author of that fabled law, according to which the assassination of the prince upon the throne gave to the assassin a title to succeed him. "People behold your rights! If a single article of them be violated, insurrection is not your right only, but the most sacred of your duties." Such is the constant language, for such is the professed object of this source and model of all laws-this self-consecrated oracle of all nations. The more abstract—that is, the more extensive-the proposition is, the more liable is it to involve a fallacy. Of fallacies, one of the most natural modifications is that which is called begging the question the abuse of making the abstract proposition resorted to for proof, a lever for introducing, in the company of other propositions that are nothing to the purpose, the very proposition which is admitted to stand in need of proof. Is the provision in question fit in point of expediency to be passed into a law for the government of the French nation? That, mutatis mutandis, would have been the question put in England that was the proper question to have been put in relation to each provision it was proposed should enter into the composition of the body of French laws. : Instead of that, as often as the utility of a provision appeared (by reason of the wideness of its extent, for instance) of a doubtful nature, the way taken to clear the doubt was to assert it to be a provision fit to be made law for all men-for all Frenchmen—and for all Englishmen, for example, into the bargain. This medium of proof was the more alluring, inasmuch as to the advantage of removing opposition, was added the pleasure, the sort of titillation so exquisite to the nerve of vanity in a French heart-the satisfaction, to use a homely, but not the less apposite proverb, of teaching grandmothers to suck eggs. Hark! ye citizens of the other side of the water! Can you tell us what rights you have belonging to you? No, that you can't. It's we that understand rights: not our own only, but yours into the bargain ; while you, poor simple souls! know nothing about the matter. Hasty generalisation, the great stumbling block of intellectual vanity!—hasty generalisation, the rock that even genius itself is so apt to split upon !-hasty generalisation, the bane of prudence and of science! In the British Houses of Parliament, more especially in the most efficient house for business, there prevails a well-known jealousy of, and repugnance to, the voting of abstract propositions. A jealousy of This jealousy is not less general than reasonable. abstract propositions is an aversion to whatever is beside the purpose an aversion to impertinence. The great enemies of public peace are the selfish and dissocial passions :-necessary as they are—1 -the one to the very existence of each individual, the other to his security. On the part of these affections, a deficiency in point of strength is never to be apprehended: all that is to be apprehended in respect of them, is to be apprehended on the side of their excess. Society is held together only by the sacrifices that men can be induced to make of the gratifications they demand: to obtain these sacrifices is the great difficulty, the great task of government. What has been the object, the perpetual and palpable object, of this declaration of pretended rights? To add as much force as possible to these passions, already but too strong, to burst the cords that hold them in,—to say to the selfish passions, there— everywhere is your prey!-to the angry passions, there— everywhere—is your enemy. Such is the morality of this celebrated manifesto, rendered famous by the same qualities that gave celebrity to the incendiary of the Ephesian temple. The logic of it is of a piece with its morality :-a perpetual vein of nonsense, flowing from a perpetual abuse of words-words having a variety of meanings, where words with single meanings were equally at hand-the same words used in a variety of meanings in the same page,—words used in meanings not their own, where proper words were equally at hand,-words and propositions of the most unbounded signification, turned loose without any of those exceptions or modifications which are so necessary on every occasion to reduce their import within the compass, not only of right reason, but even of the design in hand, of whatever nature it may be :-the same inaccuracy, the same inattention in the penning of this cluster of truths on which the fate of nations was to hang, as if it had been an oriental tale, or an allegory for a magazine :-stale epigrams, instead of necessary distinctions, figurative expressions preferred to simple ones, sentimental conceits, as trite as they are unmeaning, preferred to apt and precise expressions,-frippery ornament preferred to the majestic simplicity of good sound sense,—and the acts of the senate loaded and disfigured by the tinsel of the playhouse. In a play or a novel, an improper word is but a word, and the impropriety, whether noticed or not, is attended with no consequences. In a body of laws-especially of laws given as constitutional and fundamental ones—an improper word may be a national calamity, and civil war may be the consequence of it. Out of one foolish word may start a thousand daggers. Imputations like these may appear general and declamatory— and rightly so, if they stood alone, but they will be justified even to satiety by the details that follow. Scarcely an article, which, in rummaging it, will not be found a true Pandora's box. In running over the several articles, I shall on the occasion of each article point out, in the first place, the errors it