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warm zeal for truth, a conscientious and sober spirit which shrink from one-sided statements and hasty conclusions. It is impossible in reading the book not to feel a confidence in and re'gard for the writer. When he delivers a judgment, we may feel satisfied that he has good reasons to support it, and the calm and measured tone in which his opinions are expressed renders them all the more acceptable to thoughtful readers. But it would be a mistake to suppose that this wise moderation is purchased at any cost of animation and directness of remark. M. de Loménie is far removed from viewiness. His chaste and well-bred style is such as one might expect (though one does not always get it) from a member of the French Academy. The book is a credit to the author and his country; and its exceptional merit increases the regret that its assured fame will never gladden the heart of the sincere student who toiled over it so long.

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The two volumes now published are only a portion of the work planned by M. de Loménie. We are promised two more volumes, which will be devoted exclusively to the life of Gabriel Honoré Mirabeau, the famous orator and leader of the popular party at the commencement of the Revolution. The volumes now before us deal with his ancestors and family generally-with the "Riquetti kindred," about whom Mr. Carlyle discoursed with such humoristic force and gusto more than forty years ago. Mr. Carlyle's striking article was avowedly founded on the "Memoirs published by M. Lucas de Montigny, the wellknown "fils adoptif." One of the objects of M. de Loménie's book is to supplement and correct the numerous deficiencies and even inaccuracies of those "Memoirs," into which the filial zeal of their author had perhaps excusably led him. For instance, the high antiquity and nobility of the Mirabeau family, on which so much stress has been laid, turn out to be an illusion assisted by no little fabrication. The great demagogue of the Revolution was not only proud of his pedigree, but careless of truth when he spoke of its purity and distinction: "There has never been but one mésalliance in our family, and that was with the Medicis." This stalwart piece of boasting the orator ascribes to his father; but there is reason to suppose it is all his own. The fact really is, that the Mirabeaus emerge visibly in history for the first time with any clearness only toward the end of the sixteenth century, and then not as ancient nobles but as merchants of Marseilles. The pretended Italian extraction also of the Riquettis, originally Arrighetti of Florence, "cast out of it in some Guelph-Ghibelline quarrel such as were common then and there in the year 1267" (Carlyle), is now as good as proved to be a not very creditable myth, con

structed by the Mirabeaus and their pedigreemakers in the seventeenth century. The very name of Riquetti is comparatively modern. As late as the year 1570, when they bought the castle and estate of Mirabeau, they figure in official documents as Riquet, a name of vulgar prevalence in Provence, and a familiar diminutive of Henry. The question is unimportant enough. Such a remarkable family as the Mirabeaus can easily dispense with the adventitious ornament of exalted lineage, even if it were genuine, as in this case it is not. But M. de Loménie was quite justified in devoting so much time and trouble to the destruction of a baseless legend, which has given occasion to much weak moralizing on the ancestry of great men.

In these volumes we have portraits more or less complete of six persons, either Mirabeaus or connected with the Mirabeaus by marriage, four men and two women: (1) Jean Antoine, the famous col d'argent, his three sons; (2) the Marquis of Mirabeau, the Friend of Man; (3) the Bailli; (4) Louis Alexandre; (5) Françoise de Castellane, the mother of the Marquis; (6) Marie-Geneviève de Vassan, mother of the Orator, all in their way noteworthy people, and two at least of striking originality. In the ample materials at his command (he had the whole of the rich collection of Mirabeau papers in the possession of the late M. Lucas de Montigny confided to him), M. de Loménie has found abundant means to give us a gallery of full-length portraits evidently lifelike and veracious. In such degree and form as our space allows, we shall attempt to reproduce an outline of some of these family pictures.

It seems to be generally assumed that the interest attaching to the Mirabeau family is derived from the famous tribune, who terminated his short and rather scandalous career in a dazzling blaze of glory and public lamentation in 1791. In him the "wild blood" of the Riquettis is supposed to have culminated in a final explosion of originality and genius. He is emphatically the Mirabeau. His ancestors collateral and direct are only interesting as they lead up to him. Unless I am much mistaken, this current opinion will be considerably reversed by these volumes. The world is doubtless already prepared to concede a high place to the old Marquis, the “crabbed Friend of Man," whose "nodosity" and "unwedgeableness" have been sung by Mr. Carlyle in characteristic fashion. But his brother the Bailli, and his father Jean Antoine, are even more striking and fascinating figures, with a fund of modified force and self-contained nobility of nature, to which the more popular and famous members of the family can lay no pretension. M. de Loménie is clearly right in claiming for the

