regner ceux qui, plus faibles ou mieux eclairés, auraient fini par consentir à se soumettre au vou general. Ily avait cercle tous les soirs chez la duchesse favorite; là on ne soutenait que la thèse dangereuse de la résistance, là on faisait jurer a la noblesse de ne céder jamais, on lui montrait la perte de tous ses avantages comme la consequence infaillible d'un rapprochement avec les tiers, on lui faisait envisager la gloire qu'il y aurait pour elle à ne pas se mêler à des vilains; le sort de la France, de la cour, de la monarchie est dans vos mains, disait-on, montrez-vous dignes de vos pères, et songez que vous forlignerez du jour où vous fraterniserez avec la bourgeoisie."—Vol i. p. 401. Thus were the seeds of hatred and malice industriously sown by those who knew not if they were doing right or wrong; and women, instead of devoting themselves to those domestic duties, in the performance of which alone they shine, were seen enticing or goading their husbands, sons and lovers to civil contest!. And they acted a similar though worse part after the flight of the princes from France. Instead of basely leaving their country and their king in the bloody hands of their enemies, it was the duty of the nobles and gentry to endeavour to stop the torrent of jacobinical misrule by uniting and breasting the storm. Had this been done, the horrors of the revolution might have been avoided, and a salutary reform of grievances attained. As a body they were decidedly more numerous than the jacobins; but instead of joining together their strength to save the state, each endeavoured to save himself: individually brave, says our author, none of them would have refused to expose his life in a duel, yet, as a body, they acted like cowards. "The women, who have always pushed us on to the commission of all sorts of folly, took it into their heads to force all the gentlemen to emigrate, and they employed the numerous resources which their influence gives them, to effect this purpose, which was culpable, as soon as the king was threatened. The stupid vanity of the courtiers made them believe that their absence would annihilate the nation; that the populace would regard themselves as lost when their great lords had abandoned them! Another suicidal calculation was the disorganization of the army by depriving it of its officers, &c. Les femmes furent celles qui firent le plus de mal a la famille royale, par l'exageration de leurs sentiments. Elles ne voulaient reconnaître pour gentilshommes françois que ceux qui passaient à l'etrange; on n'etait chevalier que lorsque l'on prenait la fuite, et pour avoir de l'honneur a leurs yeux, il fallait necessairement porter les armes contre sa patrie. Madame de Saint Ch- à l'entendre, ne prenait des amants que pour les contraindre à quitter la France, &c. J'ai connu une dame de Suval qui dit à sa fille unique, préte à se marier: Mon enfant, prends patience, envoie ton future de l'autre coté du Rhin faire une campagne, tu l'epouseras au retour; mais s'il persiste à demeurer, je vous refuse ma benediction, et je ne vous verrai jamais.' Ce n'etait pas la seule folle de ce genre. Combien n'avons-nous pas entendu des femmes dire aux hommes de leur societé : 'Que faites-vous ici? votre place est auprès des princes.' et du Louis XVI pas un mot; personne ne songeait à lui envoyer des defenseurs; on cherchait au contraire à le ravir par tous les moyens possibles." &c.-Vol. i. p. 481. Let us now take a view of some of the distinguished individuals as they appeared to our peer in the various periods of his long life. In the eighteenth year of his age, whilst he was at college at Paris, his uncle wished him introduced to Voltaire, who had lately arrived in the city, where his presence created a great sensation among all ranks. His name and writings were in every mouth, and no one spoke of him but in terms of the highest admiration. His fame had made a profound impression upon the imagination of our young peer, who trembled at the thought of encountering so extraordinary a personage. He had seen his portrait and figured him in his own mind as of a large person, handsome in his old age, with a dignified mien, and a dress like all the world. "Imagine my disappointment when I found myself facing, not a man but rather a skeleton, with its bones barely covered with a black and wrinkled skin. His face was horribly meagre, his mouth seemed cleft to the ears; he had no teeth and a sardonic grin dwelt perpetually on his pale and thin lips; his eyes shot flames: I have retained, to this hour, the extraordinary expression they produced on me; they were two diamonds, two resplendent carbuncles; he had also in those eyes, genius, wit, malice, observation-the more you examined them the more evident it appeared that they could only belong to one elevated by nature above the common race of man. "The patriarch of Ferney seemed bent; his arms were long and meagre his hands pale-his fingers