Pleasure learnt so gracefully to please:When wits and courtiers held the same resorts,
The courtiers wits, and all wits fit for courts:
When woman, perfect in her siren art,
Subdued the mind, and trifled with the heart;
When Wisdom’s lights in fanes fantastic shone,
And Taste had principles, and Virtue none:
When schools disdained the morals understood,
And sceptics boasted of some better good:
When all was Fairyland which met the view,
No truth untheorized, and no theory true.”
I have dwelt, I say, at some length upon the characteristics of those times; because it is never to be forgotten that the personage I have to speak of was their child. To the latest hour of his existence he fondly cherished their memory; to them he owed many of those graces which his friends still delight to recall: to them, most of those faults which his enemies have so frequently portrayed.
The great test of his understanding was that he totally escaped all their grosser delusions. Of this I am able to give a striking proof. It has been said that M. de Talleyrand was raised to the episcopal dignity in January, 1789, four months previous to the assembling of the States-General. To that great Assembly he was immediately named by the baillage of his own diocese; and perhaps there is hardly to be found on record a more remarkable example of human sagacity and foresight than in the new bishop’s address to the body which had chosen him its representative.
In this address, which I have now before me, he separates all the reforms which were practicable and expedient, from all the schemes which were visionary and dangerous – the one and the other being at that time confused and jumbled together in the half-frenzied brains of his countrymen: he omits none of those advantages in government, legislation, finance – for he embraces all these – which fifty years have gradually given to France: he mentions none of those projects of which time, experience, and reason have shown the absurdity and futility.
A charter giving to all equal rights: a great code embodying and simplifying all existing and necessary laws: a due provision for prompt justice: the abolition of arbitrary arrest: the mitigation of the laws between debtor and creditor: the institution of trial by jury: the liberty of the press, and the inviolability of private correspondence: the destruction of those interior imposts which cut up France into provinces, and of those restrictions by which all but members of guilds were excluded from particular trades: the introduction of order into the finances under a well-regulated system of public accounts: the suppression of all feudal privileges: and the organization of a well-considered general plan of taxation: such were the changes which the Bishop of Autun suggested in the year 1789. He said nothing of the perfectibility of the human race: of a total reorganization of society under a new system of capital and labour: he did not promise an eternal peace, nor preach a general fraternity amongst all races and creeds. The ameliorations he proposed were plain and simple; they affiliated with ideas already received, and could be grafted on the roots of a society already existing. They have stood the test of eighty years – now advanced by fortunate events, now retarded by adverse ones – some of them have been disdained by demagogues, others denounced by despots; – they have passed through the ordeal of successive revolutions; and they furnish at this instant the foundations on which all wise and enlightened Frenchmen desire to establish the condition of government and society in their great and noble country. Let us do honour to an intelligence that could trace these limits for a rising generation; to a discretion that resisted the temptation to stray beyond them!
About the time of the assembling of the States-General, there appeared a work which it is now curious to refer to – it was by the pen of Laclos – entitled Galerie des États-Généraux. This work gave a sketch under assumed names of the principal personages likely to figure in the States-General. Amongst a variety of portraits, are to be found those of General Lafayette and the Bishop of Autun; the first under the name of Philarète, the second under that of Amène; and, assuredly, the author startles us by his nice perception of the character and by his prophetic sagacity as to the career of these two men. It is well, however, to remember that Laclos frequented the Palais Royal, which the moral and punctilious soldier of Washington scrupulously avoided. The criticism I give, therefore, is not an impartial one. For, if General Lafayette was neither a hero nor a statesman, he was, take him all in all, one of the most eminent personages of his time, and occupied, at two or three periods, one of the most prominent positions in his country.
“Philarète,” says M. Laclos, “having found it easy to become a hero, fancies it will be as easy to become a statesman. The misfortune of Philarète is that he has great pretensions and ordinary conceptions. He has persuaded himself that he was the author of the revolution in America; he is arranging himself so as to become one of the principal actors in a revolution in France.
“He mistakes notoriety for glory, an event for a success, a sword for a monument, a compliment for immortality. He does not like the court, because he is not at his ease in it; nor the world, because there he is confounded with the many; nor women, because they injure the reputation of a man, while they do not add to his position. But he is fond of clubs, because he there picks up the ideas of others; of strangers, because they only examine a foreigner superficially; of mediocrity, because it listens and admires.
“Philarète will be faithful to whatever party he adopts, without being able to assign, even to himself, any good reasons for being so. He has no very accurate ideas of constitutional authority, but the word ‘liberty’ has a charm for him, because it rouses an ambition which he scarcely knows what to do with. Such is Philarète. He merits attention, because, after all, he is better than most of his rivals. That the world has been more favourable to him than he deserves, is owing to the fact that he has done a great deal in it, considering the poverty of his ability; and people have been grateful to him, rather on account of what he seemed desirous to be, than on account of what he was. Besides, his exterior is modest, and only a few know that the heart of the man is not mirrored on the surface.
“He will never be much more than we see him, for he has little genius, little nerve, little voice, little art, and is greedy of small successes.”
Such was the portrait which was drawn of Lafayette; we now come to that of M. de Talleyrand.
“Amène has charming manners, which embellish virtue. His first title to success is a sound understanding. Judging men with indulgence, events with calmness, he has in all things that moderation which is the characteristic of true philosophy.
“There is a degree of perfection which the intelligence can comprehend rather than realise, and which there is, undoubtedly, a certain degree of greatness in endeavouring to attain; but such brilliant efforts, though they give momentary fame to those who make them, are never of any real utility. Common sense disdains glitter and noise, and, measuring the bounds of human capacity, has not the wild hope of extending them beyond what experience has proved their just limit.
“Amène has no idea of making a great reputation in a day: such reputations, made too quickly, soon begin to decline, and are followed by envy, disappointment, and sorrow. But Amène will arrive at everything, because he will always profit by those occasions which present themselves to such as do not attempt to ravish Fortune. Each step will be marked by the development of some talent, and thus he will at last acquire that general high opinion which summons a statesman to every great post that is vacant. Envy, which will always deny something to a person generally praised, will reply to what we have said, that Amène has not that force and energy of character which is necessary to break through the obstacles that impede the course of a public man. It is true he will yield to circumstances, to reason, and will deem that he can make sacrifices to peace without descending from principle; but firmness and constancy may exist without violent ardour, or vapid enthusiasm.
