XXXIV. 1838. year for the army were to be 81,000 men, and 37,000 CHAP. sailors for the royal navy ;-forces miserably inadequate when the immensity of the force within a day's sale of the southern coast of England is taken into consideration. Some very curious facts were brought out in the debates in the Chamber on the state of the poor, and the proportion of legitimate to illegitimate births in Paris. It appeared that out of every 1000 births 316 were illegitimate, and that "33,000 orphans abandoned by their parents passed annually through the hospitals of the country." M. Lamartine, in an eloquent speech, declaimed against the measure in progress to suppress or diminish those establishments, which went to rescue from death or ruin the unhappy beings thus brought into the world only to encumber it. "Foundlings are for us," said he, "for all modern societies, one of those sacred necessities for which we must provide, if we would eschew a dissolution of morals, an inundation of crime and popular agitation, which no one can contemplate without trembling. Do not trust to those fatal measures which go only to conceal an evil which will immediately burst forth in other quarters. Insensate are they who are alarmed at the increase of population, if we take sufficient steps to implant and organise it. Man is the most precious of all capitals; and to those who are alarmed at its increase I would say, what would you be at? Are you prepared, as in China, to provide against the dreaded superabundance of population by immersing the children in rivers? It is a noble task to replace the care of a family for those unhappy children whom God has placed in your hands. That task the charity of St Vincent and the genius of Napoleon have rendered easy: you have nothing to do beware lest you undo what they have done; rise superior to those who would inflict a mortal wound on the honour, the morality, the security of the Ann. Hist. country; recollect that there are higher duties than those 194; Moniof property or economy, and that those who are born have 17, 1838. the right to live."1 1 xxi. 193, teur, Feb. CHAP. XXXIV. 17. and death of Talley rand. May 17. While the Legislature was engaged with these important topics, public attention was for a brief period 1838. arrested by the last illness and death of a man who had Last illness played an important part on the theatre of nations in the last generation. On the 17th May, M. Talleyrand died. Arrived at the advanced age of eighty-two, his life had exceeded the ordinary term, and he retained his faculties to the last. Before his death, he had felt a desire to be reconciled to the Church to which he had originally belonged, and in which he had held the rank of bishop; and at the earnest entreaty of his young and beautiful relative, Mademoiselle de Dino, who watched his last days with pious care, he had on 10th March written a recantation of his errors, both religious and political, but which, with characteristic caution—an instance of "the ruling passion strong in death"-he kept by him, and only signed a few hours before his decease.* At the same time he addressed a penitent letter to the Pope, in which he professed his entire adherence to the tenets of the Romish Church. Shortly after signing his recantation, the King paid him a visit, and inquired anxiously after his health. "This," said the dying penitent, "is the highest honour my house has ever received." Books of devotion were frequently, at his own desire, in his hands during his long deathbed illness, one especially, entitled, "The Christian Religion studied in the true Spirit of its Maxims." "The recollections which you recall," L. Blane, v. said he to the Abbé Dupanloup, "are dear to me, and I Ann. Hist. thank you for having divined the place they have preserved in my thoughts and in my heart." Shortly before his death he received extreme unction; and on hearing 1 Cap. ix. 407, 411; 295-297; xxi. 181; Chron. * "Touché de plus en plus par de graves considérations, conduit à juger de sangfroid les conséquences d'une Révolution qui a tout entraîné, et qui dure depuis cinquante ans, je suis arrivé au terme d'un grand âge, et après une longue expérience, à blamer les excès du siècle auquel j'ai appartenu, et à condamner franchement les graves erreurs qui dans cette longue suite d'années ont troublé et affligé l'Eglise Catholique, Apostolique, et Romaine, et auxquelles j'ai eu le malheur de participer."-Dernière Pièce de M. de Talleyrand, May 17, 1838. CAPEFIGUE, ix. 468. دو XXXIV. ter. 1838. 18. the names of Charles, archbishop of Milan, and Maurice, CHAP. his patron saint, he said in a feeble voice, “Have pity on me.' M. Dupanloup having related to him that the Archbishop of Paris had said, "I would give my life for M. de Talleyrand," "He might make a better use of it," replied the dying man; and with these words he expired. Belonging to, and celebrated in, another age, M. de Talleyrand had outlived his reputation and his influ- His characence; but he is too important an historical character to be permitted to depart this earthly scene without an obituary notice. That he was That he was a man of remarkable abilities is sufficiently proved by his career: no man rises so high, even amidst the storms of a revolution, without the aid of those talents which are peculiarly adapted to the times in which he lived. It was to the possession of these talents that the ex-bishop of Autun owed his elevation, and the long duration of his influence through all the mutations of political fortune. He was neither a great nor a good man had