for the extension of knowledge, brotherly love, and heroism are capable of exciting admiration and reverence, so long will the Arctic voyages, and the brave voyagers, be held in grateful remembrance among men. The enterprises of commerce and the plans of humanity have indeed been baffled, but we are glad to feel that the world has not wholly lost the treasure and the precious lives, which have been expended in the SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE.

ART. VI.- Beaumarchais et son Temps; Études sur la Société en France au XVIIIe Siècle d'après des Documens inédits. Par LOUIS DE LOMÉNIE. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères. 1856. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. xi., 522, 596.

AMONG the characters of a secondary importance which distinguish the most brilliant portion of the last century, there are few possessed of such universal attraction as that which attaches itself to the name of Beaumarchais. To the man of letters, he presents himself as the author of the two wittiest and most sparkling plays that the French stage has seen since the days of Molière. The advocate and the general reader will recall to mind those passages in the Causes Célèbres to which his talents have given almost an historical interest. The financier and the merchant recognize in him the man of business, whose transactions reached" from China to Peru," and who, from the most insignificant beginnings, brought his credit to be respected in every commercial mart in Christendom; while to the politician and the statesman, he figures as the subtle diplomatist, the hardy intriguer, whose machinations involved the whole European continent, more or less, in our Revolutionary contest, and embarked in the cause of a distant and an alien race, struggling to establish a democracy in the place of a constitutional monarchy, the most ancient of the despotic powers of the Old World. And yet, strange to say, the personal history of this man has hitherto remained in greater obscurity than

that of almost any public character of his day and generation. Even those scenes in his career which relate most immediately to American affairs are not yet completely unveiled; and in short, until assisted by the labors of M. de Loménie, the student was rather perplexed and tantalized than materially benefited by his consultation of the scanty and scattered memorials which existed in reference to his public and private life.

In the preparation of the volumes before us, their author appears to have enjoyed singular advantages. His style is agreeable, his information comprehensive and accurate, and the matériel placed at his disposal all that could be desired. The opening chapter describes M. de Loménie's admission, under the guidance of his hero's grandson, into the dusty and long-closed garret, where for five-and-fifty years had slumbered in undisturbed repose the vast magazine of papers and documents which Beaumarchais had left behind. Buried beneath the accumulated dust of half a century, hidden in chests or piled away on cobwebbed shelves, whole heaps of invaluable manuscripts met his delighted view. Here was a package of letters from dignitaries long since in the grave; there, files of documents relative to those famous lawsuits with which "all Europe rang from side to side." At the bottom of yonder trunk, whose key has long since been lost and forgotten, he finds the original autographs of the Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro, lying side by side with the model of an escapement, carrying us back to the days of the humble watchmaker in the Rue St. Denys, and inscribed Caron filius ætatis 21 annorum regulatorem invenit et fecit 1753. The sight of these chefs d'œuvre of the humble mechanic and of the courtly dramatist, so carefully preserved together, reminds one of the Eastern king who was wont to display in the same coffer his original shepherd's robe and his gorgeous mantles of royalty.

From the arrangement and docketing of some of the papers thus discovered, it would seem that Beaumarchais had himself anticipated their future value for biographical purposes. But at his death, his family had good reasons for not giving them to the public. Hence it is that so little has hith

The

erto been known, and that little not well, of his career. sketch by La Harpe, vague as it is, was long the only authentic source of information about him, unless we include the scattered and isolated passages in which he incidentally figures in the memoirs of the times. At last, however, when family policy no longer compels the suppression of any of the voluminous documents that survive their author, it is fortunate indeed that circumstances should have thus happily concurred for the development of a history so intimately interwoven with that of the epoch in which he flourished. Sprung from the lower ranks of society, he has left the traces of his wanderings through every grade. As M. de Loménie himself remarks, the surprising variety of his aptitudes brought Beaumarchais into constant contact with the most opposite persons and things, and fitted him to play every day, and nearly at the same moment, the most diverse parts in the comedy of life. Watchmaker; musician and singer; playwright and composer; courtier or demagogue, as occasion dictated; man of pleasure and man of business; financier and manufacturer; editor and privateer; politician, ambassador, and secret agent of the state; turning aside from considering the salary of a danseuse to despatch a squadron which should battle with "the hardy Byron," side by side with the fleet of D'Estaing;- Beaumarchais had a hand in almost every affair, great or small, which preceded the French Revolution.

