CHAPTER X

.

Reign of Louis XV. continued—The Bull Unigenitus—A Notary Public—G. N. Nivelle—G. C. Buffard—Death of Deacon Paris—Rise, progress, and acts, of the Convulsionaries—Persecution of them, and artifices employed by them to foil their persecutors—Lenglet Dufresnoy—La Beaumelle—F. de Marsy—Marmontel—The Abbé Morellet—Mirabeau the elder—The Chevalier Resseguier—Groubendal and Dulaurens—Robbé de Beauveset—Mahé de la Bourdonnais—Count Lally—La Chalotais—Marin—Durosoi—Prévost de Beaumont—Barletti St. Paul—Dumouriez.

Religious intolerance, on the one hand, and disgusting fanaticism, on the other, contributed largely to swell the number of captives in the Bastile, and in other places of confinement. For many years after Pope Clement XI., at the instigation of the bigoted Le Tellier and Louis XIV., had thrown among the clergy of the Gallican church that ecclesiastical firebrand the bull Unigenitus, it continued to spread the flames of fierce contention, hatred, and persecution. The first individual for whom the bull found an abode in a prison was, I believe, a notary public. While the regency was held by the Duke of Orleans, the bishops of Mirepoix, Senez, Montpellier, and Boulogne, had the boldness to sign an act, protesting against the bull, and appealing from the pope to a future council; and, accompanied by a notary, they solemnly presented this act to the assembled Sorbonne. As to have imprisoned the four bishops would scarcely have been politic, they were only ordered to retire to their dioceses; the notary, of whom a scape-goat could more conveniently be made, was sent to the Bastile.

Backed by power, the supporters of the bull were finally triumphant, and they did not fail to make the vanquished party experience the consequence of being defeated by men who did not consider forbearance as a virtue. It would be useless to dwell upon the many appellants who were chastised for having ventured to doubt the pontifical infallibility, and insist on referring the question in dispute to a future council; I will, therefore, only make mention of two individuals.

Among those who were most active in opposing the bull Unigenitus, and who, consequently, were proscribed by its champions, was Gabriel Nicholas Nivelle; he was indefatigable in drawing up memorials and tracts, and soliciting appeals against it. He more than once contrived to elude his pursuers; but, in 1730, he was taken and committed to the Bastile, where he remained for four months. His zeal was, however, rather excited than cooled by this imprisonment; and, till his decease in 1761, when he was in his seventy-fourth year, he continued to be a determined opponent of the bull. Nivelle edited several voluminous works relative to the contest in which his party was engaged; the principal of which, in four folio volumes, bears the title of The Constitution Unigenitus denounced to the Universal Church, or a General Collection of the Acts of Appeal.

Equally hostile to the bull, and equally persecuted by its victorious friends, was Gabriel Charles Buffard, a native of Bayeux, who was born in 1683. He was rector of the university of Caen, and canon of Bayeux; but was expelled from his offices, and banished out of the diocese, in 1722. Buffard settled at Paris, where he was not long allowed to remain in quiet. He was conveyed to the Bastile, and, after having been there for some time, he was exiled to Auxerre. From Auxerre he was speedily dragged to suffer another imprisonment in the Bastile. Fortunately, he found a protector in Cardinal des Gesvres, through whose intercession he was set at liberty. Buffard thenceforth lived in retirement, and gained a subsistence by giving opinions as a chamber counsel, and by assisting young scholars in the study of the canon law. He died in 1763.

It was an opinion of Bishop Butler, the celebrated author of The Analogy of Religion, that “whole communities and public bodies might be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals;” and, indeed, that “nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity, equally at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those transactions which we read of in history.” Singular as, at first sight, this opinion may appear to be, there are many circumstances which ought to induce us to pause, before we reject it as erroneous. The strange scenes, for instance, which took place among the Jansenists,—scenes arising out of the death of the deacon Paris,—may almost authorize a belief, that large bodies of individuals can be simultaneously smitten with monomania, or at least can communicate it to each other with wonderful rapidity.

Francis Paris, a strenuous opponent of the bull Unigenitus, was the son of a French counsellor. Pious, humble, and benevolent, Paris relinquished to his brother all claim to the paternal succession, renounced the world, lived by the labour of his own hands, and spent his leisure moments in prayer, and in succouring, consoling, and instructing the poor. His modest estimate of his own abilities deterred him from taking holy orders. He died on the 1st of May, 1727, and was buried in the church-yard of St. Medard. Many of those to whom he had been a comforter and guide, looked upon him as a beatified being, and came to pray at his tomb. Among the number were many females. Rumours soon began to be spread, that miracles were worked by the influence of the sainted defunct; sight was said to be restored, and contracted limbs extended to their full longitude. Multitudes now flocked to the sacred ground. Then ensued, especially among the women, contortions and convulsive movements, attended by cries, shrieks, and groans, all of which were regarded as manifestations of divine power. All convulsive movements are catching, and consequently, the number of persons who displayed them at St. Medard, increased daily to an enormous extent. The jargon which was uttered by the convulsionaries, during their paroxysms, was next supposed to be the language of prophecy; and a whole volume of it was actually published, under the title of “A Collection of Interesting Predictions.” Before, however, we laugh at our Gallic neighbours for such folly, it may be well to remember some things which have happened in England, within the last quarter of a century.

After these practices had gone on, with hourly increasing vigour, for some years, the government closed the church-yard of St. Medard, which was become the theatre of exhibitions calculated to mislead the weak-minded, and disgust men of sound intellect. But the sect of the convulsionaries—for it had by this time grown into a strong and regularly organized sect,—was not discouraged by this measure. Earth from the church-yard where the deacon Paris was interred, and water from the spring which had supplied him with drink, became the symbols of this buried idol, and the means of working miracles. Meetings were held in private houses, and there fanaticism, of the darkest, wildest kind, gave full scope to all its gloomy inspirations. A regular system of torture was practised by the deluded votaries; women being the principal sufferers. To be beaten with logs on the tenderest portions of the human frame; to bend the body into a semi-circular form, and allow a weight of fifty pounds to be dropped from the ceiling on to the abdomen; to lie with a plank on the same part, while several men stood on it; to be tied up with the head downwards; and to have the breasts and nipples torn with pincers; were among the inflictions to which females submitted, and apparently with delight. The blows were inflicted by vigorous young men, who were called Secouristes. The highly sublimed madness of some pushed them to still more dreadful extremities; it prompted them to be tied on spits, and exposed to the flames, or to be nailed by the hands and feet to a cross. The performance of these unnatural acts was denominated “the work.”

