beautiful silver ore lie scattered, which you must dig for, and sift: suddenly, when your thread or vein is at the richest, it vanishes (as is the way with mines) in thick masses of agglomerate and pudding-stone, no man can guess whither. This is not as it should be; and yet unfortunately it could be no other. The long bad book is so much easier to do than the brief good one; and a poor bookseller has no way of measuring and paying but by the ell, cubic or superficial. The very weaver comes and says, not "I have woven so many ells of stuff," but "so many ells of such stuff:" satin and Cashmere-shawl stuff,-or, if it be so, duffle and coal-sacking, and even cobweb stuff.

pardon, and pass by on the other side. Such copiousness (having wagons enough) as gives things are an ordained trial of public patience, the reader many a pang. The very pains bewhich perhaps is the better for discipline; stowed on it are often perverse; the whole is and seldom, or rather never, do any lasting become so hard, heavy; unworkable, except injury. in the sweat of one's brow! Or call it a mine, Close following on Dumont's "Reminis--artificial-natural silver mine. Threads of cences" came this Biography by M. Lucas Montigny, "Adopted Son;" the first volume in 1834, the rest at short intervals; and lies complete now in Eight considerable Volumes octavo: concerning which we are now to speak,-unhappily, in the disparaging sense. In fact it is impossible for any man to say unmixed good of M. Lucas's work. That he, as Adopted Son, has lent himself so resolutely to the washing of his hero white, and even to the white-washing of him where the natural colour was black, be this no blame to him; or even, if you will, be it praise. If a man's Adopted Son may not write the best book he can for him, then who may? But the fatal circumstance is, that M. Lucas Montigny has not written a book at all; but has merely clipped Undoubtedly the Adopted Son's will was and cut out, and cast together the materials for good. Ought we not to rejoice greatly in the a book, which other men are still wanted to possession of these same silver-veins; and take write. On the whole M. Montigny rather sur-them in the buried mineral state, or in any prises one. For the reader probably knows, what all the world whispers to itself, that when "Mirabeau, in 1783, adopted this infant born the year before," he had the best of all conceivable obligations to adopt him; having, by his own act, (non-notarial,) summoned him to appear in this World. And now consider both what Shakspeare's Edmund, what Poet Savage, and such like, have bragged; and also that the Mirabeaus, from time immemorial, had (like a certain British kindred known to us) "produced many a blackguard, but not one block-as head!" We almost discredit that statement, which all the world whispers to itself; or, if The present reviewer, restricted to a mere crediting it, pause over the ruins of families. article, purposes, nevertheless, to sift and exThe Haarlem canal is not flatter than M. Mon-tract somewhat. He has bored (so to speak) tigny's genius. He wants the talent which and run mine-shafts through the book in variseems born with all Frenchmen, that of pre-ous directions, and knows pretty well what is senting what knowledge he has in the most in it, though indeed not so well where to find knowable form. One of the solidest men, too: doubtless a valuable man; whom it were so pleasant for us to praise, if we could. May he be happy in a private station, and never write more; except for the Bureaux de Préfecture, with tolerably handsome official appointments, which is far better!

state; too thankful to have them now indestructible, now that they are printed? Let the world, we say, be thankful to M. Montigny, and yet know what it is they are thanking him for. No Life of Mirabeau is to be found in these Volumes, but the amplest materials for writing a Life. Were the Eight Volumes well riddled and smelted down into One Volume, such as might be made, that one were the volume! Nay it seems an enterprise of such uses, and withal so feasible, that some day it is as good sure to be done, and again done, and finally well done.

the same, having unfortunately (as reviewers are wont) "mislaid our paper of references!" Wherefore, if the best extracts be not presented, let not M. Lucas suffer. By one means and another, some sketch of Mirabeau's history; what befel him successively in this World, and what steps he successively took in consequence; His biographical work is a monstrous quar- and how he and it, working together, made the ry, or mound of shot-rubbish, in eight strata, thing we call Mirabeau's Life,—may be brought hiding valuable matter, which he that seeks out; extremely imperfect, yet truer, one can will find. Valuable, we say; for the Adopted hope, than the Biographical Dictionaries and Son having access, nay welcome and friendly en- ordinary voice of rumour give it. Whether, reaty, to family papers, to all manner of ar- and if so, where and how, the current estimate chives, secret records; and working therein long of Mirabeau is to be rectified, fortified, or in years, with a filial unweariedness, has made any important point overset and expunged, will himself piously at home in all corners of the hereby come to light, almost of itself, as we matter. He might, with the same spirit, (as proceed. Indeed, it is very singular, considerwe always upbraidingly think,) so easily have ing the emphatic judgments daily uttered, in made us at home too! But no: he brings to print and speech, about this man, what Egyplight things new and old; now precious illus-tian obscurity rests over the mere facts of his trative private documents, now the poorest public heaps of mere pamphleteer and parliamentary matter, so attainable elsewhere, often so omissible were it not to be attained; and jumbles and tumbles the whole together with such reckless clumsiness, with such endless

