Madame Louise of France. By the Author of Tales of
Kirkbeck. (Rivington.)—This is an adaptation and condensation of a longer French life, and makes a book sufficiently interesting and readable ; sometimes ex- citing a smile that may or may not be intended ; sometimes truly pathetic. Madame Louise was the youngest daughter of Louis XV; an accident to her in childhood caused a deformity (said to be alight, but described by herself as "a hump "), which probably had something to do with her choice of a religious life. Nothing could be more likely, we should think, though the biographer scorns to admit so worldly a motive. There are some charming little stories of the Princess's childhood, as this of her first confession, when she accused herself of having wished to- have been born a Turk out of vanity ; the vanity being the desire to make an heroic conversion of herself to Christianity. The desire for self-mortification soon developed itself. She would eat no dishes that she loved, and distracted the cooks by her seeming daintiness ; an im- putation which she bore as an additional mortification. Next she inured herself to the smell of tallow candles, which was peculiarly hateful to her. She procured the dips by stealth, would light them as- soon as her attendants had left her. At last she resolved to enter a convent, and with some difficulty persuaded her father to give his. consent. She chose the severe order of the Carmelites, on which she had set her heart from the beginning ; and increased the merit of the. choice by selecting one of the poorest of the houses belonging to it. The great difficulty she now had to encounter was to be treated as an. ordinary inmate, and not as a Daughter of France. She could not, it is. evident, get her way entirely, but she was quite in earnest about it, and felt that every little mortification that was spared to her was so much loss. There are some amusing things about the King, who, indeed, appears in a more amiable light than we have ever seen him before ; how, for instance, when his daughter asked for a dress in which she. might do scullery-work he sent a robe of pink taffoty silk, in which, by the way, she set about cleaning the outside of the saucepans, &a. We can scarcely say that the book gives one a higher idea of cloister life; it makes it seem, on the contrary, very small ; but Madame Louise was- evidently a good, gentle creature, not without some talent for govern- ing others. Happily for herself, she died before the Revolution.
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