The Convulsionaries did not form a homogeneous body; as was to be expected, they were split into parties, bearing various appellations, and being, in some instances, hostile to each other. There were the Vaillantistes, the Augustinians, the Melangistes, the Margoullistes, the Figuristes, and many more. The Vaillantistes took their name from Peter Vaillant, a priest, who taught that the prophet Elijah was resuscitated, and that he would appear on earth, to convert the Jews and the court of Rome. His disciple, Housset, maintained that Vaillant himself was the prophet. Darnaud, another priest, boldly assumed the character of the prophet Enoch. The Augustinians, who carried their fanaticism to such a pitch that they were looked upon as heretical by other convulsionary sects, were the followers of a friar of the name of Augustin. Among their peculiar follies, was that of making nocturnal processions, with torches in their hands, and halters round their necks, to Nôtre Dame, and thence to the place de Grêve; these processions were a sort of rehearsal of the tragic scene in which they expected they should ultimately be called upon to perform. The Melangistes were those who distinguished two causes producing convulsions; one which gave rise to useless or improper acts, another which inspired divine and supernatural acts. The tenets of the Margoullistes have not been handed down to us. The Figuristes were so called from their representing, in their convulsive paroxysms, various phases of the passion of Christ, and the martyrdom of the saints.

The fierce enthusiasm of all these sectarians has never been exceeded. Like American Indians, they set at defiance the utmost severity of pain. Even slight stimulus would rouse them into violent action. “I have seen them,” says Voltaire, “when they were talking of the miracles of St. Paris, grow heated by degrees, till their whole frame trembled, their faces were disfigured by rage, and they would have killed whoever dared to contradict them. Yes, I have seen them writhe their limbs, and foam, and cry out ‘There must be blood!’” Not the slightest concession would they make to avoid punishment. A pardon was offered to several of them, who were sentenced to the pillory; they refused it, for they could not, they said, repent of having done right. No lapse of time could eradicate this feeling from their minds. In 1775, when M. de Malesherbes visited the Concièrgerie, he found there a male and a female convulsionary, who had been imprisoned for forty-one years. Age had not chilled in them the resentment which was excited by their wrongs. He offered them liberty, if they would only ask for it; but they firmly replied, that they had been unjustly detained, and that it was the business of justice to atone for its errors, and to give the reparation to which they were entitled. They were released.

It must not be imagined that the sect of the convulsionaries consisted merely of poor and ignorant people. Such was not the case. Strange as the fact may appear, the sect included great numbers of pious, learned, and intellectual men. Very many rich individuals also belonged to it, and contributed to the maintenance of their less fortunate brethren. A Count Daverne was sent to the Bastile “for wasting his property in supporting the convulsionaries;” and the same crime brought a similar penalty on other individuals. That there were, however, numerous impostors, who pretended to espouse the doctrines of the sect in order to further their own purposes, admits of no doubt. There were men who gave regular lessons in the art of bringing on convulsions.

A hot persecution was perseveringly carried on against this sect, and with the usual result; the sect throve in spite of it, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of it. For five-and-thirty years it mocked all attempts to exterminate it, and it did not begin to decline till it was left to the withering influence of ridicule and neglect. It is believed to have retained a few votaries even to a recent period. The Bastile and the other Parisian prisons were yearly crowded with convulsionaries. Of those who were confined in the Bastile, one of the earliest was Peter Vaillant, from whom the Vaillantistes derived their name. He had previously suffered there an imprisonment of three years, for his opposition to the bull Unigenitus. In 1734, he was again sent thither, and, after having been there for two-and-twenty years, he was transferred to Vincennes, where he died. Housset, his disciple; Darnaud, who called himself the prophet Enoch; the Abbé Blondel, author of Lives of the Saints; the Abbés Deffart, Planchon, and Deribat; Lequeux, prior of St. Yves, the learned editor of Bossuet’s works; and Carré de Montgeron, a counsellor of the parliament of Paris; were of the number of those who were sent to the Bastile. Montgeron was born in the French capital, in 1686, and we have his own word for it that, till he was suddenly converted in St. Médard’s church-yard, he was a thoroughly worthless unbeliever. By a natural transition, he became one of the most credulous and enthusiastic of dupes. In 1737, he printed a quarto volume, illustrated with twenty plates, “to demonstrate the truth of the miracles operated by the intercession of the beatified Paris.” This volume he presented to Louis XV. at Versailles, and the next day, by order of the monarch, he was conveyed to the Bastile. He was afterwards an inmate of various prisons, and died at last in the citadel of Valence. While he was in confinement, he added two more volumes to his rhapsody.

In hunting down the humbler class of delinquents, the police found abundant employment, and they performed their task in the most oppressive manner. Hénault, the lieutenant of police, an irascible and unreasoning man, was an ardent partisan of the Jesuits, and, of course, was a violent enemy of the proscribed sect. His myrmidons spread terror in all directions. They are charged with having, “even in the dead of night, penetrated into the dwellings of individuals, scaled the walls, broken open the doors, and shown no respect to age or sex, when their object was to discover, imprison, consign to the pillory, banish, and ruin, those who favoured the convulsionaries.” It was dangerous to be subject to epileptic or other fits; persons who were attacked by them in the streets having been pitilessly hurried off to jail.

The vigilance of the police was also kept on the stretch, and in a majority of cases was eluded, by the prints, posting-bills, pamphlets, and periodical writings of the convulsionaries, as well as by their secret meetings. Of the prints, one represented the tree of religion, in the branches of which were seated Quesnel, Paris, and other apostles of Jansenism, while two Jesuits were striving to root it up. For this, a rhymer and engraver, Cointre by name, was committed to the Bastile. In another, Archbishop Vintimille was seen throwing a stone at the sainted deacon Paris, and the lieutenant of police was holding the archiepiscopal cross, and stimulating the prelate. This print procured for Mercier, the vender of it, a place in the Bastile. In a third of these caricatures was depicted the pope larded with a dozen Jesuits.

In placarding the walls, and distributing hand-bills, all sorts of stratagems were employed. The following is one of the most ingenious modes which was adopted by the bill-stickers. A woman, raggedly dressed, with a large pannier strapped on her back, leaned her pannier against the wall, as though she wished to rest herself. In the pannier was a child, who, as soon as she stopped, opened the cover, and fixed a bill on the wall. As soon as his task was performed he closed the aperture, and his bearer proceeded with him to another convenient place. The bills and short pamphlets, which were made public in this and other ways, were innumerable. In the library of the Duke de la Vallière, there was an imperfect collection of them, which formed thirteen quarto volumes. Most of them seem to have been printed in the environs of the capital; they were often brought into the city by females, and in searching for them, the police officers were guilty of the grossest indecency.

