "the lion was to lie down Wonderful books! Once read, not only ever remembered, but ever graven on the mind of those who know how to read. We can enter into the feeling of Lord Byron's exclamation, when, after asking Godwin why he did not write a new novel, his lordship received from the old man the answer, "And what matter," that it would kill him. said Lord Byron; we should have another St. Leon."

with the lamb," as was so beautifully brought to
pass by Robespierre, and other tender-hearted
dispensers of the mercies of Jacobinism, he for-
sook his divinity for politics. He was afterwards
a bookseller, on Snow Hill, but not lucky in trade.
The circumstances of his connection with Mary
Woolstonecroft, his marriage and its consequen-
ces, his children and their several histories, are too
well known to render it necessary that we should
We may say,
do more than allude to them.
however, that in no man's fate was the evil of
acting on wrong principles so manifested to the
destruction of all that could in any relation of
life confer happiness or conduce to honour. In
writing The Life of Mary Woolstonecraft, he
has done more good unintentionally than it ever
could have, intentionally or otherwise, done evil.
We shall not have any such lady in our literature
again.

There is power, and But it was not to be. stirring thought in Fleetwood, Mandeville, and Cloudesley; but they are not what Lord Byron called for. The promised Seven Sleepers, which was to be the conclusion of a new series of St. Leon, has never come; and of Godwin the novelist we suppose there is an end. Of Godwin the politician we have little good to say. He started in opposition to the received views of the world on all the most important affairs in which that world is concerned; and it is perfectly unnecessary to add, that the world beat in the end, as indeed in his case it deserved to beat. The principles of his "Political Justice," derived as it was pretended from the Bible, would, if they could have been acted upon, have subverted all the honourable relations of society, and destroyed all the ennobling or redeeming feelings of the heart. Godwin himself, as he confesses in his preface to St. Leon, was sorry for having insulted, in that cold-blooded, and, we must say, absurd book, those charities and duties which are the links of life: we should be much surprised if he has not since repented of all the work. In his answer to Malthus, he showed that true feelings were prevalent in his mind, though he failed in producing the fit refutation of the desperate quackery which he opposed, and which was destined to fall to destruction before the hand of Sadler. His Thoughts on Man, containing much that is eloquent, contain but little that is The Whigs have had the kindness to give him profound; and we are sorry to find, that though his scepticism on the most vital points is not so a hundred a-year in some place in Somerset recklessly urged as in former days, it is scarcely House, which props his declining days. They abated. His historical work on the common-gave Mr. T. Macauley 10,000l. It is well.

He has now taken his place in our world of authors; and we incline to think, that Caleb Williams and St. Leon are the only books of his which will be remembered. His mind is not productive, therein singularly differing from that of Sir Walter Scott, with whom alone, as a novelist of power, he of all our contemporaries can be compared. There is a want of invention even in his best books; and we can believe the current story, that Caleb Williams was written to illustrate a system, or to prove that a novel might be composed without reference to the passion of love. Once fairly embarked in his book, he forgot his systems; but the idea of so originating them proves that there is a deficiency in the mind. The phrenologists inform us, that the organ of veneration is wholly and most singularly absent in his head ;-we do not exactly believe in phrenology; but his works prove to us, that there is some want in his intellect which operates to control the impulses of his genius.

VOL. XXVII.

JULY, 1835-1

A

From the London Keepsake.
THE DESERTED CHATEAU.

FROM THE FRENCH.

On a cold and cheerless evening in the autumn of 1816, as the notary of Vendome was preparing to retire to rest, a carriage drove hastily up to his door; and word was brought him that the Comtesse de Merset desired his immediate attendance at La Grande Bréteche. She was not expected to live through the night, and had just received extreme unction at the hands of her confessor. Rumour said the comtesse and her lord had been living together in the most singular manner during the past six months. They gave admittance to none, and the comtesse resided entirely in her sion, while the comte confined himself to the other. But a short time before that, at which the notary was summoned to attend the death-bed of the comtesse, the Comte de Merset had suddenly left the chateau, and gone to Paris, where, after leading a life, it was asserted, of great excess, he had lately died. On the day of his departure, the comtesse had caused the chateau to be almost entirely dismantled, most of the furniture, pictures, and tapestry burnt, or otherwise completely destroyed; and from that moment, had secluded herself within its walls, never emerging from them but to attend mass in the neighbouring church. She refused admittance to all who either from interest or curiosity called upon her; her doors being opened to her confessor alone, whose visits were said to be long and frequent. It was whispered among the gossips of the town, that she was also much changed in appearance; but through the impenetrable black veil she wore when attending mass, the curious vainly strove to ascertain whether this rumour was well or ill founded.

