“Some of those most interested in the matter, to whom he has communicated his malicious decision, rail loudly against such a determination; whilst others, with perhaps equally good reason, as loudly applaud; so that it is evident to the unconcerned looker-on, that whatever may be his secret motive for thus deciding, it is already justified by the different passions which it has excited. He has in this, as in everything else, displayed the depth of his reflective powers, and refused to sacrifice high interests and grave results to a paltry feeling of _amour propre_. He has reflected that, in those intervening years, all the loud baying pack of fierce detractors of his fame will have yelped forth their calumnies—the smaller fry will also have all expended their puny efforts, and then _he_ will come and call upon posterity to judge between him and them. Doubt it not—posterity will answer the appeal. The next generation will be more just than his own. The fierce passions, the deadly struggles, the political hatreds, amid which his own existence has been passed, will all have died away, and men will sit in calm, unbiassed judgment on the various actions of his life, and will be the better able to pronounce their verdict when they have beheld the _consequences_ of his counsels; when they shall have been enabled to compare his adoration of his country, his indifference to its _rulers_, with the slavish self-interest, the narrow-minded, mercenary views of those with whom he had so often to contend.
“Believe me, a man must entertain a tolerably good opinion of his own discrimination, and have the organ of self-esteem developed in no mean degree, who could sit down coolly with a pretension of giving to the world a correct, nay, even a _lucid_ life of Prince Talleyrand. He has out-lived the greater portion of the comrades of his youth, of whom even then he lived so far in advance, that it was said of him, he had ‘comrades and colleagues, but no contemporaries.’ Long before middle age, he had learned that, in public life, the one thing needful is discretion; while he it was who first published to mankind the discovery he had made, that ‘speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.’ Therefore, it is not probable that there exists a soul who could ever have penetrated sufficiently into the wily statesman’s confidence ever to gain enough knowledge of his aims and views, to _account_ for the different changes in his principles, with which he has been so taunted by all parties. There is not a single epoch of his life which is not, besides, so bound up with anecdotes and incidents of the ‘times in which he lived,’ that often the most simple recital of facts, as connected with any adventure in which he may have been engaged, might give deep offence in other quarters, and cause recrimination, and perhaps even, in some cases, litigation, on the part of other high personages, whose names would have to be brought forward.