286 FOREIGN CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS 



in haste, their women and children thrown alive into the sea, their daughters 

 dishonoured. Those-who landed in Africa experienced no better fate ; 

 they fell into the hands of the plundering Bedouins, or perished in the 

 deserts of hunger and thirst. Of six thousand who wandered from Oran 

 to Algiers, one only reached the place. Within three months of their 

 expulsion from Valentia (and the same thing occurred in the other 

 provinces), more than 100,000 persons are said to have suffered death 

 under the most dreadful forms ! Those who resisted succumbed at last 

 beneath the fearful odds arrayed against them. After Philip had set a 

 price on the heads of those who, being dispersed, had sought refuge in 

 the woods, they were hunted down and shot like wild beasts. Instead of 

 being filled with horror and indignation at these dreadful scenes, the 

 priests affected to behold in them the providence of the Almighty, and a 

 supreme confirmation of their views and principles. Spain thus lost 

 more than half a million of her most useful inhabitants, whilst those 

 who, escaping pursuit, remained in the country, lost all their property, 

 and were reduced to absolute indigence." 



Yet this expulsion of the Moors, the Spanish writers describe as the 

 most memorable and the most heroic enterprise the world had ever beheld. 



The other portions of the European history are written in a style of equal 

 earnestness, ability, and erudition ; but we have, it is trusted, afforded a 

 specimen sufficiently extensive, to make our readers look forward with 

 pleasure to the translation of this work, which we find by an advertise- 

 ment is in course of publication under the title of *' Illustrations of the 

 History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries ;" translated from 

 the German of Frederick von Raumer. Part I. Germany, Denmark, 

 Spain, the Netherlands, and France. 



Ueber die unbescTir'dnkte Pressfreiheit, Vom Obersten Gustafsson, 



ehemalegem Konig von Schweden. 8vo. Aachen. 



On the unlimited Freedom of the Press, by Colonel Gustafsson, ex- King 



of Sweden. 8vo. Aix-la-Chapelle. 



The vicissitudes of fortune to which all human conditions are incident, 

 have ever been a favourable theme of declamation to the moralist. The 

 fall of great and illustrious men, especially royal personages, has in every 

 age and country been selected by orators and poets in preference to all 

 other incidents, as the fittest on which to exercise their genius ; and 

 indeed there is not a more deeply affecting exhibition than the descent to 

 the level of common mortals of one who held unlimited sway over 

 millions of his fellow creatures. But from the throne on which he sat 

 to the grave to which we are all hurrying, no time must intervene. A 

 king who survives his high estate, and mingles among those above 

 whom he formerly rose as a god, excites rather feelings of contempt 

 than emotions of sorrow and commiseration, because by being thus 

 content to outlive his greatness, he appears to be destitute of those 

 intense feelings, which, while they excite the deepest sympathy of the 

 beholders, should render it impossible for him to survive his calamities. 



■ " But yesterday a king, 

 And arm'd with kings to strive — 

 And now thou art a nameless thing : 

 .So abject— yet alive 1" 



We have been led into this preliminary strain by a feeling of con- 

 temptuous pity, which the unroyal occupations of the ci-devant king of 

 Sweden, and exercised in the most drivelling manner, have engendered 

 within us. To see a man who occupied a throne thus employed in writing 

 bad books, in defence of a bad cause, is assuredly the very reverse of 



