it was not in the main deceptive. The circumstances of his early life might claim our pity, if pity were not overpowered by the strong moral reprobation demanded by his deliberate errors. Irregular and petulant as a boy; debauched and outrageous as a youth; entering upon life with every accompaniment of riot on the one hand, and sad disappointment on the other; contracting marriage with as heartless a selfishness as ever disgraced humanity, and surrounded after it by all the irregularities of vice and entanglement-the age of thirty saw him, "with all his household gods shivered around him;" separated from his wife-self-divorced from his country -a "Prometheus," (to use his own title,) with all the vultures of conscience let loose upon his soul. His genius, which, properly nurtured, might have illuminated mankind, flared with a self-consuming fire. In the triumphs of his first success, he wrung from an admiring public, as piece after piece appeared, tributes of admiration never equalled; yet he ended his career by making his high powers instruments of the most bitter infidelity, the most caustic malice, and the most self-degrading buffoonery.

His death was doubtless, in its remote cause, produced by habits of intoxication freely indulged, and by the otherwise severe regimen he instituted to preserve his Apollo-like beauty. Self-will had been the leading impulse of his life, and was his ruling passion at the last. He had been exposed after a debauch to inclement weather, and was overtaken by dangerous sickness. No persuasion could induce him to submit to the necessary remedies. In vain was early bleeding urged upon him; he persisted in his resistance to the remedy till it was too late. He died at Missolonghi, in Greece, April 19th, 1824.

"It is with infinite pain," says one of his physicians, "I must state, that though I seldom left Lord Byron's

pillow during the latter part of his illness, I did not hear him make any, even the smallest, mention of religion. At one moment, I heard him say, 'Shall I sue for mercy? After a long pause, he added, 'Come, come, no weakness; let's be a man to the last!'"

7. ROBERT BURNS.

THE death-scene of Robert Burns was melancholy indeed. "I was struck," says a lady, in a confidential letter to a friend, "with his appearance on entering the room. The stamp of death was imprinted on his features. He seemed already touching the brink of eternity. His first salutation was, 'Well, madam, have you any commands for another world?'"

8. MIRABEAU.

GABRIEL HONORE DE RIQUETTI, Count of Mirabeau, drew his first breath at Bignon, March 9th, 1749. He was born tongue-tied, with a twisted foot, and with two molar teeth already cut. The first-named peculiarity little indicated the future fame of the brilliant orator. When three years old, he was attacked with confluent and malignant smallpox. Some quack ointments were imprudently administered; the result was, that on recovery his features were disfigured and deformed by huge and uneffaceable seams and furrows. At ten years of age, his life was in jeopardy from violent fever, the effects from which were neither slight nor transient. At fifteen he was placed at a military school in Paris. Here he became a proficient in the dead and living languages; but his favourite study was mathematics, united

with architectural drawing. In his eighteenth year, under an assumed name, Mirabeau entered the military service as a volunteer. For about a year all went well. He then became the rival of his colonel in a love affair. Dissensions ensued. Very possibly, military authority was pushed to tyranny. At all events, his regimental duties became unbearable: he abruptly quitted his corps and fled to Paris. His father, never friendly to him, now interposed. Through his intervention, Mirabeau was sent a prisoner to a fortress in the Isle of Rhé. His wish was, to have banished his son to the pestilential swamps of Surinam; but this the friends of the family overruled. Such was Mirabeau's position at the age of twenty! Released, by the good offices and favourable report of the governor, from his prison in the Isle of Rhé, he was entered as second lieutenant in the Legion of Lorraine, and despatched to Corsica. In 1771 a temporary reconciliation took place between the father and son. Mirabeau visited the marquis, who now consented that his first-born should assume the title of Count Mirabeau.

In the summer of the following year, he married Mademoiselle de Marignane, an amiable young lady, and an heiress in prospective. His matrimonial life was unhappy. Extravagant propensities soon involved him in debt; and his inflexible father, taking advantage of his embarrassments, obtained another lettre-de-cachet. Its effect was to compel Mirabeau to withdraw from his ancestral residence, the castle of Mirabeau, and to retire to Manosque, an insignificant town in its vicinity. Here he wrote his "Essay on Despotism."

The marquis's animosity was still unappeased. Not content with his son's retirement at Manosque, he sought and obtained against him an interdict from the Châtelet at Paris. Nor was this all. A letter of exile, by the same active intervention, was procured, whereby

Mirabeau was forbidden to pass the boundary of the town of Manosque, save under peril of severe punishment. To this alternative he subsequently subjected himself by avenging in the public road, some twenty miles away from Manosque, an insult offered to his sister by a dastard styled the Baron of Villeneuve-Moans. Him Mirabeau flogged soundly on the king's highway. The result was his arrest while attending the sick couch of his apparently dying child, followed by incarceration in the castle of If. Thither his wife declined accompanying him. She preferred a residence at her father's mansion at Aix to sharing her husband's prison apartments at If. His pen again beguiled Mirabeau's weary hours. He wrote in his rock-prison the life of his daring grandfather, Jean Antoine de Mirabeau, who spoke his mind to the king (Louis XIV.) on the venality and licentiousness of his court. M. Dallegre, Mirabeau's keeper, won by the wit and frankness of his captive, relaxes the severity of his treatment, and grants him many a welcome indulgence,-nay, more; becomes interested in his fortunes, and endeavours to procure his release. The marquis learns this, and instantly transfers his son from If to the castle of Joux-an exchange materially for the worse in point of comfort and situation, and reduces his allowance from 2501. to 50l. per annum. His talents again win for him the favour of the governor, who permits him to visit the neighbouring town, Pontarlier. There he became acquainted with the aged Marquis de Monnier and his beautiful and youthful wife,-a couple paired, not matched-the former being seventyfive, the latter eighteen. The acquaintance issued in the elopement of the marchioness with Mirabeau.

The guilty parties took refuge in Holland, and fixed their abode at Amsterdam. There, prompted by his necessities, Mirabeau, who had assumed the name of St. Mathieu, (from an estate of his mother's in Limousin,)

sought literary employment. He had, however, been in Amsterdam more than three months before it was secured by him. Then it poured in; and by labouring ́ incessantly from six in the morning to nine at night, he contrived to earn a louis per diem. But those were now tracking him whose search he was not destined long to escape. He had admitted at Amsterdam being the author of the "Essay on Despotism." This was well known in France to be Mirabeau's, and the secret of his retreat became at once divulged. M. Monnier sent entreaties begging his wife to return, promising to forget and forgive everything; and even offered money to the fugitives. Sophie declined the marquis's proposal; and he, irritated at her refusal, commenced proceedings against her and Mirabeau to regain his settlements and her dowry. They resulted in a decree of the bailiwick of Pontarlier, by which the male offender was pronounced "guilty of abduction and seduction," condemned to be beheaded in effigy, to pay a fine of five livres to the king, and forty thousand livres to the Marquis de Monnier; the adulteress, Sophie, was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the Besancon house of correction, to be there shaved and punished like the females of the place, and to forfeit all her rights and privileges of every kind; her marriage portion going to M. Monnier.

At this in Amsterdam the fugitives smiled. But fiercer enemies were in hot pursuit. The Marquis of Mirabeau and the parents of Sophie had jointly resolved on terminating this criminal connexion and punishing the parties. The united efforts and united interest of Sophie's family and Mirabeau's effected a violation of international law; a police officer, Brugnières, was sent to Holland with letters of arrest, signed by Amelot and Vergennes; and with instructions to seize the fugitives alive or dead.

Of these proceedings Mirabeau, by some means, was