Ir was in the height of the Paris season, in 1817, that a card of invitation led me to the ample saloon of the Countess of D, where I found a crowd of individuals of all ranks and nations. There were French, English, German, and Russian uniforms, intermingled with heaven knows how many besides. Decorations and orders glittered on every hand in a blaze of light from bright eyes and an infinity of wax-tapers. Here were groups of politicians of the then antique Gallic, who affected to be as firmly attached to the Bourbon dynasty, all barbonnagé as it was, as they had been just before devoted heart and soul to the service of the most extraordinary name in modern history, whom they now affected to regard as the superbe oppresseur !

"There is a sight to make a man hate himself in his kind," said Colonel H-t of the Baden Dragoons, who had introduced me to the lady of the mansion; "here we see of what changeable stuff Frenchmen are made."

"The way of the world, colonel; but you are in an ill humour tonight. Was it ever different among court retainers ?"

"I am not out of humour, but it sickens me to see how men belie their avowals. When my regiment was a part of the army of Napoleon, I saw some of these people on service. Then they declared they owed all they possessed to that wonderful genius. They could not be fulsome enough in the expression of his praises. Listen to them, base flatterers of the Bourbons, now! Rien n'est beau que le vrai. I served the same leader, too, went into battle with him under the same confidence in his genius which they had, praised his wonderful talents, and censured his arbitrary temper. But my contingent was a foreign auxiliary; I felt it to be so at the time; no national tie bound me to his eagles. These are Frenchmen, vain about their patriotism, all deeply indebted to Napoleon. They might, at least, conceal their want of principle. I am German, fought against him at last, but owed him nothing."

a

In this way the colonel spoke out his mind in a sort of whisper; I feared at times that he would have been overheard, and, changing the subject, inquired who that pale, marble faced-looking personage might be seated no great way from

us.

"One of the most wonderful men in Europe, in public estimation," replied the colonel, "unless his politic conduct has obtained him fame upon credit. You must have seen him before. Those long grey-turning locks and cold impassive features; surely you must recognise the man. In Paris so long, and a stranger to the Prince of Benevento!"

It was even himself; the clever, shrewd diplomatist, whose head was so much too long for the muddled cranium of the cleverest diplomatist of the old school in Europe, adding the two next best into the bargain. I had never fallen in with him, though I had and have a singular habit of falling in the way of distinguished men. He was a plainer man, much more simple in his carriage, than I had imagined. He seemed to be at the most perfect ease; yet altogether I thought character was never so belied by personal appearance. Still after a scrutiny there was something indescribable about his ashen countenance. He was seated with his legs partially across, as if to give ease to his lameness. One hand rested on the elbow of his chair, the other held a flower which a young lady had just presented to him, having seemingly but at that moment discovered he was present.

"Here, then, is the cidevant Bishop of Autun!" I could not take my eyes away from him. All I had read or heard about him came rapidly into my mind. "Words were, indeed, given to us to conceal our thoughts," was a phrase rightly or wrongfully attributed to him: it suits him, unquestionably. That tranquil, immotive, heart hiding countenance well seconds in the rigidity of his visage the meaning of the aphorism. Where could it be so well illustrated? That mind which masks itself best

is at the summit of virtue in political chicanery. "Talleyrand is the greatest name in modern diplomacy--he is before me," passed through my thoughts with the speed of lightning. Colonel H- t went up to him, and I anticipated an introduction, somewhat prematurely, as it appeared. He returned my friend's salutation with great courtesy, changing at the same time an apparent abstraction of sense to an ease and elegance of manner which, to a stranger, could not but be highly prepossessing. If artful, he concealed his art behind a pleasing simplicity of bearing and speech; he appeared the very extreme of remoteness from assumption or affectation of any kind. The freedom of self-possession for which he was celebrated struck me at once. He played off no game of superiority, but arose from his chair after a word or two to pass into another apartment where cards had been introduced, and he was at the moment desirous of joining some friends who addressed him for that purpose. This request, consentaneous with the colonel's salute, lost me the chance of a presentation.

