reference is made to their high authority. It is only now, however, that the voluminous original is published, not merely entire, but in every part exactly as it came from the admirable pen of the author. As it stands before us, a range of twenty-one goodly volumes, of close type and ample size, we do not hesitate to compare it in value, of an historical kind, with any work, of whatever fame, which has issued from the press since the invention of printing. Without an accurate examination of it, it is difficult to understand the nature of Saint-Simon's claims to the respect of the historical inquirer. Saint-Simon is not an annalist: for, though his Memoirs record most of the events of his time, he describes only the facts that came under his own cognizance, or those of his immediate informers. He is not an historian: for he does not bind himself to trace any order of events, or narrate any particular transactions. He is not a biographer: for he is more sedulous in drawing the character of his subject, than in pursuing him through the different stages of his life. But he partakes of all the three characters, and embraces much more than comes under any one of them. All that an able and inquisitive man, moving in the very first circles of a great court, could ascertain in the course of a vigorous existence, whether in the way of character, anecdote, event, scene, or incident, relating to a most interesting period, is embraced in the rich treasure which the world is now fortunate enough to possess in the Memoirs before us. The groundwork of these Memoirs is the life of the author himself; but, as during the reign of Louis XIV. he was much more of an observer than an actor, the incidents that relate to his own person are overgrown with the facts that relate to others. These are related in a style of vigor and force that leaves nothing to be desired for effect, and with that air of reasonableness and good sense which impresses the reader, not only with confidence in the veracity of the narrator, but with respect and esteem for his character. Along with faith in the author's honesty, we cannot fail also to take with us a high respect for his talents. No writer has yet possessed a more perspicuous insight into character, or better succeeded in transferring his portraits to paper. His memoirs form a gallery of the great men of his age, and to study them as they live in his pages is a near approach to living in the age they adorned or, may be, disgraced. It would be far from a compliment to the Duc de Saint-Simon to call him the French Clarendon, though there are not wanting points of resemblance between him and the English writer. The subject of SaintSimon is, however, far less gloomy, and quite as instructive as that of the Rebellion; his characters, moreover, are drawn with equal perspicuity, and much less prejudice. Saint-Simon brings both persons and things in the most lively point of view before the reader; while Clarendon, with not more vigor but far more effort, obscures his subject by elaboration, and darkens even intelligent remarks by a lumbering obscurity of style. The style of SaintSimon is not what is called polished, for his sense does not wait upon construction; he writes from a full mind, and is content to put down precisely what he would have spoken when animated by a favorite subject, and in a pleasant mood for the elucidation of the characters of the men he had lived with, or the events that passed before his eyes. In the estimation of their contemporaries both stood equally high; both were men who had enjoyed the highest offices and possessed the greatest influence, and were equally anxious that their times should be well understood by posterity. The one, however, is altogether monarchical in his principles, and if the aristocratical order ever had a zealous and conscientious partisan, Saint-Simon was the man. Saint-Simon was, in fact, the model of an aristocrat; the importance he attaches to trifling matters of precedence is only to be understood by one who has imbued himself in the spirit of his times. His sentiments of honor are scrupulous and sensitive to a degree becoming the immediate descendant of a race of chivalry. As a man he is modest, sensible, and liberal; but the instant he identifies himself with an injured body, as he considered the aristocracy of his age to be, he is proud, haughty, and defying. To be without birth is, with him, an argument of incompetency; but at the same time to be successful, overweening, and assuming, as were many of the upstart ministers of Louis XIV., was a proof of unexampled baseness. With this feeling, however, it is plain to see struggling a spirit of justice and discrimination, the offspring of a clear head and a good disposition. Of the people, in these Memoirs we hear nothing: Saint-Simon, in some of his projects, looks upon them in the light of a flock that ought neither to be harried by wolves, nor tormented by dogs; but, individually, and as persons exciting the writer's sympathy, throughout the whole of these twenty-one volumes, they may be said to be nonexistent. The king, the ministers, the mistresses, the army, and the court, in its classes of aristocracy, favorites, and servitors, are the only bodies of whose importance a grand seigneur of that time was cognizant. Service was his first thought; after two or three campaigns, and a seige or two, he was considered qualified, not to desert the army (for this Louis rarely forgave), but to beg some charge about the court during a cessation of military operations, -to spend the winter at Versailles, to hunt with the king, and to ask for an invitation to Marly. If, as was probable, he was gov ernor of some town, or held any other high provincial charge, an occasional visit to the seat of it might be overlooked. Then, again, occurred the duties of war, an expedition to Savoy, attended by his gentlemen and friends, or to Flanders or the Rhine. The grand spectacle of the manœuvres of Turenne, Luxembourg, or Villars, with the excitement of some danger, afforded a few opportunities of distinguishing that courage in which a nobleman of that day was never deficient, and thus being talked of in the saloons of Versailles, such is a general sketch of the ordinary life of such a person. Of course it was varied by political cabals, by intrigues, by duels, and by occasional visits to the Bastille. The moral characteristics of the courtiers were not of a high order; success was the end and arbiter of all measures, and there appear to have been no means of ensuring it, however base or wicked, which were not resorted to: the object of the success being rarely of a kind to palliate the unworthiness of the instruments. High play, profusion, and expense of every description, were too general to be considered peculiar to an individual; they had, moreover, the royal sanction; and it is curious to consider how completely the moral code of that age was the creature of the monarch's breath. No man was ever so completely the director of the spirit of his time as Louis, and