But the great object which the police sought to obtain, and in which it was utterly foiled, was the suppression of a periodical publication which bore the title of Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques. This obnoxious work was vigorously continued for more than twenty years, without the government being able to lay hands on the writers, or to stop the printing and distributing of it. Many persons were, indeed, committed to the Bastile and other prisons, on suspicion of being its editors or contributors, but no positive proof could ever be procured. The police were wholly at fault; and the authors of the paper appear to have taken a provoking pleasure in showing the lieutenant of police their contempt of his efforts. In one instance, while his satellites were fruitlessly searching a house which was suspected of being the printing-office, a bundle of the papers, wet from the press, was thrown into his carriage almost before his face. The paper was sometimes printed in the city, and sometimes in the neighbourhood. At one time the press was secreted even under the dome of the Luxembourg; at another, it was hidden among piles of timber, and the printers were disguised as sawyers; on other occasions, it was contained in a boat on the Seine. When the paper was printed in the vicinity of Paris, various artifices were resorted to for smuggling it into the town, one of which deserves especial notice. Water-dogs were trained as carriers; they were closely shorn, the papers were wrapped round them, a large rough skin was then sewn carefully over the whole, and the sagacious animals then took their way, unsuspected, to their several destinations.

But enough has been said on the victims of religious delusion; and we must now turn our view to persons of a different class. The fertile author of little short of thirty works, and the editor of an equal number, nearly all of which are forgotten, Lenglet Dufresnoy, who was born at Beauvais in 1764, was perhaps a more frequent visiter to the Bastile than any other person. It is said that he was so accustomed to lettres de cachet, that as soon as he saw M. Tapin, the officer, enter his apartment, he would greet him with, “Ah, M. Tapin, good day to you;” and then say to his servant, “Come, be quick; make up my little bundle, and put in my linen and my snuff;” which being done, he would add, “Now, M. Tapin, I am at your service.” Between 1718 and 1751, he was at least five times in the Bastile. He was also acquainted with Vincennes and other jails. His first committal to the Parisian state prison was perhaps the one which was most dishonourable to him; he was sent there to act the part of a spy, and worm out the secrets of the persons who were in durance for being concerned in the Cellamare conspiracy. It is asserted, that he had already appeared in a similar degrading character at Lille, in 1708, where he was paid for intelligence by the allies and the French, and betrayed both parties. Lenglet was of a quarrelsome and caustic disposition, which involved him in personal disputes, and he appears to have paid little respect to truth; but he had at least one estimable quality, an unconquerable love of independence,—no offers, however flattering or lucrative, could prevail on him to place himself under the galling yoke of the rich and the great. His death, which took place in 1755, was occasioned by his falling into the fire while he was asleep.

The Bastile twice received Laurent Angliviel la Beaumelle, who was born in 1727, at Vallerangue, in Lower Languedoc. His first imprisonment, in 1753, which lasted six months, was caused by his Notes on the Age of Louis XIV.; for his second, in the following year, he was indebted to a passage in his Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, which charged the Austrian court with keeping poisoners in its pay. His release, at the end of five months, was generously obtained by the intercession of that court which he had so grossly insulted. La Beaumelle was brought up in the Catholic religion, but, during a residence of some years in Geneva, he became a protestant. At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed professor of French literature at Copenhagen, and his first work, “Mes Pensées,” was published in the Danish capital. Lured by the patronage which Frederic of Prussia held out to authors, La Beaumelle removed to Berlin. Voltaire, who was then at the Prussian court, visited him, and expressed a wish to be numbered among his friends; but their amicable intercourse was soon changed into deadly hostility. There was a short paragraph in Mes Pensées, which wounded the vanity of Voltaire, and La Beaumelle was also guilty of having a respect for Maupertuis, whom Voltaire detested, and missed no opportunity of ridiculing. The rabid hatred with which Voltaire ever after pursued his foe, and the virulent and even low abuse which he lavished on him, can excite only disgust. The malign influence of Voltaire having rendered Berlin a disagreeable abode, La Beaumelle returned to his native country. After having resided in peace at Toulouse for several years, he obtained a place in the King’s Library, at Paris, which, however, he did not long retain; his death, which happened in 1779, followed close upon his appointment. La Beaumelle had certainly no mean talents; and it is much to be regretted, that they were so often thrown away upon literary squabbles. Of his works, the best are Mes Pensées; a Defence of the Spirit of Laws; and Letters to M. de Voltaire.

The literary successor of La Beaumelle in the Bastile, was Francis de Marsy, a native of Paris, born in 1714. After he had finished his studies, he was admitted a member of the society of Jesuits. His first productions were two Latin poems, on Tragedy and Painting, from which,

## particularly the latter, he derived considerable reputation, his Latinity

being good, his versification flowing and spirited, and his imagery poetical. Encouraged perhaps by the praise which he received for these works, he became an author by profession, and wasted, in the ungrateful occupation of writing for booksellers, those talents which, otherwise employed, might have given him permanent fame. One of his tasks, an analysis of the works of Bayle, which he published in 1755, was condemned by the parliament of Paris, and made him, for some months, an inmate of the Bastile. He died in 1763. Among his works are the first twelve volumes of the History of the Chinese, Japanese, &c.; and an edition of Rabelais in eight volumes. The former is a hasty compilation; the latter he spoiled, by retouching and modernizing the style—it is probable, however, that the clothing of Rabelais in a modern garb was a sagacious scheme of the publishers.

To hazard censure upon an individual of the privileged class, or even to be suspected of having done so, was an infallible passport to the Bastile. That versatile and elegant writer Marmontel was one of those who were taught the danger of a courtier’s hostility. This enemy was the Duke d’Aumont, whom, in his Memoirs, he truly describes as being “the most stupid, the most vain, and the most choleric, of all the gentlemen of the King’s chamber.”

John Francis Marmontel, the son of parents in a humble station, was born in 1723, at the town of Bort, in the Limousin. He has drawn a delightful picture of the comfort and content in which his family lived. “The property on which we all subsisted was very small. Order, domestic arrangement, labour, a little trade, and frugality, kept us above want. Our little garden produced nearly as many vegetables as the consumption of the family required; the orchard afforded us fruits; and our quinces, our apples, and our pears, preserved with the honey of our bees, were, in winter, most exquisite breakfasts for the good old women and children. They were clothed by the small flock of sheep that folded at St. Thomas. My aunts spun the wool, and the hemp of the field that furnished us with linen; and in the evenings, when, by the light of a lamp, which our nut-trees supplied with oil, the young people of the neighbourhood came to help us to dress our flax, the picture was exquisite. The harvest of the little farm secured us subsistence; the wax and honey of the bees, to which one of my aunts carefully attended, formed a revenue that cost but little; the oil pressed from our green walnuts had a taste and smell that we preferred to the flavour and perfume of that of the olive. Our buck-wheat cakes, moistened, smoking hot, with the good butter of Mont d’Or, were a delicious treat to us. I know not what dish would have appeared to us better than our turnips and chesnuts; and on a winter evening, while these fine turnips were roasting round the fire, and we heard the water boiling in the vase where our chesnuts were cooling, so relishing and sweet, how did our hearts palpitate with joy! I well remember, too, the perfume that a fine quince used to exhale when roasting under the ashes, and the pleasure our grandmother used to have in dividing it amongst us. The most moderate of women made us all gluttons. Thus, in a family where nothing was lost, trivial objects united made plenty, and left but little to expend, in order to satisfy all our wants. In the neighbouring forest there was an abundance of dead wood of trifling value—there my father was permitted to make his annual provision. The excellent butter of the mountain, and the most delicate cheese, were common, and cost but little; wine was not dear, and my father himself drank of it soberly.”

