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It would not be difficult to deduce that practice of common swearing, which, till our own times, was so disgraceful to the English gentry, and which even now forms a miserable feature in the character of the lower classes of our countrymen, to this royal origin ;* for the vices of the more elevated ranks are invariably and inevitably adopted by the infe

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Common swearing was the reproach of the English, in the fifteenth century; and tauntingly alluded to by a very remarkable character, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. When she was imprisoned in Rouen, chained to the floor, and loaded with irons, the Count of Luxemburg, accompanied by the Earls of Warwick and Stafford, paid her a visit, under the false pretence of arranging with her the terms of her ransom. Viewing the Count, who had betrayed her to the English, with ineffable disdain, she cried, 'Begone! you have neither the inclination nor the power to ransom me." Then casting her eye upon the two Earls, she said, "I know that you English are determined to put me to death, and imagine that after I am dead you will conquer France; but though there were an hundred thousand G-d dammees in France, more than there are, they will never conquer that kingdom."-Villaret, tom. xv. p. 57. quoted by Dr. Henry, Hist. Eng. v. x. p. 293. For a beautiful. memoir, and complete vindication, of the character of this great, but amiable, enthusiast, see Mr. S. Turner's Hist. Eng. v. iii. quarto.

rior ones, whose eye is always turned up to those above them for the example and sanction of their own conduct. Whether the senseless, if not impious, habit be gradually fading away among the multitude, may, perhaps, be doubted; but it is gratifying to observe, that it has almost entirely disappeared in higher life; and it is a striking proof of our improvement in taste, as well as in morals, that every man who now indulges in the pernicious practice is considered as forfeiting his claim, not only to the character of the christian, but also to the manners of the gentleman.t

+ The reign of Charles II., so fruitful in every species of profligacy and impiety, seems to have been the period when the practice of swearing among the great, the fashionable, and the gay, was at its climax. Lord Rochester, pre-eminent in every vice, rendered himself conspicuous by the fancifulness and eccentricity of his blasphemous expressions. He was, however, mercifully checked in his mad career by premature disease; and spared, for a time, to deplore this and other vicious habits with horror, contrition, and remorse. The following anecdote occurs in an elegant and useful little work, by the late venerable William Gilpin, vicar of Boldre, Hants, entitled "Moral Contrasts," Cadell, 1799. "Lord Rochester had formerly indulged an uncommonly

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profane habit of swearing. Oaths made a part of his usual conversation; and when he was heated, they were frightful. But he had so wholly mastered this vile habit, that Bishop Burnett tells us, when fits of pain came upon him, which were frequent and violent, he never heard any thing like an oath escape him. On one occasion, indeed, when he was suffering under an acute paroxysm of his disorder, and had sent a servant for something, which he thought he might have brought sooner, he cried out, that d-n'd fellow, I suppose, is lost.' When the Bishop remarked it, he said, 'Aye, you see how the language of fiends still hangs about me. Who deserves d-ng so much as myself? God forgive me!' Except on this occasion, the Bishop observes, he never heard even a hasty expression come from him."-Page 148. The soldiery in Scotland, who were commissioned to execute the atrocious purposes of Charles IId's government against the unfortunate Puritans of that country, "raved," says the writer of Alexander Peden's Life, "like fleshly devils, when the mist shrouded from their pursuit the wandering Whigs.” One gentleman belonging to this band of military bloodhounds, closed a declaration of vengeance against the Conventiclers with this strange imprecation, "or may the devil make my ribs a gridiron for my soul."-Scott's Minstrelsy, vol. ii. 59.

We have been informed, by an unquestionable authority, that the innocent exclamation of our late amiable monarch George 111. on any excitation either of anger or surprise, was only, "Oh, dear!"

THE MONASTERY.

THAT Success leads to rashness is as true in literature as it is in war. Many have been the authors in whom popularity has generated carelessness; and the conviction of favour with the public lessened that respect for its judgment and taste, on an attention to which their fame had originally been founded. Instead of being stimulated by victory to further exertions, they have remitted their vigilance, relaxed their discipline, and scattered their powers a negligence which has not unfrequently been followed by disappointment, defeat, and disgrace. It might be harsh (perhaps irrelevant) to apply this observation to the Author of Waverley; but, assuredly, the tricks he has played in the novel of " The Monastery," and the liberties he has here.

taken with the good sense and correct taste of an enlightened public, justify the conclusion that it was written with the most culpable haste and carelessness; with no exercise of those faculties of genius and invention, of sagacity and discrimination, of happy diction, and graceful composition, which had adorned and dignified all his preceding productions. The plot of the Monastery is involved and confused, its characters feeble, its incidents unexciting, its situations unnatural, with little or nothing in it that can rescue it from that character of imbecility, which Dr. Johnson attributed to Mr. Macauley's History, when he averred, that " many men, many women, and many children, could have written as good a book." Had the general execution of the novel, however, been of an higher cast than it confessedly is, one egregious and prominent defect pervades it, which would have lowered the impressiveness, and marred the effect, of the finest writing-the introduction of the fiction of the White Lady, and the glaring inconsistency with which this visionary character is delineated.

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