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MEMOIR OF ARMAND CARREL. 



IN a recent number of our Magazine we gave a slight sketch of this 

 illustrious Frenchman, while contrasting his principle with the want 

 of principle exhibited by another of his countrymen, M, Thiers. We 

 now give a more enlarged memoir of him, which we believe will be ac- 

 ceptable to our readers; for the bonds of reciprocal attachment, which 

 happily nowconnect the two greatest and most enlightened countries 

 in Europe, are so strong, that the inhabitants of Britain can feel a real 

 and deep interest in the history, andjsympathize with the fate, of one of 

 the purest of the patriots, and the greatest political writer a of France. 



Arniand Carrel, the subject of our memoir, was born at Rouen 

 on the 8th of May, 1800. His father was a respectable merchant or 

 linen-draper of that town, and he originally designed his son to 

 succeed him in his business; but, fortunately for the cause of free- 

 dom, the bold and determined character which Armand exhibited at 

 an early period of life, and the predilection he evinced for a military 

 life, induced the father to give way to the natural disposition of his 

 son; and Carrel was accordingly sent to the military college of St. 

 Cyr. Here he soon distinguished himself amongst his companions, 

 not so much by excelling them in the mathematical exercises, as by 

 the superiority of his compositions, especially military harangues 

 and declamations in the cause of freedom. Even at this early period 

 he evinced the bold and indomitable nature of his character, which 

 could never bear an insult. The general who was at the head of the 

 school, and whose opinions were but little in unison with those of 

 Carrel, having one clay reproached him by saying that with such 

 dispositions as he showed, he ought to have remained at home and 

 shouldered the yard-measure of his father, Carrel sternly replied, 

 " General, if ever I take a yard-measure in my hand it shall not be 

 to measure calico." For this daring* reply, which was construed, 

 and perhaps justly so, into a threat of applying the rod against the 

 head of his superior, an attempt was made to expel him from college; 

 and the expulsion would undoubtedly have taken place had not 

 Carrel transmitted a report of the whole affair to the minister of war, 

 who, seeing that he had only resented an insult most unwarrantably 

 offered him, interfered in his behalf, so that he remained at St. Cyr 

 until the usual period of the termination of his education. But his 

 situation at the school during the interval was rendered exceedingly 

 disagreeable by his triumph on this occasion. He was the constant 

 object of oppression on the part of the general and inferior officers; 

 and the indomitable obstinacy with which he passively resisted it, 

 caused him, on his leaving the college, to be reported to the minister 

 of war as a dangerous and discontented youth. 



Notwithstanding this, Carrel was shortly afterwards appointed to 

 a sub-lieutenancy or ensigncy in the 29th regiment of the line, and 

 in 1821 was stationed with a corps at Neuf-Brisac, where he was 

 engaged in what was called the conspiracy of Befort. This subject 

 is involved in considerable obscurity. It was one of those numerous 



FEB. 1837. K 