Marmontel was designed by his father to be brought up to trade, but his desire of learning was unconquerable, and was at last allowed to be gratified. His early education he received from the Jesuits, at the humble college of Mauriac, and he completed it at Clermont and Toulouse. At one time he fancied that he had a vocation for the ecclesiastical state, and he would have become one of the fraternity of Jesuits, had he not been deterred by the pathetic entreaties and remonstrances of his mother. It was at Toulouse that he made his first literary essay, in a competition for one of the prizes bestowed by the academy for Floral Games. A correspondence into which he entered with Voltaire, induced the poet to advise him to take up his abode in Paris, and on this advice he acted in 1745. For a considerable time after his settling in the capital, he had to contend against poverty. The complete success which attended his tragedy of Dionysius the Tyrant, lifted him at once into fortune and fame. “In one day,” says he, “almost in one instant, I found myself rich and celebrated. I made a worthy use of my riches, but it was not so with my celebrity. My fame became the origin of my dissipation, and the source of my errors. Till then my life had been obscure and retired.” It is honourable to him that all his family benefited by his improved circumstances; and, in palliation of his errors, we must consider how difficult it was for a young and flattered poet to escape the contagious effect of a corrupted capital. He finally renounced his licentious habits, and became an affectionate and happy husband and father.

Dionysius was followed by Aristomenes, Cleopatra, and other tragedies, of which only Aristomenes was eminently successful. His wide-spread reputation at length gained for him the patronage of Madame de Pompadour, through whom he obtained the place of Secretary of the Royal Buildings, and a pension on the French Mercury. It was for the Mercury that he began those tales, which have been translated into English under the erroneous appellation of Moral Tales. On the death of Boissy in 1758, Marmontel, by the favour of Pompadour, received the patent of the Mercury; and, under his management, the work rose into high repute. He, however, enjoyed this lucrative employment for only two years. Cury, a wit, who had been deeply injured by the stupid and spiteful Duke d’Aumont, composed a satire on his titled enemy. He repeated the verses to Marmontel, and the latter, who had an excellent memory, repeated them to a company at Madame Geoffrin’s. This circumstance was instantly reported to the Duke d’Aumont, who lost not a moment in procuring a lettre de cachet, by virtue of which Marmontel was conveyed to the Bastile, charged with being the author of the satire. His confinement lasted only eleven days; but as he generously refused to betray the writer’s name, the patent of the Mercury was taken from him, and nothing was left to him except a pension payable out of the profits of the work.

In 1763, Marmontel became a member of the French Academy, and, twenty years later, he was appointed its perpetual secretary. After he was deprived of the Mercury, he pursued his literary labours, for many years, with equal vigour and credit. Among the works which he produced during that period are Belisarius, the Incas, a translation of the Pharsalia, a new series of tales, various comic operas, miscellaneous pieces, a History of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, Elements of Literature, and Memoirs of his own Life. During the fierce struggles between the republican parties, after the downfall of the throne, Marmontel lived in retirement, and in a state of penury which bordered upon poverty. He was elected a member of the council of elders, in 1797, but the revolution of the 18th Fructidor deprived him of his seat, and he withdrew to his cottage in Normandy, happy in not being exiled to another hemisphere, as was the case with many of his colleagues. Marmontel died of apoplexy, on the last day of 1799.

Morellet, the friend, and by marriage the relative, of Marmontel, was, like that writer, one who suffered from the vengeance of the great. It must be owned, however, that there was less injustice in his punishment than in that of his friend, as he was really the author of the satire for which he was confined, and it was published under circumstances which made even Voltaire doubt whether the conduct of the writer was perfectly justifiable. Andrew Morellet, to whom some of his acquaintance gave the punning appellation of Mord-les, or Bite-’em, was born at Lyons, in 1727. He received the early part of his education at the Jesuits’ College in that city, and he completed his studies at Paris, in the seminary of Trente-Trois, and the Sorbonne. He appears, however, to have paid at least as much attention to the works of modern philosophers as to those of the theologians. At Paris he became intimate with D’Alembert, Diderot, and other contributors to the Encyclopædia. Returning to Paris, after a tour which he made with a pupil, he was gladly admitted into the most talented society in the capital. Palissot, in his comedy of the Philosophers, having ridiculed the philosophical party, Morellet resented the insult by a satirical production, called The Vision. In this work there were some severe lines on the princess of Robecq, an enemy of the encyclopedists, who was then lying on her death-bed. For these lines Morellet suffered an imprisonment of several months in the Bastile. Morellet was admitted into the French Academy in 1784, and he contributed much to the Dictionary of that body. In 1803 he became a member of the Institute, and in 1807 attained a seat in the legislature. His life was protracted to the age of ninety-two, and, for nearly the whole of that time his pen was actively employed on subjects of political economy and general literature, and in translations, principally from the English language. A selection from his writings was made by himself, in four volumes, with the title of Literary and Philosophical Miscellanies of the 18th Century. He died in 1819.

By Marmontel, who married his friend’s niece, he is thus characterized: “The Abbé Morellet, with more order and clearness, in a very rich magazine of every kind of knowledge, possessed in conversation a source of sound, pure, profound ideas, that, without ever being exhausted, never overflowed. He showed himself at our dinners with an openness of soul, a just and firm mind, and with as much rectitude in his heart as in his understanding. One of his talents, and the most distinguishing, was a turn of pleasantry delicately ironical, of which Swift alone had found the secret. With this facility of being severe, if he had been inclined, no man was ever less so; and, if he ever permitted himself to indulge in personal raillery, it was but a rod in his hand to chastise insolence or punish malignity.”

