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tical history of the nineteenth century if we could rely on their general accuracy. But we were startled at the commencement by sundry statements which, assuming them to be true, strikingly illustrate the maxim le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable; and we found more and more, as we proceeded, that would go far towards justifying the theory of the late Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, who formally laid down from the judgment-seat that writers of fiction are not good witnesses, because they necessarily contract an incurable habit of trusting to their imagination for their facts. On this delicate point, however, our readers may judge for themselves after reading Dumas' account of his birth, parentage, and education

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It were to be wished that the same philosophical indifference touching the distinctions of birth which was exhibited by Sydney Smith, had been manifested by all autobiographers who could not boast of an admitted or clearly established claim to ancestral honours; for an apocryphal progenitor is very far indeed from conciliating respect or favour for his soi-disant descendant. After stating that he was born on the 24th July, 1802, at VillersCoterets, two hundred paces from the Rue de la Noue, where Desmoutiers died, two leagues from Ferté-Milon, where Racine was born, and seven leagues from Chateau-Thierry, where La Fontaine first saw the light,' Dumas proceeds to state that his real hereditary name is not Dumas:

'I am one of the men of our epoch whose right has been contested to the greatest number of things. People have even contested my right to my name of Davy de la Pailleterie, to which I attach no great importance, since I have never borne it, and because it will only be found at the end of my name of Dumas in the official acts which I have executed before notaries, or in the documents in which I have figured as principal or witness.'

To prove his title to this honourable designation, he prints an exact copy of the register of his birth, from which he undoubtedly appears to be the legitimate offspring of Thomas Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, General, &c. &c., who by other references is made out to be the son of the Marquis de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman of ancient family, who, adds his grandson, by I know not what Court quarrel, or what speculative project, was induced, about 1760, to sell his property and domicile himself in St. Domingo.' It would seem that his expatriation did not last long, for in 1786 we find him settled in Paris, where

6

In reference to Lockhart's attempt to make out an irreproachable pedigree for Sir Walter Scott, Sydney Smith said-When Lady Lansdowne asked me about my grandfather, I told her he disappeared about the time of the assizes, and we asked no questions.' the

the following brief dialogue between him and his son, the father of the narrator, explains the alleged change of name. The son calls upon the Marquis and announces a sudden resolution. What is it?' inquires the Marquis. To enlist.' 'As what?' 'As soldier.' 'Where?' 'In the first regiment that comes to hand.' 'As you like,' replied my grandfather; but as I am the Marquis de la Pailleterie and Colonel Commissary-General of Artillery, I cannot permit my name to be dragged about in the lowest grades of the army.' Then you object to my enlisting?' 'No; but you will enlist under a nom de guerre.' 'Nothing can be more just; I will enlist under the name of Dumas.' 'Be it so.' And the Marquis, who had never been the tenderest of fathers, turned his back on his son, leaving him free to do as he chose. My father therefore enlisted, as agreed, under the name of Alexandre Dumas.' The Marquis died thirteen days afterwards, but the new recruit never assumed his hereditary name and title-an omission which might fairly warrant a passing doubt of his right to them, were it not for a certificate, signed by four notables of St. Germain en Laye, to the effect that he was by birth a genuine Davy de la Pailleterie.

This weighty question being disposed of, Dumas proceeds to enlarge on the corporal advantages of his father, who, if he answered to the description, must have united the grace and beauty of Antinous to the strength of Hercules :

'He had the brown complexion, chestnut hair, soft eyes, and straight nose which belong exclusively to the mixture of the Indian and Caucasian races. He had white teeth, sympathetic lips, the neck well set upon powerful shoulders, and notwithstanding his height of five feet nine inches (French), the hand and foot of a woman. His foot in particular set a swearing (faisait damner) his mistresses, whose slippers he was rarely unable to wear. At the epoch of his marriage, his calf was exactly the size of my mother's waist. His wild mode of living in the colonies had developed his address and his strength in an extraordinary manner. He was a regular American cavalier, a Guacho. With gun or pistol, he did wonders of which St. Georges and Junot were jealous. As to his muscular force, it had become proverbial in the army. More than once, he amused himself in the riding school whilst passing under a beam, by taking this beam between his arms, and lifting his horse off the ground between his legs. I have seen him (and I recollect the circumstance with all the excitement of childhood) carry two men upright on his bent leg and hop with them across the room. . . . Dr. Ferus, who served under my father, has frequently related to me that, on the evening of his arrival to join the army of the Alps, he saw by the fire of a bivouac a soldier who, amongst other feats of strength, was amusing himself by inserting his finger in the barrel of a musket and raising it, not at arm's length, but

at

at finger's length. A man wrapped in a cloak mixed with the spectators and looked on like the rest, till smiling and throwing off his cloak, he said; not bad that, now bring me four muskets. They obeyed, for they had recognised the General-in-Chief. He then inserted his four fingers in the four barrels, and lifted the four muskets with the same ease with which the soldier had lifted one. Ferus, when he told me this anecdote, was still at a loss to comprehend how a man's muscles could raise such a weight.'

We are as much at a loss as the Doctor; but further marvels

are to come:

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During one of the General's Italian campaigns, the soldiers were forbidden to leave the camp without their side-arms under pain of forty-eight hours' arrest. My father was passing on horseback, when he met Père Moulin, since maitre d'hotel at the Palais Royal, who, at this period, was a tall and fine young man of twenty-five. Unluckily this tall and fine young man had no sword by his side. On seeing my father, he set off on a run to gain a cross street; but my father, who had caught sight of the fugitive and guessed the cause of his flight, put his horse to the gallop, overtook him, and exclaiming, so rascal, you are resolved to get yourself assassinated; collared him, and lifting him from the ground, without pressing or slackening the pace of his horse, my father carried the man thus in his talons as a hawk carries a lark, till, finding a corps de garde on his way, he threw Moulin towards them, exclaiming, Forty-eight hours arrest for that——.'

