next day, we are told, that he received an order to visit none but his relations, as a form of censure for having left France without permission; but this was an order that fell very lightly on him, for he was connected by birth or marriage with almost every body at court, and every body else thronged to see him at his own hotel. The treaty, which was concluded between America and France at just about the same period, was, by Lafayette's personal exertions, made effective in our favor. He labored unremittingly to induce his Government to send us a fleet and troops; and it was not until he had gained this point, and ascertained that he should be speedily followed by Count Rochambeau, that he embarked to return. He reached the head-quarters of the army on the 11th of May 1780, and there confidentially communicated the important intelligence to the Commander-in-chief.

Immediately on his return from his furlough, he resumed his place in our service with the same disinterested zeal he had shown on his first arrival. He received the separate command of a body of infantry, consisting of about two thousand men, and clothed and equipped it partly at his own expense, rendering it by unwearied exertions, constant sacrifices, and wise discipline, the best corps in the army. What he did for us, while at the head of this division, is known to all who read the history of their country. His forced march to Virginia, in December 1780, raising two thousand guineas at Baltimore, on his own credit, to supply the pressing wants of his troops; his rescue of Richmond, which but for his great exertions must have fallen into the enemy's hands; his long trial of generalship with Cornwallis, who foolishly boasted in an intercepted letter, that "the boy could not escape him ;" and finally, the siege of York-town, the storming of the redoubt, and the surrender of the place in October, 1781, are proofs of talent as a military commander, and devotion to the welfare of these states, for which he never has been repaid, and, in some respects, never can be.

He was, however, desirous to make yet greater exertions in our favor, and announced his project of revisiting France for the purpose. Congress had already repeatedly acknowleged his merits and services in formal votes. They now acknowleged them more formally than ever by a resolution of November 23d, in which, besides all other expressions of approbation, they desire the foreign ministers of this government to confer with him in their negociations concerning our affairs; a mark of respect and deference, of which we know no other example.

In France a brilliant reputation had preceded him. The cause of America was already popular there; and his exertions and sacrifices in it, which from the first had seemed so chivalrous and

romantic, now came reflected back on him in the strong light of popular enthusiasm. While he was in the United States for the first time, Voltaire made his remarkable visit to Paris, and having met Madame de Lafayette at the Hotel de Choiseuil, he made her a long harangue on the brilliant destinies that awaited her husband as a defender of the great cause of popular freedom; and ended by offering his homage to her on his knees.

Before his return too, the following beautiful verses, from the Gaston et Bayard of Belloy, had been often applauded, and their repetition sometimes called for, on the public theatre; and Madame Campan tells us, that she for a long time preserved them in the handwriting of the unfortunate Queen of Louis Sixteenth, who had transcribed them because they had thus been publicly appropriated to the popular favorite of the time.

Eh! que fait sa jeunesse
Lorsque de l'âge mûr je lui vois la sagesse?
Profond dans ses desseins, qu'il trace avec froideur,
C'est pour les accomplir, qu'il garde son ardeur.
Il sait défendre un camp et forcer des murailles,
Comme un jeune soldat désirant les batailles;
Comme un vieux général il sait les éviter.
Je me plais à le suivre et même à l'imiter.
J'admire sa prudence et j'aime son courage.

Avec ces deux vertus un guerrier n'a point d'âge.

Act. I, Sc. 4.

It is not remarkable, therefore, with such a state of feeling while he was still absent from the country, that, on his return, he was followed by crowds in the public streets wherever he went; and that in a journey he made to one of his estates in the south of France, the towns through which he passed received him with processions and civic honors; and that in the city of Orleans he was detained nearly a week by the festivities they had prepared for him.

He did not, however, forget our interests amidst the popular admiration with which he was surrounded. On the contrary, though the negociations for a peace were advancing, he was constantly

A similar circumstance happened, or rather in this second instance was prepared, at about the same time by Rochon de Chabannes, who introduced the following portrait of him into his Amour François, acted in 1780.

On est compté pour rien, quand on est inutile ;
L'oisiveté, monsieur, est une mort civile....
Voyez ce courtisan à peu près de votre âge;
Il renonce aux douceurs d'un récent mariage,
Aux charmes de la cour, aux plaisirs de Paris,
La gloire seule échauffe, embrase ses esprits,

Il vole la chercher sur un autre hémisphère, etc.

The resemblance was, of course, immediately recognised, and the name of Lafayette, which at first was murmured doubtfully, was, at the conclusion, shouted throughout the theatre in a tumult of applause.

urging on the French government the policy of sending more troops to this country, as the surest means of bringing the war to a speedy and favorable termination. He at last succeeded; and Count d'Estaing was ordered to hold himself in readiness to sail for the United States, as soon as Lafayette should join him. When, therefore, he arrived at Cadiz, he found forty-nine ships and twenty thousand men ready to follow him, first for the conquest of Jamaica,' and then for our assistance; and they would have been on our coast early in the spring, if peace had not rendered further exertions unnecessary. This great event was first announced to Congress, by a letter from Lafayette, dated in the harbor of Cadiz, Feb. 5, 1783.

