Monthly Review of' Literature, 



[JAN. 



from drinking. To the pertinacity of the 

 Queen, and her clique, he attributes the 

 revolution, or at least the violence of it 

 Louis himself would readily have yielded to 

 the' demand of the Assembly, and been 

 content with the power they at first were 

 inclined to leave him ; but all or nothing 

 was the resolution of the Queen's party. A 

 considerable portion of the correspondence 

 is occupied with details relative to the nego- 

 tiation of treaties of commerce a matter 

 now of little interest, except to shew how 

 readily these rude and unlicked statesmen 

 fell into the common tracks and trammels 

 of the most cultivated diplomacy, and 

 proved as wise in their generation as the 

 most legitimate. 



While Ambassador at Paris, on some 

 occasion he came over to England, and was 

 presented to the king, with whose reception 

 of him he was not very well pleased. The 

 old king could not very readily controul 

 his resentments against a rebel, notwith- 

 standing his well-repeated declaration and 

 it would not have been easy for any king 

 to please Jefferson. 



Landscape Annual ; 1830 For the or- 

 namental, this Annual is the incomparabilis 

 of the year the whole is in good, sober, 

 substantial taste ; the drawing, and the en- 

 graving, the binding in design, material 

 and workmanship, and the literary manu- 

 facture, sufficiently respectable. The beau- 

 tiful volume embraces a kind of tour through 

 Switzerland and Italy, commencing with 

 Geneva, and terminating at Rome ; and 

 the plates consist of all the more remark- 

 able spots, to which the traveller's attention 

 is usually given, from the one point to the 

 other in Switzerland, Geneva itself, Lau- 

 sanne, the Castle of Chatillon, the Bridge 

 of St. Maurice, Lavey, Martigny, Sion, 

 Viege, and in Italy, the Val d'Ossala, the 

 Lakes Maggiore and Como, the Temple of 

 Como, Milan, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, 

 Petrarch's house at Arqua, Venice, Fer- 

 rara, Bologna, and the Fish Market at 

 Rome. There are twenty-five plates four 

 of which are assigned to Venice, represent- 

 ing the Rialto, the Ducal Palace, the Palace 

 of the Foscari, and the Bridge of Sighs, 

 which last struck us as most remarkable, 

 though all are beautiful the water is per- 

 fect. The artist, Mr. Samuel Proutt, in 

 both selection and execution, has shewn a 

 just and delicate taste, and his efforts have 

 been admirably seconded by the engravers, 

 inferior to none in the country. The de- 

 scriptions are written by Mr. Thomas Ros- 

 coe, and answer their purpose perfectly well, 

 though some of the poetry, well known as it 

 all is, might very well have been spared. 



The Romance of History, Second Series 



Spain. By Don T. de Trueba. 3 vols. 



I2mo This Romance of History differs 



essentially, and favourably, from the old 

 historical romances, and even the last im- 

 provements of them by the wizard of the 



North. The writer of such romances in the 

 olden time, and even in more recent times, 

 either introduced into his scenes new agents, 

 of his own creation, for the production of 

 recorded events, or mixed up the domestic 

 adventures of the chief actors with political 

 ones, or committed these usually very grave 

 personages to deeds, of which, if there be 

 any reliance to be placed upon the laws of 

 nature, as discoverable, of course, we mean 

 by experience, they must have been per- 

 fectly innocent all which maneeuvres have 

 manifestly a tendency to confound and per- 

 plex the student of truth, by associating in 

 his mind the vagaries of fancy with the 

 realities of facts, thus counteracting the 

 historian and the antiquarian, and, at best, 

 neutralizing their painful efforts. Writers 

 of what is now termed Romance of History, 

 on the contrary, pace prudently along the 

 beaten paths of story, in search of extraor- 

 dinary facts the more extraordinary of 

 course the better and limit their best ef- 

 forts to the development of the feelings of 

 the agents, according to their conception of 

 probabilities in given positions. This is 

 doing little or no harm it is rather work- 

 ing with the historian than against him. 

 For the historian himself, even the driest, 

 must, to some extent, do the same thing, 

 and will, we suppose, more and more the 

 more, that is, novelists by profession, take 

 to the construction of history a course 

 which is rapidly becoming fashionable. For 

 this project of detailing the marvels of fact 

 in the tone of romance, we are indebted 

 mainly to the late Mr. Neale, who, himself, 

 with considerable success, executed a part 

 of his plan in the story of his own country. 

 Don T. de Trueba, who has, we thank 

 him, shortened his name, and who, we are 

 glad to find, is the man who has caught 

 Mr. Neale's mantle, commences his series, 

 as was natural, with his country, and has 

 accomplished his purpose with equal spirit 

 and elegance, and with even a more faithful 

 adherence to the traditions of fact. Mr. 

 Neale admitted like Sir Walter Scott in 

 his Grandfather's Tales apocryphal mat- 

 ters, as if to defeat his own plan ; while 

 Don T. de Trueba takes up nothing which 

 is not admitted as authentic by Spanish 

 historians. And no country in the world 

 presents more striking scenes, blending, as 

 many of them do, the manners of the F^ast 

 and the West, and presenting such heroes 

 as Pelagius, Bernardo, and the Cid. 



The succession of tales, amounting to 

 twenty -four, and symmetrically distributed, 

 eight in a volume, carry the reader over the 

 whole of the long line of Spanish story 

 commencing with Roderick, the - last of the 

 Goths, and the invasion of the Moors an 

 act of revenge on the part of Count Julian 

 for Roderick's seduction of his daughter 

 and concluding with the fortunes of Cal- 

 deron, in the reign of Philip IV., which 

 reads like the same story in Gil Bias, and 

 Portocarrero's conspiracy in the following 



