reputation for intelligent and advanced views in regard to the work it originally marked out and is now accomplishing, to state that the entire correctness of those views, and the desirableness of such work, have been very strongly corroborated by the conclusions reached in the deliberations of the International Conference,* that recently met at Geneva for the discussion of questions similar to those involved in the design and labors of the United States Sanitary Commission. The President of the Conference, General Dufour, said: "To be truly useful to the cause of humanity, we must, instead of indulging the vain hope of suppressing wars, endeavor to render their consequences less terrible if possible, and lend our aid effectually to those whose duty it is to give assistance to the sufferers." The representative of the king of Prussia, Dr. Löffler, a chief medical officer of the Prussian army, also expressed the sentiments of his government in the following language: "The history of the great contests in our times has demonstrated that, when war is about to break out, it is impossible for the official authorities to provide the means of succor with sufficient rapidity, and even in a sufficient degree, for all possible exigencies. It is to the charitable support and cooperation of the public that we must address ourselves to surround the victims of the contest with all the care to which they have a well-deserved right, and which the heart of the true philanthropist must demand for unfortunate fellow-beings." This was the spirit of the conference, in which the nations of Europe were represented by able and experienced military officers and other public men.

Inspired with enlightened and patriotic zeal for the welfare. of the vast armies that our country has summoned to the field, and having most fortunately united in its work experienced and earnest men, who will steadfastly and intelligently maintain the cause they have undertaken, the United States Sanitary Commission, deliberately marking out its own plan of humane and supplementary work, has, from the necessities and incentives of the occasion, given the first great and suc

* Conférence Internationale pour étudier les Moyens de pourvoir à la Suffisance du Service Sanitaire dans les Armées en Campagne. Convened at Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 26, 27, 28, 29, 1863.

cessful example in providing against the insufficiency of the sanitary service in armies.

The wide range and great magnitude of the Sanitary Commission's work have been inevitable results of the vast increase of our forces, and of the original and fixed policy of the Commission, "to secure for the men who have enlisted in this war that care which it is the will and the duty of the nation to give them."

This work has been, and must continue to be, rendered practicable by the hearty support and sympathy of our free and loyal people. It is a necessity which an advancing civilization has laid upon their hearts and their hands. And while in our peaceful homes and in our popular armies it is joyfully accepted as a labor equally of patriotism and of love, the influence of this great scheme of beneficent labor has gone out to all other civilized nations as an impressive illustration of the progress of that humane Christian spirit which is augmenting the popular appreciation of the sacredness of human life and human sympathies, and which shall yet elevate the brotherhood of states and nations above the very causes of war.

ART. IV. Mémoires de Jean Sire de Joinville ou Histoire et Chronique du Très-Chrétien Roi Saint Louis publiés par M. FRANCISQUE MICHEL. Précédés de Dissertations par M. AMBR. FIRMIN DIDOT et d'une Notice sur les Manuscrits du Sire de Joinville par M. PAULIN PARIS. Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, Fils et Cie. 1859. 12°. pp. clxxxix., 356.

[Memoirs of John, Lord of Joinville, or History and Chronicle of the Most Christian King Saint Louis.]

ONE of the most delightful books that ever was written is the Memoirs of the King St. Louis by the Sire de Joinville. It is at once the most picturesque of chronicles, the sincerest of biographies, and the most unconscious of personal narratives. It is so full of human nature, that it interests us like a contemporaneous narrative.

St. Louis was the typical personage of his time, the man in whom the qualities that marked the age found their highest and most characteristic expression. When men were most sensitive to the impressions of religion, he was the most Christian of kings, the most devout of men. At a time when the imaginations of men were in a condition of exaltation, he was the wildest dreamer of all. No Schoolman went beyond him in fondness for the subtile speculations of theology. No monk surpassed him in humility, in chastity, in patience, in reverence for the Church. Among knights he was the bravest and the gentlest. He was the truest of friends. Even to his own companions and to the people of his realm he seemed the ideal of a king, humane, courteous, pious, and they beheld in him alike the accomplishments of a hero and the virtues of a saint.

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Joinville tells us more of the personal character of Louis than is to be gathered from all other books, and in giving a lively portrait of the King gives us a no less lively likeness of himself. He was indeed the worthy friend and companion-atarms of his king. Of a nature less spiritual and elevated, but of sounder temper, less enthusiastic, and of less ascetic tendency, of a freer disposition and a richer humor, — in a word, less of a saint and more of a man than Louis,―Joinville is the pattern of a true knight of the later days of chivalry, at once a good Christian and a man of the world, bold, frank, simplehearted, and loyal. With entire artlessness and a childlike simplicity he shows himself to us; he makes his readers his friends, he takes us into his intimacy; and when we come to the end of his book, it is as if we had finished a long talk with the old crusader, as if he and we were separated by no gulf of time, but had shaken hands together across the centuries. Few books are of so much worth in bringing us into sympathetic relations with the past.

