Dates, which a member of the same society, also named Clement, had edited twenty years before. This second edition, as it was called, resembles the first only in plan and title, but is in fact a new work, with which every body was pleased but the author." He again undertook to refashion his labor, and, after thirteen years of industrious research, printed, in three folio volumes, a third edition of L'Art de vérifier les Dates, Paris, 1783-1787. This third edition is regarded by the learned as the noblest monument of erudition of the eighteenth century. M. Clement was named a member of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1785, and was collecting materials illustrative of French history, when death carried him off on the 29th of March, 1793, at the age nearly of eighty."

(Vol. V.) In this volume may be remarked the life of Benjamin Constant, of political notoriety, and that of Cuvier, which we shall abridge.pe!

George Cuvier was born 25th August, 1769, at Mempelgard, in the department of the Doubs, which city at that time belonged to the Duke of Wurtemberg. His parents were Lutherans, and sent him to a classical school with the view of preparing him for the ecclesiastical profession. He was competitor for an exhibition, which would have removed him to the University of Tubingen: but the partiality of the tutor intercepted in favor of another lad the reward which he had deserved. The injustice, however, was so manifest that it reached the ears of the Prince, who gave him a station in the academy at Stutgard, where he was the fellowstudent of the celebrated Schiller. He there attended to drawing, and to natural history, collected an herbal, and painted insects from living specimens. On quitting this college, he accepted the place of preceptor in the family of Count Hericy, who resided in Normandy, on a district which facilitated the study of petrefactions and of marine productions. His attention to those objects soon brought him into connection with the naturalists of Paris; and he assisted Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was attached to the Museum of Natural History, with various memoirs relative to the classification of mammiferous animals. In the third year of the French Republic, M. Cuvier was appointed professor in the Central School of Paris, and drew up for his class an Elementary Sketch of the Natural History of Animals. He also became a member of the Institute. When M. Mertrud retired from the chair of comparative anatomy, Cuvier undertook in his stead that class of lec tures, and was soon distinguished by the luminous eloquence of his diction and the original depth of his research. He afterward lectured at the Lyceum, and in the eighth year of the Republic -succeeded Daubenton as anatomical professor in the college of France. He was much consulted by Bonaparte in organizing various institutions for public instruction, and then obtained appointments under government which have been confirmed to him. In his legislative capacity, he readily gave his support to ministerial and even to unpopular measures. The most important and original of his works is intitled Récherches sur les Össemens fossiles,

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in which he disinters, reconstructs, and resuscitates entire races of lost animals and plants: it is a work of genius, not less than of learning, and forms an epoch in science. The cabinet of comparative anatomy attached to the Botanic Garden owes its institution and arrangement to the interposition of Cuvier: who is now a baron, privy-counsellor, officer of the Legion of Honor, and also also secretary to the first class of the Institute, and member of the French Academy, besides being an associate of almost all the literary societies of Europe.'

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A merited tribute is paid to the character of the late Mar quis Cornwallis; in the course of which the biographer commits the singular blunder of identifying the Marquis Wellesley with his brother the Duke of Wellington!AVNO

In Vol. V. compensation is made for amalgamating the above-named two noblemen into one, by splitting into two persons the Reverend James Dallaway, author of well known works on Constantinople and on the arts; an oper ation which those who know that gentleman's corporeal im portance might be tempted to excuse according to the rules of proportion; and an offence which those who know his good humor will recognize him as the first to forgive. Sir Hugh Dalrymple, of Cintra memory, is here called Sir Henry. Among other ornaments of this volume are Decandolle, De lambre, Delille, Denon, and Desaix; and a niche is accorded to our late Duchess of Devonshire, who is celebrated for her accomplishments, her beauty, her devotion to the political fame and interests of Mr. Fox, and her poem on the pas sage of Mont St. Gothard.