In the scope of a pretty large range of society both at home and abroad at that time, I never saw any one who at all resembled this wonderful man. Talleyrand was sui generis; his singular appearance is familiar to most persons from pictures and written descriptions, but his character is yet to be written. He was a wellabused man. In England the unfledged article-writers in magazines and newspapers- some wild from Connaught-made Talleyrand a mark for their diatribes without knowing any thing about him. Scores of scribblers, from the notorious Jew Goldsmith and his Revolutionary Plutarch downwards, affected to describe him whom they did not understand, perhaps never saw, just as party-spirit operated; writers who, like Lord Brougham, write characters in one fashion at one time, and diametrically opposite at another, and then expect to gain credit with the world for their opinions. Prejudice ran strong about this personage, so long upon the public scene, that lapse of time alone will enable a fair estimate of him to be given. It suffices that one party says of him, as Pas

querel of the doctor, "Ce ne'st pas la science que fait le médecin heureux, c'est l'effronterie et le jargon;" but Talleyrand was a quiet man, and made no commodity of a waste of words; when he spoke it was well and to the purpose. Others said that his whole merit was a peculiar cunning, that he was a shallow coxcomb. But Talleyrand was no more unprincipled than, according to public opinion in modern days, becomes an adroit politician; and his cunning only consisted in seeing much farther beyond his nose than the politicians and diplomatists who were his contemporaries, and who in England, as well as on the Continent, could not glance farther than the extremity of that member-some not so far. But I shall attempt that sketch of character which I have just declared to be impossible to do correctly, if I proceed much farther.

Talleyrand, except in his advanced age, which could not make his check more bloodless, differed little then from what he was when he last mingled in London society, and when he hobbled up the steps of the Travellers' Club-house to take an evening hand at whist. A change of years made no change in his imperturbable mind. He was as philosophical and as observant to the last as he was at this time, when he was not much beyond sixty years of age,-witty, subtle, dexterous, and penetrating; but his qualities were discoverable only through their effects. An opaque, icy veil covered his intentions until the moment of action. Love and hate never came to the surface with him, even if they were the moving principle of the hour. To have exhibited emotion under the strongest temptation, would have been to sin unpardonably against the insensibility that he used for self-defence or to serve his immediate purpose. Talleyrand, upon the slightest display of his capital, got larger credit than any other personage not of blood royal, while his great reputation never betrayed him into the exhibition of the smallest degree of vanity, because he would not afford that a single weakness he could help should be wasted. He might turn his frailties to account on one side or the other; and he calculated upor them in his diplomacy, the profess

through which he fed his own selfishness. Was decay assaulting the edifice in which he had housed for long years in gorgeous magnificence, he was the first to espy the spot that, expanding into dry-rot, would inevitably cause its fall, and prepared, unseen by others, a removal from the danger that might place him in jeopardy. No one understood so well how to escape peril, to conceal his own weak points, or to expose those of others.

Such was the substance of my friend's character of Talleyrand, to which he added, that some of his (the colonel's) countrymen have compared Talleyrand to the Mephistophiles of Goethe; but the comparison was bad, for Mephistophiles was not a well-bred character, nor half as witty. He had not Talleyrand's brilliant qualities, and was but a semi-devil to the Frenchman, who was sulphur unadulterated. "Yet," said the colonel, "I may do Talleyrand injustice in censuring his politic regard of himself and care in every jump he took to alight upon his feet; for he was ever, under the Emperor Napoleon as he was under the Bourbons, in all situations the friend of moderate measures and of peace. At times he would battle the question with the greatest soldier of modern times, though in vain; and, as he could not produce the effect he desired in this respect, so he took care of himself, seeing clearly enough the picture of the future."

But I forget that I am in a crowded saloon, among the gay, the learned, and the renowned. There was Benjamin Constant, the first political writer of his time, the somewhat inconstant-in fact, the friend of Corinna of Coppet. Here were marshals of France, Napoleon's marshals, and among them the unconquered Suchet, men now become characters of history. Few of them, however gifted, seem to have been of "Plutarch's men," like their master. They were ruled by humbler expectations than an exalted ambition of conquest. Yet was Suchet one of the most remarkable. He had risen from grade to grade in the army by merit alone, that plague-spot in the sight of the feudal aristocracies throughout Europe. His conduct on the Mincio and the Var, when the tide of war

had turned against France, established his fame. In Spain he was uniformly successful, not less from his courage and humanity than his skill in organising and governing. He was somewhat above the middle stature, too stout to be symmetrical in figure at this time. Like most of the more distinguished of the commanders of Napoleon's armies, he exhibited little of the soldier out of uniform. There was none of that stiff mannerism which the German soldier carries every where, and the English too in a degree little less prominent.