external history; the right knowledge of which, one would fancy, must be the preliminary of any judgment, however faint. But thus, as we always urge, are such judgments generally passed: vague plebiscita, (decrees of the common people;) made up of innumerable loud empty

ayes and loud empty noes; which are without | French Riquettis; and produce,-among other meaning, and have only sound and currency: things, the present article in this Review. plebiscita needing so much revisal!-To the work, however.

It was hinted above that these Riquettis were a notable kindred; as indeed there is great likelihood, if we knew it rightly, the kindred and fathers of most notable men are. The Vaucluse fountain, that gushes out, as a river, may well have run some space under ground in that character, before it found vent. Nay perhaps it is not always, or often, the intrinsically greatest of a family-line that becomes the noted one, but only the best favoured of fortune. So rich here, as elsewhere, is Nature, the mighty Mother; and scatters from a single Oak-tree, as provender for pigs, what would plant the whole Planet into an oakforest! For truly, if there were not a mute force in her, where were she with the speaking and exhibiting one? If under that frothy superficies of braggarts, babblers, and highsounding, richly-decorated personages, that strut and fret, and preach in all times Quam parvá sapientia regatur, there lay not some substratum of silently heroic men; working as men; with man's energy, enduring and endeavouring; invincible, who whisper not even to themselves how energetic they are?-The Riquetti family was, in some measure, defined already by analogy to that British one; as a family totally exempt from blockheads, but a little liable to produce blackguards. It took root in Provence, and bore strong southern fruit there: a restless, stormy line of men; with the wild blood running in them, and as if there had been a doom hung over them ("like the line of Atreus," Mirabeau used to say,) which really there was, the wild blood itself being doom enough. How long they had stormed in Florence and elsewhere, these Riquettis, history knows not; but for the space of those five centuries, in Provence, they were never without a man to stand Riquetti-like on the earth. Men sharp of speech, prompt of stroke; men quick to discern, fierce to resolve; headlong, headstrong, strong every way; whe often found the civic race-course too strait for them, and kicked against the pricks; doing this thing or the other, which the world had to animadvert upon, in various dialects, and find clean against rule."

One of the most valuable elements in these eight chaotic volumes of M. Montigny is the knowledge he communicates of Mirabeau's father; of his kindred and family, contemporary and anterior. The father, we in general knew, was Victor Riquetti, Marquis de Mirabeau, called and calling himself the Friend of Men; a title, for the rest, which bodes him no good, in these days of ours. Accordingly one heard it added with little surprise, that this Friend of Men was the enemy of almost every man he had to do with; beginning at his own hearth, ending at the utmost circle of his acquaintance; and only beyond that, feeling himself free to love men. "The old hypocrite!" cry many,not we. Alas, it is so much easier to love men while they exist only on paper, or quite flexible and compliant in your imagination, than to love Jack and Kit who stand there in the body, hungry, untoward; jostling you, barring you, with angular elbows, with appetites, irascibilities, and a stupid will of their own! There is no doubt but old Marquis Mirabeau found it extremely difficult to get on with his brethren of mankind; and proved a crabbed, sulphurous, choleric old gentleman, many a sad time: nevertheless, there is much to be set right in that matter; and M. Lucas, if one can carefully follow him, has managed to do it. Had M. Lucas but seen good to print these private letters, family documents, and more of them, (for he "could make thirty octavo volumes,") in a separate state; in mere chronological order, with some small commentary of annotation; and to leave all the rest alone!—As it is, one must search and sift. Happily the old Marquis himself, in periods of leisure, or forced leisure, whereof he had many, drew up certain "unpublished memoirs" of his father and progenitors; out of which memoirs young Mirabeau also in forced leisure (still more forced, in the Castle of If!) redacted one Memoir, of a very readable sort: by the light of this latter, so far as it will last, we walk with convenience. The Mirabeaus were Riquettis by surname," which is a slight corruption of the Italian Arrighetti. They came from Florence: cast out of it in some Guelph-Ghibelline quarrel, such as were common there and then, in the year 1267. Stormy times then, as now! The chronologist can remark that Dante Alighieri was a little boy of some four years that morning the Arrighettis had to go, and men had to say, "They are gone, these villains! They are gone, these martyrs!" the little boy listening with interest. Let the boy become a man, and he too shall have to go; and prove come è duro calle, and what a world this is; and have his poet-nature not killed, for it would not kill, but darkened into Old-Hebrew sternness, and sent onwards to Hades and Eternity for a home to itself. As Dame Quickly said in the Dream-" Those were rare times, Mr. Rigmarole !-Pretty much like our own," answered he.-In this manner did the Arrighettis (doubtless in grim Longobardic ire) scale the Alps; and become Tramontane

