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MIRABEAU HIS CHARACTER AND CORRESPONDENCE.* 



THE fame of the statesman, the orator, the litterateur, Mirabeau, has 

 experienced a resuscitation in this country beyond what might have been 

 anticipated. Dumont's " Recollections," feeble and inaccurate as many 

 of them are, have excited a new and lively interest respecting that ex- 

 traordinary man ; a man that it is probable, had he not been prema- 

 turely cut off by death, would have been the means of preventing nine- 

 tenths of the horrors of the French Revolution. 



One of the consequences of Dumont's publication is, the bringing for- 

 ward of two volumes of Mirabeau's Letters. The singular manner in which 

 they fell into the hands of the translator, as far back as the year }806, 

 after a quiet slumber of more than twenty years amongst the archives 

 of Paris, may be seen by turning to The Monthly Magazine (page 500) 

 for May last, where will be found inserted two very remarkable letters 

 from Marat and Beaumarchais, drawn from the same source. It appears, 

 too, from the preface to the work now in our hands, that the translator 

 has in preparation two other volumes of letters, written by the leading 

 men of the Revolution. These letters of Mirabeau, written during his 

 residence in England, during the years 1 784 and 1 785, are eighty-five 

 in number, some long, some short, upon all sorts of subjects, from the 

 gayest to the gravest. We will endeavour to indicate some of their 

 more prominent features. 



They present, in the aggregate, a complete picture of Mirabeau's 

 multifarious literary projects, and of the better the untainted portion 

 of his mind, during his short sojourn in our island. Literature and the 

 arts, men and manners, laws arid customs, were the objects of his fixed 

 and unceasing attention. Nothing escaped his notice. His respect for 

 the English character, his admiration of the British constitution, in its 

 purity, his determination to avail himself of his knowledge of the latter, 

 with the view of meliorating the state of his own country on his return 

 thither, are every where apparent. Chatham's eloquence he seized upon 

 as the model of his own. Trial by jury was one of the idols of his 

 worship. Alluding to the trial of his servant, Hardy, at the Old Bailey, 

 for robbery, (that trial in which Garrow, Park, Sylvester, and Fielding 

 all figured as counsel,) he remarks " This was the first time that a 

 French culprit had appeared before an English tribunal since the peace ; 

 and each seemed to vie, one with another, to shew me ' that justice in 

 this country is always administered to the admiration of the world, in 

 such a way as to extort approbation even from the prisoners them- 

 selves/ " They, however, by no means shew this to the satisfaction of 

 Mirabeau ; and though he says, " I will move heaven and earth, when 



1 return, to alter our mode of trying criminals," and that " we must 

 also have trial by jury, according to English law," he is by no means 

 blind to the more barbarous points of our legal system, and the horrible 

 errors that too frequently attend the administration of justice in England. 



* Mirabeau's Letters, during his Residence in England ; with Anecdotes, Max- 

 ims, &c. translated from the Original Manuscripts. To which is prefixed an Intro- 

 ductory Notice of the Life, Writings, Conduct, and Character of the Author. 



2 vols. Wilson. 



