verse. liar constitution, nothing of real value can be attained; it is equally true, that he that will be under no obligation to others, will be able to confer little upon them. Great wealth is the result of many exchanges. The Creator has not so endowed the most gifted of his children, that he can be independent of his brethren. The most perfect characters have many faults, the strongest many weaknesses, which it is the part of friendship to correct, to compensate, and, if possible, remove. The happiest culture is undoubtedly that which, leaving the stronger features of the character to their natural development, still soften many an asperity, modifies whatever is extravagant, and tends to produce a happy harmony among all the faculties. We need humility, and an open, loving spirit, that we may be ready to receive instruction from every one on any point wiser than ourselves. The characteristics of the PRELUDE are the same as those which distinguish the author's other works; simplicity, fine descriptions of nature, and the subtler workings of his own mind, with general reflections upon man and life. The diction is often but a single remove from prose. To many the poet's delineation of the growth and development of his mind and character would have been quite as attractive without the rhythm. One naturally thinks while reading it, of the “ Poetry and Truth from My Life” of Goethe; and must allow that the work of the German, though written in prose, is far more poetical. The details of actual life lose often much of their homely charm, when committed to the formality of blank Still the work is of great value as a faithful record of the inner life of a distinguished poet of our own day. Wanting the attractions of narative and incident, it pleases by the pictures which it presents of the poet, in the various stages of his progress, and the scenes and objects in which he most delighted. It is calm and cheerful, and tends to make us contented with our lot. “The poet's soul was with me at that time: Sweet meditations, the still overflow Should reverence." MIRABEAU. NEXT to Napoleon, the COUNT DE MIRABEAU was the most extraordinary person to whom that mother of prodigies, the French Revolution, gave birth. Down to that period, his life had been diversified by a sufficient number of marvellous deeds and disgusting vices, to have furnished materials for a "select library" of heroic or revolting romances. Born in 1749, he became the most eminent and celebrated member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Provence. His father, the Marquis de Mirabeau, was a leading partizan of the school of Political Economists, founded by Quesnay; and after its chief, one of its ablest writers. An ultra-liberalist on paper, and an ardent advocate of theoretical equality, his life was one continuous exemplification of unbending aristocracy, making him a worthy sire of him of whom Neckar said, he was a "Tribun par calcul, et Aristocrat par goût." In boyhood, the Count exhibited a rare combination of intuitive genius, exquisite sensibility, generous daring, and vehement passion. From some cause, never fully explained, his father seems to have hated him from his very birth. Instead of providing for him that species of mental and moral nurture which would have given a right direction to his strong propensities, and caused them to shoot up and bear comely and valuable fruits, he first poisoned the soil whence they sprung, and then threw them out upon the world to grow without culture or die of neglect. By means admirably adapted to blight or to poison the heart of his child, he thwarted, indiscriminately, all his boyish plans and stifled all his youthful aspirations. At the age of fourteen, he placed him in a military school, where his robust intellect and versatile taste made large acquisitions in languages, mathematics, music and drawing, while his precocious appetite and fiery temper sought enjoyment and exercise in debauchery and broils. Leaving this school, he entered the army, became an adept in the practice of athletic sports, read with avidity all the works on military science that came in his way, and contracted the worst vices of a gay and dissolute camp. He fell violently in love, and wished to marry and quit the service. But his father, so far from yielding to his importunities, and seizing this opportunity to make his wayward son a man of purity and peace, was deeply incensed, and was on the point of banishing the Count to an unhealthy tropical colony, when the interference of some members of the Mirabeau family so far appeased his ferocity, that he commuted his sentence to imprisonment in a fortress on the island of Ré, in the bay of Biscay. This outrage unsealed the waters of bitterness in the soul of young Mirabeau; and thenceforth the persecutions of the unnatural father were returned with all the intensity of hatred which the abused son could command. The war between them was open and relentless. During the ten or twelve following years, the Count endured a series of vexations and cruelties at the hands of the Marquis, that aroused the deepest indignation and abhorrence in impartial minds. These were repaid by repeated instances of studied contempt or malignant abuse on the part of the son, that excite mingled emotions of admiration and disgust. Having been released from Ré, Mirabeau entered the army in Corsica, where his skill and bravery