There stands, about a hundred yards from the small town of Vendome, on the banks of the Loire, an old, lone, and weather-stained mansion, with tall gable-ends and elevated roof. What has once been a garden, extending towards the river, lies in melancholy neglect around it; and there, the yew and the box-tree, which marked its winding alleys and formal terraces, once closely and neatly clipped, now spread forth in over-own suite of apartments at one end of the mangrown luxuriance. Noxious weeds display their rank but beautiful vegetation along the sloping banks of the stream; and the over-hanging fruittrees, having had the pruning-knife withheld from them for the last ten long years, produce but a scanty and ungathered crop. The espaliers are grown in labyrinths; the walks, once graveled, have become grassy, and their traces are nearly lost. Yet, from the top of the mountain, where hang the ruins of the old chateau of the dukes of Vendome, the only height whence the eye may penetrate into this inclosure, it is not difficult to recognise the pleasure-grounds and gardens which, in times past, formed, perhaps, the chief pride and recreation of some ancient gentleman of the old regime, devoted to the culture of his roses and dahlias; and there, may be seen the remains of a rustic summer-house, with its moss-grown seats and worm-eaten table. A sun-dial, whose pedestal is fast falling into decay, stands near the entrance, with this quaint inscription;

Fugit hora brevis.

dome, the Comte de Merset had been fortunate enough to gain her hand. The world had constantly spoken of them as of an attached and happy couple, though it was hinted the husband's affection was of rather a jealous tendency; but this might, or might not, be the fact, as it was not easily susceptible of proof, and the gentle and engaging manners of the lovely comtesse won all hearts. The sudden change that had lately taken place in her conduct, had not failed to raise many conjectures as to its cause; and by some, madness had been assigned as a sufficient explanation. She was now dying, and no one had even heard she was ill; for she had herself refused all medical aid, feeling, perhaps, her state too hopeless, to allow of human assistance proving of any avail.

A sentiment that does not tend to decrease the While still in the prime of her youth and lovemelancholy associations which the sight of soliness, and one of the richest heiresses in Vendesolate and ruined a scene must awaken. The chateau itself is much out of repair; the windowshutters, always fast closed, exclude the air from the dismantled apartments, and the summer's dew, the winter's snow, the damp and the dry, have combined to blacken the timbers, stain the ceilings, and discolour the paint. The doors are never opened; tall weeds have sprung up among the interstices of the flight of steps which leads to the principal entrance of the building, and the fastenings are encrusted with rust. The silence of this desolate abode remains unbroken, save by the twittering of the birds, which have built a hundred nests in the balconies, or the voice of the soliiary vermin, now its sole inhabitants, that come and go in uninterrupted security. On a summer's evening, the owl may be heard hooting from the broken casements, as if to assert her right of possession; and the bat flaps its dark wings, like the evil genius of the place, among the ivy, which hangs its pendants from the ruined walls. There is neither life nor brightness about this deserted mansion; all is gloomy, and empty, and silent. It seems as if an invisible hand had every where traced the word "Mystery!" It is, however, said to have been a small fief, and bears the name of La Grande Bréteche: its history being known but to few-those few shrink from a further investigation into its dark secrets.

*

*

*

*

It was near midnight, when the notary reached La Grande Bréteche, and ascended its dark and lofty staircase. Passing through various large and desolate apartments, wholly deprived of furniture, or of the appearance of being inhabited, cold, damp, and cheerless, around which the light held by the attendant threw a deeper shade, he at length reached the state chamber, where lay the dying comtesse, stretched on a bed whose rich satin hangings and dark waving plumes shed so deep a gloom, it was some time before the eye rested upon its tenant. One strong ray of light, however, from a lamp placed on a small