One Riquetti (in performance of some vow at sea, as the tradition goes) chained two mountains together: "the iron chain is still to be seen at Moustier;-it stretches from one mountain to the other, and in the middle of it there is a large star with five rays;" the supposed date is 1390. Fancy the Smiths at work on this business! The town of Moustier is in the Basses-Alpes of Provence: whether the Riquetti chain creaks there to this hour, and lazily swags in the winds, with its "star of five rays" in the centre, and offers an uncertain perch to the sparrow, we know not. Or perhaps it was cut down in the Revolution time, when there rose such a hatred of noblesse, such a famine for iron; and made into pikes? The Adopted Son, so minute generaly, ought to have mentioned, but does not.-That there was building of hospitals, endowing of convents, Chartreux, Récollets, down even to Jesuits; still more, that there was harrying

duke was obliged to say how it stood; the king, with a goodness equal to his greatness, then said, 'It is not of to-day that we know him to be mad; one must not ruin him,'"-and rhinoceros Bruno journeyed on. But again, on the day when they were "inaugurating the pedestrian statue of King Louis in the Place des Victoires," (a masterpiece of adulation,) the same Mirabeau, "passing along the Pont Neuf with the Guards, raised his spontoon to his

saluting first, bawled out, 'Friends, we will salute this one; he deserves it as well as some:'" (Mes amis, saluons celui-ci; il en vaut bien un autre.)-Thus do they, the wild Riquettis, in a state of courtiership. Not otherwise, according to the proverb, do wild bulls, unexpectedly finding themselves in crockery-shops. O Riquetti kindred, into what centuries and circumstances art thou come down!

and fighting, needs not be mentioned: except | came accordingly; the king asked the duke only that all this went on with uncommon why he had not executed the order? The emphasis among the Riquettis. What quarrel could there be and a Riquetti not in it? They fought much: with an eye to profit, to redress of disprofit; probably too for the art's sake. What proved still more rational, they got footing in Marseilles as trading nobles, (a kind of French Venice in those days,) and took with great diligence to commerce. The family biographers are careful to say that it was in the Venetian style, however, and not ignoble. In which sense, indeed, one of their sharp-shoulder before Henry the Fourth's statue, and spoken ancestors, on a certain bishop's unceremoniously styling him "Jean de Riquetti, Merchant of Marseilles," made ready answer, "I am, or was, merchant of police here," (first consul, an office for nobles only,) "as my Lord Bishop is merchant of holy-water:" let his Reverence take that. At all events, the ready-spoken proved first-rate traders; acquired their bus ide, or mansion, (white, on one of those green hills behind Marseilles,) endless warehouses: acquired the lands first of this, then of that; the lands, Village, and Castle of Mirabeau on the banks of the Durance; respectable Castle of Mirabeau, "standing on its scarped rock, in the gorge of two of seven-and-twenty wounds in one hour. valleys, swept by the north wind,"-very | brown and melancholy-looking now! What is extremely advantageous, the old Marquis says, they had a singular talent for choosing wives; and always chose discreet, valiant women; whereby the lineage was the better kept up. One grandmother, whom the Marquis himself might all but remember, was wont to say, alluding to the degeneracy of the age: "You are men? You are but mannikins (sias houmachomes, in Provençal;) we women, in our time, carried pistols in our girdles, and could use them too." Or fancy the Dame Mirabeau sailing stately towards the churchfont; another dame striking in to take precedence of her; the Dame Mirabeau despatching this latter with a box on the ear (soufflet) and these words: "Here, as in the army, the baggage goes last!" Thus did the Riquettis grow, and were strong; and did exploits in their narrow arena, waiting for a wider one.