soon won him a captain's commission. Ambitious to rise in the service, he applied to his father for aid in purchasing a regiment. It was refused, and he left the camp forever. Being now two years in his majority, he married a beautiful young lady of small fortune, and retired to Limousin, a central province of the kingdom, and commenced agriculture. For a few months he passed a comparatively quiet and orderly life in this rural district. But, like the storm petrel, smooth seas and calm skies were not his favorite elements. Growing discontented with his monotonous pursuits, and looking around for a way of escape, he found himself entangled in hopeless bankruptcy. His father had scarcely given him a livre since he drove him from home to struggle against poverty and neglect in the army. He had settled in Limousin with his father's approval. He had been expected to keep up the dignity of the family, by living like a nobleman's heir. Aristocratic exaction had aided to plunge him into his pecuniary difficulties. A suitable opportunity was now afforded for parental interference to relieve him from his embarrassments. The Marquis did interfere. He brought a charge of lunacy against the Count, caused him to be arrested under a Lettre de Cachet, and confined to his estate ! Subsequently, escaping from confinement to avenge an insult to his sister, his father procured another Lettre, which threw him into the castle of If. After remaining here some time, his place of imprisonment was changed to the fortress of Joux. His agreeable manners so won upon the commander of the fortress, that he gave him permission to live in the adjoining town. It was while residing here, in 1775, that he met with an adventure which blazoned his name through Europe. Associating with the aristocracy of the town, he saw Sophie, the wife of the Marquis Monnier, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Dole. According to the practice of the ancient regime, she had been wedded, while a girl, to a superannuated man of threescore. Allied to an austere, jealous old civilian, the life of this brilliant beauty of eighteen was one round of vexation and torment. Captivated by her ripe charms, Mirabeau, then a dashing young nobleman of twenty-six, avowed his passion to the Marchioness. She was flattered by his adoration, and intoxicated by his fascinating conversation. They contracted a guilty connection. He fled to Dijon, whither she followed him. He was there arrested by his father, but contrived to escape into Switzerland, where he was immediately joined by the Marchion Hunted in his mountain retreat by the spies of his father, he and his mistress took refuge in Holland. The noblesse and aristocracy of France, whose matrimonial infidelities were the jest of every court and camp in Europe, affected to be outraged beyond measure at this transgression of conjugal rights. The rage of the Marquis de Mirabeau knew no bounds. He trumpeted his virtuous indignation in the ears of the con. tinent. A striking evidence of the unmixed purity of his anger is found in the fact, that fifteen years before, having been fascinated with the charms of Madame de Pailly, the lickerish old Marquis turned his constant wife , the partner of his youth, the mother of his children, out of doors, that he might have larger accommodations for this voluptuous Swiss mistress, who had, from that hour to this, shared his bed, ruled his household, stimulated to frenzy his hatred of his son, and goaded him to persecute with rnflagging libels and lawsuits his discarded wife, filling the families ess. of both parties with contention, and furnishing rich food for back biters in the saloons of Paris. In Holland, Mirabeau remained about two years, supporting himself and his paramour by literary labors. Gross charges having been published against him by his father, he retorted by lifting, before the eye of Europe, the curtain which concealed the infidelities of the parental mansion. President Monnier prosecuted him for seduction in one of the French courts, and he was condemned to death and decapitated in effigy. An attempt was now made to get possession of his person. His father, not content that he should live in exile, unknown except as a seducer and a satirist, induced the government to violate the clearest principles of international law, by causing him and his mistress to be arrested in Holland, by a French officer, without the consent of the Dutch authorities, and brought to France. On their arrival, he was lodged in the castle of Vincennes, and she, being in a critical state of health, was kept under the eye of the police till she was delivered of a daughter, when she was sent to a convent. Throughout nearly the whole of his long confinement, Mirabeau was treated with extreme rigor. For some time he was deprived of pen, ink, paper and books. When these were at length granted to him, he employed the dreary hours in reading and writing. Everything he wrote was subject to the inspection of the governor of the castle. During his incarceration, he prepared some of his most celebrated works; among them, Lettres á Sophie and Lettres de Cachet; the former, scandalous in the extreme; the latter, worthy of the best phase of his character. This able and eloquent exposure of the manifold abuses of this convenient instrument of public persecution and private malice, of which, during his life, he was seventeen times the