bony: his small head was covered with a huge wig, almost after the fashion of Louis XIV, on which he had a cap of black velvet fastened by a red ribbon: he wore breeches of red velvet garnished with gold lace; red silk stockings rolled over the knee, and square-toed shoes with diamond buckles-he had a vest of gold brocade, a velvet coat like the breeches, and over all a magnificent rose-coloured robe de chamber lined with white fur, which had been given him by the Empress of Russia; the whole certainly formed a most whimsical costume, but it was not unbecoming to M. de Voltaireone would have been almost sorry to find him like other people; it was necessary that even his exterior should distinguish him from others. "I hung back behind my uncle, hardly daring to advance, and more curious to examine the great man, than desirous to speak to him-my great apprehension was lest he should address me. I was wrapped in most respectful admiration, when my uncle, taking me by the hand, presented me according to rule. Voltaire praised my figure, and inquired where I was in my studies. I am in rhetoric,' said I, trembling เ as well as blushing; he perceived it, and assuming a pleasant air, said, 'I make you afraid?' 'No, sir, but you annihilate me!' This word appeared to flatter him. He resumed 'they only make you acquainted, I presume, with Greek or Latin authors?" We learn, by heart, the choicest parts of the modern fine geniuses, Racine, Corneille and Voltaire,' added I, stammering. Your nephew is a very genteel young man,' said he, with an air of content, which I attributed to my little flattery. Other visiters arrrived, and we took our leave, my uncle quite puffed up with his nephew, and I very much satisfied with the interview." Voltaire died a very few months after this. Our peer was subsequently introduced to a crowd of men of letters and distinguished persons. He says "Marmontel was the first I remarked at my uncle's, and he was also the first to displease me: he had a dry, sharp tone of voice-he mistook jeering for wit, and had the ridiculous affectation of crying down the fine geniuses of the age of Louis XIV.; he, without doubt, hoped that if he could dethrone them, he might usurp their places: this calculation failed; for in spite of all the Marmontels past, present and future, the homage due to Boileau and Racine will never cease, whilst the author of the Tales designated as moral, begins to fall into the deep oblivion in which the last edition of his works has been plunged." These remarks are not in the most pleasing strain, nor do we think them deserved. Marmontel certainly writes with simplicity, taste and naiveté. Some of his tales are delightful; and his Memoirs contain touches that would do honour to any writer. That he was profligate and heartless, we regret to say is true, but it is saying no more than that he resembled his associates of the day; and on this our author is silent; but the man who could, by his pen, raise himself in the Augustan age of France, from poverty to affluence, from the mud cabin of the peasant to an intimacy with the lords and ladies of the palace, was no ordinary person. We believe that it is probable that in the present day, when one-half of the world is catering after novelty for the voracious literary appetite of the other, Marmontel may be laid on the shelf; and so may many others of superior merit: but the substance of their works will not be lost; it will gradually transmigrate into other volumes, and continue to delight and instruct mankind. "A more favourable opinion of him (continues our author) was entertained in 1784. He, with La Harpe, occupied the first rank in literature; but La Harpe did not like him, and the compliment was returned. Oh what an excellent personage was this little Monsieur de La Harpe! Eaten up with envy, enraged with all his contemporaries, he followed a different route from Marmontel, although at bottom he held the same opinions: he had undertaken the task of exalting the dead beyond measure, in order to depreciate the merit of the living. To be entitled to his esteem, it was necessary to be duly and faithfully buried: his eulogies were but funeral orations; his satires were constantly addressed to those whose rivalry he feared: by only glancing at him you would discover that the consciousness of his own merit was suffocating him vanity exuded from all his pores; he thought himself great-a genius: the dullest could observe this inflation of self-love, and you could not help repeating to yourself when you had La Harpe before you, the epigram of Le Brun, at once so just and so malignant 'Si vous voulez faire au plutôt Une fortune immense, et pourtant legitime, "This writer, though destitute of imagination and sensibility, did not, however, want taste, and he held the sceptre of criticism; in the Mercure, he dissected the best established reputations, on which his scalpel always made some gashes more or less deep; he granted favour to po one. 