was called, we will venture to add a few touches to the picture we have before drawn of him. There was nothing in Lescure of the popular and dazzling kind, of which his cousin Rochejaquelein had so much; he was grave, calculating, and cool even to coldness; in council he was considered pertinacious, but on the other hand, he took up no opinion lightly; and he had some reason to be firm in the maintenance of them, for he was without contest the most scientific and well-read officer in the army; his humanity had something in it (says his wife) almost angelic and miraculous; and she has reason to speak in these terms of it, if it be true, that during the whole war, in which the generals were almost daily engaged in personal combat, not an individual ever perished by his hand. As Rochejaquelein delighted in the fever and fury of actual engagement, so the mild and domestic Lescure seems to have hated and revolted from it. No barbarities exercised by the republicans could ever induce him to sanction reprisals by the royalists; and the only instance in which he was ever seen in a passion, or heard to swear, was when his soldiers sabred behind his back a man who had attempted to shoot him, and whom he had ordered to be led to the rear as a prisoner. The army adored him. As Cathelineau was called the saint of Anjou, so he received the appellation of the saint of Poitou; and his memory still lives, unsullied by any stain, and unobliterated by the hand of time, in the hearts of his countrymen. Well might his wife be proud of such a husband; a man who, more than any other in this eventful period, reminds us of the heroic Lord Falkland, as immortalized by the pen of Clarendon.

The Marchicuess had another precious stake in the war, her father, the Marquis de Donnissan, though an old soldier, not being a native of the insurgent provinces, or a proprietor in them, did not assume any particular command in the army, or fill any ostensible post; he was modest and unassuming, but his talents and knowledge gave him a weighty voice in the council. He never participated in the fond hopes which the majority entertained, and seems to have foreseen from the commencement what must be the issue of the contest. He had the greater merit in the cheerfulness with which he devoted himself to a cause despaired of for his conscience sake.

Marigny commanded the artillery, an able, an active, and a skilful officer, but he injured the cause by his cruelty to the conquered; he led the way to all savage reprisals from principle, and he conduced to give the army a character, which on one memo. rable occasion mainly conduced to its total overthrow.

Others there were, and many, and of great talent, who had no determined post, or rank, and who yet, as occasion required, exerted their authority, and were obeyed. In such an army in112

deed,

deed, merit, and the confidence of the soldiery, gave rank and consideration and liable as all this system was to misconception and disputes, yet for some time loyalty and enthusiasm supplied the place of gradation and authority. The constant succession too of battles and marches kept minds too busy for ambition or intrigue. The same circumstances too abolished far more effectually than republican decrees, all distinctions of civil rank; the tradesman, the peasant, and the gentleman, were all brothers in arms; they ran the same dangers, lived the same life, sustained the same hardships,; and talked on the same one interesting subject.

There were circumstances in the discipline, if we may so call it, of the army very remarkable: the domestic fondnesses of the peasantry prevailed over all the pressure of the times. Nothing could keep them embodied more than a few days at a time; the battle lost or gained, the enterprise successful or foiled, for which they had assembled, they returned to their farms aud cottages. The chiefs remained with a few deserters or stragglers from other provinces, but when a new design was in agitation, or a new danger threatened, the army was re-assembled as quickly as it had dispersed. The requisition was sent round to the parishes, the tocsin sounded, and the following notice was read to the inhabitants" In the holy name of God, on the part of the king, such or such a parish is invited to send the largest number of men possible to such a place, on such a day, at such an hourthe soldiers will bring their provisions." Such a requisition was not slowly obeyed; in addition to the victuals which each man brought with him, the chiefs prepared a general stock, which they raised from the estates of the gentry, the noblesse, and the enigrés to this voluntary contributions from the zeal of all classes made very large additions. The army moved without baggage, waggons, or tents, but care was taken in the providing hospitals. The town of St. Laurent on the Peore was appointed for the reception of the wounded, both royalists and republicans; its situation is central, but probably the chief reason for the selection was to be found in its having become the retreat of a sisterhood of religious women, who were devoted by the rules of their order to the attendance on their sick fellow-creatures. communities are among the bright and redeeming ordinances of the Roman Catholic religion, and the enlightened discrimination of revolutionary reform had swept it away with other less blameless institutions.

These

The discipline of the army in the field was very imperfect, as might be expected: nothing could induce them to submit to the duties of the sentinel, or picquet: this fell on the officers. There was no attempt made to regiment them; but as soon as an expe

dition was planned, and the posts of the chiefs assigned, the soldiers flocked to this or that commander, as affection or confidence prompted, and the only limit was the necessity of the ser

vice.

A deep sense of religion animated all ages, sexes, ranks, and employments. The peasants said their prayers before beginning the battle, and in general signed themselves with the cross before every discharge of their muskets. As soon as the sound of the firing announced to the neighbourhood that the armies were engaged, the women, the children, the aged, and the infirm, flocked to the churches, or knelt in the fields to pray for the success of La Vendée; so that the whole population of the province might be said at the same instant to be animated but with one thought, and pursuing one object.