yet there has been a majority of kings who have far exceeded him in talent and information. He was, in fact, the founder of a system, both in manners and morals, which spread over the whole of Europe, reigned in France till the Revolution broke it up, and of which the traces may be yet detected in every corner of the civilized world. The materials for the developement of this system are to be found in the work before us. It is an investigation, however, that we shall not pursue; for, although it might be attended with interesting results, it would lead us into a discussion and analysis of detached portions of the Memoirs; our object will rather be, by selecting and arranging a few of their prominent features, to convey to our readers a just notion of their several contents. We cannot do this better than by collecting together, from various parts of these volumes, the traits which distinguish some of the characters who have left their impress on the times, a process which will show the description of materials the Duc de SaintSimon has left for the student of history, whose main object is to live over again other times with the spirit and philosophy of a highly improved age. The first character that naturally presents itself for consideration is THE MASTER himself; the man, who, above all others, was set apart, by the course of events, to be all of a god that mortal will suffer, or mortals create. In the personal character of Louis is necessarily included that of the companion of half his long life, the Maintenon. After him we shall introduce into our gallery a few of the rarer spirits of his reign. A remarkable characteristic of the age and reign of Louis XIV. is that he was his own premier: the tyranny to which, in his youth, he had been subjected by Mazarin, gave him a horror of a prime minister, and he determined to be his own; this was an early resolve which never could be shaken. Out of the same source sprung his objection to a churchman in his cabinet; it was a determination to which he adhered all through his long and various reign with equal decision. He flattered himself that he should be able to govern alone, it was a grievous mistake; his reign is a satire upon despotism. He was not ruled by one, but by every body in their turns, and he who cherished the idea that his will was the predominant law, in fact exercised less will in the management of his affairs than the meanest subject of his realm. The opening of his life, which cannot properly be dated before he arrived at twenty-three years of age, was, undoubtedly, a prosperous one, according to the ordinary scale by which such positions are calculated. The agitation of the realm since the death of Louis XIII. had produced the ordinary consequence of agitation in the affluence of genius which it had called up in every department. The ministers at the head of affairs were the adroitest and ablest in Europe according to the ideas of the day; his generals held the first rank in the world, and their seconds were men who became founders of systems and schools of war in their time; and the court was crowded with men of experience and ability, who had been formed in the stirring period which had only just subsided. The state was in a flourishing condition, or seemed so, which, with historians, is pretty generally the same thing. Colbert, however, had arranged the finances in some order; the shipping, the commerce, the manufactures, and even the literature of the country assumed an air of prosperity. Colbert, like a skilful gardener, by the aid of a little sun and a fortunate aspect, had succeeded in ripening a fruit which the ambition of his master, and the rivalry of his fellow ministers, resolved shortly upon plucking for their own use. Though a young man and a king, Louis was not altogether without experience. He had been a constant frequenter of the house of the Countess de Soissons, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, the resort of all that was distinguished, both male and female, that the age could produce, and where he first caught that fine air of gallantry and nobleness, which characterized him ever afterwards, and marked even his most trifling actions. For, though - the talents of Louis XIV. were in fact rather below mediocrity, he possessed a power of forming his manners and character upon a model, and of adhering to it, which is often more valuable in the conduct of life than the very greatest abilities. By nature he was a lover of order and regularity, he was prudent, moderate, secret, the master both of his actions and his tongue. For these virtues, as they may be called in a king, he was perhaps indebted to his natural constitution; and if education had done as much for him, certainly he would have been a better ruler. He had a passion, however, or rather a foible, — that was vanity, or as it was then called, glory. No flattery was too gross for him, incense was the only intellectual food he imbibed. Independence of character he detested: the man who once, though but for an instant, stood up before him in the consciousness of manly integrity of purpose, was lost for ever in the favor of the King. He detested the nobility, because they were not the creatures of his breath; they had their own consequence; his ministers were always his favorites, because he had made them and could unmake them, and because, moreover, they had abundant opportunities of applying large doses of the most fulsome flattery, and of prostrating themselves before him, of assuming an air of utter nothingness in his presence, of attributing to him the praise of every scheme they had invented, and of insinuating that their own ideas were the creatures of his suggestions. To such a pitch was this intoxication carried, that he, who had neither ear nor voice, might be heard singing among his peculiar intimates snatches of the most fulsome parts of the songs in his own praise. And even at the public suppers, when the band played the airs to which they were set, he might be heard humming the same passages between his teeth. The generals in this respect were as bad as the ministers: they led him to believe that he dictated every measure, and that their best plans were formed on the hints he had thrown out. The courtiers, with such examples before them, performed their natural parts with even more than ordinary zeal. But the facility with which they administered to his vanity was not so remarkable as the ease with which he appropriated every thing to himself, and the ineffable satisfaction with which he glorified himself, on every fresh offering of adulation. His love of sieges and reviews was only another form of this his only enthusiasm, his passion for himself. A siege was a fine opportunity for exhibiting his capacity, in other words, for attributing to himself all the talents of a great general: here too he could exhibit his courage at little expense of danger, for he could be prevailed upon, as it were with difficulty, to keep in the back ground, and by the aid of his admirable constitution, and great |