circle from the subject. When Madame de Staël published her celebrated novel of Delphine, she was supposed to have painted herself in the person of the heroine, and M. Talleyrand in that of an elderly lady, who is one of the principal characters. "On me dit (said he, the first time he met her) que nous sommes tous les deux dans votre roman, déguisés en femme." Rulhieres, the celebrated author of the work on the Polish revolution, having said, "Je n'ai fait qu'un mechanceté de ma vie;" "Et quand finira-t-elle ?" was M. Talleyrand's reply. "Genève est ennuyeuse, n'est-ce pas ?" asked a friend; "Surtout quand on s'y amuse," was the answer. "Elle est insupportable" (said he, with marked emphasis, of one well known; but as if he had gone too far, and to take off something of what he had laid on, he added) "Elle n'a que ce defaut-là." 66 · Ah, je sens les tourmens d'enfer," said a person whose life had been supposed to be somewhat of the loosest. "Déjà ?" was the inquiry suggested to M. Talleyrand. Nor ought we to pass over the only mot that ever will be recorded of Charles X., uttered on his return to France in 1814, on seeing, like our second Charles at a similar reception, that the adversaries of his family had disappeared, "Il n'y a qu'un Francais de plus." This was the suggestion of M. Talleyrand. He afterwards proposed, in like manner, to Charles's successor, that the foolish freaks of the Duchesse de Berri should be visited with this rescript to her and her faction-" Madame, il n'y a plus d'espoir pour vous, Vous serez jugé, condamnée, et graciée.' Of his temper and disposition in domestic life, it remains to speak; and nothing could be more perfect than these. If it be true, which is, however, more than questionable, that a life of public business hardens the heart; if this be far more certainly the tendency of a life much checkered with various fortune; if he is * Certainly it came naturally to him it is, however, not original. The Cardinal de Retz's physician is said to have made a similar exclamation on a like occasion:-Déjà, Monseigneur ?" almost certain to lose his natural sympathies with mankind, who has in his earliest years tasted the bitter cup of cruel and unnatural treatment, commended to his lips by the hands that should have cherished him; if, above all, a youth of fashionable dissipation and intrigue, such as M. Talleyrand, like most of our own great men, undeniably led, has, in almost every instance, been found to eradicate the softer domestic feelings, and to plant every selfish weed in the cold soil of a neglected bosom-surely it is no small praise of his kindly and generous nature, that we are entitled to record how marked an exception he formed to all these rules. While it would be a foolish and a needless exaggeration to represent him as careless of his own interest, or ambition, or gratification, at any period of his life, it is nevertheless quite true that his disposition continued to the last gentle and kindly; that he not only entertained throughout the tempest of the revolutionary anarchy the strongest abhorrence of all violent and cruel deeds, but exerted his utmost influence in mitigating the excesses which led to them in others; that his love of peace in all its blessed departments, whether tranquillity at home, or amity and good will abroad, was the incessant object of his labours; that, in domestic life, he was of a peculiarly placid temper, and full of warm and steady affections. His aversion to all violent courses was, indeed, in some instances, carried to a length which prevented his wonted calmness of judgment, and his constant and characteristic love of justice even when an adversary was concerned, from having their free scope. He never could speak with patience of Carnôt, for having continued, during the reign of terror, to serve and to save his country by directing the war which defended her against Europe in arms;-forgetting how much less could be urged for his own conduct under the profligate and tyrannical directory of 1797 and 1798, under the conscriptions of Napoleon, and under the military occupation of the Allies-even admitting his predominant de sire to prevent anarchy and conquest-than might most fairly be offered in defence of that illustrious republican's inflexible and uncompromising, though stern and undaunted virtue. NAPOLEON.-WASHINGTON. AFTER Lafayette had quitted the armies of the Republic, defaced by the crimes of 1792, and Carnôt himself, long the director of their marvellous achievements, and standing by his country in spite of all the excesses by which she was disfigured, had at length been driven from her side by the evil men that swayed her destinies, victory, long, so familiar to the French people, was for a season estranged from them, and the period of their conquests seemed at last to have arrived. A new and yet more triumphant course was then begun, under the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte, certainly the most extraordinary person who has appeared in modern times, and to whom, in some respects, no parallel can be found if we search the whole annals of the human race. For though the conquests of Alexander were more extensive, and the matchless character of Cæsar was embellished by more various accomplishments, and the invaders of Mexico and Peru worked their purposes of subjugation with far more scanty means, yet the military genius of the Great Captain shines with a lustre peculiarly its own, or which he shares with Hannibal alone, when we reflect that he never had to contend, like those conquerors, with adversaries inferior to himself in civilization or discipline, but won all his triumphs over hosts as well ordered and regularly marshalled and amply provided as his own. This celebrated man was sprung from a good family in Corsica, and while yet a boy fixed the attention and raised the hopes of all his connections. In his early youth his military genius shone forth; he soon gained the summit of his profession; he commanded at twentyfive a military operation of a complicated and difficult nature in Paris: being selected for superior command |