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(Vol. VI.) In this volume we may distinguish the life of Dumouries; but we shall prefer to abridge that of Dupuis the former being in general well known; and military reput ations, unless of the very highest order and most extensive influence, soon fading on the public interest, while those which Lare founded on literature retain their primary impression.

Charles Francis Dupuis was born at Trie-le-Chateau, in the department of the Oise, October 16. 1742, of poor parents; his father, a schoolmaster, taught him to write remarkably well, and instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. The Duke de la Rochefoucald saw the lad one day measuring the height of the parish-steeple, and, desirous of encouraging early proficiency, sent him to the college of Harcourt, where he acquired the classical languages, and became fond of the orators. At the age of twenty

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Arafe accomplishment among Frenchmen, who in general Contrive to render their writing any thing but legible and legitimate. For examples, let the reader examine the signatures of the principal compilers of this Dictionary, prefixed to some of the volumes Réo, Van w aid to Isalp four

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four, he took the professorship of rhetoric in the college of Lisieux, and entered himself for the bar, to which he was called in 1770. He soon afterward married. In 1775, he composed a Latin tin oration on the distribution of the prizes at the University, and in 1780 a funeral oration on the death of the Empress MariaTheresa, both of which were much admired. In the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions he inserted dissertations concerning the Pelasgi, He attended Lalande's astronomical lectures with assiduity, and there conceived the idea of deriving from the pri mæval star-worship the hieroglyphic fables of the various religious sects. This idea he has perhaps pushed too far: but he has embodied it in a learned and curious work, intitled Origine de tous les Cultes, which appeared in 1794, in three quarto volumes, M. de Tracy abridged this somewhat tedious production under the title Analyse raisonnée de l'Origine de tous les Cultes. - Dupuis sat in the Convention, and voted for the detention of Louis XVI. Ultimately, he retired to a country-house in Burgundy, where he died of a putrid fever in 1809.

Among the memoirs in this volume, are those of the Didots, Dolomieu, Ducis, Sir John Duckworth, Dugommier, Dumas, Dupont de Nemours, Duroc, Dutens, Egerton Duke of Bridgewater, Eichhorn, Eliott Lord Heathfield, and Sir Gil-or bert Elliott, afterward Lord Minto, (here miscalled Lord Elliott,) L'Epée, Euler, Lord Exmouth, &c. &c.

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The principal contributors to this work are MM. Arnault, Jag, Norvins, and Jouy, which last writer is the most known by his lively essays of the Hermit of the Chaussée d'Antin, 'ṛ noticed by us in vol. lxxii. p. 465. and elsewhere, and by his work intitled Morality applied to Politics, reviewed in Art. VI. of this Appendix. To have planned an universal map of living merit and eminence, to have executed as it were a geography of extant celebrity, - and to have assembled, as if in one apartment, the scattered ornaments of actual human society, the movers of the moving world,—is to have deserved-ei well of the present times. In general, we repeat that the judgments passed on the characters here brought together have considerable equity and liberality, and are likely by their impartiality to anticipate the verdict of posterity: but muchof insignificance has also attracted the attention of these nomenclators; they make grave-stones and epitaphs for common earth and oblivious dust: and they must expect to find those memorials frail, which implore the passing tribute of a sigh for the natural “ prey to dumb forgetfulness."Abs

No volume beyond the sixth has yet reached us: but it l appears from the French news-papers that the work has been continued as far as the eighth; and that for some extra-libe- 11 rality or deficient loyalty in several articles of that volume, the #

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authors have been cited before a Juge d'Instruction, who will probably give them a political lesson on the literary art of biography, to which their occasional leanings on the side of freedom and patriotism render them exposed from the agents of ultra-royalism

ART. X. 'Mémoires de Benvenuto Cellini, &c.;' 'î. e. Memoirs of t Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine, Goldsmith and Sculptor, writ

ten by himself; interspersed with many curious Anecdotes re-m lating to History, and the Arts. Translated from the Italian, by a M. T. DE SAINT MARCEL. 8vo. Paris. 1822. Imported by od Treuttel and Co. Price 9s.

