MR. SMYTHE'S HISTORIC FANCIES.

THIS volume is rather an imitation of "Young BEN" than an emanation from "Young England" ; unless Young England delights more in phrases than facts, and aspires after a dreamy and fanciful millennium, instead of the substantial improvement of society. The principles, if such they can be called, which Historic Fancies con- tains, are derived from the lucubrations of Mr. BENJAMIN DIS- EAEEI junior ; except that Lord JOHN MANNERS, to whom the vo- lume is dedicated, as "the PHILIP SYDNEY of our generation," may perhaps be the prompter of the Jacobite sentiments of Mr. SMYTHE. The prose style is entirely imitated from DISRAELI the Younger, and is by no means a bad imitation : the sounding phrase, the epigrammatic terseness, the pregnant-seeming though really turgid sentence, and the "loftiness" or "swagger' of the manner, (whichsoever the taste of the critic may be pleased to call it,) are presented without the servility of a copyist, and are all, as we say the Jews say, "ash Boot ash new." The style of the verse, at least of the better-sounding verse, is derived from MACAULAY ; another writer of the rhetorical school, but with better taste, a bet- ter manner, and a more instructed mind than the BULWERS and DISRAELIS, though with him too, as with all rhetoricians, truth may seem subordinate to a mode of statement.

Historic Fancies really consists of a series of what are called

"contributions "—for many of the papers are too slight, short, and fragmentary, to rise to the character of articles. The title given them is correct enough ; for the subjects are with a few exceptions in some way or other historical, and the views enforced are rather founded on fancy than sound judgment. A few of these "Historic Fancies" are derived from the English annals,—as the "Last Prayer of Mary Stuart,"—addressed, by the by, to the Virgin ; some Stuart and Jacobite outpourings, with a dramatic Opposition scene of the "Last Century," in which Bolingbroke, Pulteney, and the Jacobite leader Wyndham, take part : but the most important and elaborately-treated subjects are French,—exhibiting the two

opposite principles, and with equal zest for each, of the profligate

Aristocracy of the old regime and the bloody fury of the Revo- lutionary Democracy. It is yet stranger, perhaps, that the admirer of devout if not of superstitious Romanism at home, and the abuser of the Revolution of 1688, should devote more pains and space, if not more unction, to apologies for ROBESPIERRE, ST. JUST, and other Revolutionary heroes, than he does to the old nobility of France. In verses supposed to emanate from the Jacobins of Paris, he chants as earnest a defiance of kings and nobles as rhe- toric can rise to ; and in a series of notes takes a defensive review of some of the principal authors of the Revolution and of the Reign of Terror; yet he can hardly spare a tear for the mis- fortunes of the ill-fated Louts and his family.

All this is odd in a person whose loyalty runs riot after the race

of the ST-timers, and appears to hope for the advent of HENRI of Bordeaux. It is odder still in a senator who professes to belong to a party which professes to aim at advancing the happiness of man- kind by improving the condition and the morals of the masses. It may be said, indeed, that an author is not responsible for the dra- matic spirit which be throws into his productions : but none of the productions we allude to are in a dramatic form, and few are even in verse, but a species of prose essay, where the writer speaks in his own person and is held to express his own convictions. This, no doubt, Mr. SMYTHE does ; but it is after the rhetorical fashion. He is not like a seeker after truth, giving utterance to the con- clusions he has proved and holds fast, but like an advocate taking up a side extempore, impressed for the time being with a sentimen- tal or histrionic feeling towards that which is momentarily present. This quality of impulsiveness, properly cultivated, may make a ready writer or speaker "on the adverse sides of every possible question," but is not likely to form a great statesman or even a very useful public man.