Bailli the preeminence over all his kindred, as "the finest moral product that ever came out of that impetuous race." A finer nature than that of the Bailli, lofty, disinterested, strong, and simple, yet full of native flavor, would not easily be found in biography; a really good man who only lacked opportunity to be a great one, as we shall show presently. But his and the Marquis's father, Jean Antoine, is hardly inferior, though in a somewhat different order of gifts. Mr. Carlyle with his quick eye for character has already marked him: "Haughtier, juster, more choleric man need not be sought for." He has hitherto been known by a life of him, supposed to be written by his famous grandson, the orator, which M. de Loménie now discovers to be a diluted and emasculated transcript of a much fuller and richer original by his son the Marquis. Those who prefer the picturesque and nervous prose of the elder Mirabeau to the smooth and clear but comparatively tame style of his son will regret that M. de Loménie has not seen fit to publish this interesting piece in extenso.

As regards the subject of the memoir, the famous Silverstock himself, it is difficult to feel that he is quite an historical character. There is a suspicious flavor of legend in the accounts we have of him. He is killed, or as good as killed, at the battle of Cassano; he receives twenty-seven wounds in one hour; he has his jugular vein cut in two, and yet he gets quite well again. He treats everybody, from the King downward, with a rough independence of speech which, under Louis XIV., is a moral phenomenon nearly as marvelous as his surviving mortal wounds is a physical one. It now appears that his biographer, the Marquis, knew little of his father personally, that he left home as a child, and only returned to it twice on short visits; and that his narrative was chiefly founded on the reports and anecdotes current in the army and the provincial society in which his father had moved. Still there is such dramatic propriety about the character, though odd and eccentric it is so conceivable and lifelike, that we can not doubt that there was a large basis of fact on which the narrative rested. It is a pity that we have not more authentic records of such a fearless, upright, noble-hearted man, who in many ways presents a finer type of character than any of the Mirabeaus, his son the Bailli alone excepted. All his high-handed ways and choleric speeches, for instance, appear of little moment compared to his magnanimous conduct on the collapse of Law's Mississippi Scheme. An ordonnance of monstrous iniquity had been issued, making the worthless paper of the bankrupt scheme legal tender for the payment of debts. The brave Silverstock sternly refused to avail himself of such a means

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of saving the large sum of a hundred thousand crowns which his brother-in-law had invested for him without his authority in Mississippi stock. He would not part with his now valueless coupons. "Somebody at last," he said, “will have to pay in hard cash, and I should be the original cause of his loss." He was getting old, he had a rising family, and it was all his savings which thus disappeared. M. de Loménie is disposed to doubt, as it seems to us with good reason, the rude and ungracious speech he is said to have made to Louis XIV. when introduced by the Duc de Vendôme with words of strong eulogy on his services. "Yes, Sire," replied Mirabeau, according to the story," and, if, leaving active service, I had come up to court and bribed some catin, I might have had my promotion and fewer wounds to-day." I ought to have known you better," said Vendôme afterward. For the future I will present you to the enemy, and never to the King." M. de Loménie questions this anecdote on the ground that the Marquis says that his father always had a great veneration for Louis XIV., and that such a speech does not seem compatible even with common respect, which is very true. But we think that a stronger argument against its authenticity may be found in the fact that the reign of catins at Versailles had long been over when Silverstock Mirabeau was presented there covered with wounds. It was over even before he entered the army in 1684. Under the semimonastic rule of the austere Maintenon and the converted Louis, such expressions would not only have been insolent, but absurdly out of place. There is less reason to doubt the characteristic story of his behavior to one of Louvois's armyinspectors, who insisted on reporting him absent from a review, when he was only a little late on the ground. The major of the regiment urged extenuating circumstances for his junior, but the inspector was inflexible. "Monsieur," said Mirabeau, “I am then truly absent in your opinion?” "Yes, monsieur." 'In that case, this no doubt passes in my absence"; and immediately rains a shower of cuts with his riding-whip on the inspector, leaving him in some difficulty of reconciling fact and theory.

