escape from his own glory, and the ordinary recompenses of ambition, Gouverneur Morris, whose fortune was considerable, whose social position excellent, desired to visit Europe. Washington gave him several letters to his friends, and charged him—a characteristic detail-" to buy him at Paris, a flat gold watch, without any ornament; not," says the letter, "the watch of a fool or of a man who desires to make a show, but of which the interior construction shall be extremely well cared for, and the exterior air very simple."

Morris started for France, from whence he wrote to his friends, between 1789 and 1792 a great many letters, which Jared Sparks, one of the most indefatigable biographers of the United States, published in 1802 with the life of his compatriot Morris. Biography, treated as Jared Sparks treats it, is by no means amusing; it is a Chinese screen, without perspective, where all is on the same flat, all the incidents have the same importance. Yet I like this style without style, this good faith of an honest business man better than the charms of the rhetoric biographer.

The political acts of Morris, citizen of the United States, were honorable without being brilliant. The qualities of his mind were essentially American; a penetrating good sense, and a great taste for order and economy; a gentle and benevolent severity in his way of judging men; and in matters of fortune a consummate prudence and exemplary patience. The spirit of a-propos and clever sally was not wanting to his character any more than to Franklin: not the only likeness between them, for they had the same cool temperament, the same Socratic look into things. Morris having never been obliged to fight against fortune, nourished more epicurean tastes, and resigned himself more easily to the brilliant and conversational idleness of great cities. He had also some good old habitual sins, gastronomy, for instance, and the love

of doing nothing, which put him upon a level with the France of Louis XV., and associated him with its movement.

Morris is an admirable observer; never has the French Revolution been judged by so impartial a witness, by a man come from the other world to assist at this great drama, by an American, a member of the Congress where Washington and Franklin sate. Democrat by fact and not by theory he knows how liberty is established. He does not recall the memory of Athens and Rome, his own remembrances suffice him. He handled the interests of a nation which created itself a republic in spite of its metropolis, and which has also had its noble contests, its terrible crises, its moments of exaltation, its violent revolutions, its martyrs, its heroes, its obstacles to overcome.

How will Gouverneur Morris appreciate the new liberty of France? The movers of this grand change will pass before his eyes and will exhibit to him all their resources. It is curious to examine their portraits, made by a man who had no interest in deceiving. How will he regard those ardent theories, those philosophic vapors, by whose constant eruptions society is melted to be recast. Does he consider this vehemence as a pledge of duration; this powerful ebulition as a proof of strength? He has seen our Mirabeaus, our Camille Desmoulins; he has watched them as they worked; he has consigned his reflections to a journal, which is now published. How has he prophesied? You will not accuse him of judging after the blow was struck; nor of yielding to the predilections of an aristocratic birth. If he shows severity, it will be the severity of a friend. What leaning can this son of American colonists have towards the nobles of France? And this enemy of England, who has just revolted against the tyranny of the metropolis, can he be a partisan of Pitt, of Coburg?

Let us follow him.

Let us listen to him.

It was in 1789; minds were in motion in France, heads were fermenting. Morris disembarking at Havre, formed the acquaintance of a little gentleman who appeared to him a phenomenon; it was the first specimen of this sort which had offered itself to his notice; a universal reformer; a man of plans and systems; a little gentleman, whose brain was boiling with politics, philanthrophy and philosophy; a genius who could regulate the destinies of twenty empires better than Lycurgus or Alfred the Great. Something worth observing is this the immense surprise of the good Morris in presence of this legislative gentleman, Morris, who had himself just been a legislator and the founder of a state. He makes a note of this curious and uneasy individual, and goes on his way.

He arrives in Paris Feb. 3, 1789. Paris flashing with luxury, sparkling with cleverness, saturated with pleasure, where the awful scene of the "States General" is about to open.

The first persons whom he visits are Jefferson, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, in France, and M. de Lafayette, for whose character he professes a high esteem, without sharing in his feelings, or his manner of judging. The physiognomy of reforming France astonishes him. The impression produced upon him by the universal enthusiasm, by the manner of the court, by the blundering fervor of the advocates, the lawyers, the men of letters, is far from favorable. He finds no where that religious profundity of sensation and decision which is a pledge of a people's future. stead of admitting the zeal for a purely theoretic liberty; instead of getting inflamed by the noisy logomachy of orators and writers; instead of associating himself with that popular superstition, which, in six years, was to become an ardent fanaticism, our American, who goes to the bottom of things, and earnestly seeks in the wild chaos, the germs of veritable

In

independence, of real liberty, recognizes with sorrow, that no such germs are to be found there. From the first day he predicts the inevitable and bloody fall of the French Republic about to be established.

His political opinions never agree with those of his friend M. de Lafayette. The first time that this celebrated name appears in his journal, he says "Lafayette is too full of politics; he appears to be too republican for the genius of his country."

It is in vain that you say to Morris, "We want the liberty which you have acquired." He replies obstinately, "This is not our American liberty." M. de Lafayette shows him a copy of the celebrated "Declaration of the Rights of Man," which he intends to read in the National Assembly. Morris, always a man of sense, says that words are not things, and that dogmatic assertions are of very little importance to the happiness of the masses. "I gave him my opinions, and suggested several amendments tending to soften the highcolored expression of freedom. It is not by sounding words that revolutions are produced."

The

Alas! Morris touched the wound with his finger. There were certainly too many sounding words in all that—the man of letters and the rhetorician had too much to do with our first revolution. Men had too much faith in words, and sacrificed things to them with too much inconsiderateness. people thought they could make liberty as Rousseau had made virtue-by declamation. This frightened a foreigner who had seen a true liberty develop itself by mere moral force. He could not forget that he had taken a very active part, played a very essential role in a revolution crowned with success, with fortune, with power.

How could Morris help fearing that abortion would result from all this Spartan, Roman bombast? Founder of a demo

cracy, he had seen no Greek memories in the cradle of the institutions which he had helped to form. What seems to him incompatible with the establishment of liberty is the violent fury for renovation, the blind and childish confidence of those who hope to found durable institutions on enthusiasm and phrases. You must turn to the memoirs of Morris, to see how a friend of Washington appreciates those paper politicians, who issue from the Registry and the Sorbonne to regulate kingdoms. The disdain of this republican for republican talkers reaches sometimes even injustice. He has not indulgence enough for an old civilized country, overladen with colleges and academies, impregnated with Greek and Latin ideas; for a capital which has known the Regency and Louis XV.; for men who have read Rousseau after leaving the petit souper, and who though kneaded in monarchy are yet drunk with patriotic desires, and who run with the passions of a child towards the ideal goal from which their habits and their wishes separate them. Morris keeps too constantly under his eyes America, the new country, where manners are simple, interests not complicated; ideas, serious and strong-a nation which does not care to imitate Epaminondas, or to have a Demosthenes, so long as they can make the port of Boston free; so long as the Stamp Act does not diminish their profits. How could Morris do otherwise than pity the metaphysical discussions, and endless speculations of the French. Politics are no matters of sentiment and passion, and Morris was both frightened and alarmed at what he saw. "They reform here," he says, "with unparalleled giddiness. Every body has something to do with it. Each man has a plan, each man a theory. The physicians of the social body are multiplied. There is not an attorney, no matter how little, how ignorant of rhetoric, who does not become a reformer. Where is the moral and intellectual force which alone can