78 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED, 



improve and preserve a country wMcli, sooner or later, is sure to 

 secede from Great Britain, and which., did it remain faithful to the 

 mother country, could not be of real service to it for any length of 

 time." 



As to Mr. Neuman, of whom the duke speaks as "a distinguished 

 man of letters," the only other literary production of his which I 

 see named is a translation of a play of Kotzebue's, entitled " Self- 

 immolation." As to the duke himself, the author of the Travels, it 

 will be of interest to state that he was the descendant and lineal 

 representative of Frangois, Due de la Rochefoucauld, the famous 

 aiithor of the " Reflexions, or Moi-al Sentences and Maxims," who 

 was descended from the ancient Dukes of G-uienne. One of these 

 Rochefoucaulds served under Philip Augustus of France against our 

 Cceur de Lion; and Froissai't speaks of another of them who attended 

 a tournament at Bourdeaux with a retinue of 200 men, all kinsmen , 

 or relatives. One perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's 

 Eve, and his heir was soon afterwards murdered by the partizans of 

 the League. The son of this one was created a duke by Louis XIII., 

 (the title had been previously count), and it was his son, the second 

 duke, who became known throughout Europe by his volume of 

 Maxims. The next duke. Master of the Horse to Louis XIV., was, 

 like his predecessors, a great soldier ; as also was his successor, who 

 took part in the engagement at Landeu, in which "William III. of 

 England was defeated. The next duke became a friend and follower 

 of Yoltaire, and lost favour at the court of Louis XV. The next, 

 during the troubles of the French Revolution, was taken from his 

 carriage and killed by a mob in the presence of his wife and mother 

 at Gisors in 1792, his crime being his title, although politically he 

 was a liberal. Tlie traveller of the years 1795, '96, '97, in the 

 United States and Canada, was the nephew of this duke, and, as I 

 suppose, inheritor of the title, which, however, had become illegal in 

 France. He was the friend, and, in some sort, the pupil, agricultur- 

 ally, of the Englishman Arthur Young, and many parts of the duke's 

 work consist of the kind of information which Arthur Young, towards 

 the close of the last century, travelled through England, Ireland, 

 France and Italy to collect. The Epistle Dedicatory, of which we have 

 already heard, prefixed to the Travels, is addressed to the widow of 

 the recently-murdered duke, his uncle : the lady, however, was dead 

 before the Travels appeared. The duke, while referring to this 



