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editors are restrained in their fancy, by a shew of respect to the facts of each case. The articles are therefore romances in style, without those flights of imagination which render romantic compositions fascinating. In fact they are neither prose nor poetry—but by mingling both, they have deformed both, without possessing the peculiar beauties of either.

The best cases in that celebrated work have nevertheless been transferred to these volumes; but to adapt them to English reading, they have been stript of all their verbosity. As an example, the case of Urban Grandier in the original is five times the length of the article in this work; yet the reader will perceive even in the part that has been retained, some of that garrulity and flighty sentiment which our neighbours incorporate with every history of facts. In other articles the editor has compressed into a score of pages the substance of an entire volume of the Causes Celebres, and yet in spite of his care some of the flippant sentiments of the original articles still remain.

The editor is at the same time aware that the interest of a trial often turns on small points, and is increased by the reader being, as it were, carried into court. This important principle he has never lost sight of, and in proof may refer to the verbal examinations which he has retained whenever they are connected with the jet of the case, or with historical personages and curious traits of manners. If the general reader has reason to find any fault with the work, it will rather be with the minutiœ of detail, than with any deficiency; while many curious documents have for