tion of the rising generations within her own bosom, has been in all ages, an indispensable part of the discipline of the Catholic Church.

Upon the "Supplement to Six Months in a Convent," it is scarcely necessary for us to make any remark. It is a wretched attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies of Miss Reed's first narrative, and to face out the falsehoods with which that precious "Scripture-like" (!) composition abounds. A single specimen will shew the sort of mind which Miss Reed possesses, and the attachment to truth by which it is distinguished. In a plain, straight-forward overwhelming answer to that incendiary publication, the Superior had emphatically denied that Miss Reed had ever taken the vows. The following is Miss Reed's reply to that denial.

"The Superior denies that I took any vows, as related in my narrative, but she does not deny that the book which was put into my hands at my reception contained the promises or vows which I have repeated as having then received. She may, perhaps, call the vows by some other name, but I first heard the bishop talk about the "white vows," and the Superior speak of the "black vows." I do not suppose that is the proper name, but it was used because a white veil is used on one occasion, and a black veil on the other."—p. 65.

If Miss Reed had been "received" into the community, or, in other words, if she went even privately through the ceremony by which the novitiate is commenced in an Ursuline convent, the bishop must have been present on the occasion, the sisters must also have been present, the day would have been recorded, at least in her own memory, and after that period she would have worn the white veil. Now she does not appeal to the testimony of the bishop, or of any of the sisters; she cannot mention the day when this alleged ceremony took place, and she admits that she never wore the white veil! She does not even re-assert

that she did take the vows!

But for the injury inflicted upon the property of the convent, and for the danger to which the sisterhood and the children committed to their care were exposed, on this occasion, we should have been inclined to rejoice that they had had amongst them for a season, such a domestic spy and traitress as Miss Rebecca Theresa Reed, and that she afterwards told the world all that she could say or imagine to their prejudice. Even if every page of her narrative and supplement were true, what does it amount to? That a system of austere discipline was established at Mount Benedict; that no time was spent there in idleness; that religious observances, prayer, the duties of education, meals, sleep and recreation, absorbed the whole of every night and day.

Miss Reed does not venture to assert that she witnessed any scenes even of levity at Mount Benedict during her stay there; she has not stated that she heard so much as a single improper expression, used by any of its inmates. She complains that they were too grave for her notions of enjoyment, and that they did not lead that romantic kind of life which she had prefigured in her imagination. This is really the gist of her whole Bill of Indictment. From the silence of this treacherous and hostile witness upon all essential points of conduct, we may therefore conclude that the ladies of Mount Benedict were well deserving of the high character given of them in the letters which we have already cited. We may further conclude that falsehood has exhausted all its power in this last effort of persecution against the Ursuline convents in America; that the more they are understood, the more dearly they will be prized by every parent who wishes to give his daughter a solid education, and to preserve her from the hands of those numerous and ignorant adventurers, who set up boarding-schools and female academies, as they do conventicles, for the mere purpose of pecuniary gain. To such swindlers as these Miss Reed was a prize of no small value; should Mrs. Henry Grey visit New England, we have no doubt that they would be able to turn her talents also to account. She is an instrument ready shaped to their purpose.

ART. III.-Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time. By Sir N. W. Wraxall, Bart., Author of "Memoirs of my own Time." 3 vols. 8vo. London. 1836.

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EW productions have been attacked more violently upon their first appearance, than the Memoirs of my own Time," which were published in the year 1815. The Whig and Tory journals exerted all their powers of invective, apparently with a determination, not merely to destroy the work itself, as a work of authority, but even to disqualify the author for intercourse with decent society. They accused him of having uttered many falsehoods; they handed him over to the Society for the Suppression of Vice, as a fit object for prosecution, in consequence of some anecdotes which he related in his pages; and they unanimously agreed in declaring, that he described as his familiar friends several distinguished persons, who would not even salute him in the streets. Reviews, which affected to be the advocates of no party, political or religious, took the tone from the leading organs of opinion, and the whole literary world seems to have agreed in denouncing Sir Nathaniel as a libeller of private cha

racter, and a book manufacturer of incomparable dulness. The courts of justice were not free from the general prejudice which was excited against him. In his narration of the circumstances connected with the marriage of the Princess Royal to the late Duke of Wirtemberg, Sir Nathaniel made an unfortunate allusion to the Count Woronzow, then Russian ambassador in this country. He offered to correct his error in any form of language that might be deemed satisfactory to the offended party, but every proposal of that kind was rejected. He was prosecuted. Garrow discharged a deluge of indignant eloquence upon his devoted head. He was found guilty; sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and to pay to the king a fine of five hundred pounds!

In those days it was positively perilous for a private gentleman to aspire to the honours of authorship, in any department of letters. Looking to the severity then exercised by the critical tribunals, it would appear as if every new aspirant to literary fame were to be forthwith summoned to their bar, and indicted as a public transgressor. They assumed to themselves the powers of the Star-Chamber, employed emissaries in all regions for the purpose of collecting details of the life of each adventurous perpetrator of a quarto, and rivalled each other, not only in the rigour of the decrees which they fulminated against their unfortunate victim, but in the acerbity of tone by which their judgments were accompanied. Thus, one of Sir Nathaniel's inquisitors, not content with producing against him all the errors which were to be found in his work, denounced him, moreover, as one of the six members of the House of Commons who were sent to that assembly by the fair or fraudulent creditors of the Nabob of the Carnatic !-as if this were a crime of the greatest magnitude at a period, when more than half the seats in that branch of the legislature were sold in open market!