I saw Suchet afterwards in plain clothes on several occasions, and should have taken him for any thing but a soldier except in countenance, which was manly, though affable and indicative of superior intellect. His complexion was pale; hair dark, lank, and coarse; and his features were handsome. He had a lofty, broad forehead, dark eyes, aquiline nose, lips wavy in outline and rather thick, with a chin almost as long as his forehead was high. There was in the expression a character of much energy. I was told that, next to his master, he had the power of attaching the soldier to his person in a remarkable degree. This might have been the result of kindness towards his men and his uninterrupted success, together with the toleration of conversational interchange with the humblest in the ranks sometimes on a march,-a conduct never abused by the French soldier, because of all modern soldiers he is the least of a mere machine, and has most of resource and self-reliance.

I was introduced to the marshal, who entered at once freely into conversation. He spoke of the National Guard, which had been reviewed the day before, inquiring if I had seen it, and what I thought of the appearance of the regiments. I replied that I thought them very like the soldiers of the line (it was the National Guard of 1816, about 40,000). The marshal observed that Frenchmen had a fondness for military display born with them; that they were sooner made soldiers than any other people in Europe; that vast numbers had served in a military capacity, and that it was fortunate for the existence of the integrity of France that it was so. The marshal asked where I was

when the troops passed in review. I told him in a window of the Rue de la Paix, near the Place Vendôme. He observed that it was an excellent position, from commanding the street and the place as well. After some other desultory conversation, he said that he had that day called upon a compatriot of mine, the Duke of Wellington. I said, "No, I am an Englishman, the Duke is an Irishman." The marshal smiled, and observed it was the same thing; a native of Alsace was a Frenchman.

Suchet died about seven years subsequently, aged fifty-four, leaving a fine character both as an officer and a man. Napoleon said of him, that with two such marshals in Spain he would not only have conquered the country but kept it. In this he referred to the marshal's talents for organising civil government, his equitable principle of levying the taxes, his mildness, disinterestedness in money affairs, and salutary discipline.

There were at that time in Paris a number of houses of distinguished persons, open to such as had an introduction to one or two in the first instance. Wealth had no precedence of talent of any kind, for then the Napoleon system remained prevalent among persons of good standing in society. The question was not then, "Is he, indeed, worth a million ? God bless me, what a great man!" as it is in England; but simply, "Who is he?" And if he were a character recognised as noted for any particular distinction in social life, for art, arms, or literature, he stood out immediately. The assumptions of wealthy ignorance then went in France for nothing. The question "What is the man?" not, was, "What is he worth in cash?" Not that money was disregarded then, far from it; but it was kept in its proper place. Many vile things might be done there to obtain moncy as well as here, but the possession did not as in England obliterate the means of acquirement. Money was there the means to an end, instead of being as it is here the end of every means. In France, then, the use of money in the enjoyments it would procure was the point looked at in its possession. In England, hundreds of thousands in possession were only stimulants to

the acquirement of hundreds of thousands more, to the labour of outwitting, toiling, groping, up to the last gasp of existence. At this time the difference struck me much. Twelve years afterwards I saw a considerable change for the worse; and now, I am told-for I have not seen for myself-there is a strong bias to secure the possession of wealth before all things, much in the English way. But the vanity of a Frenchman will always secure from contempt the individual who has nothing but his person and his merit to recommend him, which they will not do in England. The salcons of the fashionable classes will not be open to receive Jews, brokers, and moneychangers of the Bourse and Palais Royal, and be shut against those who do honour to France by their endowments, as the custom is in England. The degradation of the French name this way will be avoided, if the lust of lucre and the cravings of avarice elevate the more despicable of soul to the tables of kings and nobles in that country. For one Englishman who retires upon what he deems a moderate competency, a hundred Frenchmen retire each upon a tenth of the sum. The one is bereft of resources to kill time, and annihilates the little of it that remains to him in dulness and afterdinner naps over apoplectic port wine. The Frenchman sings, reads, dances, cultivates a garden-plot, and makes his remnant of life a positive enjoyment. The mass of the Parisians are a better informed people than the mass of the Londoners, hence they appreciate intellect higher. A popular writer in England may be invited to the table of some person of monied or titled note to be made a lion of, but there is no community of feeling existing between the parties. The admission of any superiority on the side of intellect would wound the self-love of those who measure the dignity, wisdom, and superiority of man solely by the length of a purse, which will swallow up all that it can get besides, and beg its own sove reignty to be first understood. Now as the money-getter must hand over his every sense and faculty, even his very soul, to gain his end, and tread alike upon rank and intellect, it would have been policy for rank and