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M. de Loménie quotes several details from the Marquis's account of his father, which are omitted in the weaker version made by his son the orator. This rather touching narrative of the last days of the old soldier is omitted by his grandson:

My furlough [says the Marquis] was on the point of expiring, and, though I could have obtained further leave, he insisted on my departure, and I was thus prevented from doing my duty by him up to the last. But I did not think he was nearly so ill as he was. He soon began to refuse nourishment, and re

plied always to all entreaties to that effect: "All my life long, when I have said No, it has meant no." In other respects his latter end was passed in great calm and serenity, chatting and even laughing with his confessor, a devout and gentle priest, whom he loved much.

and warmest affections, free from greedy appetite of every kind, free of vanity, of ambition (a little too free of the last), and regardless of everything but his duty and his own austere sense of rectitude. He was besides a most voluminous writer, though he published nothing.

M. de

Referring to an early stage of his decline, the Loménie fills more than half a page with the Marquis says:

A certain select company assembled pretty regularly in his house to pass the evenings with him, and these parties were really a high school of honor, eloquence, dignity, and historical reminiscences. He was not gifted with the happy genius that excels in calling forth the qualities of others, which is as precious as it is rare. His taste would have inclined to a noble and well-seasoned humor, but, as that sort of wit easily becomes bitter, an excess to which his family was prone, his principles kept him from it. For the rest, his health was latterly so precarious that he could not trust himself in a facetious vein, and he preferred discourse which was grave and noble, in which no grace of diction or warmth of eloquence was wanting. Moreover, excepting his sight, which was so diminished that he could scarce find his way about, although no defect appeared in his eyes, he lived up to the end complete in all his faculties; his visage was not changed; his apparel, which on another would have seemed common, was sumptuous on him. No man ever had a finer presence, or affected it less. He was so nice in the matter of

cleanliness that, even in the country and alone on coming in from a walk, he always changed his wig before entering the apartment. Why attempt to paint a man, except with the object of giving a lifelike picture? The smallest traits are important in a fine subject.

It is like passing from the twilight of legend to the broad daylight of historical fact, to turn from Mirabeau of the silver collar to the Bailli, his second son. From the abundant letters of his which are still preserved (something like two thousand in number, out of which M. de Loménie makes copious extracts) it is possible to obtain a direct glimpse of a truly human face, as comely and tender as it is strong and honest. The Bailli had talents and knowledge, especially the great talent of ruling men and winning their love at the same time, and extraordinary knowledge, considering the hard and roving sea-life he led during his best years. But his distinction lies in the union of these masculine qualities with a more than womanly sweetness and gentleness of nature, a lofty probity which seems never to give a thought to self-interest, and a delicacy of moral sense quite admirable. M. de Loménie compares him to Molière's Misanthrope, and says he was an Alceste of real life, which seems to us to be hardly doing him justice. He was a chivalrous, heroic, modest man, of sterling worth

mere titles of the memoirs and observations which he addressed to official persons on all kinds of subjects relating to public affairs, especially those which concerned his own branch of them, the naval service. More characteristic still is his private correspondence with his brother, the Marquis, who shares with him the honor that it reflects on both.

Among the four thousand letters they exchanged [says M. de Loménie] there are hardly ten in which, in spite very often of the most urgent personal matters, we do not meet with long discussions of general questions fitted to interest superior minds. Every moment the two correspondents drop their private affairs, to enlarge on religion, politics, the government, the finances, history, the problem of good and evil, progress, liberty, aristocracy, democracy, the state of society, the dangers which threaten it, the reforms which might save it, the question whether it can be saved, the future in store. Then dissertations, often warm and eloquent, frequently fill ten or twelve folio pages.-(Vol. i., p. 188.)

M. de Loménie remarks, and his quotations abundantly prove the assertion, that the Bailli had, equally with his brother, the odd, picturesque, yet powerful style which excited Mr. Carlyle's admiration; but he thinks that the Bailli, who never wrote with a view to publication, has the advantage-he is less stilted and pedantic. In any case it must be confessed that we have here a very interesting and rare type of man, a man whose width of culture even a Goethe might envy. First, the hard training of a sea-life, then the governorship of Guadaloupe, later the command of the Coast Guard during the Seven Years' war; and through all this active career, a literary taste which had familiarized him with the best French and Latin authors, and a speculative turn which leads him to discuss and shows him to have had settled and well-grounded opinions on all sorts of topics-political, financial, historical-often not at all connected with his profession. Here was a man leading a life similar to that of our Hawkes and Boscawens, and possibly as a professional sea-king he was not their equal, though even this is by no means certain, as he was never intrusted with the command of a great fleet in which he might have shown his capacity as an admiral; but, for culture and humanity, they can not suffer a comparison with him. A man of highest courtesy and noblest presence, a scholar and a gentleman in the full

est sense of the words, and a brave mariner of the true sea-breed withal, the Bailli Mirabeau is a fine specimen of the rich endowment of that old French race which had done so much to mar, but far more to make, our modern civilization.

