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 king. doms. 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 manuers 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, 166 They reform here," he says, "with unparalleled giddiness. Every body has something to do with it. Each man has a plan, cach. mi a theory. The physicians of the social body are multiplica. 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

rescue France ? A little energy, and better morals would do her far more good than all these words."

During the various crises of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1794, Morris, who had been taught bloody lessons, grew firmer in his opinions, and did not cease to cry out to every party that they were losing themselves and ruining the liberty of their country. At last, his disapprobation became so thorough and so distinct, that the French republicans, annoyed by the presence of such a censor, solicited his recall in 1794, for Morris had replaced Jefferson as Chargó d'Affaires for the United States. Nothing appeared easier than for a minister of the American Republic to go hand in hand with the chiefs of the French Republic. But these latter had gone so far in so short a time that Washington, Franklin, Morris, had been left behind. After being two or three times put upon the list of the "suspected," our republican went home, where he lived peaceably at his estate of Morrisiana, and died not a very great while ago.

SECTION V.

MORRIS AT PARIS FROM 1789 TO 1792-PRELUDES TO THE REVOLUTION-JEFFERSON'S OPINION ON THE FRENCH REVO

LUTION.

I think that no other observer was so happily placed as Morris, to get a view of our Revolution. Minister Plenipotentiary of a friendly republic, rich and independent, his relations with those in power were habitual, easy and confidential. As American and Member of Congress, he had a right to the favor of the more exalted revolutionists. Well brought up

and educated, and'a friend of de Lafayette, he was admitted to the drawing rooms of the nobility, and the cabinets of the dying monarchy. While he sympathized in the movement of the people towards liberty, he never hid his pity for an aristocracy which had flourished so long and which was so suddenly uprooted. Therefore all doors were opened to him, those of the boiling revolutionary clubs, those of the hotels where the trembling relies of the monarchical party united. There are a thousand curious little traits, a thousand lightgiving anecdotes, jotted down upon the tablets of the traveller.

You see there how marquises and counts amused themselves on the eve of a fearful catastrophe; how lords, old and young, whose heads would soon be in danger, attached, in the chapel and during the mass, a lighted candle' to the cassock of a fashionable abbé; what politico-romantic discussions were heard at the restaurateurs' of Versailles; how the expiring monarchy looked everywhere for advice, counsel, direction, accepting all and following the worst. Side by side with these details, the observant American places his prophetic reflections; the date is there and the date is remarkable; Morris predicts the events of more than one year.

The Republic is about to be-established, and he announces it; the Republic will be changed into a Dictature and a Tyranny; he says so in 1791. If he appreciate a person, if he predict a result, time proves, that the man was welljudged, the result inevitable.

Let us look how he describes the materials of the coming revolution.

"The materials for a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals; but this general position can never convey to an American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by any

figure of rhetoric, or force of language, that the idea can be communicated. A hundred anecdotes, and a hundred thousand examples, aie required to show the extreme rottenness of every member. There are men and women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have the pleasure to number many in my own acquaintance; but they stand forward from a background deeply and darkly shaded. It is, however, from such crumbling matter, that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected here. Perhaps, like the stratum of rock, which is spread under the whole surface of their country, it may harden when exposed to the air; but it seems quite as likely that it will fall and crush the builders."

We are tempted, by our love for France, to accuse the American of injustice; nevertheless when we examine, without prejudice, the epoch of which he speaks, when we look at the Memoires de Bachaumcnt, the Correspondence de Grimm, the Works of Laclos, the letters of Madame d'Epinay, that sentiniental rouée, the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, who loved with so naïvely-philosophic a passion, three men at once, and the facetie of M. de Caylus, and the prettinesses of our friend Crebillon the younger;- we must agree with Morris that there is not much republic in all that ;-that the affair of the Queen's collar, the lawsuit of Beaumarchais, the scandal about Madame d'Eon, the antecedents of Mirabeau, the favor of the abbé-cardinal de Bernis, form a strange portal through which to enter into an austere democracy. must excuse Morris, nurtured, as he was, in respect for the law, for marriage, for an oath, for the sanctity of the family; who has seen flourish, in the midst of this respect and this morality, not the shadow, the bloody phantasmagoria of a republic, "but a true Republic, industrious and calm.

We

Sometime after having written the above letter to Washington, he writes to Mr. Jay:

"When I reflect how very little this nation is prepared by habits or education, to enjoy complete liberty, I fairly tremble for it; it will overshoot the mark, or rather, I fear, has already done so. They have felt too long the heavy weight of royal authority. Now they look with pleasure upon whatever can restrain or break it; they seek a republic, but how will they sustain it? France does not yet know all the evils to which the exaggerated feebleness of the executive power necessarily exposes itself. She only fears the tyranny of power, which can no longer touch her; she does not arm herself against anarchy, the most fearful danger which now threatens her."

This was written in 1789.

We have already remarked in Morris, a mixture of severe morality, and of skilful social finesse. He has just enough of American puritanism not to excuse the slightest vice; and enough experience of the world not to be the dupe of a single false appearance. Add to this that he does not draw brilliant portraits to win your admiration, or his own; that his opinions are neither exaggerated nor wanting, but singularly redoubtable. He shows no favor to pretension. Does a vanity hide itself under a virtue; does a feebleness put on the robe of glory, the American is inexorable. Penetrating without malignity, sagacious without ambition, thrown into a stormy society which marches blindly towards its ruin, had he identified himself with it, like Anacharsis Clootz and Thomas Paine, he could not have judged it; had he only hated and despised it, like Burke, he would have been unjust. But he marched with it, yet kept apart from its follies, its furies, its intoxication. Ile kept his eyes open, his glance clear, his soul accessible to what was noble in the efforts of France.

French society, so well represented in its greatness and littleness by Voltaire; and which like him is a lover of hu