As soon as tranquillity was restored, Lafayette began to receive pressing invitations to visit the country whose cause he had so materially assisted. Washington, in particular, was extremely urgent ; and yielding not only to these instances, but to an attachment to the United States, of which his whole life has given proof, he embarked again for our shores, and landed at New York on the 4th of August, 1784. His visit however was short. He went almost immediately to Mount Vernon, where he passed a few days in the family of which he was so long a cherished member, and then visiting Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, and Boston, received every where with unmingled enthusiasm and delight, he re-embarked for France. But when he was thus about to leave the United States for the third, and, as it then seemed, the last time, Congress, in December 1784, appointed a solemn deputation, consisting for its greater dignity of one member from each state, with instructions to take leave of him on behalf of the whole country, and to assure him, "that these United States regard him with particular affection, and will not cease to feel an interest in whatever may concern his honor and prosperity, and that their best and kindest wishes will always attend him." It was at the same time resolved, that a letter be written to his Most Christian Majesty, expressive of the high sense which the United States in Congress assembled entertain of the zeal, talents, and meritorious services of the Marquis de Lafayette, and recommending him to the favor and patronage of his Majesty. We are not aware, that a more complete expression of dignified and respectful homage could have been

offered to him.

During the year that followed the arrival of Lafayette in his own country, he found the minds of men more agitated on questions of

When Count d'Estaing was one day in conference with Charles III. of Spain, on the arrangements for this expedition, the Count suggested to his Majesty the propriety of leaving Lafayette for a time as Governor of Jamaica, in the event of its subjugation; "God forbid !" said the king, alarmed, “he would immediately make a republic of it."

political right, than they had ever been before. He went, for a short time, in 1785, to Prussia, for the purpose of seeing the troops of Frederick Second, and was received with distinguished kindness and consideration by that remarkable monarch; at whose court, by a singular coincidence of circumstances, he frequently met with Lord Cornwallis, and several other of the officers who had fought against him in the campaign that ended at York-town. But the grave and perilous discussions that were then going on in France, soon called him back from Prussia. Into some of those discussions he entered at once; on others he waited; but on all his opinions were openly and freely known, and on all he preserved the most perfect consistency. He was for some time ineffectually employed with Malesherbes, the minister of Louis Sixteenth, in endeavoring to relieve the Protestants of France from political disabilities, and place them on the same footing with other subjects. He was the first Frenchman who raised his voice against the slave trade; and it is worth notice, that having devoted considerable sums of money to purchase slaves in one of the colonies, and educate them for emancipation, the faction, which in 1792 proscribed him as an enemy to freedom, sold these very slaves back to their original servitude. And finally, at about the same time, he attempted with our minister, Mr. Jefferson, to form a league of some of the European Powers against the Barbaresque Pirates, which, if it had succeeded, would have done more for their suppression, than has been done by Sir Sidney Smith's Association, or is likely to follow Lord Ex

mouth's victories.

But while he was busied in the interests to which these discussions gave rise, the materials for great internal changes were collecting together at Paris from all parts of France; and in February 1787, the Assembly of the Notables was opened. Lafayette was, of course, a member, and the tone he held throughout its session contributed essentially to give a marked character to its deliberations. He proposed the suppression of the odious lettres de cachet, of which Mirabeau declared in the National Assembly, that seventeen had been issued against him before he was thirty years old; he proposed the enfranchisement of the Protestants, who, from the time of the abolition of the Edict of Nantz, had been suffering under more degrading disabilities than the Catholics now are in Ireland; and he proposed by a formal motion,-which was the first time that word was ever used in France, and marks an important step towards a regular deliberative assembly, he made a motion for the convocation of Representatives of the people. "What," said the Count d' Artois, now Charles Tenth, who presided in the Assembly of the Notables, "do you ask for the States General ?" "Yes," replied Lafayette, "and for something more and better :"

an intimation, which, though it can be readily understood by all who have lived under a representative government, was hardly intelligible

in France at that time.'

Lafayette was, also, a prominent member of the States General, which met in 1789, and assumed the name of the National Assembly. He proposed in this body a Declaration of Rights not unlike our own, and it was under his influence, and while he was for this very purpose in the chair, that a decree was passed on the night of the 13th and 14th of July, at the moment the Bastille was falling before the cannon of the populace, which provided for the responsibility of ministers, and thus furnished one of the most important elements of a representative monarchy. Two days afterwards, he was appointed Commander-in-chief of the National Guards of Paris, and thus was placed at the head of what was intended to be made, when it should be carried into all the departments, the effective military power of the realm, and what, under his wise management, soon become such.

His great military command, and his still greater personal influence, now brought him constantly in contact with the court and the throne. His position, therefore, was extremely delicate and difficult, especially as the popular party in Paris, of which he was not so much the head as the idol, was already in a state of perilous excitement, and atrocious violences were beginning to be committed. The abhorrence of the queen was almost universal, and was excessive to a degree of which we can now have no just idea. The circumstance that the court lived at Versailles, sixteen miles from Paris, and that the session of the National Assembly was held there, was another source of jealousy, irritation, and hatred, on the part of the capital. The people of Paris, therefore, as a sign of opposition, had mounted their municipal cockade of blue and red, whose effects were already becoming alarming. Lafayette, who was anxious about the consequences of such a marked division, and who knew how important are small means of conciliation, added to it, on the 26th of July, the white of the Royal cockade, and as he placed it in his own hat, amidst the acclamations of the multitude, prophesied, that it "would go round the world ;" a prediction, which is already more than half accomplished, since the tricolored cockade has been used for the ensign of emancipation in Spain, in Naples, in some parts of South America, and in Greece.

Still, however, the tendency of everything was to confusion and violence. The troubles of the times, too, rather than a posi tive want of the means of subsistence, had brought on a famine in

1 No one rose to second this motion; and yet, only two years afterwards, the States General were convoked in obedience to the unanimous call of the nation; so clearly had Lafayette foreseen, what was foreseen by nobody else.