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ping me on the nose replied, Why are you so curious?"

Among the objects of his ardent devotion, was the Princess of Belgiojoso, a lady celebrated for her personal attractions, her mental accomplishments, her connection with important political movements, her varied experience of life, and the kindness and generosity of her disposition. No plan of social reform failed to excite her interest, while she almost became a martyr to her patriotic zeal in the cause of Italy. Being a subject of Austria, her large fortune was sequestered by the Government in 1831, on account of her participation in a revolutionary scheme at Milan, which was not, however, carried into effect. From a splendid hotel which she occupied in Paris, she retired to comparatively humble lodgings in a fifth story. It must be said, to the honor of the best Parisian society, both in aristocratic and financial circles, (bankers, brokers, money-operators, and so forth,) that not a person, not a lady of the highest fashion and elegance dropped her acquaintance on this account, and no one was frightened from visiting her by the ninety-six steps of the stair-case. Lafayette, always noble and chivalrous, was the last man to be changed towards his friend by such a reverse of fortune. The amusing circumstance in the affair was, that his grandson, Jules de Lasteyrie, a very young man, was, at the same time, assiduously devoted to the Princess. The two extremes often met in their innocent visits to a common shrine, and in that case, youth was compelled to retire before senility.* To me, at that time, and for many years after, the Princess was a friend, dearly beloved as a sister. She cherished the utmost enthusiasm for Lafayette. Her devotion to him was boundless-but his expressions of gallantry-the squeezing and kissing of hands-were very little to her taste. In this respect, she resembled the generality of her countrywomen. The visits of the General, often repeated twice a day, were usually made at certain hours, on going to and returning from the Chamber of Deputies.

At the request of the Princess, I

used to go to her lodgings about the same time. When the bell of the porter announced the General's arrival, I would hurry down to the door to receive him, and, as he was a little lame, he would lean on my arm, while making the tedious ascent of the stair-case. The same thing took place on coming down, and when we parted he always embraced me, enjoining me to take good care of our dear common friend.

Lafayette certainly had his weaknesses, and this devotion to the fair was one of them. But what of that? By relating such minutiæ, I do not disparage his character. Heroes do not constantly walk on stilts, or in the cothurnus, like the Greek tragedians. Man is a compound of wisdom and folly, of various impulses and passions, of lights and shadows; and the beauty of a character consists in the prevalence of the sunny sides over the cloudy ones. Frozen, mock perfections, suspended, like icicles, from the nose of humanity, are false to nature and repulsive to the soul.

One of the General's intimate friends was Destutt de Tracy, to whose daughter George Lafayette was married. This was the man whom Napoleon called the ideologue of the Institute. He was celebrated as the philosopher who had carried out the materialist system of the 18th century to its ultimate extreme. He was the intimate friend of Jefferson, during the diplomatic residence of the latter in Paris, and afterwards, for several years his correspondent. He thus sent to the American sage the manuscript of his commentary upon Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," in which he lucidly exposed the superficial and inconsequent reasonings of that distinguished publicist. The iron rule of Napoleon prevented the publication of this work in France, and it appeared for the first time in this country, as translated by Jefferson. Destutt de Tracy and myself were conversing with each other one evening in the saloon, we observed the General devoting himself to a certain young beauty, with youthful alacrity. The philosopher smiled and remarked, "The

As

General is always the same-always young in his devotion to women and liberty."

And so he was. Ardent in the defense of freedom, at the age of seventy, as when a youth, he fought under the flag of American independence. Always. Always ready to plunge headlong into every movement for social and political disenthralment, and to sacrifice his fortune, or even his life, when the case had become desperate, and the scaffold beamed in the distance. Such was his course in the celebrated conspiracy of Befort, when he owed his salvation almost to a miracle. Had he been seized at that time, the Bourbons and their ultra-royalists and priestly retinue would have treated him as they did Ney, Didier, Berton, the non-commissioned officers of la Rochelle, and many others.

