A DISSERTATION OM JOINVIIIE'S LIFE OP ST. LOUIS. By M. le Baron de ία Boitte. Τ η life of St. Louis, written by the lord de Joinville, has always been considered ss one of the most procione monuments of our history ; and as a work that contains many of those qualifications which we are accustomed to wiah for in the lires of private persons. The author was of very considerable rank by his birth, bis connections, his employments, and still more from his personal merit He had not only lived under the reign of the prince whose life he has written, but was moreover personally attached to him for twenty-two years, and, by consequently following him in his expeditions, had participated in the most important eventa of nia reign. The air of candour and good faith that accompanies his recitals prejudices the reader in his favour ; the scrupulous attention he shews not to mention mets of which he was not a witness, end only to touch on such ss he relates from the report of others, ss his history requires ; this attention, I repeat, ought to convince us, that the lord de Joinville had no other intention than to transmit to posterity nothing but what he was perfectly well informed of. His history is not, like the greater part of the chronicles of those times, a simple recital of what passed in France and elsewhere during the reign of St. Louis ; it makes us intimately acquainted with that monarch : it gives ne a just idea of his heart and head, and paints equally well the great man, the great saint, and the great king. The friendship and confidence with which St. Louis honoured the lord de Joinville ; the intimate familinrity, if I may be allowed the expression, to which he had admitted him, have famished many curious details, which, although improper for a general history, are not the lew agreeable or instructive, since they more distinctly display the characters of the principal persons whom the historian successively offers to our view. So many interesting motives to the French will not suffer them to see with indifference the attempt that has been made to tear from their hands one of their principal historians, by endeavouring to make the history of the lord de Joinville pam for a romance, not composed till the fifteenth century. For upwards of two hundred years, when it was first printed, no one had ever thought of suspecting its authenticity, when an unjust criticism appeared in the posthumous works of a learned man (Jo. Hardonin), more celebrated, however, for the singularity of his ideas, than for the extent of his erudition. He maintains, that die Life of St. Louis, generally attributed to the lord de Joinville, is the work of an author very much posterior to him, who has forged the name of the supposed author of it. I peas over these objections in silence ; they will have no weight, until it shall be granted that the greater part of ecclesiastical and profane authors have been supposititious writers.