137 



TOURRETTE, MARC-ANTOINE. 



TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE. 



133 



1788, a translation of ' Interesting Memoirs of a Lady; ' and his trans- 

 lation of Pennant's ' Description of the Arctic Regions ' appeared the 

 year after his death. He also revised the translation of the ' Universal 

 History ' begun by Psalmanazar, which some youug authors had under- 

 taken at his suggestion. 



These are his most important publications. They deserve a place 

 iu the history of letters, inasmuch as they contributed to nourish that 

 taste for English literature which was then growing in France, and 

 which haa contributed so much to modify not only the taste, but the 

 character of the nation. Diderot, the first to recognise the merits of 

 Le Tourneur as a translator, was the first eminent author of France 

 who really felt the merits of English imaginative writing ; his sanction 

 encouraged others to feel, or affect to feel, its beauties. Le Tourneur 

 had the principal share iu enabling merely French readers to judge in 

 some measure for themselves. The literary taste of France has not 

 become assimilated to England since the time of Diderot and Le 

 Tourneur, but it has been since their publications entirely revolu- 

 tionised. Gb'the, in his 'Dichtung und Wahrheit,' and in his 

 ' Rameau's Neffe,' has explained the influence which Diderot exercised 

 over the modern literature of Germany, both by his own writings and 

 by directing attention to English authors. It was in part through 

 the medium of French literature that the English literature was 

 made to exercise so strong an influence over that of Germany. The 

 part which Le Tourneur played in this intellectual revolution was an 

 humble but still an important one. 



It has been intimated above that Le Tourneur in translating Shak- 

 spere was indebted to Eschenburg, and this of itself would imply that 

 he was acquainted with the German as well as with the English lan- 

 guage. He published some translations from the German: in 1787 

 one of Sparmaun's 'Journey to the Cape of Good Hope;' in 1788, 

 one of the 'Memoirs of Baron Trenck.' In 1785 he translated and 

 published a selection from the elegies of Ariosto. 



The persevering industry displayed in this brief recapitulation of 

 what was accomplished by Le Tourneur in the space of eighteen 

 years, would lead to the inference that be must have secured an 

 independence by his labours. In addition to this source of income, 

 he held for a number of years the appointment of private secretary 

 to Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. ; and for a short time before 

 his death that cf censeur-royal. An anonymous biography is prefixed 

 to his 'Jardius Anglais;' and M. Weiss has contributed a correct 

 outline of its leading incidents to the ' Biographie Universelle.' Le 

 Tourneur had not the slightest pretension to the character of a man 

 of genius, but he was a respectable and useful labourer in the field 

 of letters. 



TOURRETTE, MARC-ANTOINE -LOUIS CLARET DE LA, 

 naturalist, was born in August 1729, at Lyou, where his father was 

 commandant of the city, Pre"vot des Marchands, and President a la 

 Cour des Monnaies. He commenced his elementary studies at a 

 college of Jesuits in Lyon, and was afterwards sent to the College de 

 Harcourt at Paris. He was early admitted a member of the Academy 

 of Sciences at Lyon, and during the last twenty-five years of his life 

 acted as secretary to that body. On returning to his native city he 

 was appointed a Conseiller ti la Cour des Monnaies, but he pursued 

 the study of the belles-lettres with great assiduity. Dissatisfied how- 

 ever with the tendency of these studies, he engaged in that of natural 

 history. He commenced with zoology and mineralogy, and soon 

 formed a large collection of insects and minerals. The establishment 

 of a school of veterinary medicine, by Bourgelat, at Lyon, directed his 

 attention to botany. In conjunction with the Abbe" Rozier, he was 

 appointed to superintend the formation of a botanical garden, and 

 the giving instruction to the pupils in botany. The result of these 

 exertions was the publication, in 1766, of an elementary work on 

 botany, entitled ' Demonstrations e'ldmentaires de Botanique,' 8vo. 

 This work, at first in two volumes, contained a general introduction 

 to a knowledge of the structure of plants and their arrangement, 

 with descriptions of the most useful and curious. In the first edition 

 fche introductory matter was entirely drawn up by Tourrette, the 

 description of the plants by Rozier. In a second edition nearly the 

 whole was rewritten by Tourette. This work has since gone through 

 other editions. The fourth consists of four volumes of letter-press in 

 8vo, and two volumes of engravings in 4to, containing notices of the 

 lives of both Tourrette and Rozier. 



In 1770 Tourrette published a voyage to Mount Pilat, giving a geo- 

 graphical account of the district, and a list of the plants which he 

 discovered there. In 1795 he published the 'Chloris Lugdunensis' 

 (8vo), in which he described the plants of the neighbourhood of Lyon, 

 and paid especial attention to those belonging to the class Crypto- 

 gamia. He published numerous papers on various departments of 

 natural history, in the Transactions of Societies and Journals. Those 

 most worthy of mention were on the origin of Belemnites, on vegetable 

 monstrosities, and on the Helminthocorton, or Corsican moss. He made 

 numerous excursions for the purpose of collecting plants in various 

 parts of France and Italy. In some of these herborisings he was accom- 

 panied by Jean Jacques Rousseau, with whom he was intimate ; and 

 in the published correspondence of that philosopher are several letters 

 written to Tourrette. He took great pains in introducing foreign 

 trees and shrubs, which he cultivated in his father's park near Lyon, 

 and at his own residence in the city he had a garden containing 3000 



species of plants. He was a correspondent of moat of the great 

 botanists of bis day, as Linnaeus, Adauson, Jussieu, and others. 

