mily pride and hereditary vices; and believed themselves, notwithstanding the tendency of the theories which they patronised and the abuses of which their privileges made a part, secure in their peculiar advantages and enjoyments. The Count exhibits their situation in vivid terms.

"Pour nous, jeune noblesse française, sans regret pour le passé, sans inquiétude pour l'avenir, nous marchions gaîment sur un tapis de fleurs qui nous cachait un abîme. Rians frondeurs des modes anciennes, de l'orgueil féodal de nos pères et de leurs graves étiquettes, tout ce qui était antique nous paraissait gênant et ridicule. La gravité des anciennes doctrines nous pesait. La philosophie riante de Voltaire nous entraînait en nous amusant. Sans approfondir celle des écrivains plus graves, nous l'admirions comme empreinte de courage et de résistance au pouvoir arbitraire.

L'usage nouveau des cabriolets, des fracs, la simplicité des coutumes anglaises nous charmaient, en nous permettant de dérober à un éclat gênant tous les dé. tails de notre vie privée. Consacrant tout notre temps à la société, aux fêtes, aux plaisirs, aux devoirs peu assujettissans de la cour et des garnisons, nous jouissions à la fois avec incurie et des avantages que nous avaient transmis les anciennes institutions, et de la liberté que nous apportaient les nouvelles mœurs: ainsi ces deux régimes flattaient également l'un notre vanité, l'autre nos penchans pour les plaisirs."

It was the mode among those of his order, who possessed any literary talents, to attempt compositions of the lighter cast, and particularly vers de société, verses which were adapted to flatter a mistress, amuse a coterie, or sting á rival, an enemy, or a court favourite. This, however, was not always a safe exercise of their wit and knack of rhyme. Maurepas,—afterwards one of Louis the Sixteenth's ministers,-suffered an exile of twenty-five years for a song; and the Chevalier de Boufflers for a long time marred his fortune by similar effusions. Our author, in a sportive mood, devised some pungent couplets against the minister of marine, in 1779. Being, soon after, at a hunt with the king-Louis XVI.-this monarch observed to him, with a very severe countenance, "I have been told that you have suffered yourself to make certain verses, very lively and wicked, and hardly fit to be acknowledged." The culprit, endeavouring to hide his embarrassment, replied that he had indeed amused himself in camp by writing a song, and forthwith he warbled, in a low tone, into the ear of the sovereign, a few stanzas of a different piece of his own, rather licentious, upon the deception of jealous husbands. Louis laughed heartily, and said no more on the subject: but the affair might have been widely different from a joke.

Ségur became celebrated for his poetical and dramatic bagatelles, and has published a number of them in an octavo, entitled Mélanges. He is, besides, a voluminous author in prose; advantageously known as such in the republic of letters. His "Politique de Tous Les Cabinets de l'Europe," to which Burke has referred with so much respect in the Letters on a Regicide Peace, is a valuable and curious contribution to political and diplomatic history: his Historical and Political View of Eu

rope, from 1786 to 1796, another work of considerable repute, has likewise passed through several editions:-we have, moreover, from his pen, an extensive outline of Ancient History; Histories of Rome, of the Lower Empire, and of France; and four volumes, entitled Galerie Morale et Politique, which, as he states in his preface, were composed for the rich, the happy, and the powerful, though he represents these to be, of all readers, the least disposed to welcome advice and weigh truth. The Gallery consists of a series of essays on many different topics, from which profit and pleasure may be derived by the incalculably more numerous and less fastidious remainder of mankind. As a writer, the Count is not frequently profound, nor minutely erudite, nor absolutely original; but, having gathered from books and social converse, a large fund of information, and acquired a flowing and elegant style, he has imparted to nearly all his performances in prose, a degree of attraction and solidity, which has rendered them justly popular, and has fairly earned for him the seat which he holds in the French Academy. Most of them were executed for the purpose of procuring means wherewith to discharge debts, and relieve other necessities occasioned by the French Revolution. His Life of Frederick William II. of Prussia, converted into the Historical and Political View which we have already mentioned, was prepared, as one of the novels of Sir Walter Scott is said to have been,-to furnish paraphernalia, a trousseau, for a daughter about to be married. The Count worked, however, only in the silver age of authors: the price stipulated with his bookseller was but a thousand crowns-the baronet could command thousands of guineas.