The following incident may serve to convey a notion of the manner in which the General's personal prowess was exhibited against the enemy in the field:

It was at Mauldi that my father found the first opportunity of distinguishing himself. Commanding as Brigadier a look-out party composed of four dragoons, he unexpectedly fell in with an enemy's patrol composed of thirteen Tyrolese chasseurs and a corporal. To see and, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers, charge them, was the affair of an instant. The Tyrolese, who did not expect this sudden attack, retreated into a small meadow surrounded by a ditch wide enough to stop cavalry. But, as I have already observed, my father was an excellent horseman; and he was on an excellent horse called Joseph. He gathered up the reins, gave Joseph his head, cleared the ditch like M. de Montmorency, and found himself in an instant in the midst of the thirteen chasseurs, who, stupefied by such hardihood, presented their arms and surrendered. The conqueror collected the thirteen rifles into a single bundle, placed them on his saddle-bow, compelled the thirteen men to move up to his four dragoons, who remained on the other side of the ditch which they had been unable to clear, and having repassed the ditch the last man, he brought his prisoners to head-quarters. Prisoners were rare at this time. The appearance of four men bringing in thirteen produced a lively sensation in the camp.'

This we can well believe, and we know of no parallel for the exploit except that of the Irishman, who, single-handed, took four Frenchmen prisoners by surrounding them; or that of Sir Frizzle Pumpkin, to whom a squadron of cavalry surrendered at discretion on his coming suddenly upon them in a woody defile when he was consulting his personal safety by flight.

If an English writer were to begin in this fashion, his countrymen would most assuredly set him down for a rival of Munchausen, and haply hold themselves excused from attaching any serious importance to his future revelations, real or pretended. But in the case of a vivacious Frenchman, ample allowance must be made for a national habit, which we would rather exemplify by instances than characterize in plain language.

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If M. Lamartine occasionally laid himself open to censure by indiscretion, he rendered invaluable services to the cause of peace and order by his courage and presence of mind at an extremely critical period, in 1848; and the praise of highminded and unswerving integrity has been unanimously conceded to him. It is impossible to suspect such a man of wilful or conscious departure from veracity, and we may therefore cite the Waterloo chapter of his 'History of the Restoration' as one of the most remarkable examples on record of the predominance of imagination over judgment in a Frenchman. the course of a few pages he makes the Duke of Wellington, mounted on his eighth horse after seven had been killed under him, gallop up to two of his regiments of Dragoons, make them take off the curbs of their bridles to prevent them from checking their horses in the charge, and distribute brandy to the men before launching them against the foe. He then orders his 'intrepid Scotchmen,' after allowing the approach of the French cavalry without firing, to slip under the horses, and rip them up 'with the short and broad sword of these children of the North.' By way of episode, Ney figures in the front, flourishing his general's hat in his left hand, his broken sword in his right, his dying horse at his feet; and General Lesourd dismounts, whilst his dragoons are rallying, to have his arm amputated, and then leads them to the charge.

It may possibly be urged that M. Lamartine is essentially a poet, and cannot be expected to clip the wings of his fancy when once fairly set in motion by so exciting a theme. But M. Thiers is eminently endowed with most of the qualifications which are supposed to guarantee the trustworthiness of an historian. He has a clear head, a ready pen, penetration, sagacity, and large experience of affairs acquired as a practical administrator. Yet, strange to say, his account of the battle of

Trafalgar

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Trafalgar is substantially as much at variance with both fact and probability, though not quite so extravagant on the face of it, as M. Lamartine's Waterloo.' According to M. Thiers, hardly one of the French ships struck until assailed by an irresistible superiority of numbers-three or four to onealthough, when the battle began, Nelson had four ships of the line and three frigates less than Villeneuve. To the same category belong the famous boast, La garde meurt et ne se rend pas, attributed to Cambronne, who was actually taken prisoner at Waterloo, the dying words (never spoken) of Desaix, and the alleged, self-immolation of the sailors of Le Vengeur,' who, instead of sinking with the cry of Vive la Republique, scrambled into the English boats, crying loudly for help. The extraordinary fictions to which French ministers and generals habitually resorted during the late war to keep up the spirits of the people and thetroops, must be fresh in the recollection of our readers. Therewas not a pin to choose between the expiring Empire, the government of National Defence, or the government of the National As-sembly, in this respect. No sooner had M. Thiers got together the semblance of an army than he declared it to be the finest army ever possessed by France; and when, after several days of desultory street fighting, he had worn out rather than conquered the armed rabble of the capital, he proclaimed that the whole world was lost in admiration at the splendour of his victory and the irresistible prowess of French troops.

If we recall attention to this national weakness, it is simply for the purpose of suggesting that we cannot throw aside Dumas as unworthy of further notice by reason of his tendency to exaggeration, without laying down a rule which must prove fatal to the reputation of the most distinguished of his countrymen. Fortunately, too, the value of his 'Memoirs' consists principally in anecdotes and revelations which may be easily verified by accessible evidence, or in views, reflections, and criticisms based upon patent and acknowledged facts. With regard to the alleged events of his boyhood, we are inclined to assume his general accuracy, because we are utterly at a loss to see what motive he could have in inventing or colouring stories, most of which are by no means flattering to his self-love. He frankly tells us that he was bred up in poverty in a petty provincial town, by a doting mother, whose fondness, we must do him the justice to add, he uniformly repays by the most affectionate and unremitting solicitude for her feelings and comforts. Indeed the endearing and ennobling sentiment of filial love breathes throughout the whole of his family details as freshly. and naturally as in Moore's Diary, thereby affording another striking

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