A less amiable captive than Marmontel and Morellet next claims our attention. Though he was by no means destitute of talent or information, Victor Riquetti, Marquis of Mirabeau, owes the redemption of his name from oblivion less to his numerous literary productions than to his being the father of the celebrated Mirabeau. The marquis, who was descended from a Florentine family, was born at Perthes in 1715. He became a disciple of Quesnay, and published many works, to disseminate the doctrines of the political economists. His compositions are disfigured by a detestable style, great affectation, and a want of method. Of his labours, which amount to more than twenty volumes, it will suffice to mention L’Ami des Hommes and the Théorie de l’Impôt. With reference to the former, Voltaire satirically speaks of Mirabeau as “the friend of man, who talks, who talks, who talks, who decides, who dictates, who is so fond of the feudal government, who commits so many blunders, and who gets so often into the wrong box—the pretended friend of the human race.” He bestows equal contempt on the second work—“I have read the Theory of Taxation,” says he, “and it seems to me no less absurd than ridiculously written. I do not like those friends of man, who are for ever telling the enemies of the state ‘we are ruined;—come;—you will have an easy task.’” The government seems to have been of the same opinion as Voltaire, for the Theory of Taxation procured for its author a lodging in the Bastile. Mirabeau, however, continued to write and to publish till nearly his last moments; he died in 1789. This pretended friend of the human race, as Voltaire with justice calls him, deserved abhorrence in all the relations of social life. He was an oppressive master, and a tyrannical and brutal husband and father. He was perpetually soliciting for lettres de cachet to plunge some branch or other of his family into a dungeon. Of those letters he is said to have obtained fifty-four, many of which were enforced against his highly-gifted though erring son, the Count de Mirabeau, whom he hated, and whom, by his persevering cruelty, he contributed to drive into desperate courses.

Among those who felt the vengeance of the vindictive Pompadour was the Chevalier Resseguier, a native of Toulouse, who was much admired in the Parisian circles for his gaiety and wit. An epigram which he aimed at the royal mistress, speedily made him an inmate of the Bastile. There, like many other unfortunate victims of the marchioness, he might perhaps have spent the rest of his days, had not his brother, a member of the parliament of Toulouse, hastened up to the capital and succeeded in mollifying Pompadour. In their way home from the Bastile, the grave magistrate began to give his brother some prudent advice. Little disposed to listen to it, the chevalier thrust his head out of the coach window, and, in the words of Philoxenus of Syracuse, exclaimed, “take me back to the quarries!” The brother still persisting to administer caution and reproof, the chevalier lost all patience, censured him bitterly for having stooped to ask a favour from the marchioness, and then leaped from the carriage. Resseguier of course continued to scatter his sarcasms on all sides. For one of them, directed against the notorious President Maupeou, who was afterwards chancellor, he ran considerable risk of paying a second visit to the Bastile. He was dining, on a fast-day, at the house of M. de Sartine, and some of the guests were admiring the size of the fish. “Yes,” said Marin, (whose name the reader will meet with again) “they are very fine fish; but I dined yesterday with the president, and we had still larger.” “Ah!” replied Resseguier, “I do not wonder in the least at that; it is the place for everything monstrous.” Louis XV. was informed of this pungent attack on the instrument of his despotism, and was greatly irritated by it.

The next literary prisoner was the involuntary proxy of an offender, who took care to get beyond the reach of the police. In 1761, Grouber de Grouberdal, a German by birth, and barrister by profession, author of Irus, ou le Savetier du Coin, and a poem with the title of Le Sexe Triomphant, was sent to the Bastile, on suspicion of having written a satire called the Jesuitics, to which he appears to have only contributed some verses. Grouber, however, escaped with no more than a month’s imprisonment. A friend of Grouber’s was the real author. Henry Joseph Dulaurens was born at Douay, and very early displayed abilities of a superior order. He was less amiable than talented; for he is said to have been suspicious, sarcastic, hasty, restless, and turbulent: that he was licentious, is proved by his works. Dulaurens was destined for the church, but abandoned the clerical profession. His satire, the Jesuitics, which was modelled on the celebrated Philippics of La Grange Chancel, was aimed at the Jesuits, to whom he had long been bitterly hostile. Fearing that it would bring him into peril, he set off for Holland, on the morning after it was published, without warning his friend Grouber that danger was to be apprehended. In Holland he became a writer for the booksellers; but, though his pen was extremely fertile, and his productions, which were generally marked by originality and spirit, obtained an extensive sale, he was scarcely able to avoid sinking into poverty: the booksellers throve on those fruits of his talent, by which he himself was barely kept alive. By his flight from Paris, Dulaurens had eluded a residence in the Bastile, but it ultimately brought on him a more protracted confinement than he would have endured had he remained in France. In the hope of bettering his condition, he quitted Amsterdam, and went to Liege, whence he removed to Frankfort. While he was living in the latter city, he was prosecuted by the ecclesiastical chamber of Mentz, as an anti-religious writer, and was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He died in 1797, in a convent near Mentz, after having been a prisoner during thirty years. Of his works, the most remarkable are, Le Compère Mathieu, L’Evangile de la Raison, Irma, and L’Aretin Moderne, in prose; and Le Balai, and La Chandelle d’Arras, two mock-heroic poems;—of these poems, which are of considerable length, the first was composed in twenty-two days, and the second in fifteen.

Of all the writers who, during the reign of Louis XV., found or deserved a lodging in the Bastile, Peter Robbé de Beauveset may, perhaps, be considered as one of the most degraded, in a moral point of view. He was born at Vendôme, in 1714, received a good education, and was not destitute of talent. At an early age, he began to write poems of the coarsest obscenity, and he continued the practice till almost the close of a long life. To repeat them to all companies that would listen, seems to have been one of his greatest pleasures. Next to licentious composition, he delighted in satire. His verses were insufferably harsh; but they now and then displayed happy thoughts and forcible expressions. To give an idea of his propensity to wallow in the mire, it will be sufficient to say, that he chose for one of his themes the only disease which is a disgrace to the sufferer, and that the song was worthy of the theme. This drew on him the sarcasm, likely enough to be true, that he was “the bard of the unclean malady, and that he was full of his subject.” Having tried his satirical skill upon Louis XV., an order was issued to seize his papers, and he would certainly have paid a visit to the Bastile, had he not skilfully parried the blow. Being timely warned of his danger, he destroyed the obnoxious piece, and substituted in its place another of an opposite kind. This stratagem was successful. Instead of sending him to prison, the king pensioned him, and gave him apartments in the palace of St. Germain. Severe censors have hinted, that the debauched monarch wished to have a monopoly of the poet’s obscene rhymes. Robbé likewise received a pension from the Archbishop of Paris, on condition that he should not publish his objectionable pieces. He kept to the letter of his agreement; he did not print them; he contented himself with reciting them to as many hearers as he could find. The motive of the archbishop we can comprehend; but it is not easy to perceive what could have induced the duchess of Olone to leave a legacy of 15,000 francs to so shameless a writer, and to speak in flattering terms of his reputation as an author! Before his death, which took place in 1794, he is said to have manifested some signs of reformation.