We think it due to the memory of this much abused author to say, that the literary offences of which he was accused on that occasion, appear, upon a fair examination, to have been enormously exaggerated. His scandalous details were, indeed, justly censured. He attempted to defend them by citing the example of other memoir writers, who indulged in a similar vein of composition-an example which should have discouraged rather than invited imitation. With these exceptions, his faults were really very few, and very easily corrected. Writing from memory, he happened to assert that he had met Mr. Pitt at Antwerp, whereas Mr. Pitt had never visited that city. He, moreover, antedated one or two immaterial transactions, and postdated as many others. These, with some trivial mistakes in names, titles, births, deaths, and marriages, constituted the whole.

of his crimes, and yet his name has come down to us branded with an inscription approaching almost to infamy.

The truth is, that Sir Nathaniel was never intimately connected with any political party. In private life, he is understood to have been a man of agreeable manners. He had seen much of the world, at home and abroad; but being deficient in those talents which are valuable in public life, he was not much courted by either side of the House. He boasts of his Memoirs as being characterized chiefly by "loyalty to the sovereign, detestation of French principles, abhorrence of Bonaparte and his fallen gang, attachment to the Crown, and reverence for the British constitution." In other words, had he been encouraged at St. James's, he would have been a good back-stairs courtier. Having spent the best fifteen years of his life in the House of Commons, he had favourable opportunities for observing the manoeuvres of all parties, and the conduct of many distinguished individuals, during one of the most important periods of our history. He appears to have watched the men around him with the curiosity of a practised gossip, and to have noted their peculiarities without any strong personal prejudice. We can detect in his character no cogent motive of action, which could have misdirected his natural sagacity, or blinded his judgment. A brilliant writer he certainly is not, nor always a very correct one. Neither will contemporary readers find much of novelty in his pages. It may be said of the three volumes now before us, as of those by which they have been preceded, that they yield us little information which has not been anticipated by the newspapers. This is true to a considerable extent. It would be unjust, however, to assert that there is nothing original or new in the present work. It abounds with historical sketches and anecdotes, to which the testimony of a contemporary writer always imparts a lively interest. The egotism of a biographer is to us never offensive. On the contrary, we seldom feel that we can have too much of it. So unbroken is the chain of sympathy which connects together all the members of the great human family, that personal narratives, even when limited to the most ordinary transactions of life, possess an irresistible charm for minds of every order.

There is no portion of their national annals, of which men in general are so ignorant, as of that which occupies the twenty or thirty years that have elapsed previously to their own entrance into active life. They are not much disposed to look for it through piles of pamphlets and periodical journals; and the period is for them still too recent to have been reduced within the controul of regular historical authority. We have, therefore, always thought, that those individuals conferred an essential

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benefit upon their successors, who have favoured the world with memoirs of their own times. From productions of that class, it is scarcely possible that errors can be absent. The worst narrator of a great battle is usually a person actually engaged in the conflict. Surrounded by the smoke of artillery, looking to the columns which he has to charge, or to the post which he is ordered to gain at all hazards, he knows little of what is going on in other quarters of the field. The operations of his own regiment, however, he can place like a picture before his reader. So it is with the writer of the history of his own times. If he pass beyond the sphere which was within the survey of his own eye, he becomes liable to great mistakes; but as long as he confines his story to what fell within his own observation, he can hardly fail to reward our attention. This is undoubtedly Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's redeeming merit. He seldom deviates from the path which he trod himself; and though he is frequently prolix, sometimes coarse, and altogether innocent of any thing in the shape of wit, and of epigrammatic point in his mode of telling an anecdote, still we must admit, that these posthumous memoirs are well entitled to a conspicuous place in every historical library. It is the good fortune of all such productions, that each successive year adds materially to their importance. How highly should we not prize a legible scroll from Pompeii or Herculaneum, or a newly discovered manuscript in the Vatican, containing personal memoirs of men and manners, as exhibited in Italy or Greece twenty or thirty centuries ago!

The present volumes commence with the early part of 1784; producing, at the outset, before us, two highly distinguished patriots, Coke of Norfolk and George Byng, who still live, enjoying a green and an honourable old age, sanctioning by their authority, and supporting, with unabated energy, every useful measure of sound constitutional reform. At that period, the attention of the country was engrossed by the general election, and the violent political contests to which the return, and the subsequent scrutiny, for Westminster, gave birth. The agitation produced by these events, naturally led to that degree of excitement in the public mind, which required to be fed by such a dramatic spectacle as the impeachment of Mr. Hastings,-the most striking instance of time wasted, of the most splendid eloquence absolutely thrown away, of rhetorical exaggeration, passion, and puerility, recorded in the archives of any country.

The still-vexed question about Junius, seems to have frequently excited Sir Nathaniel's inquisitive faculties. In his former work, he assigned the celebrated compositions written under the shadow of that name, to Gerard Hamilton. He appears subse