When it came to courtiership, and your field of preferment was the Versailles Eil-deBœuf, and a Grand Monarque walking encircled with scarlet women and adulators there, the course of the Mirabeaus grew still more complicated. They had the career of arms open, better or worse: but that was not the only one, not the main one; gold apples seemed to rain on other careers,-on that career lead bullets mostly. Observe how a Bruno, Count de Mirabeau, comports himself:-like a rhinoceros yoked in carriage-gear; his fierce forest-horn set to dangle a plume of fleurs-delis.

"One day he had chased a blue man (it is a sort of troublesome usher, at Versailles) into the very cabinet of the king, who thereupon ordered the Duke de la Feuillade to 'put Mirabeau under arrest.' Mirabeau refused to obey; he would not be punished for chastising the insolence of a valet; for the rest, would go to the diner du roi, (king's dinner,) who might then give his order himself.' He

Directly prior to our old Marquis himself, the Riquetti kindred had as near as possible gone out. Jean Antoine, afterwards named Silverstock, (Col de Argent,) had, in the earlier part of his life, been what he used to call killed,

Haughtier, juster, more choleric man need not be sought for in biography. He flung gabellemen and excisemen into the river Durance (though otherwise a most dignified, methodic man) when their claims were not clear; he ejected, by the like brief process, all manner of attorneys from his villages and properties; he planted vineyards, solaced peasants. He rode through France repeatedly, (as the old men still remembered,) with the gallantest train of outriders, on return from the wars; intimidating innkeepers and all the world, into mute prostration, into unerring promptitude, by the mere light of his eye;-withal drinking rather deep, yet never seen affected by it. He was a tall, straight man (of six feet and upwards) in mind as in body; Vendôme's "right arm" in all campaigns. Vendôme once presented him to Louis the Great, with compli ments to that effect, which the splenetic Ri quetti quite spoiled. Erecting his killed head (which needed the silver stock now to keep it straight,) he said: "Yes, Sire; and had I left my fighting, and come up to court, and bribed some catin (scarlet-woman!) I might have had my promotion and fewer wounds to-day!" The Grand King, every inch a king, instantaneously spoke of something else.

But the reader should have first seen that same killing; how twenty-seven of those unprofitable wounds were come by in one fell lot. The Battle of Casano has grown very obscure to most of us; and indeed Prince Eugene and Vendôme themselves grow dimmer and dimmer, as men and battles must; but, curiously enough, this small fraction of it has brightened up again to a point of history for the time being:

"My grandfather had forseen that mancuvre (it is Mirabeau, the Count, not the Marquis, that reports: Prince Eugene has carried a certain bridge which the grandfather had charge of;) "but he did not, as has since hap

pened at Malplaquet and Fontenoy, commit
the blunder of attacking right in the teeth a
column of such weight as that. He lets them
advance, hurried on by their own impetuosity
and by the pressure of their rearward; and
now, seeing them pretty well engaged, he
raised his troop, (it was lying flat on the
ground,) and rushing on, himself at the head
of them, takes the enemy in flank, cuts them
in two, dashes them back, chases them over
the bridge again, which they had to repass in
great disorder and haste. Things brought to
their old state, he resumes his post on the
crown of the bridge, shelters his troop as be-
fore, which, having performed all this service
under the sure deadly fire of the enemy's dou-
ble lines from over the stream, had suffered a
good deal.
M. de Vendôme coming up, full
gallop, to the attack, finds it already finished,
the whole line flat on the earth, only the tall
figure of the colonel standing erect! He or-
ders him to do like the rest, not to have him-
self shot till the time came. His faithful
servant cries to him, 'Never would I expose
myself without need; I am bound to be here,
but you, Monseigneur, are bound not. I an-
swer to you for the post; but take yourself
out of it, or I give it up.' The Prince (Ven-
dôme) then orders him, in the king's name, to
come down. Go to, the king and you: I am
at my work; go you and do yours.' The good
generous Prince yielded. The post was en-
tirely untenable.