Considered for their intrinsic literary qualities, without regard

to the attention which has been challenged for the character of their author and his connexion with a political party, these Historic Fancies may be called clever rather than great. Their tone and style smack of the Annual and the literary petit maitre. The minor papers might all have been published in some book of the boudoir, without exciting much more attention than its other contributions. The same may be said of all the verse ; for though the subject and sentiments of " The Jacobin of Paris" might have seemed odd for an Annual, the style of the thing would have justified its reception. The essay on the Aristocracy of France, and the notice of the Re- volutionary actors, are of a higher character as regards subject and purpose ; for the themes are unquestionably historical, and the object of the author appears to have been to extract from each what was really meritorious—to show that all was not unmitigated badness, but that great qualities were combined with great vices. This was a philosophic object. It has not succeeded, because Mr. Smuts is a poetaatical rhetorician, not a philosopher ; and, un- able to seize the whole, he loses sight of the bad whilst presenting the good. But although the subject of these papers is not adapted for the drawingroom, the manner of the following is drawingroom

eloquence. It is from the essay on the Aristocracy of France— perhaps the best and fairest thing in the book.

FRENCH NOBILITY.

"The aristocracy of France is the most illustrious that the world ever saw. There may be more ancient titles in Scotland or in Germany, more arrogance of descent in Italy or Spain, more gentle blood in our °en old manor-houses of Northumberland or Lancashire ; but no aristocracy can compete with hers in sustained and European illustration. The very vice of the system was the cause and continuation of its brilliancy. The nobleman of the ancient regime was born to the high places of the army and the state, as with us he is born to his hereditary possessions. The baton of a marshal, the seals of a minister, the government of a province, devolved almost as surely as the he- raldic quarterings upon a shield or the seigneurial rights of an estate. The doctrine of the aristocratic succession' was upheld with a religious pomp, and a more than religious intolerance. It was not so much an order as a hierarchy. It was a hierarchy based upon exclusion, and rule, and form, and caste. It had its army, its navy, its law, its church, and its finance—all pa- trimonies rather than professions. if the Duke of Marlborough bad been born a Frenchman, there would have been a succession of Dukes of Marlborough, Marshals of France."

No; there would have been no Duke of MA.RLBOROUGH, only Ensign CHURCHILL. The same error of exaggerating a single and partial truth into the representative of the whole subject, is found at the opening of the next passage.

" The history of old France is the biography of fifty families: it is almost written in the proverbs of their ancestral pride, in such phrases as 'Le beau sang des Noailles,' or 'L'esprit des Mortemart.'

"It was this serial and continuous celebrity which made the great names of France as familiar in every other country as their own. The foreigner who heard of the Montmorencies, Rohans, Montesquious, La Tren:billies, his great contemporaries, had heard his father and his grandfather repeat the same names as belonging to the great Frenchmen of his day. They became the household words of every household on the Continent. France sowed them broadcast, as she stretched out her hand over Europe. The German peasant who fled before the armies of the Marechal de Richelieu, would remember the traditions he had heard in his childhood of the great Cardinal, who had been so faithful an ally of Gustavus and so bitter an enemy of Tilly. The young and high-born Chanoinesse, who at the close of the last century prayed night after night for the deliverance of her royal countrywoman, would recall to mind that all her hopes depended upon a descendant and namesake of Conde. She would mingle her interest in the Lafayettes and La Rochefotteaulds—the actors of the wild drama then performing—with her reminiscences of far other Lafayettes and La Rochefoucaulds, the real heroes of some Seuderi romance."

There is the same kind of smart onesidedness in this epigram- matic picture of

VOLTAIRE.

"Remember the Prophet and Precursor of that Great Reformation. Recall his person so softly apparelled, his residence so delicately furnished. See him in his study. It is hung with the portraits and needlework of Sovereigns. His portfolio is full of their correspondence. He is proud of nothing so much as of being a Gentleman of the Chamber. He delights to compare Louis the Fifteenth to Trajan. He will not bow to God, but he cringes to Madame Pom- padour. He receives a pension through her influence. He is enabled by her bounty to display the ostentation he delights in. Re drives out every day in a gilt coach with four horses. He insists upon the inhabitants of Ferney calling him ' Monseigneur.' He despises and tramples on 'the canaille.' The main offence of Christianity, in his eyes, is, that it is a religion of the people; the chief fault of the apostles, that they were not gentlemen. Yet this lux- urious lord, who sapped all the authority that was above and all the faith that was beneath him, could write about the tyranny of monarchs and the evils of their sway !"

The following sketch of the reverses of the Aristocracy during the Revolution is better, because the feelings of the man rise above the phrases of the rhetorician.

