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 prosopopoeia 

 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 



