a retinue of squires with falcons on their fists, of gentlemenof-honor and pages.

A sceptic from mere heedlessness, in morals, in religion, in politics, in literature, there are no truths which take deep hold on M. Thiers, no sincere and thorough devotion to the cause of the people which does not provoke his laughter. He resembles a lustrous silk which ever varies its hue and reflects to the sunlight all sorts of colors, without having any of its own, and through whose loose tissue you may see the light.

Ask him not for firm convictions, he cannot form any; for evidences of virility, his temperament is incapable of it. You dislike his bantering, but what, if all things appear to him laughable! You complain that he ridicules you, but he ridicules himself as well!

Intrust him, if you please, with the ministry of the Marine, of War, of the Interior, of Justice, of Foreign Affairs; but take care how you place at his disposal millions and especially hundreds of millions, for they would pass like water through the riddle of his fingers. To this facility of his of squandering money, he joins a certain mode of accompting for it, which is not that of all the world, and this he calls, quite ingeniously, the art of grouping figures.

It would not be easy to gauge exactly the capacity of his political appetite. This only can be affirmed, that he has been, and would be again a thousand times more, in case of opportunity, an immense consumer of men, of horses, of vessels of war, of munitions and of money. You would not say, to look at this manikin, that he has a bigger stomach than another. But like Garagantua, he would swallow, at a mouthful, the largest budget.

At once pliant and tenacious, indifferent and determined, he retracts but to return, he grants but to resume; he leaves you but the alternative, which you cannot avoid offering him, and tagged to all his concessions you may find something to this effect: "Do the one thing or the other, pro

vided you do the other :" "Give us either this or that, we care not, if only you give us that which we ask.”

I like, after all, this natural, lively, free-and-easy discourser. He converses with me, and never declaims. He does not psalmodize everlastingly on the same tone, like the brother preachers of the Doctrine. It is true, indeed, he too ends, at the long run, by wearying me with his prattle. But it is a sort of warbling which is still a recreation from the oratorical monotony, that eternal bore, the most unbearable of bores to a parliamentary martyr, condemned to suffer it from noon along to six in the evening.

He does more than move, more than convince; he interests, he amuses that people, which of all others, likes the most to be amused, to be amused still, to be amused always, even in matters of the greatest gravity.

M. Thiers meditates without effort, and produces without exhaustion. He is insusceptible of fatigue, and the most rapid traveller of ideas that I know. Times and events pass before his memory in their due order and according to their dates, and nature, which others have to search for, presents herself to him uncalled, in all the pomp of her majesty and all the graces of her smile. Have you observed on board the steamboats which plough our rivers, that glass suspended against the cabin-wall wherein the shore is reflected? It exhibits in rapid passage by you the beautiful villages, the tall-spired churches, the verdant meadows, the woodcrowned mountains, the swelling sails of vessels, the yellow corn-fields, the flocks of the valley, the clouds of the air, the animals and the men. Such is M. Thiers-a sort of parliamentary mirror, he reflects the passions of others, but has none himself; he weeps, but he has not a tear in his eyes; he stabs himself with a dagger which does not draw a drop of blood. Pure acting all this, but what acting and what an actor! What naturalness, what versatility! what fertility of imitation! what surprising inflexions of tone! what transparence and lucidity in that style! what graceful negligence in that diction!—but no, you are de

You play

ceiving me, comedian, and you mean to deceive. your part admirably, but it is no more than a part; all this I know, and yet I suffer myself to be carried away by your allurements; I cannot resist so long as you speak, being under the influence of the charm, and I almost prefer hearing even error from your lips, to the truth from the lips of another!

For example, how consummate he was in the play of the Bastiles! I have witnessed all the best exhibitions in the dramatic line, grand opera, comic opera, vaudeville and farce, which have appeared in the theatre of the PalaisBourbon. But I must own that the fortifications of Paris are the most astonishing of the mystifications and other whirligigs which I have seen. Never did better comedian play poorer play. He dropped himself with such art, he attitudinized in that part with such an ingenuity of fantasy, he so animated the scene and produced so complete an illusion in all the spectators that they were unable to refrain, even those who came to hiss him, from exclaiming : "Bravo! perfectly played! admirably done!"—and at the conclusion, so happy was his sleight-of-hand, that he placed the Chamber under his goblet, and then lifted it, but there was no Chamber, and the feat was complete!