Ir is not a little singular that the lively, energetic, and ver

satile genius of Italy has produced fewer and less excellent va memoir-writers than any other civilized state: yet such is the! fact. With all her treasures of poetry and art, and warm and h animated as is her climate, she has to number in her annals scarcely any other than tedious and prosing historians, whose real merits are sadly deteriorated by the verbosity and inconsequence of their style. Their periods not unfrequently extend over whole pages, and their researches on the most indifferent point will occupy a series of sections. The biographers, also, and auto-biographers, are mostly chargeable with the same failings; and they are cold, dull, and heavy, in proportion as their abilities are opposed to every thing slender and superficial.f They may be said to be the heavy ordnance of history; the materiel or main support of the parties which they compose; and of a calibre altogether discouraging and invincible to t most readers, They are also not seldom inconsistent and faulty in their conclusions, and have been often taken to task or wholly displaced by foreign writers, as inadequate to do justice to their own great national characters and achievements.

We are not afraid of being told that this is too sweep ing an accusation, or that we are unfairly severe, by those even among the Italians themselves who have attempted to digest the entire works of these giants of literature, Nor will some of their greatest names,Guicciardini, Davila, or Macchiavelli, among their political writers,-Muratori, Tiraboschi, Mazzuchelli, and Crescimbeni, as literary historians, - Segni, Platina, Gravina, Maffei, and even Alfieri, together with Lanzi and Vasari, in the history of poetry and the arts, form exceptions to some of these charges; charges less heavy, indeed, but more intolerable than those of plagiarism, dullness, and verbosity, which are not a little surprizing in southern writers, and are difficult to be endured or forgiven by the German and more northern literati.

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***They do not even always manifest those more valuable qualities of such species of composition, which we should naturally attribute to the extent of their researches and the prolixity of their language; we mean selection, correctness, and accuracy in their matter; furnishing rather a mass of inform ation, out of which subsequent writers, the Gibbons, Robertsons, Voltaires, and Schlegels of their age, may gather important facts and incidents, in the formation of works at once more interesting and more analagous to the true nature, objects, and utility, of all memoirs and histories. Yet in this view, as the great precursors and authorities of modern historians, during some of Europe's most eventful periods, the writers of Italy fill a conspicuous and important place in the historical records of the world; while their annals are farther consecrated by Roman recollections, and by scenes enacted on the theatre of old Roman greatness and renown. ver A Je to 5 In directing our attention to the present work, we have to observe that the task which the most accomplished of the 'Italian literati, and men of birth, conceived to be beneath their notice, or which they were unable to effect, viz. the power of giving zest, interest, and animation to their memoirs and personal relations, seems to have been left for the genius of an obscure and self-taught artist of the fifteenth century: whose account of his own life and adventures, and of the age in which The lived, though filled with imposture and absurdities, and delivered in a rough provincial dialect, attracted more attention by its humour, anecdote, and vivacity, than any work of a similar kind that had before appeared. It not only ran through several editions in a short period, but was surreptitiously published, and translated into other languages, was -read by all classes of people, and was the subject of comment from learned writers and Della Cruscan academies. These honours were, doubtless, little contemplated by Cellini when he dictated, with a chisel in his hand, to his apprentice-boy, his observations on the scenes and events in which he had been engaged with princes, popes, statesmen, soldiers, and artists, not less irritable though less courageous than himself. Occupied in numerous employments far less peaceful than that of a goldsmith, (which was his trade,) brave, credulous, and infatuated, many were the assassinations whichheb escaped, and many those which he committed, though in his code of honor they were deemed strictly honorable, Alternately a favorite and a victim to the caprice of Popes and Princes, he preserved an unconquerable pride and audacity to the last; and, perfectly sensible of his genius and merits, he always asTserted his claims to notice on nearly equal and familiar terms,