The Bailli's career as a sea-captain was laborious, but not distinguished. The fault was none of his. We know what interest was capable of in the old times in the way of bringing a man forward, and of giving him a chance of showing his quality, even in the English navy. And the English navy was justice itself compared to the French, in all matters of promotion and readiness to give "the tools to him who could handle them." The brave Bailli never was intrusted with more than with the command of sorry little frigates; poor peddling work, such as made Nelson stamp and rage in the early days of his career. Very interesting is it to see him out of health and without a ship, promptly volunteering to take part in the expedition against Minorca, or to post off to Toulon, eager for service in any form, but only to be refused after all. By dint of importunity, however, he succeeded at the last moment in getting a post, as second in command, on board the Orpheus, a ship of sixty-four guns. It was one of the vessels most hotly engaged in the battle of Port Mahon, and a letter of the Bailli to his brother, the Marquis, is of especial interest to us, not only as giving a good picture of a zealous officer, but as showing that, in the candid opinion of a perfectly impartial and competent witness, the unfortunate Admiral Byng was not quite up to the mark of sea-valor, and that the indignation against him in England was not wholly unjustified:

ON BOARD THE ORPHEUS, May 21, 1756. We had yesterday, dear brother, an engagement of two hours and a half duration, which would have lasted longer if it had pleased the English. Thanks

to the Lord, I have come out of it safe and sound. I am the more thankful, inasmuch as during half an hour there was a prodigious storm of grape and canister. All the officers have escaped like myself, but the men have suffered a good deal. The enemy has suffered even more. They had the advantage of the wind, and it only lay with the English to make it much hotter for us, as our admiral gave them every encouragement. Our vanguard, to which this ship belongs, was the most engaged. But it may with truth be said that the English have very feebly supported before our men-of-war the pride and insolence they have shown before our merchantmen.

On the whole it was an even game, and as they had the wind they could have made the affair more serious. I say even, as they had only one line-of-battleship more than ourselves.—(Vol. i., p. 225.)

The old salt comes out in full flavor in this letter. The good Bailli, for all his culture, takes

his profession in all seriousness, and is no wise inclined to mince matters with the English. He detests them most cordially, and although he does not reciprocate the crudity of Nelson's maxim, that one "should hate a Frenchman as one does the devil," he quietly says, "I have accustomed myself to regard the English as the enemies of the human race, and especially of France." Yet he has a sort of grudging admiration for us in some respects, and especially approves the constitution of our Admiralty, in which old sailors who knew their business directed naval matters. He was for a short time prisoner in England, in 1747, but was not so much impressed as, with his aristocratic tastes, might have been expected. The nobles, he thinks, are too much dependent on the common people. Military virtue is not sufficiently esteemed, and money too much so, and he shrewdly opines, as early as 1754, that the American colonies will be lost to the mother-country in a few years, which was seeing a good twenty years ahead.

But it is during his government of Guadaloupe that the higher nature of the man comes out in its full luster, his firmness, justice, and mercy, his tenderness for others, his severity to himself, his almost Quixotic scorn for gain and even legitimate self-interest. The vice and corruption of colonial society, poisoned as it was by the deadly sin of negro slavery, offered an ample but not a pleasant field for the display of the Bailli's austere virtue. Like all worthy to command, he receives the responsibility of ruling men with inward anxiety and humble heart-searching. When he made his official entry into the island, and a great crowd assembled to see and scrutinize the Governor, and escort him to the church, where the Apostolic Prefect harangued him on his duties, he was dismayed. "My prayer to God was to preserve me from injustice, and to give me the firmness to repress it. I prayed fervently, and hope I was heard." In another letter he says: "I am becoming devout, which must seem to you an odd notion. But do not understand the word in its ordinary sense. I have no taste nor talent for mysticism more than usual, but I feel I never prayed to God with fervor before. I do so out of fear of doing harm, and that fear is so strong that I hope sincerely to be preserved from it.”

