Talleyrand, by Lytton Bulwer.[Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: _Historical Characters. By Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B. Two vols., 8vo. Richard Bentley, New Burlington street, London_. 1868.]
Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer has presented the public with sketches of some eminent men, and has done his work well. It is not a series of biographies, but rather a finished outline of their prominent characteristics and of their achievements. In advance of the memoirs of Talleyrand, written by himself, and now in course of publication, this illustrious Frenchman is placed among the number, and in a new light. He is no longer the inscrutable being he appeared to his contemporaries, and as he has appeared since to their children. His name has been intimately associated with the great men and events of the last years of the unfortunate reign of Louis XVI. of France, near the close of the last century. Still more prominently is the memory of him associated with the convocation of the States-General and the National Assembly. By accident, he had the good fortune to be free from the odium attached to the Legislative Assembly and the atrocities of the National Convention, with the attendant horrors of the Committee of Public Safety in the Reign of Terror.
He fled from France in all haste as an _émigré_, and yet was lucky to avoid being classed with the aristocrats and so-called enemies of his country. He was prominent in the Revolution, without the stain of a regicide; he was a fugitive with the loyal crowd, without being stigmatized as a royalist. No amount of human foresight could have served him as a safe guide to shun the dangers which beset his fame and security on either side. His success was altogether fortuitous; but his friends attribute all to his superior sagacity and wisdom, while his enemies ascribe it to his remarkable cunning and prudence. When the days of danger and of blood passed by, Talleyrand returned to Paris with _prestige_, and was immediately employed by the Directory. When that went down, he floated to the surface with Bonaparte in the consulate and empire. Upon the fall of the empire, with the entrance of the allied armies into the capital he was their trusted counsellor. { 89} The restoration of the Bourbons was at once accompanied with the restoration of Talleyrand to the foreign office and to the head of affairs. When the Bourbons were expelled, in 1830, he was again reinstated by Louis Philippe, under whose reign he died in 1838, with that sovereign an attendant at his death-bed.