oftener of a higher moral tone, or more dignified character than, we fear, it was in his nature to feel, or his purpose to express, as a disciple of the souldepressing, earth-bound Voltairian school. M. Guizot expresses himself with great force and propriety on this point. Considered as a whole, the "Decline and Fall" presents, we must admit, with the reservation of occa sional antichristian misrepresentations, fewer historical errors than almost any extant composition of equal compass; insomuch that on the Continent, we are assured by M. Guizot, the work is constantly cited as authority, similar to that, we may say, assigned by Gibbon to Le Nain de Tillemont's Ecclesiastical and Imperial Annals of the first six centuries of the Christian era. We are, therefore, the more surprised at the glaring anachronism in his fifty-ninth chapter, where he makes Pope Gregory the First, (in full letters,) implore the aid of Charles Martel, in 740, against the Lombards, whereas that Pontiff had ceased to live, nearly ninety years before the French hero's birth, in 604. An inadvertence, too, relating to the classical history of Rome, has been overlooked by all Reviewers. In the thirty-first chapter it is asserted that the Anician family was unknown during the five first ages* of Rome, and that its earliest * This is a faulty order of words, and should be the first five ages of Rome; for these five ages could not, all and each, be the first, as the words so placed necessarily imply. They stand here as in the French-"Les cinq premiers siècles de Rome," but the inflexible character of that tongue would not, (as the Latin, "Quinque priora secula, or priora quinque secula,”) admit any other collocation; and we find it so in M. Beaufort's "Dissertation on the early History of Rome." Different, indeed, is the genius of the two languages-the one pliant and moveable in position-the other fixed and unbending, ever since it surrendered its independence, and sank subdued date found in the Annals of Pighius was that of Anicius Gallus, a tribune of the people in the year of the city, 506. But we are surprised that Gibbon, in the vast extent of his reading, should have passed unobserved the explicit mention in Pliny, (Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 6,) of Quintus Anicius, as Curulus Edilis, colleague in that office of Cneius Flavius, in the year 449 of the usual Roman chronology, or 442 of Niebuhr's more accurate reckoning, that is, full sixty years anterior to Gibbon's statement. That edileship, besides, was one of marked celebrity; for Flavius divulged the secrets of the civil law held in mysterious reserve by the pontiffs as an instrument of popular control, by compelling a recurrence to themselves on every contention which arose. "Civile jus repositum in penetralibus pontificum evulgavit Flavius," says Livy (ix. 46.) Aulus Gellius, (vi. 9,) Cicero and unnerved under the imposed fetters of the French Academy, though it has latterly recovered some of its original elasticity and vigour, as displayed in Amyot, Montaigne, and Charron, without losing its characteristic lucidity. Moliere, in his "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," introduces nine words (Acte ii. Sc. 6)-"Belle Marquise vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour," which the silly citizen's teacher attempts to place in four different ways; but, except the original, they are all barbarous, unidiomatic, and repulsive to a French ear. Not so the Latin, of which we may adduce a line of only eight words-"Tot tibi sunt dotes, Virgo, quot sidera cœlo," which Erycius Puteanus, in his “Pietatis Thaumata," &c., printed at Antwerp in 1617, showed, were susceptible of 1022 different positions, corresponding with the number of fixed stars known to the old astronomers. But James Bernouilli, in his "Ars Conjectandi," (Basil, 1713,) proved that the verse offered 3322 combinations. The French, in fact, admits of few inversions, compared even with the English or Italian, as was remarked to us by the ex-Spanish king, Napoleon's elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who, in illustration, referred to the opening lines of the Paradise Lost, and the Henriade, with various passages of Ariosto, Tasso, &c., where, in all save the French, the words were susceptible of varied collocation, an advantage which accounted, in his conception, for the superiority of our orators over the French, from the versatility of expression thence derived. de Oratore, (cap. 41,) and de Republica, (lib. i.) with Pighius himself, at page 377 of his Annals, (Antwerpiæ, 1613,) dwell on what was deemed a memorable event, as occurring during the office of Anicius and Flavius; but the languid health of the former made him so little conspicuous, that, like Cæsar's colleague in the Consulship, M. Calpurnius Bibulus, his name was eclipsed by that of Flavius. It continued, however, an authentic record, and holds a prominent place in one of the noblest monuments of Roman genius, Pliny's great work, " opus non minus varium quam ipsa natura," in the emphatic eulogy of his adopted nephew, (Epist. lib. iii. 5.) The reader may likewise see in the Rev. Mr. Maitland's "Essays on the Dark Ages," at page 230, the fallacious grounds on which Gibbon rests his sarcastic note in volume x. p. 193, on the imputed superstition of the dignitaries of the Church, relative to Gog and Magog. Still, notwithstanding these, or any other indicated drawbacks on his accuracy, the work, as he anticipated, has taken root; and, with the unhappy exception of his antichristian sentiments, few are entitled, with a firmer tone of confidence, to say, "What care I what curious eye doth quote deformities?" (Romeo and JulietAct i., Sc. 4,) or adopt Ovid's peroration to his Metamorphosis Jamque opus exegi quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, The Rev. editor, we must observe, in conclusion, cannot be presumed to have revised the Biography, teeming as it does with errors, of which not less than a hundred disgrace the impression. For his informa tion, too, we may state that the name, at page 262 of that volume, and note, left in blank, is the prince of "Beauveau," the personal friend of Louis XVI., whom he accompanied from Versailles to Paris, on the 6th of October, 1789, a day of which the terrors have been so vividly depicted by Burke. J. J. ROUSSEAU. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CORK MAGAZINE. Cork, 21st October, 1848. MR. EDITOR-In No. X. of your publication, appeared an article on Jean Jacques Rousseau, translated from an essay on that eccentric being, by a female disciple of kindred temperament, the heteroclite George Sand, who, from the conscious abandonment of all womanly attributes of mind or feeling, disdaining the voice and impress of nature, has contemptuously discarded her sex and name, and boldly assumed the masculine designation, with its characteristic bearing and defiant independence, in order to indulge, in unrestrained enjoyment, a corresponding licence of sentiment and action. Of her celebrated patron, or model, the lady, (for I will not follow her example and deny the stamp of Providence,) presents a delineation, far truly, from accordant with the known course of his life, though some aberrances of conduct are not denied; and as both writers are unsurpassed in the art of disguising evil under the most specious forms, I think it right, in humble exertion, to oppose to the fallacious, but seductive portraiture, the genuine character of this |