The liability to be thrust into a prison, for the purpose of gratifying a courtier, or other powerful enemy, was not the fate of authors alone; the men who devoted their talents, and shed their blood, to enlarge or defend the dominion of their country, were equally subject to it. Striking proof of this fact is afforded by the persecution which fell to the lot of Mahé de la Bourdonnais and Count Lally.

Bernard Francis Mahé de la Bourdonnais was born in 1699, at St. Malo, entered the service of the East India Company at an early period, and displayed such talent, and such consummate knowledge of mercantile as well as of naval concerns, that, in 1735, he was appointed governor-general of the isles of France and Bourbon. On his arrival in the Isle of France, he found everything in a state of penury and confusion. In a very short time, however, he showed what can be done by a man of abilities and perseverance. A new and vivifying spirit was breathed by him into the languishing frame of the colony. Laws and police were established; arsenals, docks, forts, magazines, and canals, were constructed; and the cultivation of indigo, cotton, manioc, and sugar, was introduced. All this was accomplished within the space of five years. Twice La Bourdonnais was sent to the coast of Coromandel, with succours for his ungenerous rival and enemy Dupleix; the first time in 1741, the second in 1746. To narrate all the exertions of La Bourdonnais, on these occasions, would require a volume. His conduct was such as to win the warm praise of the English, who suffered by his success. The result of his operations, in 1746, was the surrender of Madras; but the terms of the capitulation were dishonourably violated by Dupleix, in spite of the remonstrances of the indignant conqueror. Dupleix having appointed another governor at the Isle of France, La Bourdonnais returned to Europe, and on his way homeward was taken by an English vessel. In England he met with that reception which was due to a talented and noble foe, and was allowed to proceed on parole to his native country. A far different greeting awaited him in France, where his mean and malignant enemies had long been labouring effectually for his ruin. He had only been three days in Paris before all his papers were seized, and he was hurried to the Bastile. There he was kept in solitary confinement for twenty-six months, not even his wife and children being allowed access to him; nor was he permitted to have the means of writing. One of the charges against him, founded on the testimony of a soldier who had been hired to perjure himself, was that he had secretly conveyed on board of his vessel a large sum of money from Madras. To refute this charge, by showing that it was impossible for the witness to have seen any such proceeding from the spot where he was posted, La Bourdonnais, destitute as he was of materials, drew from memory an exact plan of Madras, and contrived to have it conveyed to the commissioners who were appointed to investigate his conduct. The plan was drawn on a white handkerchief, with a rude sort of pencil formed from a slip of box, and dipped in brown and yellow colours, which he obtained from coffee, and the verdigris scraped from copper coins. This curious document quickened the movements of his judges, and they took steps to bring the question to an issue. After having undergone an imprisonment of three years, he was pronounced innocent, and was released. The gift of liberty came too late to save his life; his health was undermined by grief, anxiety, and the unwholesomeness of his dungeon, and his fortune had melted away in the hands of his persecutors; he languished in severe pain, and in a state of indigence, till 1755, when death put an end to his sufferings.

A doom still more severe than that of La Bourdonnais was assigned to the unfortunate Count Lally. Thomas Arthur Lally was born in 1702, and was the son of Sir Gerard Lally, one of those high-minded but mistaken Irishmen, whose ideas of duty led them to expatriate themselves rather than renounce their allegiance to the second James. Young Lally was early conversant with war; he was not twelve years old when he first mounted guard, in the trenches before Barcelona. In the course of the next thirty years, he distinguished himself in numerous battle fields, particularly at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and was employed in missions to England and Russia, the former of which, not a little perilous, was undertaken in 1737, for the service of the Stuart family. To the house of Hanover he was an inveterate foe, and he was fertile in plans for its overthrow. On the breaking out of the war between England and France in 1756, he was made a lieutenant-general, and appointed commandant of all the French establishments in Hindostan. Unfortunately for him, the government unwisely delayed his departure, and withdrew a part of the force which had been intended to accompany him. When he reached Pondicherry he found everything in confusion, none of the resources which he had expected to find, and, worse than all, men in office who knew that he meant to punish peculators, and who were therefore incessantly on the alert to thwart all his plans. Their machinations were aided by his own defects; for he was harsh, violent, and headstrong, in an extraordinary degree. Voltaire says of him, that “he had found the secret of making himself hated by everybody,” and that “every one, except the executioner, had a right to kill him.” There is much exaggeration in this; but it is certain that Lally was, and deserved to be, an unpopular man.

In spite of the scantiness of his means, Lally took the field against the English, with a firm resolve to drive them out of India. His first operations were successful. He made himself master of Goudalour, Fort St. David, and Devicotta, but here his good fortune ended; he was foiled in an attack on Tanjore, and was subsequently compelled to raise the siege of Madras. His failure must not be attributed to want of military skill; he was nearly without resources, and there was in his own army a powerful faction which was hostile to him. The council of Pondicherry, too, hated him with such a deadly hatred that it rejoiced in, and even helped to cause, his disappointments. Invested at last in Pondicherry by the English, he defended the place with desperate courage, but was compelled by famine to surrender.

On his return to France, Lally attacked his enemies with his wonted impetuosity. Their influence, however, was superior to his, and he was sent to the Bastile. Nineteen months elapsed before he was even questioned. The trial was at last commenced, and it occupied more than two years. The whole of the proceedings teemed with the most flagrant injustice; there was a manifest determination to send the prisoner to the scaffold. The language used by some of his judges deserved the severest punishment. Sentence of death was pronounced on the 6th May, 1766. On its being made known to him, Lally stabbed himself with a pair of compasses, but the wound was not mortal. Three days afterwards, he was taken to execution, and, that nothing might be wanting to lacerate his feelings, he was conveyed in a mud-cart, and his mouth was gagged. This brutality had a contrary effect to that which was expected; it excited for him the sympathy of the spectators, and covered his enemies with execration and disgrace. The son of Count Lally, advantageously known during the revolution as Count Lally-Tolendal, obtained, some years afterwards, a solemn reversal of the sentence, and the restoration of his parent’s honour.

