than to sit down with the dogged brow of a hypercritic to pick out errors and carp at deficiencies. The kind-hearted Abbé, by his decorous gaiety, inoffensive satire, and occasional tinge of tender melancholy, surely deserves this much forbearance. Nor can we, considering the unassuming nature of his work and the circumstances under which it was written, allow ourselves to be angry with him for the abrupt flights and transitions by which he so frequently passes from the annals of crime to the recital of follies, from the lady's bower to the ensanguined scaffold, from the dark details of feudal oppression to the trivial tattle of the town; careless in some instances to terminate history or anecdote, to dispel the doubts and gratify the curiosity of the reader. Whilst recognising the historical importance and interest of a grave and minute account of the sessions of the Grands-Jours, we do not quarrel with our Abbé for not having transmitted it to us, but accept his heterogeneous tragi-comic volume as a graphic and amusing sketch of the vices, follies, and tone of French society in the twenty-third year of the reign of Louis, surnamed the Great. At the last stage before Clermont, the town of Riom, Fléchier abruptly commences his narrative. It was the place of rendezvous for the members of the tribunal, who halted there to shake their feathers and prepare their pompous entry into Clermont. "At Riom," says the Abbé, "we began to take repose and congratulate ourselves on our journey. We were so well received by the lieutenant-general, and were lodged in his house with so great cleanliness and even magnificence, that we forgot we were out of Paris." The hospitable seneschal, moreover, took pleasure in showing his honourable guests all that was remarkable in the town and its environs, especially a young lady of great attractions, whose numerous charms of person and mind made her to be considered in that country as one of the wonders of the world. She was about twenty-two years of age, daughter of a certain President Gabriel de Combes, and without being a perfect beauty, she was deemed irresistible when desirous to please. The great praises Fléchier heard of her, raised his expectations to a high pitch, and when he saw her, he was disappointed. He admitted many merits, but also discovered defects. A person of quality belonging to that country, and whose name is not given, combated this depreciatory opinion, which the gentle Abbé willingly waived, merely expressing surprise that a lady of such merit should have passed her twentieth year without making some great marriage. The worthy country gentleman, his interlocutor, was astonished at his astonishment, being unable to conceive that the adventures of this pearl of Auvergne had not been trumpeted in the remotest corners of the kingdom. When at last convinced of Fléchier's ignorance, he volunteered to dispel it; and the Abbé, evidently delighted to be initiated into