BOOKS.

THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE LAFAYETTES.*

A COMBINATION of biography and history, when well managed, has always a peculiar charm. The best way to get new lights on any period is to put ourselves in the place of one or other of its chief actors. The vagueness of a general impression passes away when the acts of some heroic person, the hopes and fears of a special family, are dwelt upon; biographical truth becomes historical romance, the best of its kind.

The inexhaustible subject of the French Revolution is here touched in this way, and Miss Sichel's book is most welcome, though we follow her over ground that is nearly all familiar. What is new is a vivid realisation of the private character of Lafayette and of his heroic wife, Adrienne de Noailles, the daughter of the saintly Duchesse d'Ayen, the sister of the Vicomtesse de Noailles, heroine and martyr, and of Madame de Grammont and Madame de Montagu. All students of the Revolution know this family intimately; but Madame de Lafayette moved on different lines, which yet never separated her in heart from her more entirely Royalist relations.

The Duchesse d'Ayen hesitated long before consenting to her daughter's marriage with the Marquis de Lafayette, then fourteen, while Adrienne was twelve. A long-nosed, red- haired, awkward boy of a wild and romantic disposition, young Lafayette was almost too odd even for the great people of the eighteenth century with their many eccentrici- ties. It must be confessed that Guerin's extraordinary portrait of him as a young man (on p. 340) has the profile of a fool. It expresses little but a sort of imaginative vanity, which was indeed the weak point in his character. The forehead recedes in an unusual manner. It is really difficult

• The Howehold of the Loloyettes. By Edith Sichel. With 12 Portraits. London A. Constable and Cu.

to understand how such a face as this could have belonged to a person of real talent and power. Ary Scheffer's portrait, the frontispiece, is also far from handsome, but has goodness of expression and dignity of bearing. Madame d'Ayen at last realised the boy's possibilities, and saw in him the match for Adrienne's own originality. Though a much greater and saner-minded woman, she was still the granddaughter of that noble old oddity, the Marechale de Noailles, and the niece of Madame de Tessa, one of the most picturesque figures of the emigration. Lafayette could not have married a wife more able to appreciate his fine principles and to enter loyally into all his visionary ideals. Her devotion to her husband, to whom she was married when their ages were about sixteen and fourteen, is one of the many instances which seem to justify the French system of family arrange- ments.

Lafayette was nineteen when he left his wife, who never blamed him, and sailed away to help America. He was just over thirty when he commanded the National Guard of Paris, and did his best to protect Royalty and civilisation while carrying out the principles of 1789. These were his principles, and through all his long life they never varied.

He was a consistent and perfectly virtuous Republican, not ambitious, though Mirabeau called him " Cromwell- Grandison," aiming first and only at the moral improvement and happiness of the world. He was a heroic leader, but a too abstract politician ; and he had little of the personal magnetism that attracts men, and none of the opportunism that manages them. He loved popularity, but was not always able to secure it, for he loved honesty better. The most curious and interesting part of his history is that which has to do with Napoleon, from whom he hoped so much, and who disappointed him so cruelly. Perhaps a certain want of knowledge of human nature was to be expected from this straightforward, single-minded man, who dreamed of seeing a meteor like Napoleon the unselfish and consistent leader of a free and regenerated France. Napoleon knew Lafayette better, and was quite aware that he would disenchant him, though at first there was a fair imitation of friendship between them, growing out of the romance in both natures. But Lafayette was a gentleman and an honest man ; Napoleon was neither.

Miss Sichel has performed most successfully the difficult task of making us realise with equal vividness the man and his surroundings. She gives a clear and picturesque account of the Revolution in its stages, by no means confining herself to those scenes in which Lafayette himself took part. In fact, through the darkest years, the years in which most of his wife's family died under the guillotine, in which she herself shared with the Duchesse de Daras the horrors of Le Plessis, he was imprisoned in the fortresses of Wesel and Olmiitz.

The severity of Prussian and Austrian gaolers was great, but it cannot be doubted that this imprisonment saved Lafayette's life, which the Jacobins would gladly have taken. He was spared to show the nineteenth century the mind and life of an idealist, to make his suffering wife's last days happy by his tenderness, and to lead one more Revolution, that of 1830. One doubts whether Louis Philippe gave any great satisfac- tion to so exalted a mind. Liberty is apt to run away as fast as she is pursued, and whether France has even yet overtaken her may be a question.

The most attractive part of the book deals with Adrienne, who was a superior being, after all, to her husband. It was only in a certain measure that she shared his abstract dreams of liberty, and this not from any aristocratic prejudice, but because she was a woman of supreme good sense, and under- stood better than Lafayette the world she lived in. She was also a good Catholic, while his religion was as vague as his other aspirations, though he was too noble for the mocking spirit of the philosophers. But she threw herself into his interests and objects with the utmost generosity and loyalty, and passed uncomplainingly through trials that would have broken an ordinary spirit. There was a time when she had to face the coldness of the relations she loved best, who were estranged by her husband's opinions. All this passed away ; but we have seldom read a more pathetic story than that of Lafayette's wife, as Miss Sichel tells it.

One thing is certain : nothing can be dull that deals with French people of the eighteenth century. Even the story of the prisons has touches of comedy that relieve the blackness;

and as to the emigres,—read the account of the life at Lowenberg, Altona, Wittmold, led by the delightful and eccentric Madame de Tease and her more saintly nieces, Madame de Montagu and Madame de Grammont, with old M. de Mun in attendance. Madame de Tease, Voltairian and protector of cures, is one of the most characteristic and distinguished figures in a book full of character and distinction.

We should have liked to quote many passages, picturesque touches of daily life, remarks of real political insight, clear views of the people and the tendencies of the age. But we must reserve space for a few words about Miss Sichel's intro- duction, which is one of the best and truest pieces of writing that we have met with for a long time. The much-abused ancien regime here meets with fair treatment for once, and we have an unusually good picture of what the society of the eighteenth century really was. Vicious in many cases no doubt; but on the other hand—" there was almost as large a number of nobles—some Catholic, some philosophical—who led lives of saintly virtue and religions fervour—such virtue that it seems as if it should have saved the City." No one, indeed, who has read the memoirs of the time will say that the De Noailles were a singular instance of a religions family.

This society was wild and absurd in many ways ; of startling opinions, eccentric and inconsistent; mad after new doctrines, benevolent and enthusiastic ; passionate for science, like the young lady who carried a skeleton in the hood of her carriage, or like the disciple of Mesmer who, out of pure charity, spent an hour by the roadside in the rain trying to bring a dead man to life. Such were the fashionable people of the later eighteenth century, and perhaps their great-great- grandchildren are not so very unlike them. Landlords like the Prince de Conti, with a reputation for cruelty to his peasants, and a life spent in doing them kindnesses—or like the Marechal de Mouchy and the Duo de Lianconrt ; women such as Mademoiselle de Montesson, who gave up her fortune to minister to the poor and visit the prisons, a little-known pioneer in one of the best works of modern charity,—these stand out as nobler types of the time.

It is an easy conclusion that among these different types, Lafayette and his wife were distinguished. They may be said to unite the two best currents in French society then,— he, who dreamed so nobly and acted so ineffectually ; she, who saw so clearly and lived such an ideal life of sacrifice.