Few of the courtiers and men of fashion, of his meridian period, equalled Ségur in wit, address, and general fascination of manner. The Prince de Ligne, whom Madame de Stael celebrates as one of the most accomplished and winning gentlemen and cavaliers that ever lived, bears testimony, in his sprightly Letters, to Ségur's rare endowments of mind and body, and the extraordinary personal favour which he acquired with all the sovereigns, whose social leisure he adorned and enlivened. With equal facility and success, he extemporized verses and tales; discussed literature and politics; threw out bons mots and raillery; and lavished compliments "bien spirituels, et bien françois." It was chiefly through his direct influence with Catherine II. that he concluded the famous commercial treaty of 1787, between Russia and France.

On his appointment, in 1784, to the important post of ambassador at the Court of Russia, he left behind him his wife, who was one of the most distinguished of her sex for beauty and virtue. During the five years of his absence, it was remarked that the breath of calumny never reached her, even in that atmo

sphere, where it seemed nearly impossible to remain untainted, particularly within the precincts of the Court; and where suspicion so easily arose, and was exhaled with so much levity on all occasions. She was young; and her father-in-law, the old Maréghal de Ségur, being at the head of the war department, she resided with him at Versailles, and did the honours of the house towards a multitude of military guests, who made illicit love their business as much as any other art of destruction. This cireumstance we notice to confirm the credit due to her for the other: and the merit of this exemplary woman will be the more felt, when we add that her husband was notoriously among the most gallant, and the most successful in his gallantries, of all the gay courtiers who contributed to render Paris and Versailles a scene at once of the highest refinement and lowest degeneracy of our species. He was not, however, insensible to her charms and moral excellence; he preferred her to any other woman; but, according to the vitiated taste and fashion of dissolute capitals, he preferred even to her the renown and adventures of un homme à bonnes fortunes. His muse was more frequently employed to extol the true object of his admiration than any other; some of the most delightful verses ever presented by a husband to a wife, are in the number of his erotic offerings; and we may believe, in all its parts, the following romantic story, which he relates in his third volume, in his account of his journey to the Crimea, with Catherine II.—

"At Theodosia, we were just going to commence our journey, the empress was already in her carriage, and I was hastily descending the steps of her palace to join her, when, all of a sudden, there appeared before me a young woman dressed in the Asiatic fashion. Her size, her gait, her eyes, her forehead, her mouth, in short, all her features presented, with inconceivable accuracy, the perfect image of my wife.

Surprise rendered me motionless. I doubted whether I was awake; I believed for a moment that Madame de Ségur was really come from France in search of me, and that they had taken pleasure in concealing the event, and preparing for me this unexpected meeting: the imagination travels quickly, and I was in the country of wonders.

In the mean time Prince Potemkin, seeing me stand like a statue, called to me in vain, and ran to tell me that the empress was waiting for me. The young woman withdrew, and my too short dream was broken; I related it in a few words to the prince.

'Is the resemblance then so complete?' said he. I answered, that it was perfect and incredible.'

'Well then,' replied he, laughing, batushka, (a familiar and friendly expres sion), this young Circassian belongs to a man who will allow me to dispose of her as I think proper, and as soon as we arrive at Petersburgh, I will make you a present of her.' I thanked him, but added, 'I shall not accept your offer: I think such a proof of sentiment would appear very strange to Madame de Ségur.'

We separated, and I thought all was over: but, some time afterwards, the prince convinced me that he was piqued at my refusal; he attributed it to a false delicacy, which prevented me from receiving a present from him. I will prove that you are mistaken,' I said to him, by accepting any other present which you may be pleased to offer me.'"