Lafayette had enemies, with whom he was the object both of envy and detraction. Barrère, the celebrated member of the Committee of Public Safety with Robespierre, the Demosthenes of the guillotine, speaking to me one day about the General, called him a Marquis, who had received liberal frictions in America, but as their effect passed away, the red heel peeped out.* But this was wholly unfounded. The montagnards, the sans-culottes-and Barrère was one of them—hated Lafayette from the outset-nor did he spare them at that time, or afterwards. He once told me that Marat and other Jacobins were paid by the aristocrats, by Egalité Orleans, and by Pitt, to attack and discredit him in public opinion. This, however, was a mere fancy of the General. Marat and his followers were consumed by violent passions, but their convictions were sincere. The true Jacobins were not mercenary.

At a subsequent period of my protracted sojourn in Paris, the statesmen of Louis Philippe and of the bourgeoisie, the hangers-on of the court, and above all, the coterie of the Doctrinaires, were wont to call the General visionary, impracticable, and to affix. God knows how many other similar epithets to his name. This was because he never compromised with his convictions or his conscience. In the opinion of the above-mentioned persons, Lafayette was a man without

talent, without far-reaching or profound ideas, and governed chiefly by vanity in his practical course. But, in reality, he shone among them all, as a pure spirit among mean and perverse ones. If his actions ever were prompted by vanity or ambition, it was of that noble and disinterested character, of which not even a glimpse could ever have possibly been attained by his detractors. When I knew him, his vanity was concentrated in the wish to be the symbol of freedom for the oppressed of all nations and races upon the earth, and to make his name a terror among the sovereigns of Europe, all of whom, without exception, he regarded as tyrants. He desired that his image might thus be remembered in royal palaces, and in the dwellings of the people. If his soul felt the stirrings of ambition, it was an impersonal and magnanimous sentiment. He valued power only as an instrument for the establishment of freedom. To the triumph of this cause he was wholly devoted. In its pursuit, he was incapable of intimidation. His mind was elastic and hopeful. He was an ardent believer in human progress. He cherished the largest charity for new ideas. No plan for reform, however opposed to prevailing notions, was deemed unworthy of his interest. He was the only person in the social circles in which he moved who never spoke with contempt or ridicule of the doctrines of St. Simon and Fourier. St. Simon he knew personally, and had fought by his side for the independence of this country, the former having held a commission in the army of Rochambeau. Lafayette was bent upon eradicating the prejudices by which the human mind was enslaved, and advancing the highest and purest development of the race, without exception of clime, color, or creed. The leading article of his faith was the melioration of the political, social, and material condition of humanity.

How different, in all respects, was this revered patriarch from the chief pontiff of Louis Philippe, the rigid, arrogant and, politically speaking, wholly unprincipled and immoral Guizot. It is true that Guizot was not without personal honesty in matters pertaining

to his worldly fortune; but he spread broadcast the seeds of moral and political corruption, during the whole period of his administration. He openly preached to his constituents the civic duty of becoming rich, by whatever means. He several times changed his convictions, always siding with power, if his services were accepted_by_its holders, thus verifying the words of an ancient, "omnia serviliter pro dominatione." He balanced power against liberty, and so far degraded himself as to become the willing and supple tool of the reckless designs of Louis Philippe. Guizot, with a plebeian origin, hates democracy, and has more than once tortured both logic and history, in order to gain weapons for its defeat. He would fain destroy the democratic spirit, as a sacrifice to wealth, to the bourgeoisie, and to royalty. Guizot, the born Calvinist, the former accuser of the Jesuits, when in possession of power allowed that order again to spread surreptitiously for the sake of gratifying the wishes of the pious Queen. When the just wrath of the people overthrew his master, and wrenched the power from their united hands, he elevates Monk, the betrayer of English liberty, to the dignity of a hero, and of a benefactor to his country-thus tampering with history in order to impel Changarnier, the commander of the Republican army, to the restoration of the defeated house of Orleans. Such a man, and his satellites, from their sham pedestal of philosophical arrogance, presumed to look down with compassion on a person like Lafayette.

