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Delany, an Irishman to the backbone, gives the following character of him: "No man ever deserved better of any country than Swift did of his: a steady, persevering, inflexible friend; a wise, a watchful, and a faithful counsellor, under many severe trials and bitter persecutions, to the manifest hazard both of his liberty and fortune." With respect to his conversation and private economy some particulars may be worth mentioning. His rule never to speak more than a minute at a time, and to wait for others to take up the conversation, it were well if professed talkers would adopt. He excelled in telling a story, but told the same too often; an infirmity which grew on him, as it does on others, in advancing life. He was churlish to his servants, but in the main a kind and generous master. He was unceremonious and overbearing, sometimes brutal; but in company which he respected, not coarse, although his politeness was in a form peculiar to himself. He considered wealth as the pledge of independence; but his frugality towards the close of his life amounted to avarice. As we have represented some features of his character in no very amiable light, we will conclude with an anecdote which shows the kindly portion of his nature to advantage. In the high tide of his influence, he was often rallied by the ministers for never coming to them without a Whig in his sleeve: whatever might have been his expectations from the unsolicited gratitude of his party, he never pressed his own claims personally; but he often solicited favours from Lord Oxford in behalf of Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and Steele. Personal merit rather than political principles directed his choice of friends. His intimacy with Addison was formed when they used to meet at the parties of Lord Halifax or Lord Somers, who were leaders of the Whigs; but it continued unabated when the Tories had gained the ascendency.

Swift's works have gone through many editions in various forms. The latest and best is that of Sir Walter Scott. That man must be considered fortunate in his biographers, of whom memoirs have been handed down, with more or less detail, by Lord Orrery, Dr. Delany, Dr. Hawkesworth, Dr. Sheridan, Dr. Johnson, and Sir W. Scott.

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THE Chancellor Daguesseau is said to have been descended from a noble family of the province of Saintonge; if so, he was careless of his privileges, for he never used between the two first letters of his name the comma, indicative of noble birth. He came however of distinguished parentage; for his grandfather had been First President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and his father was appointed, by Colbert, Intendant of the Limousin, and subsequently advanced to the Intendancies of Bordeaux and of Languedoc. In the latter government he suggested to Colbert the grand idea of uniting the Ocean and the Mediterranean by means of that mighty work, the Canal of Languedoc. In the persecution raised against the Protestants of the South of France by Louis XIV. he was distinguished by mildness; and to his honour be it remembered, one person only perished under his jurisdiction.

Disgusted by the dragonades, and by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he resigned his Intendancy, and removed to Paris, where he continued to enjoy the royal favour, and to be employed in offices of trust; so that he may be said not only to have formed his son's youth, but to have watched over his manhood.

That son, Henry François Daguesseau, was born at Limoges, November 7, 1668. In 1690 he was appointed King's Advocate in the Court of the Chatelet, and soon after, at his father's recommendation, Advocate-General in the Parliament of Paris. On hearing the wisdom of so young a choice brought into question, the king observed, that "the father was incapable of deceit, even in favour of his son." So brilliantly did the young lawyer acquit himself in his charge, that Denis Talas, one of the chief of the magistracy, expressed the wish, " that he might finish as Daguesseau had begun." The law officers of that day did not confine themselves to a mere dry fulfilment of legal functions; there was a traditional taste, a love of polite and classic literature, a cultivation of poetry and eloquence, on which the jurists prided themselves, and which prompted them to seize every opportunity of rivalling the ecclesiastical orators and polite writers of the age. Thus, at the opening of each session, the Avocat-Général pronounced an inaugurative discourse, which treated rather of points of high morality than law. guesseau acquired great fame from these effusions of eloquence. Their titles bespeak what they were: they treat of the Independence of the Advocate; the Knowledge of Man, of Magnanimity; of the Censorship. "The highest professions are the most dependent," exclaimed Daguesseau on one of those occasions; "he whom the grandeur of his office elevates over other men soon finds that the first

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hour of his dignity is the last of his independence." These generous sentiments are strongly contrasted with the despotism of the government and the general servility of the age.

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In 1700 Daguesseau was appointed ProcureurGeneral, in which capacity he was obliged to form decisions on the gravest questions of state. learned Memoir, drawn up by him in the year 1700, to prove that no ecclesiastics, not even cardinals, had a right to be exempt from royal jurisdiction, shows his mind already imbued with that jealousy of Papal supremacy which afterwards distinguished him. But his occupations were not confined to legal functions, the administration of that day being accustomed to have recourse, in all difficult and momentous questions, to the wisdom and authority of the magistracy. Thus Daguesseau was enabled, by directing his attention to the state of the hospitals, to remedy the enormous abuses practised in them, and to remodel those charitable institutions upon a new and philanthropic system. In the terrible famine of 1709, he was appointed one of the commission to inquire into the distresses of the time. He was the first to foresee the famine ere it arrived, and to recommend the fittest measures for obviating the misery which it menaced.

There existed, at that time, few questions on which a French statesman or magistrate found himself in opposition to the sovereign. Constitutional political liberty was unknown; and even freedom of conscience had been violated by the persecuting edicts of Louis XIV. The magistracy had allowed the Protestants to be crushed, awed by the fear of being considered favourers of rebellion. The legal and the lettered class of French, however they had abandoned the great cause of Reform, exaggerated as it had been by Calvin, were nevertheless still un

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