In the shop of a humble watchmaker of Paris, and on the 24th of January, 1732, Pierre Augustin Caron was born. As Arouet possesses all his fame under the territorial appellation of Voltaire, so, a quarter of a century later, the young Caron acquired that more euphonious territorial surname which his genius has made immortal. It is sufficient to say here of his family, that, while in point of position it was respectable among the bourgeoisie of Paris, it was far superior, as to mental cultivation, to perhaps any in the same rank of today. In this domestic circle, the relations of Caron appear to have been singularly happy. Loving and beloved, the same tenderness and generosity which embellished his childhood accompanied him to the grave; and his correspondence

Yet the days of his youth They were the witnesses of

with his relatives constitutes by no means the least interesting portion of the volumes before us. passed not altogether smoothly. full many an escapade, pushed, perhaps, to the utmost limit of careless gayety; nor did his father always find in the halfspoiled boy the very model of an industrious apprentice. These juvenile disorders at length came to a head; and, as well as his nature permitted, he seems to have in season shaken off the slough of his inconsequential follies, and subsided into the acute and ingenious mechanic. Towards the end of 1753, being then in business with his father, he made his début before the public, contending with success for the honor of a certain improvement in his craft, of which a brother watchmaker had sought to deprive him. The affair was ended by his introduction, as watchmaker to the king, into the halls of Versailles. By his professional skill, he now speedily obtained not only the custom of the court, but, what was of far greater value, the notice of the royal family. Once noticed, it was hardly possible for him not to please. His tall and well-proportioned person; his regular and handsome features; and, above all, his active and selfconfident mind, could not but inspire the feeling that he was not the man to neglect. At no period of his life, and still less at the age of twenty-four, was Caron likely to be found the victim of excessive modesty. The lines of Hudibras might not unfitly be applied to this part of his character:

"He that has but impudence,

To all things has a fair pretence;
And put among his wants but shame,

To all the world may make his claim."

And when we consider his various and wonderful capacity, we need be surprised at none of his victories. Though no flight seemed too lofty or too daring for him to essay, courage never failed him. No Icarus was he, to lose heart midway at the height he had attained, and topple headlong down into the giddy gulf below. When he failed, - and fail he did, on more than one occasion, the fault was in anything rather than in his own lack of audacity and presence of mind.

Caron had not been long attached to the court of Louis XV., when he contracted an advantageous matrimonial alliance with the widow of M. Francquet, to whose employment in the palace he also succeeded. It was from some portion of this lady's estates that he borrowed his cognomen of Beaumarchais; but it was not until 1761, when he bought the sinecure post of a Royal Secretary, that he acquired nobility, and the legal right to subscribe himself de Beaumarchais. This gave occasion for his witty reply, in the procès Goëzman, to the reproaches of his plebeian origin. "My nobility is no thing of yesterday," he cried; "it is already nearly twenty years old! Nor is it like that of many of our nobles, of uncertain origin, and involved in tradition. I have the parchment deed itself to show for it, freshly written, and stamped with yellow wax. No one can dispute it to me, for here is the receipt!" Such humorous insolence as this is the strongest commentary on the state of feeling in France before the Revolution. But he was not fortunate in wedlock. His first wife died in less than a year from their nuptials. In 1768, he found consolation in the charms of another widow, one Madame Lévêque, a lady endowed largely with what Parson Evans calls "good gifts"; but she also died in about two years. These circumstances gave a handle to the charge of poisoning, which was afterwards whispered against the bereaved husband; but the story does not even call for refutation, it is so palpably groundless. The favor which various accomplishments of the young watchmaker had gained for him with the daughters of the king, was the commencement of his troubles. Envied, yet contemned, by a throng of highborn courtiers, he was exposed to incessant insult and contumely. His ready tongue, and sometimes not less ready hand, were constantly in requisition. Some of his retorts were very happy. Every one knows the story of a gentleman seeking to affront him by publicly calling on him to regulate a superb watch. In vain Beaumarchais protested that from long abstinence he had forgotten the trade of his youth, and had become very awkward. His adversary insisted; and in the next moment, while pretending to lift it to the light, Beaumarchais dropped the jewelled timepiece from his hands,