The politician or the trained soldier may smile at such an army, and such a state of discipline, but the historian of after times will record with wonder and admiration, that in that disastrous period, 68 a few strong instincts, and a few plain rules," among the villagers of La Vendée, wrought more for the cause of law and religion, and for the redemption of their country, than all the pride or depth of philosophy, the discipline of armies, or the combinations of the counsels of princes.

(To be concluded in our next.)

ART. II. Continuation of the Review of the Essays of Brown and Sumner.

(Concluded from p. 344.)

WE bave followed Mr. Sumner, with pleasure, through a series of arguments in favor of the authenticity of the Mosaic History of the Creation; he concludes his first volume with an Appendix, which contains an examination of some of the popular objections to that history. The first of these objections will be found, as science advances, to have originated in the ignorance rather than in the discoveries of geological enquirers. Cuvier, and our own Parkinson, have detected, in the bosom of the earth, a wonderful confirmation of the order in which the dif ferent acts of creation, are stated by the sacred historian, to have occurred. The second objection, met by Mr. S, is that which asserts the different characteristics, or national distinctions, so obvious in the human race, to be incompatible with their descent from a single pair. The antiquity, and the genuineness

nuineness of the Pentateuch, are defended in the remaining portion of the Appendix.

The first part of the second volume is devoted to the Wisdom of the Creator; and, in proving this from his works, Mr. S. dwells on the wonderful simplicity of the secondary causes employed to execute God's purposes in the natural world. To attain the end proposed by the least complicated means, is the great ambition of human art; and imperfectly as we are acquainted with the mechanism of the system, in which we are placed, we can yet see enough of the universality of the laws which regulate the operations of nature, to be convinced that they could only have emanated from infinite wisdom. Arguing, analogically, it might be expected, that not the inanimate world alone, but those for whose reception that world was prepared, should conform to laws of the same general and comprehensive nature. The free-agency of man, however, seems to be incon sistent with that interference, which would be necessary to reduce mankind to an uniform course of action. But if it can be shewn, that there are laws equally universal in their operation with those above alluded to, as controuling the action of blind matter, which confine within certain bounds even the animate creation, which are not transgressed by, yet do not destroy the free-agency of man; the argument thence drawn in favour of the infinite wisdom of the Creator, will be so much the more forcible, in proportion to the acknowledged difficulty of accomplishing objects which would, à priori, to our limited understandings, have appeared incompatible. Such a law is that, which implants, in the consumers of the fruits of the earth, a tendency to multiply more rapidly than the fruits themselves;"an instinctive propensity in human nature, under all governcuts, and in every stage of civilization, to multiply up to the means of subsistence, and even to press, by increase of numbers, upon the limits of the food assigned them." Sumner, Vol. 11. P. 102.

From the nature of the argument used by Mr. Malthus, to establish the universal existence of this principle, a vague and unreasonable idea had been caught up, which served to alarni many well-meaning persons; that the prevalence of vice and wretchedness amongst the lower orders of society was henceforward to be declared inevitable; and to be charged upon what was called "the first commandment which man received from his Creator."

Now Mr. Malthus' argument was simply this;-If the pro gress of population could have a perfectly free course, the number of the human race would double in ten or fifteen years.

"In the northern states of America, where the means of sub

sistence

sistence have been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and the checks to early marriages fewer than in any of the states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in periods of less than twenty-five years each." Malthus on Pop. B. I. C. 1.

In the older established states of Europe and Asia, the population increases with much less rapidity, not doubling itself in less than four or five centuries; or is stagnant; or positively retrograde; accommodating itself to the rate of production of the means of subsistence in the different countries. These facts are undisputed; and a question naturally arises from them, as to what it is which prevents the population of old established states from proceeding at the same rate as that of America, independent of its importations? To this Mr. Malthus auswers, that wherever the population does not increase with what may be called its natural rapidity, the diminution of its rate of progress proceeds from prudential restraints, from vice, and from misery. Now it would be as difficult to controvert this assertion, as to disprove the general correctness of the preceding statement of facts, to such an amount as could disturb the argument. The next step places us on what must be allowed to be more debateable ground; for Mr. M. proceeds to say, that these three checks not only do, more or less, impede the increase of the population; but, that they must keep it down to the limits dictated by the means of subsistence; and, that in proportion as prudence, for example, fails to prevent the too rapid increase of the numbers of any nation, vice and misery will necessarily extend their destructive operations. Yet, if the aggregate effect of these three checks to the natural rate of increase of mankind, be a determined quan'ity, it follows, as an unavoidable consequence, that the diminished action of any one of the three, must be compensated by an increased result from the effects of one or both of the others. But surely no one would assert, that the produce of the earth in any country is likely to go on doubling every fifteen years; and, wherever the means of subsistence do not increase in that ratio, there must necessarily be a proportionable difference between the number of human beings who will arrive, and who otherwise might have arrived at maturity; that is, there will be a certain effect to be produced by the action of one, or all the abovementioned checks. Be it also rentembered, that he who would suggest emigration as an obvious inode of relieving any pressure of the numbers of a nation upon the produce of its soil, does but present an alternative of wretchedness. Many of the evils of indigence will be borne, before the unhappy sufferer determines to seek his bread in a strange and distant land.

Good