 During the siege of Lyon he was exposed to fatigue, anxiety, and 

 hardship, which brought on an attack of inflammation of the lunga 

 that terminated his existence in 1793. Tourrette, like most of the 

 botanists who adopted the system of Linnreus, mistook its object, and 

 made it assume a position and importance of which it was utterly 

 unworthy. The consequence was that in his ' Demonstrations ' and 

 other works he sought more anxiously to add to our knowledge of 

 existing species than to elucidate the structure and functions of the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



(Notice sur la Vie de M. Tourrelte, in the fourth edition of the 

 Demonstrations Elementaires de Botanique.) 



* TOUSSAINT, ANNA LUIZE GEERTRUIDE, the maiden name 

 of the most popular living authoress of Holland, and that by which 

 she is still most generally known, though she has since 1851 been 

 married to Mr. Bosboom, a painter of some reputation at the Hague, 

 since which she writes her name A. L. G. Bosboom Toussaint. She 

 was born on the 16th of September 1812, at the town of Alkmaar, in 

 North Holland, the daughter of an apothecary, who was descended, as 

 his name suggests, from a family of French refugees. Always of a 

 weakly constitution, she was nevertheless strongly attached to study, 

 and though her compositions, exclusive of magazine articles, consist 

 entirely of novels and romances, she is said to have expended on the 

 details of one of them no less than two years' research, an amount 

 of investigation which would have qualified her for writing a 

 history. She has always shown a strong predilection for English 

 subjects. Her first romance in 1838 was 'De Graaf van Devonshire,' 

 or ' the Earl of Devonshire,' founded on the adventures of that Courte- 

 nay who was supposed to have engaged the affections of the two sister- 

 queens, Mary and Elizabeth. 'Engelschen te Rome,' or ' The English 

 at Rome,' succeeded, in looking at which the English reader can hardly 

 forbear a smile to find that the authoress's Scotch highlander swears 

 by St. Patrick, sings ballads beginning with ' From mighty Odin's 

 airy hall,' and bears the singular name of Hugh Mac-o-Daunt. A 

 series of three romances from the time of Dudley earl of Leicester's 

 inglorious career in the Netherlands, runs up to ten volumes in all, 

 and at the conclusion of the last of them, 'Gideon Florensz,' the 

 authoress in 1855 announced her intention of laying down the pen. 

 Though all these works are very popular in the Netherlands, no 

 translation or account of any of them has as yet appeared in English. 

 The only notice of Madame Bosboom Toussaint that we are aware of 

 is an article in the 40th volume of the 'Westminster Review,' on a 

 tale entitled ' Lauernesse House,' in which the controversies of tho 

 Roman Catholic faith and the Protestant are embodied in the hero 

 and- heroine. The historical romances of this popular authoress appear 

 to be those of her works which are held in most esteem, but her novel 

 of ' Don Abbondio II.' a delineation of modern Dutch manners, in 

 which one of the characters is nick-named ' Abbondio,' from the well- 

 known curate of that name in Manzoni's ' Betrothed,' is written in a 

 lively vein and would probably be more likely to secure in a trans- 

 lated shape, the interest of the English reader. 



TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE, one of the most extraordinary men 

 known to have been born of the negro race, was born at Breda, a 

 property which then belonged to the Count de Noe", near Cape Town 

 in St. Domingo, in 1743. His father and mother were both African 

 slaves. During the prosperity of Toussaint, a genealogy was compiled, 

 it is insinuated with his privity, which made his father the younger son 

 of an African king. This may be true or not; it is of little consequence. 



The first employment of Toussaint-Breda (so called from the place 

 of his birth) was to take care of the cattle on the estate. He received 

 the elements of education from a negro of the name of Pierre-Baptiste. 

 As soon as he could read and write his name, he was promoted by M. 

 Bayon de Libertat, manager of the estate, to be his coachman. He 

 gained the confidence of his master, and was appointed to exercise a 

 kind of superintendence over the other negroes. In this position the 

 Revolution found him. He took no part in the first insurrections, and 

 is said to have expressed himself violently against the perpetrators of 

 the massacres of 1791. 



The negroes not unnaturally made attachment to the royal cause 

 the pretext for rising in arms against masters who, with equality and 

 the rights of men in their mouths, still sought to keep them slaves. 

 Toussaint, from 1791 and till the appearance of the proclamation of 

 the 4th of February 1794, which declared all slaves free, was alike 

 conspicuous for his zeal in the cause of the Roman Catholic religion 

 and of royalty. He held at first the title of ' Me"decin des Armdes du 

 Roi,' in the bands of Jean Frangais, but soon exchanged it for a military 

 appointment. Though placed under arrest by the chief just named, 

 and delivered by the other negro leader, Biassou, the ferocity of the 

 latter determined Toussaiut to ally himself most closely with Jean 

 Frangais. He became his aide-de-camp. At this time Toussaint was 

 high in the confidence of the Spanish president, Don Joachim Garcia, 

 and apparently entirely guided by his confessor, the cure" of Laxabon. 

 When the negroes rejected the first overtures of the French commis- 

 sioners, Toussaint assigned as his reason, that they had always been 

 governed by a king; could only be governed by a king; and having 

 lost the king of France, had betaken themselves to the protection of 

 the king of Spain. 