As a literary composition, the Memoirs are quite without art, but they are marvellous as the work of a man eighty-five years old, reviewing the events of his young days. They have all the freshness and color of youth. The impressions received so many years before remain sharp and distinct upon the memory of the old knight, and he recounts the scenes and

incidents of the past in a style of unrivalled clearness, energy, and picturesqueness. Years and cares have left him still all that is best of youth.*

The latest, and as regards the text the best edition of Joinville, is that published by Didot at Paris in 1859, the title of which stands at the head of this article. It is to this edition that the references in the following pages are made.

The history of the editions of the Memoirs is curious. The first, edited by Antoine Pierre de Rieux, was printed at Poitiers in 1546. The period at which it appeared was an unhappy one for the monuments of the Middle Ages. The spirit of the Renaissance was at its height, and there was a mania for so-called restoration and improvement. The character of the preceding centuries was neither comprehended nor respected. Following the taste of his times, the editor takes great credit to himself for having improved the simple style of Joinville. "There is not," he says, "less merit in skilfully polishing a diamond or any other fine stone, than in finding it in its rough state; therefore, not less praise ought to be bestowed on the present author [editor] for having brought the present history to good order and an elegant style, than on him who was its first composer." The naïveté and freshness of the original were quite destroyed, and the honest seneschal would have hardly recognized his work in its new dress.

This corrupted text was three times reprinted. In 1617 the work was newly edited by Claude Menard. The text was somewhat bettered, but was still left very different from that which Joinville wrote.

In 1668, the great scholar Da Cange edited the work anew; but as he was not able to consult any manuscript of the original, his text is only a rifacimento of the two preceding. He added to the Memoirs, however, a valuable series of illustrative dissertations, full of learning, which are reprinted in the last volume of Henschel's edition of his Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis, Paris, 1850.

In 1761, under the auspices of Louis XV., the original text was for the first time printed from a manuscript in the Royal Library, And this text has been generally followed in subsequent impressions of the work.

In 1807, Colonel Johnes of Hafod published an English translation of the Memoirs, in two volumes, quarto; but unfortunately he chose to use the text of Du Cange rather than that of the edition of 1761. He speaks of the true text as being "unintelligible to three fourths of its readers, who, unless perfectly well versed in the old French language, would be fatigued and disgusted with it,” and he determined to employ the modernized version, "first on account of the difficulty, we had almost said impossibility, of reading the text of the edition of 1761, and, secondly, on account of the necessity of preserving that of Du Cange, in order to add his remarks and observations, which cannot be detached from it." (Vol. I. p. 3.) The Colonel's learning was not superior to his taste. He greatly exaggerates the difficulties of the original, which are seldom insurmountable by any one who has a fair knowledge of French, with the help of a glossary of obsolete words; and although he chose the easier and modernized version, he falls frequently into amusing blunders. Thus, in a passage describing the landing on the shore near Damietta, Joinville says: "Les Sarrazins envoierent au soudane par coulons messagiers par trois fois que le roy estoit arrivé," "The Saracens sent to the Sultan by carrier-pigeons three times that the King had arrived," which Colonel Johnes translates, "A messenger called Coullon was sent thrice to the Sultan of the Saracens to inform him of the arrival of the King of France." A book not rarer than Cotgrave's fine old Dictionary might have spared

The book begins with an account of its origin, in a dedication to Louis le Hutin, the great-grandson of the Saint:

"To his good Lord Louis, son of the King of France, by the grace of God King of Navarre, Count Palatine of Champaigne and of Brie, John, Sire de Joinville, his Seneschal of Champaigne, offers greeting, and love, and honor, and his ready service. Dear Lord, I give you to know that Madame the Queen, your mother, who loved me much, and to whom may God give good reward, begged me as earnestly as she could that I should make a book of the holy words and of the good deeds of our king, Saint Louis, and I promised them to her, and by the aid of God the book is finished in two parts.

"The first part tells how he governed himself all his life according to the will of God, and according to the Church, and to the profit of his kingdom.

"The second part of the book speaks of his great chivalries and his great deeds of arms.'

St. Louis was born on the 25th of April, the day of St. Mark, 1215. His father, Louis VIII., died when he was but eleven years old, leaving the sole charge of him to his mother, Blanche of Castile, a queen not less by nature than by station. Beautiful in person and vigorous in mind, understanding how to hold and to use authority, she not only governed the kingdom well during the long minority of her son, but exercised over him the tenderest and most watchful motherly care. His character was moulded by her, and the relations that existed between mother and son, as long as she lived, were of unusual closeness and devotion. "As to his soul, during his childhood, God guarded him by the good teachings of his mother, for she taught him to believe in God and to love him. And he was wont to relate that his mother had sometimes told him she would rather he should die than that he should commit a mortal sin." (p. 23.) By prudence and boldness she repressed the jealous and turbulent barons of the realm, who, him this odd mistake, by showing him that coulon was but an old form of colombe. His translation gives no idea of the charm and spirit of the original. It has been reprinted by Bohn, London, 1848, as part of a volume of his Antiquarian Library, entitled "Chronicles of the Crusades." A good translation into English of the original would make a delightful book for such readers as are disinclined to take the required trouble to read Joinville's own words.