198 Monthly Review of Literature. 



quite sufficient to characterize him as one of this class, if former experience 

 had not informed us of the fact. " Willing should I be," says he (p. 213), 

 " nay, I should be proud, would men judge me, not by my manners, my 

 conversation, or my actions, but by my writings. I dare be sworn as to 

 having always acted as well as I could under pressures, arising out of envy, 

 jealousy, treachery, rapacity, and ingratitude ; losses of money, of time, of 

 hopes, and of exertion : but when I contemplate the comparative virtues of 

 other men, I hang my head and blush I" 



The author or rather compiler of " The Book of Human Character" is a 

 person of very varied information, of the depth and correctness of which, 

 however, we have had reason to doubt. He has thought also on men and 

 manners, but his ideas appear to us at least more quaint than clever, eccen- 

 tric rather than original. 



As he has been rather severely handled by more than one of our contempo- 

 raries, we abstain from a task, which cannot be otherwise than unpleasant, of 

 pointing out his errors. We turn with pleasure to some of the more original 

 but not less characteristic passages of his work, which we extract to give our 

 readers an idea of the writer's power and peculiarities. 



" WHO BEGIN IN DISTRUST, AND FINISH IN CONFIDENCE. 



" Machiavel has a most detestable maxim ; ' slay your enemy, or caress 

 Mm/ Such artifice is, however, nothing more than the presumed strength of 

 incapable men ; for it is the surest way to be ourselves deceived, to fancy our- 

 selves more cunning than all the rest of the world. 



*' Some men begin the world in distrust, and finish in confidence ; others 

 begin in confidence, and finish in distrust. These opposite results arise from 

 the persons with whom the two parties have been fated to contend, to mingle 

 with and to live with. The former has fallen among Samaritans, as it were ; 

 the latter among Jews. 



" One day, Marie Antoinette told Madame Campan that Dumourier had de- 

 clared to her that he had drawn the bonnet rouge over his head j but that he 

 neither was, nor could be, a Jacobin ; and that, while speaking, he seized her 

 hand, and saluted it with transport; exclaiming, ' Suffer yourself to be saved !' 

 Her majesty trusted him when he would have made no point of deceiving 

 her, and distrusted him at a time when, of all others in his life, perhaps, he 

 was most to be trusted. 



" The error of Marie Antoinette, in respect to Dumourier, was precisely 

 the one into which Necker fell in regard to Mirabeau. Mirabeau proposed 

 that the duke of Orleans should be lieutenant-general of France ; but he 

 abandoned the idea immediately upon being closely admitted to a knowledge 

 of the duke's imbecility. Mirabeau said to M. Malouet, ' I wish to have 

 some conversation with you ; because, through all your moderation, I per- 

 ceive that you are a friend to liberty. I am, perhaps, more afraid of the fer- 

 mentation I see in men's minds than you are. I am not capable of basely 

 selling myself to the cause of despotism ; I wish for a free constitution, but 

 of a monarchical form. I have no desire to shake the monarchy ; but I per- 

 ceive so many wrong-headed persons in our assembly, such inexperience, 

 such exultation, so acrimonious and inconsiderate an obstinacy, in the two 

 first orders, that I dread some horrible commotion as much as you can. You 

 are connected with Monsieur Necker and Monsieur de Montmorin : you 

 ought to know what their intentions are. If they have formed a plan, and 

 if that plan is reasonable, I am willing to support it.' 



"In consequence of this conversation, an interview took place between 

 Necker and Mirabeau. Neeker admired his genius and his eloquence, but he 

 refused to have any thing to do with a man whose private character had made 

 him conspicuously notorious. 



'That the death of Mirabeau was a great national misfortune, notwith- 

 standing the odium which attached to his name in private, can be questioned 

 by no one duly informed of the then existing spirit of parties. In him, the 