Caradeuc de la Chalotais, a Breton magistrate, estimable for his talents and rectitude, is the next who comes forward on the scene. He appears to have been indebted for his misfortunes partly to the Jesuits, whose order he had assisted to suppress in France, and partly to the Duke d’Aiguillon, whom he had offended, by venturing to hint a doubt of his courage. He was a native of Rennes, born in 1701, and became attorney-general in the parliament of Brittany. His two Comptes Rendus, against the Jesuits, which contributed much to their overthrow, and his Essay on National Education, which forms a kind of supplement to them, are spoken of in the most laudatory terms by Voltaire. La Chalotais subsequently acted a conspicuous part, when the parliament of Brittany refused to register some of the royal edicts, which violated the Breton privileges. The Duke d’Aiguillon was then governor of the province, and we may believe that he was not sorry to take vengeance for the sarcasm which the attorney-general had aimed at him. The Jesuits, too, are said to have spared no pains to accomplish their enemy’s destruction. In November, 1765, La Chalotais, his son, and four of the parliament counsellors, were arrested, and in the following month, they were placed in close confinement in the citadel of St. Malo. The main charges against La Chalotais were, that he had written two anonymous letters to one of the secretaries of state, which contained insults upon the king and his ministers, and that he had entered into a conspiracy against the regal authority. With respect to the letters, though some persons accustomed to examine handwritings asserted them to be his, the vulgar style and incorrect spelling render it in the highest degree improbable that he was their author. He himself denied the charge in the most emphatic manner. La Chalotais was carefully secluded from all correspondence, and deprived of pen and ink; he, nevertheless, contrived to produce three eloquent memorials in his defence, and to procure a wide circulation of them. They were written on scraps of paper which had contained sugar and chocolate, with a pen made from a toothpick, and ink composed of soot, sugar, vinegar, and water. A commission was at first formed to try the prisoners, but the cause was afterwards removed into the council of state, and the captives were transferred to the Bastile. A stop was, however, put to the proceedings by the king, and the accused individuals were exiled to Saintes. An attempt was made to prevail on La Chalotais to resign his office, but he refused to listen to the messenger. On the death of Louis XV. his successor allowed La Chalotais to resume his seat in parliament, and the magistrate retained it till his decease in 1785.

The celebrated Curran, whose conversational talents no one that witnessed them could possibly forget, once said to me, in allusion to the transient intoxication produced by champagne, that it made a runaway rap at a man’s head. It may, perhaps, from a similar reason, be allowable to say, that a runaway rap was made at the liberty of the person who is the subject of this sketch. Francis Louis Marin had scarcely time to lament the loss of his liberty before it was restored to him. Marin was a Provençal, born at Ciotat, in 1721; after having been a chorister, and then an organist, he adopted the clerical profession, and went to Paris, where he became tutor to the son of a nobleman. His manner and figure, which were good, and his talents, which were far from contemptible, gained him many patrons in the French capital. He now quitted his ecclesiastical pursuits, was admitted a barrister, and published various works, one of which, the History of Saladin, is perhaps the best of all his productions, and is still in repute; it was dedicated to St. Florentin, one of the ministers, and gained for its author the appointment of royal censor, to which was subsequently added that of secretary-general to Sartine, who had been placed at the head of the inquisitorial office, to which printers and publishers were amenable. As secretary-general he seems to have satisfied no one; he was desirous of befriending the philosophical party, in which he had several friends, but was still more desirous of retaining his lucrative post. The consequence was, that he sometimes winked at, and even aided, infractions of the law, and then sought to propitiate his employers by additional vigilance and severity. Marin was certainly not overburthened with delicacy; and, unless he is much belied, he increased his income by acting as purveyor to the disgraceful amours of his royal master. In 1763, he was confined for twenty-four hours in the Bastile, for having, in his censorial character, neglected to expunge some lines from one of Dorat’s tragedies. A few years afterwards, he was deprived of a pension of 2000 livres, because he had allowed Favart’s comic opera of the Gleaner to be acted and published. In 1771, he was made editor of the Gazette de France, in which capacity he brought upon himself a perpetual shower of epigrams and sarcasms. Many of these annoying shafts were aimed at him by the Nouvelles à la Main, and he had the weakness to demand that the editor of the paper should be arrested. He had soon the misfortune or the folly to provoke a much more formidable enemy, the witty and eloquent Beaumarchais, who covered him with ridicule. To complete his vexation, no long time elapsed before the Count de Vergennes dismissed him, and in the most humiliating manner, from the royal censorship and the superintendence of the Gazette. Marin then retired to his native town, where he busied himself in literary pursuits. By the revolution he lost a considerable part of his income; but to his credit it must be owned, that he did not lose his temper or his spirits; he died in 1809. Marin had some praiseworthy qualities; he is said to have been ready to do acts of kindness, and even to have often run serious risks to serve his friends. But here we must stop, for it appears that his principles and his morals were lamentably defective; one of his biographers, who writes of him in a friendly spirit, owns that in extreme old age he had “a taste for pleasure, and even for libertinism.”

Less fortunate than Marin, Farmain De Rozoi, or, as he was generally called Durosoi, did not pay a visit of only twenty-four hours to the Bastile. Durosoi was a Parisian by birth, and seems to have early betaken himself to “the idle trade” of literature. He tried many kinds of authorship, and was far below mediocrity in all; novels, histories, poems, and plays, especially the latter, he poured forth in rapid succession, drawing down abundance of bitter sarcasms from the critics, and gaining little emolument to himself. Among the dramatic subjects which he chose was Henry IV., and he was so delighted with his hero, that he brought him on the stage in three different pieces. The appellation of “the Modern Ravaillac,” which he acquired by these pieces, shows how woefully the monarch fared under his hands. But Durosoi had worse enemies than the critics; on an erroneous suspicion of his being the author of two obnoxious works, he was shut up for two months in the Bastile. When the revolution broke out he espoused the royal cause, and became editor of the Gazette de Paris. He was a zealous and certainly an honest advocate of that cause. Though slenderly endowed with talents, he was by no means deficient in courage and noble feelings. When Louis XVI., after his flight to the frontier, was under restraint in the Tuileries, Durosoi formed the romantic but generous project of obtaining the king’s liberty, by inducing the friends of Louis to offer themselves as hostages for him; and a great number of individuals actually consented to render themselves personally responsible for the sovereign’s conduct. Durosoi did not slacken in his hostility to the revolutionists, till their final success on the 10th of August compelled him to drop the pen. He was one of their earliest victims on the scaffold, he being executed by torch-light only nineteen days after the downfall of the monarchy. He died with the utmost firmness; in a letter which he left behind him, he declared, that “a royalist like him was worthy to die on St. Louis’s day, for his religion and his king.” It is said that, with the laudable desire of benefiting mankind by his death, he was desirous that his blood should be employed in trying the experiment of transfusion.

The French revolution, which ultimately consigned Durosoi to death, opened the prison-gates of a man, of whom few particulars are recorded, but whose courage and unmerited sufferings deserve our admiration and pity. It will scarcely be credited that, from a very early period of the reign of Louis XV. there existed an infamous monopoly of grain, which was managed for the benefit of the monarch. Corn, bought at a low price in plentiful seasons, was hoarded up, and sold at an immense profit in times of scarcity. The circumstance was kept as secret as possible for many years, but the truth got out, and the name of “the compact of famine” was popularly given to the monopoly. A patriotic individual, Prévost de Beaumont, the secretary of the clergy, formed the daring project of at one sweep gaining possession of all the documents relative to this affair, and revealing to France the whole machinery of the scandalous system. When, however, he was about to carry his plan into effect, he was seized by the police, and conveyed to the Bastile. In that prison, and at Vincennes, he spent twenty-two years, his hands and feet heavily ironed, a bare board for his bed, and a scanty portion of bread and water for his daily subsistence; he would no doubt have perished in his dungeon, had not the chains which he had so long worn been broken by the strong hand of the French people.

