108 BAILLY. 



graceful passions of the King of Navarre ; his treach 

 eries ; the barbarous avidity of the nobility ; the seditious 

 disposition of the people ; the sanguinary depredations of 

 the great companies ; the ever recurring insolence of 

 England ; all this is expressed without disguise, yet with 

 extreme moderation. No trait reveals, no fact even fore 

 shadows in the author, the future President of a reform 

 ing National Assembly, still less the Mayor of Paris, 

 during a revolutionary effervescence. The author may 

 make Charles V. say that he will discard favour, and 

 will call in renown to select his representatives ; it will 

 appear to him that taxes ought to be laid on riches and 

 spared on poverty ; he may even exclaim that oppression 

 awakens ideas of equality. His temerity will not over 

 leap this boundary. Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, 

 made the Chair resound with bold words of another 

 description. 



I am far from blaming this scrupulous reserve ; when 

 moderation is united to firmness, it becomes power. In 

 a word, however, Bailly s patriotism might, I was about 

 to say ought to, have shown itself more susceptible, more 

 ardent, prouder. When in the elegant prosopoposia 

 which closes the eloge, the King of England has re 

 called with arrogance the fatal day of Poitiers, ought 

 he not instantly to have restrained that pride within just 

 limits ? ought he not to have cast a hasty glance on the 

 components of the Black Prince s army ? to examine 

 whether a body of troops, starting from Bordeaux, re 

 cruiting in Guienne, did not contain more Gascons than 

 English ? whether France, now bounded by its natural 

 limits, in its magnificent unity, would not have a right, 

 every thing being examined, to consider that battle almost 

 as an event of civil war ? ought he not, in short, to have 