victim, contributed to swell the rising tide that was soon to whelm king, nobles, and Lettres de Cuchet in undistinguishable ruin. Being denied the use of paper suitable for the composition of such a work, he wrote the Lettres on blank leaves torn from the books he read, and concealed the manuscript from his keepers by stitching it in the folds of his garments, and when he left the castle carried it away unobserved. The public authorities at length began to believe, that his imprisonment was instigated by his father more from a love of revenge than a love of justice, and orders were given for his liberation. In 1780, Mirabeau, with broken health, but unsubdued spirit, turned his back on Vincennes, where he had been kept a close prisoner three years and six months. A reconciliation, which subsequent events proved to have been heartless on both sides, was now patched up between the father and the son. Mutual charges of inconstancy passed between him and Sophie. She bitterly upbraided him for suspecting her of infidelities of which he was notoriously guilty. They separated forever. After lingering a few years in obscurity and remorse, the Marchioness terminated her wretched life by inhaling the fumes of charcoal. Mirabeau having procured a revocation of the sentence of death that had been pronounced against him for the seduction of this woman, attempted to regain the confidence of his long neglected wife. Failing to accomplish this by negociation, he harassed her with a lawsuit, which terminated in his defeat and her triumph, and the disgrace of both. Another quarrel was now fastened upon him by his father; and quitting France, in 1784, he repaired to London, accompanied by a new mistress with whom he became acquainted while dwelling in Holland. He remained in London some two years, associating familiarly with Wilkes and other radical friends of liberty, publishing several political works, and studying the structure and observing the workings of the British Constitution. In 1786, he went to Berlin, wormed himself into the confidence of the Great Frederick, joined the society of the Illuminati, and gathered materials for a history of Prussia. After wandering through Europe nearly four years, dividing his time between writing for newspapers, composing books, debauching frail women, defending himself against prosecutions for libels, going to jail for debts, and fighting duels, this half vagabond, half philosopher, returned to France in 1787. He had left the country reposing in the lap of despotism. He found it agitated with discussions that foreshadowed the events of 1789. The heavy burdens of the national debt and the exhausted condition of the public treasury, and the inability of the ordinary revenues to pay the interest of the one and supply the deficiencies of the other, called imperiously for & resort to extraordinary taxation. To meet this exigency, public sentiment was urging the necessity of a convocation of the States General. The ever active pen of Mirabeau at once entered into these inflammatory discussions. The violent character of his first pamphlet caused a Lettre de Cachet to be issued against him. He avoided arrest by flight; and from his retreat continued to issue pamphlets, some of which were valuable, others infamous, and all pungent and popular. One of his works was condemned by the parliament of Paris, another was burnt by the common hangman, and all tended to increase the popular commotion. At length, the king yielded to the general demand, and the decree for the convocation of the three estates of the realm was issued. Mirabeau repaired to Provence, the ancient seat of his family, and offered himself a candidate to represent the noblesse of his native district in the Assembly. His claim to be recognized as a member of their “order" was scouted with disdain. Not to be foiled thus, and determined to have a voice in this rare tribunal, he derided his own claim to fellowship among the nobles, courted the favor of the commons, hired a shop, hung out his sign,“ Mirabeau, Woolen Draper," put on his apron, sold his commodities, won the confidence of the mob, was elected by the sans-culottes of Aix as their representative, and with haughty mien and vengeful heart, took his seat among the deputies of the tiers-état, at Versailles, on the fifth of May, 1789. What a life of forty years had been led by this man, now to become the master mind in the most extraordinary revolution of the Christian era! What was the secret of the vast influence he exerted over the destinies of one of the oldest and most powerful monarchies of Europe, and one of the most cultivated and brilliant nations in the world ? It is to be found partly in the rare combination of elements that constituted his nature, and partly in the unprecedented character of the crisis in which he displayed his powers, It long since ceased to be disputed, that the causes of the French Revolution are to be sought far beyond the financial embarrassments which convoked the States General. Nor was the National Assembly, into which the States wer: so speedily merged, the prime origin of the commotions that immediately followed its organization. Nor were the clamors of the press, the fulminations of the tribune, the conspiracies of the clubs, and the orgies of the sans-culottes, the pristine sources of those political and social convulsions, whose throes shook two hemispheres and blanched . |