On his return from Russia in 1789, he endeavoured, as a politician, to conciliate both the Constituent Assembly and the Court, but lost the confidence of both; though, when, as the Revolution advanced, it was deemed expedient to send a special mission to Prussia, then beginning to menace war, he was chosen the ambassador, as a person of aristocratic rank, a former servant of the crown, and one who had personally known the Prussian monarch.. Arriving at Berlin, confident of the good-will of Frederick, he found all the favour of the court in possession of the French emigrants. Through their ascendancy, as it was supposed, the king was induced to offer him the bitterest indignity, in his first official audience, by turning on his heel instead of the usual courtesy. The emigrants who surrounded Frederick at the time, or were in the ante-chamber when Ségur was retiring, exhibited their triumph in so mortifying and insulting a manner, that he was completely unmanned, and as soon as he reached his lodgings, endeavoured to put an end to his life by stabbing himself with a penknife, which fortunately proved too short for his purpose. This event excited the strongest sensation among his friends in Paris, where, ere long, he re-appeared, pale and emaciate; an object of general notice and interest, as much on account of his admired and afflicted wife, as for his own sake. The extreme sensibility and mad despair of the ambassador and courtier, may remind those who are familiar with the domestic history of England, of the similar mortification, but more unhappy fate, of the youthful chancellor Yorke.

In its progress, the Revolution began sorely to afflict and alarm the Count; he looked to this country as an asylum, in common with a large portion of the inhabitants of Paris, who appeared to suppose that nothing would be wanting to their happiness if they could only once land on our shores. Out of the wreck of his fortune and that of Madame de Ségur, he purchased, from the American minister, Gouverneur Morris, a farm, on the Delaware, near Wilmington, at the price of 120,000 francs: this, however, the utter poverty and distress to which he was finally reduced by the rapine and tyranny of the revolutionary governments, forced him to sell, in the year 1798, at the sacrifice of half its cost. He languished for a time in the prisons of Robespierre, and continued to experience several of the worst calamities of the reign of anarchy and despotism, until Bonaparte acquired dominion as First Consul. Adhering to the new master, the Count was placed in the legislative body, in which he strenuously advocated the prolongation of the consulate, for life. When Napoleon assumed the purple, he chose our experienced courtier as his Grand Master of Ceremonies, created him Count of the Empire, and bestowed on him other lofty functions and titles. Ségur did not fail to perform well his various parts under the

new dynasty; nor did he omit to burn a moderate share of incense before the imperial idol. When the Bourbons were reinstated in 1814, he accepted from them the station of Peer of France; but on Bonaparte's return from Elba in 1815, he remained both in Paris and in the House of Peers, and even re-occupied his post of Grand Master of the Ceremonies, which he had filled with all the science and skill of an adept of la vieille cour. Seeing him once more,-at the end of the year last mentioned,a servant of the old dynasty, among the peers, the editors of the Dictionary of Weathercocks, Dictionnaire des Girouettes, have introduced his name into that mischievous register, and assigned to him no less than six flags, as emblems of his several varieties of fealty. They have also spitefully quoted some agreeable verses of his, upon the happiness of solitude, and the illusions of ambition, produced when he was in obscuration. We doubt, however, whether a poet ought to be held responsible in this way for his moralizing:-any more than most of the French and English bards who celebrated the charms of nature and the superiority of rural life, but rarely quitted Paris or London, could be considered as bound to reside in the country. The verses in question are these:

"D'un monde qui m'avait séduit

Je connais l'imposture ;

Mon cœur éclairant mon esprit,
Me rend à la nature.

Partout on voit tant de fureur
Et tant d'ingratitude,

Qu'on ne trouve plus le bonheur
Que dans la solitude.

Pour trouver ce parfait bonheur
Dont le séjour est un mystère,
Consultez toujours votre cœur,
Que ce guide scul vous éclaire:
De vos ambitieux désirs

Fuyez la trompeuse lumiére,
Et pour goûter de vrais plaisirs

Venez me voir dans ma chaumière."

It is not with any inclination or design to disparage our worthy author that we have premised these particulars of his career, which are derived from other sources than his Memoirs. He is now, and has long been, a good husband and patriot: the fond and conscientious wife who clung to him in all his sad reverses, is the cherished companion and helpmate of his old age; and whoever contemplates the portrait of him, which is prefixed to his first volume, and is as much a fac simile as that of the neat adjoining autograph, must form a kindly judgment of his general qualities, by an instinct more sure than any maxim of Lavater. As the near relative of Lafayette, as one of the chivalrous French. patricians who fought on our soil to achieve our independence,