To the last day of his life, the General treated me with unchanged kindness and confidence. When he died, the mourning, though widely spread, was not so deeply felt as might have been anticipated on the departure of such a noble veteran in the cause of popular enfranchisement. At that moment, the popularity of Lafayette was slightly on the

decrease. The republicans, who were then reduced to a small number, regarded him as the cause of their misfortunes, and, in their uncalled-for displeasure, accused him of unfaithfulness to their cause. Thus the celebrated Raspail said to me, at the funeral, “The king of the bourgeoisie is dead." On the other hand the bourgeois, great and small, the banker and the shopkeeper, -in France, at least, for the most part, groveling in their ideas and their aspirations, wholly insensible to generous impulses went over, horse and foot, to the camp of Louis Philippe-who, at that epoch, had just reached the climax of his power, and become the idol of traders, jobbers, brokers, of all kinds of speculators on the exchange, and of the host of new-fledged literary men, as well as of writers in the sere and yellow leaf," who sought to win by their pen the speedy enjoyment of material luxury. Justice was not done to Lafayette at his death. The republican party was exasperated by its discomfiture, and was, therefore, unjust. The mass of the nation-the literature of France, in general, with a comparatively few honorable exceptions-had been plunged into the quagmire of materialism, by the influence of the king, and the prevailing financial tendency. Lafayette was not a man of transcendent abilities-he was no pompous declaimer-nor had he a creative and organizing genius. Least of all, was he a statesman, as that term is commonly understood. But his character was ennobled by unrivaled purity of purpose, by disinterested and magnanimous aims, by indomitable courage and devotion to the highest interests of humanity. All nations, and the French more than any other, worship brilliancy of intellect, adroitness of management, and practical success. For want of these shining traits, Lafayette failed of a just appreciation in the minds of his countrymen.

IN the year 1850, it was decreed by

conventions of the whig and democratic parties, representing three-fifths, at least, of the people who concern themselves with politics, that the compromise measures were a final settlement, "in principle and substance," of the question of slavery. Mr. Webster, who had contributed so much talent and reputation to their success, congratulated himself, and the country, as he drew near his death, that there was then no part of the territory of the United States in which this subject had not not been determined and disposed of by positive law. The President of the nation, even, in his first message, was impelled to speak of those measures as having "given renewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind throughout the confederacy;" and he promised that this "repose should suffer no shock, if he had power to avert it, during his administration."

Yet, those measures had scarcely been promulged at the outermost limits of our empire, their great advocate of Massachusetts was hardly cold in his grave, the President himself was but warm in his chair, when the agitation of the slavery question broke forth anew, with a universality and earnestness of feeling never before equaled. It seemed as if all the warring winds of opinion were loose, and, as a distinguished senator aptly quoted,

"Eurus Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis, Africus."

Slavery became at once the real and vital question of the day. It vibrated in every heart, and burned on every tongue. Older issues were dropped in the intense excitement it occasioned; the ancient rallying cries, once potent in marshaling the electoral lieges around the standards of their leaders, grew as charmless as the blasts of fish-horns, and the freshest of political frenzies, which, a year before, swept over the land like a torrent, was arrested and hurled back, and broken into foam by the opposing waves of this greater agitation.

Thus, the hopes of a long era of political quiet, engendered by the recon

ciling action of Congress and the conventions, were dashed to the ground, and the flames of former feud, extinguished for a brief time, were kindled once more into a livelier energy and glow. But there is a peculiarity in the revived commotion, which it is impossible not to remark. During the earlier periods of anti-slavery excitement, it was mainly confined to men of ardent temperaments and extreme opinion, to abolitionists, strictly so-called; but, as things are now, it is shared by men of tempered and conservative disposition. The cautious and the wise-heads silvered over with age, and hearts which experience has taught to beat in measured pulses are joined with more enthusiastic spirits in a common cause. It is, indeed, no exaggeration to describe the feeling at the North as general. If we except the small joint-stock association which draws the udders of the federal government, and a score or two of effete politicians, who, like the elder Bourbons, forget nothing and learn nothing, there is not a thinking man among us who is not absorbed in this topic of the domination and spread of slavery.