he been the first, his head would have been severed from his shoulders in the early part of his career; had he been the second, he never would have emerged into the perilous light of political, from the secure obscurity of ecclesiastical life. He was an accurate observer of the signs of the times, and a base accomplished time-server. It is such men who in general alone survive the storms of a revolution, and reap the fruits of the courage and magnanimity, the ambition or recklessness, of others. Essentially selfish and egotistical, he never hesitated to sacrifice his religion, his oaths, his principles, to the necessities or opportunities of the moment adroit and supple, he contrived to make himself serviceable to all parties, and yet not the object of envenomed hostility to any. Having sworn fidelity to thirteen constitutions, and betrayed them all, he lost no character by his repeated tergiversations; no one expected consistency or honour from him, but all expected from him, and most in power received, valuable secret infor VOL. VI. B XXXIV. 1838. CHAP. mation and useful time-serving. His manners were courteous, and had all the polish of the old school, and his colloquial powers constituted no inconsiderable part of his reputation. His memory, stored with anecdotes of the many eminent men of all parties with whom he had passed his life, rendered his conversation always amusing, often interesting; but there was nothing original in his ideas, or elevated in his conceptions. His celebrity as a talker, like that of Rochefoucauld's Maxims, arose chiefly from the casual felicity of expression and uniform tracing of all actions to the secret workings of selfishness in the human breast. Judging from themselves, both these far-famed observers were doubtless in the right. The reputation of Talleyrand was greater with his contemporaries, to whom his witty sayings were known, than it will be with posterity, which will form its opinions from his actions; and both conspire to demonstrate that intellectual powers, even of the highest kind, cannot compensate for the want of those still more lofty qualities which spring from the pure fountains of the heart.* 19. of Hubert. This year brought to light another of those dark conConspiracy spiracies which revealed the extreme hatred at Louis Philippe that pervaded the republican classes of society. On the 8th December 1837, a man, landing from the English packet-boat on the quay of Boulogne at ten at night, accidentally let fall a portfolio of papers. It was Some of M. de Talleyrand's sayings which have become most celebrated were not his own, or at least they had been said by others before him. That in particular which has made the round of the world, "The principal object of language is to conceal the thoughts," was probably original in him, for it exactly painted his mind; but it is to be found long before in several English authors. Thus in Young's Night Thoughts, "Where Nature's end of language is declined, And men talk only to conceal their mind." "The principal end of language," says Goldsmith, "according to grammarians, is to express our wants so as to receive a speedy redress. But men who know the world maintain very contrary maxims. They hold, and, I think, with some show of reason, that he who knows best how to conceal his necessities and desires, is the most likely person to find redress; and that the true use of speech is not so much to express our thoughts as to conceal them."-GOLDSMITH'S Bee, No. iii., Oct. 20, 1769; Works, iii. 37. 1838. picked up by one of the customhouse officers, and, CHAP not being claimed, opened to discover to whom it be- XXXIV. longed and should be sent. It was found to contain several letters, particularly one signed "Stiegler," which seemed to indicate a conspiracy formed against the Government. It concluded with the words, "The whole matériel has been collected in Paris. I bring the plan which is desired." A man named Stiegler was upon this arrested, and in the crown of his hat was found the drawing of an infernal machine, similar to that which had proved so fatal in the hands of Fieschi when Marshal Mortier was killed. Some papers found on Stiegler, whose real name proved to be Hubert, led to the discovery of several accomplices in the plot; and in May 1838, Hubert, Mademoiselle Laure Gronville, Jacob Steublé, and several others, were brought to trial before the assize court of the department of the Seine at Paris. M. Emmanuel Arago, Favre Ferdinand Bruat, and several other counsel of eminence, conducted the defence; and the trial soon assumed that dramatic air, and produced those impassioned scenes, which at that period characterised all the state trials in France. The accused conducted themselves with a courage bordering on frenzy. It appeared that Mademoiselle Gronville was so ardent a character, that she alternately was engaged in the pious offices of a sœur de la charité, and occupied in dressing with flowers and funeral ornaments the tomb of Alibaud. The trial terminated in the conviction of Hubert, who was sentenced to transportation, and of Laure Gronville, xxi. 162Steublé, and several others, who were sentenced to five Chron.; L. years' imprisonment. Laure Gronville died during her 313-348. confinement, in a state of insanity.1 Louis Napoleon, as already mentioned, had returned from America in August 1837, to see his mother, the Duchess of St Leu, who was in a dying state. Although the prudent lenity with which he had been treated by Louis Philippe seemed to impose at least an implied 1 Ann. Hist. 180, 212, Blanc, v. |