contains in theory; and then, in the second place, the mischiefs it is pregnant with in practice. The criticism is verbal: true, but what else can it be? Words—words without a meaning, or with a meaning too flatly false to be maintained by anybody, are the stuff it is made of. Look to the letter, you find nonsense; look beyond the letter, you find nothing. (From A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights.) MADAME D'ARBLAY [Frances Burney (Madame d'Arblay) was the daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, a musician of some note, and was born in London in 1752. Her education was neglected, and she was left to develop herself by her own acuteness of observation-for which the society in her father's house gave her ample opportunities—and by reading, of which she was passionately fond, but which did not begin early, and was carried on without guidance. Even in her childhood her imagination was busy upon the construction of stories; but these were written without the knowledge of, and with no encouragement from, her relations. In 1778 she managed to publish, under a strict anonymity, her first novel, Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World. It obtained a rapid popularity, and earned praises from those whose praise was most valuable; and the secret of authorship soon leaking out, Frances Burney, at the age of twenty-seven, found herself suddenly famous, and was surrounded by the flattering attention of such men as Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Sheridan, and Windham. In 1782 she published her second novel, Cecilia, or the Memoirs of an Heiress, which raised her fame still higher. Having formed a friendship for Mrs. Delany, she was by her means brought into the service of the Queen as keeper of the robes, and remained in that service for five miserable years, during which her pen was idle and her health seriously injured. She retired in 1791, and, residing in the society of the French refugees at Mickleham, she married the French General d'Arblay, with whom she afterwards spent many years in France. In 1796 she published her third novel, Camilla, or a Picture of Youth. Its success was far less than that of its predecessors, and the Wanderer, which followed in 1814, is a book which, fortunately for her reputation, is forgotten. She published the Memoirs of her father in 1832, and died in 1840. Her Diaries and Letters, which are full of liveliness and interest, were published in 1842.] MEN who are now in middle life could hear accounts of the success of Frances Burney's novels from the lips of those to whom that success was a personal experience, and who could recall the time when they were seized with avidity, were the subject of conversation in every literary circle, and were accepted by society as a faithful mirror of its own humours. They are now read only by the curious, and they fail to attract any of that ardent admiration which a comparatively limited, but thoroughly appreciative audience still give to Jane Austen. It may be doubted whether the oblivion will be perpetual, and whether an accident or whim may not send readers back to Evelina and Cecilia in greater numbers, and whether, when fashion has revived them, there may not be found in them some elements of enduring interest. If for no other reason, Frances Burney has a secure place in our literature as the forerunner of Jane Austen; but this is not her only claim. Her plots are without interest; but we feel that her men and women live as those only can who are created by imagination working upon a quick and lively observation. She paints in strong colours, and her drawing exaggerates the features. As Macaulay has pointed out she deals with the "humours" of society, rather than with subtle delineations of character. The exaggeration to which she is prone makes her characters wear a certain monotony of contrast, often stamps them as caricatures, and not infrequently degrades her comedy into farce, and swells her tragedy into bombast. But all this need not blind us to the essential excellence of her work. Her two first books were her best, and it would be well for her fame if no others were preserved. In these her observation is most keenly awake, her fancy is most quick and lively, her perception of passionate feeling most clear, and her grasp of character most strong. From first to last, even when to our mental habit she seems to verge towards rhodomontade, there is no trace of affectation. She is not without that rarest of gifts, a sense of real humour. But the quality which is most likely to give permanence to these books is the presence of one strong and consistent vein of passion, never relaxed, round which her story groups itself, and to the delineation of which each incident is subordinated with the skill of an artist. To the variety and lightness of a picture of everyday life she adds the enduring dignity of romance, with the largeness of drawing which idealises passion. The absence of this element of romantic idealism is the chief injury to such modern fiction as most naturally suggests a comparison with Frances Burney or Jane Austen; and it is because the modern realistic novel gives so much attention to a strict accuracy in infinitesimal details, and so constantly neglects the welding element of romantic passion, that it seems to crumble into a series of disjointed fragments, without any permanence of cohesion, and fails to retain a lasting impression on the memory. We cannot pretend to feel that all her sentiment has the true ring of pathos ; but if it is often exaggerated and overstrained, it is never affected |