The first thing that strikes and shocks him

is the frightful moral degradation of the white population, arising from the influence of slavery. Labor being held in contempt as a badge of servitude, the vilest white man thinks more of himself than a peer of France. Idleness and debauchery fill up the time of the colonists. “To make sugar, to flog niggers, to beget bas

tards, and to get drunk-these are the occupations of the creoles." Their depravity was such that it blinded them to their own interest, and even French ships refused to come to the island on account of the roguery and bad faith of the inhabitants. Murder was of daily occurrence, and a black man's life was valued no higher than a dog's. Here was an opportunity for a supreme ruler to show his mettle. And the Bailli seems to have laid about him with a zeal and sternness which would rejoice Mr. Carlyle. "The rogues, and there are plenty here," he says, "tremble, and honest folks rejoice; the poor know that justice will be done them without distinction of persons. The door of their Governor, they say, is open to them at all hours, and all the colony is aware that not one of my servants would dare to prevent the least and poorest negro from coming to me and telling his story."

It was an addition to the Governor's difficulties that he was known to be poor, and that his salary was small. He consequently could keep little or no state, and could not contribute to the festivities of the place. But he would receive no presents, and refused not only all illicit gain, but such perquisites as were considered quite honorable. "No monk of La Trappe ever led a harder life than I do. Dispensing justice from morning to night, writing, signing, working-such is my existence." He says he knows he will be considered a fool for his pains, and owns that that hurts his vanity a little, but reflection will help him to bear it.

Slavery he emphatically condemns, not only on the ground of humanity, about which of course there is no question, but as economically injurious.

Thirty-five thousand whites do not produce in fertile Guadaloupe what two thousand would do without slavery. He adds, with prophetic regret, that he deplores the introduction of negroes into Louisiana, and anticipates no good result from the measure. In fact, though the question of emancipation of the slaves never seems to have occurred to him, he has all the sentiments of a throughgoing abolitionist, including the customary over-estimate of the qualities of the negro. "I look upon those people as in every respect like ourselves, excepting in color. And I even doubt whether slavery does not make us worse than they are." The justice of the last remark can not be denied. Legree is many degrees inferior to Uncle Tom, but the brain of the white man is superior to that of the negro nevertheless.

It might be supposed that the Bailli had enough on his hands in restraining his white subjects from robbery and murder, and protecting the black population from too gross ill-treatment. But he manages to find time for reading

all kinds of books, which he is always beseeching his brother to supply him with, and also to plan a complete code of colonial law, illustrated with notes of his own. He reckons that in six years' time, if health and sight endure, he will know more about the naval policy of France than any one who has yet directed it. This was, however, looking a little too far ahead. For the good Bailli had crotchets which made a man ill-fitted for official life in those days. One of his crotchets was not to suffer dishonesty in any one if he could help it, not even in a superior. As might be supposed, the rogues whom he had made to tremble were not without friends in the world, and before long he began to receive hints from his brother that in influential circles at Versailles it was considered that he had "too much zeal." Too much zeal here being interpreted meant too great antipathy to rogues. It was taken especially ill at headquarters that he showed no disposition to be on civil terms with a nameless official of high rank, to whom he was partly subordinate, and who wished much to enjoy his (the Bailli's) friendship. The latter replies that he strongly suspects the nameless official of being a rogue; he has yet no proof positive of misconduct, but, if he ever meets with any, he declares he will unmask it. The Marquis, for all his "nodosity," feels that one must not quarrel with one's bread-and-butter at this rate, and sends off an appealing letter to implore his brother to be a little more reasonable, a little more politic. "I beseech you, dear brother, grease your axles a little, or we shall certainly be upset. In God's name don't be so fierce; you will always have morgue enough not to be a time-server." This is quite enough, as M. de Loménie says, to kindle Alceste into a white heat of scornful indignation. "Do I want to be told that ministers can ruin a man whatever his merit? I do not think so much of my abilities as they do, perhaps, and regard the loss of my fortune and promotion as the easiest thing in the world, and indifferent to the state; but luckily it is indifferent to me also, and I shall return to the position of younger son in Provence without the slightest repining, rather than submit to anything which would cause me inward humiliation." And he was as good as his word; he made a determined enemy of the peculator, as he afterward proved, and found advancement in the service barred by his influence.

"The frank true love of these two brothers is the fairest feature in Mirabeaudom," says Mr. Carlyle, and he had very imperfect materials on which to found this correct judgment, compared with what we have now. Through fifty years of most varied fortunes, through acute differences of opinion, and family quarrels of the most vio

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