'He is,' said the Abbé Delille, 'what I have found out too late to my sorrow; a cross dog that is constantly biting, and would still bite when he no longer has teeth.' La Harpe was insupportable by the pretension he manifested to direct the conversation; it must, whatever it might be on, only move in the circle which he described with a despotie superiority, which could scarcely be endured." Vol. i. p. 89. His notice too of Le Brun is very well, and contains a pleasant anecdote, conveying a useful lesson to satirists. "Le Brun, our first lyric poet, if warmth, enthusiasm and impetuosity of ideas, united to a rich and uncommon versification, confer the right to such a rank, used to visit my uncle; but not on days of great entertainment, because he would then have been met by a crowd of persons whom he would have incessantly wounded by his epigrams. He dined with us at our small parties, and then he was amiable. Notwithstanding this, his presence froze the guests and even the host. They knew that nothing could screen them from his sanguinary lash; he was the person that Boileau has rendered so conspicuous. "A thousand traits of this kind are told, which are not very honourable to Le Brun; still they received him in society: whether it was that they regarded him as a modern Aretin whom they hoped to disarm by obliging conduct, a kind of tribute they willingly paid, or that the pleasure of seeing him strike others, removed the apprehension of being wounded in turn. It happened, however, on one occasion, I saw him embarrassed. One day at my uncle's, a young officer, M. de Berblont, continued to tell, for a quarter of an hour at least, and without any one being able to change the subject, how his friend and himself had beaten a provincial poet, who took on himself the task of making verses on his regiment, (at that period this was for gentlemen a species of vengeance de bon ton against a man who was not well born.) Le Brun was obliged to endure, whether he would or not, an attack on those wretched scrib blers who put their insults in verse, and who, according to our young officer, ought to be chased ignominiously from the houses they contaminate by their presence. He said he held them in such aversion, that without knowing them, and without their doing any thing to him personally, he would take pleasure in boxing their ears wherever he met them. "It may well be imagined in what an embarrassment we all were in the presence of Le Brun, who, on his side, was not at his ease; he did not reply, but kept a profound silence: he took his departure immediately after coffee, and in a month after, when he re-appeared at my uncle's, he asked what had become of Captain Bobadil? He has gone to his province, was the reply. Le Brun then drew from his pocket a biting epigram against the young officer: he read it to us, and as he finished, I approached and said to him, with a malice he well merited, M. Le Brun, do you know before M. de Berblont went away, he asked for your address? Grand Dieu! Of whom?'' of M. de La Harpe.' The scoundrel has given it him!' 'He seemed to wish, on his return, to become acquainted with you, for he told me he should pay you a visit.' "Le Brun became sick with fright: he hastily took back his epigram, and two days after, he brought us an ode in honour of the regiment in which M. de Berblont served, who, by the by, never came back again. The poet had his labour for his baseness." Vol. i. p. 91. Of Madame de Genlis, our author has nothing good to say. He refuses to admit her assertion in the third volume of her Memoirs, that the poet Chenier was in love with her. He says Chenier used to tell, with a foolish laugh, that he had on one occasion been obliged to play the part of Joseph; and that one evening being at the house of a certain lady, who was honoured, as she herself has said, by the particular kindness of the Duke of Orleans, the unexpected arrival of the prince compelled him to suffer himself to be concealed in a great armoire, whose size and convenient openings for air, would make one believe it was made for such purposes; but he protested, and our author says he may be believed, that he had no intimacy (accord) with the lady, and was an entire stranger to the imprudencies by which she awakened the jealousy of her most high and mighty protector. She never pardoned Chenier, whatever his offences might have been, but pursued him with all the rancour of an enraged and unforgiving woman. Our author was, he says, well acquainted with her, and he sketches a likeness of her very different from her own. He says he was shocked at the ruinous condition of every thing about her, and the little care she took of her person. She was an incessant babbler, and would suffer no one to put in a word. He saw her several times in the course of his life, and she was always the same. Her conversation, which she could have made interesting, flowed continu |