other latitudes at this hour, any one who has a turn for such things may easily reflect. Nay, without great difficulty, he may reflect farther, that not only the French Revolution and this Article, but all revolutions, articles, and achievements whatsoever, the greatest and the smallest, which this world ever beheld, have not once but often, in their course of genesis, depended on the veriest trifles, castings of camp-kettles, turnings of straws; except only that we do not see that course of theirs. So inscrutable is genetic history; impracticable the theory of causation, and transcends all calculus of man's devising! Thou, thyself, O Reader, (who art an achievement of importance,) over what hair breadth bridges of Accident, through yawning perils, and the man-devouring gulf of Centuries, hast thou got safe hither,-from Adam all the way!

Be this as it can, Col d'Argent came alive again, by "miracle of surgery:" and, holding his head up by means of a silver stock, walked this earth many long days, with respectability, with fiery intrepidity and spleen; did many notable things: among others, produced, in dignified wedlock, Mirabeau the Friend of Men; who, again produced Mirabeau the Swallower of Formulas; from which latter, and the wondrous blazing funeral-pyre he made for himself, there finally goes forth a light, whereby those old Riquetti destinies, and many a strange old hidden thing, become

noticeable.

"A little afterwards my grandfather had his But perhaps in the whole Riquetti kindred right arm shattered. He formed a sort of sling there is not a stranger figure than this very for it of his pocket handkerchief, and kept his Friend of Men; at whom, in the order of time, place; for there was a new attack getting we have now arrived. That Riquetti who ready. The right moment once come, he chained the mountains together, and hung up seizes an axe in his left hand; repeats the the star with five rays to sway and bob there, same manœuvre as before; again repulses the was but a type of him. Strong, tough as the enemy, again drives him back over the bridge. oak-root, and as gnarled and unwedgeable; no But it was here that ill fortune lay in wait for fibre of him running straight with the other: him. At the very moment while he was re- a block for Destiny to beat on, for the world to calling and ranging his troop, a bullet struck gaze at, with ineffectual wonder! Really a him in the throat; cut asunder the tendons, most notable, questionable, hateable, loveable the jugular vein. He sank on the bridge; the old Marquis. How little, amid such jingling troop broke and fled. M. de Montolieu, Knight triviality of Literature, Philosophie, and the of Malta, his relative, was wounded beside pretentious cackle of innumerable Baron him he tore up his own shirt, and those of Grimms, with their correspondence and selfseveral others, to staunch the blood, but fainted proclamation, one could fancy that France himself by his own hurt. An old serjeant, held in it such a Nature-product as the Friend named Laprairie, begged the aide-major of the of Men! Why, there is substance enough in regiment, one Guadin, a Gascon, to help and this one Marquis to fit out whole armies of carry him off the bridge. Guadin_ refused, Philosophes, were it properly attenuated. So saying he was dead. The good Laprairie | many poor Thomases perorate and have éloges, could only cast a camp-kettle over his colonel's poor Morellets speculate, Marmontels moralize head, and then run. The enemy trampled wer him in torrents to profit by the disorder; the cavalry at full speed, close in the rear of the foot. M. de Vendôme, seeing his line broken, the enemy forming on this side the stream, and consequently the bridge lost, exclaimed, "Ah! Mirabeau is dead then;' a eulogy for ever dear and memorable to us."

How nearly, at this moment, it was all over with the Mirabeaus; how, but for the cast of an insignificant camp-kettle, there had not only been no Article Mirabeau in this Review, but no French Revolution, or a very different one; and all Europe had found itself in far

in rose-pink manner, Diderots become possessed of encyclopedical heads, and lean Barons de Beaumarchais fly abroad on the wings of Figaros; and this brave old Marquis has been hid under a bushel! He was a Writer, too; and had talents for it, (certain of the talents,) such as few Frenchmen have had since the days of Montaigne. It skilled not: he, being unwedgeable, has remained in antiqua. rian cabinets; the others, splitting up so rea dily, are the ware you find on all market-stalls, much prized (sav, as brimstone Lucifers, "light bringers," so called) by the generality. Such is the world's way. And yet complain not