HIS POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR. 193 
A GLANCE AT THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF BAILLY. 
Bailly’s Memoirs have thus far served me as a guide 
and check; now that this resource fails me, let us refer 
to his posthumous work. 
I could only consult those Memoirs as far as they 
related to the public or private life of our colleague. 
Historians may consult them in a more general. point of 
view. They will find some valuable facts in them, 
related without prejudice; ample matter for new and 
fruitful reflections on the way in which revolutions are 
generated, increase, and lead to catastrophes. Bailly is 
less positive, less absolute, less slashing, than the generality 
of his contemporaries, even respecting those events in 
which circumstances assigned to him the principal part 
to be acted ; hence when he points out some low intrigue, 
in distinct and categorical terms, he inspires full confi- 
dence. 
When the occasion will allow of it, Bailly praises with 
enthusiasm ; a noble action fills him with joy; he puts it 
together and relates it with relish. This disposition of 
mind is sufficiently rare to deserve mention. 
The day, still far off, when we shall finally recognize 
that our great revolution presented, even in the interior, 
even during the most cruel epochs, something besides 
anarchical and sanguinary scenes: the day when, like 
the intrepid fishermen in the Gulf*of Persia and on the 
coasts of Ceylon, a zealous and impartial writer will con- 
sent to plunge head-foremost into the ocean of facts of all 
sorts, of which our fathers were witnesses, and exclusively 
seize the pearls, disdainfully rejecting the mud,—Bailly’s 
Memoirs will furnish a glorious contingent to this national 
work. ‘Two or three quotations will explain my ideas, 
4 