M. Thiers has often given me the idea of a woman without a beard, an educated and intellectual woman-not standing, but sitting, in the tribune-and knitting a chit-chat about a thousand topics, jumping from one to another with a light gracefulness, and with no appearance of the slightest mental exertion upon her ever-moving lips.

He is suppler than the most attenuated steel spring. He bends himself, he relaxes himself, he sinks or rises with his subject. He turns himself spirally around the question, from the trunk along to the top. He mounts, descends, remounts, suspends himself from the branches, hides in the thickest of the foliage, appears, disappears, and performs a thousand tricks, with the pretty agility of a squirrel.

He would extract money from a rock. Where others do but glean, he reaps a harvest.

He claps the wing, he basks in the sun. He takes the tints by turns, of purple, of gold and of azure. He does not speak, he coos; he does not coo, he whistles; he does not whistle, he warbles, and is so enchanting both in color and melody, that one knows not which to admire the most, his voice or his plumage.

M. Thiers can make you a speech of three hours long, upon architecture, poetry, law, naval affairs, military strategy, although neither poet, nor architect, nor jurist, nor sailor, nor soldier, provided he is allowed an afternoon's preparation. He must have astounded his oldest chiefs of division when he used to dissert to them on the subject of adminstration. To hear him talk of curves, arches, abutments, hydraulic mortar, you would have thought him a mason, if not an architect. He would dispute upon chemistry with Gay-Lussae, and teach Arago how to point his telescope upon Venus or Jupiter.

His discourse on the state of Belgium is a masterpiece of historical exposition. In the affair of Ancona, he explained strategetical positions, bastions, polygons, counterscarps, redoubts, to the astonishment of officers of genius. He was taken for one of the trade, for a man of learning.

Fine arts, canals, rail-roads, finance, commerce, history, journalism, transcendental politics, street-regulations, theatres, war, literature, religion, municipalities, morals, amusements, great things, middling things, small things, what matters it to him? He is at home in all. He is prepared upon all subjects, because he is prepared upon none. He does not speak like other orators, because he speaks like all the world. Other orators premeditate more or less, but he extemporizes. Other orators perorate, but he converses; and how are you to be on your guard against a man who talks like you, like me, better than you, than I, than any other person. Other orators, behind the scenes, betray some glimpse of the buskin, and by the reflection of the mirror you may see their wav.

ing plumes. They are ready laced, attired, and the foot pointed forward. They wait but the rise of the curtain to advance upon the stage. On the contrary, you seize M. Thiers as he dismounts from his horse, and you say to him: Come, hasten, the hall is full and the public await you im. patiently; take your mask and play what character you choose, a minister, a general, an artist, a puritan, but act. M. Thiers will not allow himself the time to wipe the perspiration from his brow and drink a glass of sugared water. He does not even unboot himself; he enters upon the stage, he bows, he attitudinizes, he grimaces before the spectators, he improvisates the characters, arranges the dialogue, unravels the plots and learns his part in playing it. He plays sometimes two of them, turns about, doffs his mask, puts on another; and always the same he is always different, always in his element, always a consummate actor.

I have however to reproach him with smiling sometimes at his success as he descends from the tribune. A good comedian who would maintain the illusion of the public respecting the reality of his part, ought never to laugh at the farce he has just been playing. In this respect, I admit it, M. Thiers has still some progress to make.

to.

If M. Thiers spoke less quickly, he would be less listened But he precipitates his phraseology with so much volubility, that the apprehension of the Chamber can neither precede nor even follow it. In this point of view, his defect is an advantage, and he is more of an artist than he intends. He ends sometimes, it is true, by losing himself in the details, and rambles, from right to left, so far from the subject that he breaks off without concluding. Might not this also be, in case of need, an effect, rather than a defect, of his art?

Once started, he would gallop on, without stopping, from matins to vespers.

It rarely happens that these great talkers are great poli ticians. Often they chance to say what were better omitted. and omit what ought to be said. They are, ordinarily, vain,