A striking proof how liable to abuse is irresponsible power, placed in the hands of ministers of state and of monopolizing corporations, is afforded by the persecution of Barletti St. Paul, a man of considerable abilities, who was born at Paris, in 1734. So precocious was his talent, that, at the age of sixteen, he had made himself master of all that the best teachers could communicate to him. After having been for a while sub-preceptor of the junior branches of the royal family, he was involved in a quarrel, in consequence of which he quitted France. He resided for six years at Naples, after which he was intrusted by the Dauphin with a diplomatic mission at Rome; and, when he had fulfilled this mission, he returned to his native country.

Rapidly as St. Paul had acquired knowledge, he was thoroughly dissatisfied with the method of instruction then in use, and particularly with the various and discordant systems which were followed by preceptors. He, therefore, undertook the Herculean task of forming a collection of elementary treatises on the sciences and arts, with new modes of studying languages. On this encyclopedic labour he was, at intervals, employed during nearly the whole of his life. Eighteen volumes of it were completed, and he was on the point of seeing them brought before the public, when his prospects were destroyed by the base jealousy of one learned body, and the legal despotism of another. As the cost of printing the work would be great, a society of his friends was formed, for the purpose of accomplishing the publication in concert, and a public meeting was announced, to deliberate on the necessary arrangements. But the University of Paris had taken the alarm. Like all old and pampered institutions, it hated novelty, and trembled lest its monopoly should be shaken. To avert the dreaded evil, it had recourse to the parliament; and the compliant parliament issued a prohibition against the meeting. This step was backed by the appointment of four commissioners to examine the work. It did not require the spirit of prophecy to predict that commissioners, chosen under such auspices, would be anything but impartial. The hackneyed joke, of suing his Satanic majesty in one of the infernal courts, is pretty sure to be realised on such occasions. The report which they made was so unfavourable, that a complete stop was put to the scheme of publishing. St. Paul did not tamely submit to this treatment. He procured to be printed, at Brussels, a pamphlet, which was entitled The Secret Revealed. Sartine, the minister of police, who had been one of his active enemies, was somewhat roughly handled in this production. The king of spies, jails, and gibbets, was not a man to be attacked with impunity, and he avenged himself in a manner which was worthy of him, by suppressing the pamphlet, and sending its author to the Bastile.

At the expiration of three months, the intercession of the Cardinal de Rohan obtained the liberation of St. Paul. He then went to Spain, where he became professor of belles-lettres at Segovia; an appointment which he held for three years. Returning again to France, he published a New System of Typography, to diminish the labour of compositors. For this the government rewarded him by a grant of twenty thousand livres, and by printing five hundred copies of his volume at the Louvre press. His improvement consisted in casting in one mass the diphthongs, triphthongs, and all the most frequently occurring combinations of letters. A similar plan, with the name of the Logographic, was tried in London, a few years afterwards, but it was soon abandoned.

St. Paul continued to labour indefatigably on his ameliorated system of education; he gained in its favour the suffrage of Sicard, who was one of three persons whom the National Institute nominated to examine it; but he did not live to complete it, and only a small specimen of it was ever published. He passed unhurt through the storms of the Revolution, and died at Paris, in 1809. One of his best works, “The means of avoiding the customary errors in the instruction of Youth,” suggests a mode by which two scholars may reciprocally give lessons to each other.

Almost the last prisoner, perhaps the last of any note, who was committed to the Bastile in the closing year of Louis the Fifteenth’s reign, was a man who subsequently acted a conspicuous part in politics and war. Charles Francis Duperier Dumouriez, born at Cambray, in 1739, was the son of an army commissary, who translated the Ricciardetto, and wrote some dramatic pieces. After having been educated with much care, Dumouriez obtained a cornetcy, and, before the close of the seven years’ war, he had received two-and-twenty wounds, nineteen of which were inflicted on him in a combat which he gallantly maintained against twenty hussars, five of whom he disabled. Peace being concluded, he travelled in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In 1768 and 1769, he served with distinction in Corsica, and rose to the rank of colonel. The Duke de Choiseul employed him, in 1770, on a mission in Poland, to support the confederation of Bar against the Russians, but the dismissal of the duke, which took place soon after, led to the recall of the envoy. Dumouriez was next intrusted, by Louis XV., with a secret mission to the court of Gustavus of Sweden, relative to the revolution which that sovereign was then planning. This was done by Louis, who was in the habit of taking similar steps, without the knowledge of the Duke d’Aiguillon, the minister for foreign affairs. Dumouriez was, in consequence, arrested at Hamburgh, by order of the duke, and conveyed to the Bastile, Louis not having spirit enough to avow his own acts. During his six months’ imprisonment, Dumouriez wrote various works. The accession of Louis XVI. restored the captive to liberty; and he successively obtained the government of Cherbourg, and the command of the country between Nantes and Bordeaux. That such a man should not take an active part in the French revolution was impossible. But Dumouriez was not, as the ultra-royalists have unjustly described him to be, an enemy of the throne; he was, in truth, a constitutional royalist. In 1792, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, and was appointed minister for foreign affairs, from which office he was shortly afterwards removed to the war department. That department, however, he held only for four days, at the end of which term he resigned. The duration of his official existence did not exceed three months. He was now placed at the head of the army which was destined to repel the Prussians, who were led by the Duke of Brunswick. By a masterly disposition of his troops, in the defiles of Champagne, he completely foiled the enemy, and compelled them to make a ruinous retreat. He then broke into the Netherlands, gained the battle of Jemappe, revolutionized the whole country, and carried the French arms into Holland. Quitting his army for a while, he visited Paris, for the purpose of endeavouring to save the king, but in that he failed, and rendered himself an object of suspicion. The tide of military success, too, at length began to turn against him. He lost the battle of Neerwinden, and was forced to abandon the Low Countries. Commissioners were now sent by the Convention to arrest him; and, after having vainly endeavoured to rally his army on his side, he was obliged to seek for safety in flight. After having resided in various foreign countries, he finally settled in England, where he was often consulted by the ministers. Though he was decidedly hostile to the emperor Napoleon, he took no share in the restoration of the Bourbons, nor did he approve of their conduct. Dumouriez died on the 14th of March, 1823, and was interred at Henley, in Oxfordshire. His works are numerous; the most interesting of them are, his Memoirs, and the Present State of Portugal.

##