Whence this change? Why are the halcyon expectations, which crowned the compromises as a halo, dispersed? Why are minds, the least quick to catch the impulses of the times, carried away by a prevailing sentiment? Why are they compelled into coalition with those for whom, a little while ago, they felt no sympathy, and whose plans of policy generally they disapproved? There is an effect, as we see, and there must be a cause. Is it that the hereditary antislavery sentiment of the North has received some new and mysterious access of violence, like a fever which recurs in a more malignant type? Is it that the people of the North have been suddenly seized with some irrational animosity towards their brethren of the South, and rush forward, blindly, to the perpetration of an unprovoked injustice? Not at all. There is nothing thoughtless or unkind in the recent movement. It is a legitimate fruit of circumstances-a natural and normal development of events, which any sagacious student of cause and effect, in the moral sphere, might have predicted,

and which, indeed, was predicted by many in the deepest lull of 1850.

In the first place, there can be no finality in politics, except in the establishment of justice and truth. Where society is divided on a principle, and that principle involves, beside its moral issues, vast practical interests, no parliamentary device or legislative expedient can put a stop to the discussion of it-no compromise or temporary adjustment of it can settle it forever. The very attempt to settle it, in this way, though it may succeed in quelling an existing vehemence of agitation, will, in the end, provoke a still more vehement reaction. For the mind of man is, in its nature, vital and irrepressible; you may force it down, but you cannot keep it there; its inherent elasticity will cause it to spring back; and in that spring, perhaps, it will tear into shreds the cords by which it was bound. When the compromisers of 1850, therefore, undertook to suppress, in effect, the discussion of slavery, they undertook what was plainly impossible; and much of the exacerbation which has since arisen must be referred to a natural revolt against that impracticable enterprise.

But, in the second place, there is to be remarked a special cause for the late outbreak of anti-slavery feeling, and particularly for its appearance among those classes which have not heretofore manifested a strong tendency in that direction. It is this: that a gigantic fraud, as they esteem it, has been committed in the name of slavery—a surreptitious and dishonorable act has been perpetrated in its behalf, which has aroused a keen sense of wrong, which has brought with it a humiliating consciousness of vassalage on their part, and filled the dullest understandings with apprehensions for the security of our future liberties. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise-sprung like a trap, as it was, upon a Congress not chosen in reference to it; hurried through the forms of legislation, under whip and spur, by a temporary majority; alleging a falsehood in its very terms, and having the seizure of a vast province, secured to freedom by thirty years of plighted faith, as its motive-was the fatal signal which, after astounding the nation by its audacity, rallied it to battle. The repeal of a statute, which for

nearly half a century had been regarded as irrepealable, and which, whether rightly or not, had come to be invested in general reverence with somewhat of the sacredness of a constitutional compact-the repeal of it, too, without having been called for by a single soul, under a false pretense, and by an arbitrary enforcement of parliamentary rules, struck the people everywhere with surprise, and those of the North particularly with consternation. A few months before it occurred, the very abettors of the transaction had pronounced it impossible. The committee of the Senate which reported it had pronounced it impossible. Not a man in the Union but would, at that time, have pronounced it equally impossible, had his opinion been asked; yet it was repealed by the simple declaration, which all the world knew to be untrue, that it had been rendered inoperative by the legislation of 1850! Marvelous assurance, but still more marvelous success!

We shall not inquire here whether the Missouri Compromise was originally proper or not; averse as we are to compromises in general, we are not sure that it would not have been better for all sides to have settled the dispute at that time on a basis of principle, and at all hazards; but, inasmuch as the South had reaped its share of the benefit proposed by the bargain-inasmuch as its continuance involved, to a considerable extent, the good faith of the South, we are clear, that the disturbance of it by the South was neither honorable nor wise. In accepting the responsibility of the deed, it has, so far as those interests are concerned, which led to it, both lost an opportunity and committed a fatal error. Had it spurned the offer of the territories, when it was made, it would have achieved a moral triumph far more valuable to it than any other immediate success can be. But the virtue of its representatives was not equal to the occasion-the spirit of Henry, Wythe, Macon, Jefferson, was not theirs. Or had it, after the act was consummated in Congress, withheld its approval, and manifested a willingness to allow the North a fair chance in the appropriation of land, so long consecrated to freedom by its own consent, there would have been a color of equity in its proceedings, which would have gone far in tempering the horror and