intellect, rank and the master-spirits of mind, to have pulled together to prevent an aristocracy of wealth from trampling down both. But rank, formerly foremost in intellectual culture, now turns for security to the barbarisms of past times, contemplates with regret the days of mental blindness-the times of the Tudors and Stuarts, when it was all-powerful-seeks consolation in unworthy recollections, and withers and pines upon the memory of Young England, getting more and more lost sight of itself for that very reason. Thus they who are foremost in mind, who are in advance of the time, cannot coalesce with opposing principles. The independence of the literary mind is a bar to any common system of defence with rank, where the first admission demanded is that of a superiority founded on symbols of death's heads, antique sign-posts, and fabulous assumptions. The two classes, therefore, are still separate. Wealth looks on both with eyes of contempt. It sees that advanced intellect, from the independence of a spirit that, Nathan-like, will rebuke kings, can never amalgamate where, if it could, it must lie to the teeth against its conscientious conviction, and be no more than an instrument in the hands of those who are as much behind in knowledge as it is itself in advance; and thus over both rank and mind, the broker, moneylender, and Jew fortune-heaper, maintain their ascendancy, and tread on the kibe of both.

But to our sheep. The mild, philosophic Cuvier was among the company-he who unveiled the mysteries of the antediluvian world, and opened to the view of the nineteenth century organised creatures unknown to the earliest records of natural history. He was the picture of his mind, sedate, affable, and full of benignity. Long years afterwards I met him in England, changed considerably by advanced years, but precisely the same man in his bearing. The Chevalier Langles of the Institute, to whom I had been previously introduced at the Royal Library, where he had apartments as keeper of the Oriental MSS., having been appointed in 1792. He, too, is since dead. France was indebted to him for the establishment of the Oriental

school, where the literature and languages of the East were at one time ardently studied. Here he had taken upon himself the duty of the professorship of Persian. He was well known both to Sir William and Sir Gore Ousley, and was a man of pleasing address, and highly estimated among the savans of his time. He was simple and unreserved in his intercourse. From the extent of his acquirements, he was treated with great attention by most of the distinguished persons present, who were all on terms of free intercourse with him. His collection of books and MSS. was extremely large and valuable. At his decease, Beckford of Fonthill, a great proficient, too, in Eastern lore, purchased the celebrated MS. called the Ayen Akbéry, which was presented to the great Akbar by his minister Abdoul Fâzel, containing the laws of the empire. The efforts to obtain this prize were so great that it was not obtained under seventeen thousand francs. His soirées were of the highest character, noted for the assemblage of intellectual men of all stations and countries. The chevalier was the reputed master of fourteen languages.

The geographer Maltebrun and Barbier the librarian, with the venerable Denon-names of renown in France-together with many whom my friend could not designate, were present, who are now dust, my friend the colonel and cicerone among them. They have no successors to approach these men of eminence, the same dull mediocrity pervading France as well as England.

There, too, I was greeted with a sight of the pale visage and hard countenance of the Rev. Caleb Colton, author of Lacon. I had not for two years seen this learned, shrewd, avaricious, conceited man; one whose habits were as singular as his character was contradictory.

"Come to-morrow," said he, "and take wine with me in the English fashion. Let us have some conversation,-no denial."

"Where do you reside in Paris ?"

"I have lodgings for a month or two at a wine-merchant's near the Chamber of Deputies. I took them on the recommendation of an old priest, an excellent Greek scholar, who says they keep at that house the