THE OLD REGIME IN EXILE.

"Nor was escape without distresses of another and often sadder nature. The great lady, whose sorrows hitherto had only been imaginary, whose tears had never been shed except over Mason Lescaut or Pau/ and Virginia, whose only notions of foreign lands had been taken from the theatre, whose idea of rustic hardship was all from a Greuze or a Watteau, was driven to wear coarse disguises, to ride about in carts, to sleep in lofts, in a constant agony of anguish and apprehension. Or if she found safety in Austria or England, new trials were only to begin. The obscure lodging, the unknown language, the ostentatious assistance, the pity of the good-natured vulgar, the courtesy of the supercilious few; these things were bard to bear, for those who bad been of the proudest, and the wealthiest, the most courted, and the most adored— for those whose least caprice had been the example of European elegance, and whose slightest whisper the canon of universal fashion. Nay, the commonest consolation of a foreigner in a strange land was not allotted tc them : they could feel no pleasure in hearing of their country. The post could only bring tidings of the destruction of their paternal halls, the alienation of their old domains, the triumphs of a cause which they loathed, the murders of dear rela- tions and familiar friends. But those who, unlike the chosen sister of Marie Antoinette, could survive these shocks, bore up with unfailing and courageous hearts—honour to their memory. It was with smiles as bright as bad ever been reflected by the gorgeous mirrors of Versailles, that the high-born beauty would essay to welcome the partner of her former splendours in the mean and gloomy rooms which her unforgotten taste could still adorn. And it was with almost the same lightheartedness that he had come home in former days to speak of a successful match, with the weight against him, or a set of tennis won against all odds, that he now told her how one more guinea had been advanced upon his star of the St. Esprit, or one more pupil called on in a fashionable square. These things are melancholy to relate. I have myself heard a Mont- morenci describe the horrors of St. James's Street—how he was mobbed for his foreign costume, and laughed at for his foreign ways. But it is still more melancholy to remember, that there were in those days some among us who deemed it a solemn duty to strike the stricken and trample on the fallen. There were statesmen who did not scruple to tell them, that they were a class set apart as an expiation and a shame. And when year after year of long suffering had waned away without any sign of hope or alleviation, it was no wonder that they were almost tempted to believe them. They began to think that they should never see again the pleasant places of their ancestral France. The doom of St. Peter was upon them. They tried to deny their master and themselves. They sought to hide in foreign service, in the councils of Russia—in the armies of England—in the colleges of Rome."

The poetry affixed to the essay characterizes the aristocracy of three periods—the Crusades, the time of Louis Quatorze, and the

present day. The last is curious for its closing prophecy, predict- ing the return of the Duke of Bordeaux ; but we prefer the second -as a specimen of Mr. &arum's verse.

Oh never yet was theme so meet for roundel or romaunce

As the ancient aristocracy and chivalry of France ; As when they lay before Tonrnay, and the Grand Monarque was there, With the bravest of his warriors and the fairest of his fair ; And the sun that was his symbol, and on his army shone, Was in lustre, and in splendour, and in light itself outdone. For the lowland and the highland were gleaming as of old, When England vied with France in pride, on the famous Field of Gold, And morn, and noon, and evening, and all the livelong night, Were the sound of ceaseless music and the echo of delight.

And but for Vauban's waving arm, and the answering cannonade, It might have been a festal scene in some Versailles arcade : For she was there, the beautiful, the daughter of Mortemart, And her proud eyes flashed the prouder for the roaring of the war; And many a dark-haired rival, who bound her lover's arm With a riband, or a ringlet, or a kerchief, for a charm; And with an air as dainty, and with a step as light, As they moved among the masquers, they went into the fight : 0 brave they went, and brave they fought, for glory and for France, The La Tremoille, and the Noailles, and the Courtenay of Byzance ; And haughty was their war-cry, as they rushed into the field, The De Narbonne and De Talleyrand, in Castilian on each shield. And well they knew, De Montesquieu, and Rohan, and Loraine, That a bold deed was ever sure high lady's smiles to gain. For none were loved with such true love, or wept with so true a tear, As he who lived a courtier but who died a cavalier."