was already blended with that of the approaching revolution, the chapter is not yet concluded. Like all men, Beaumarchais had his rivals and his enemies; and of these not the least bitter was the dwarfish but venomous Suard, who had from the first been opposed to the licensing of the play. With the pestilent warfare of anonymous criticism, he so drove the author to desperation, that at last, weary of a guerilla contest in which, write as wittily as he would, his antagonist was shielded from the world's bitter laugh by his disguise, and yet certain of the identity of his assailant, he discharged a Parthian dart, while avowing his intention to notice no more irresponsible and unvouched assaults. "Shall I," he said, "who, to bring my piece upon the stage, have vanquished lions and tigers, shall I now degrade myself to the level of a Dutch chambermaid, searching the blankets every morning for some vile insect of the night?" The stab was cruelly severe, and the antithesis was happy; for Suard, with whom alone Beaumarchais thought he had to do, was keenly sensitive about his physical insignificance. But unfortunately for the success of the repartee, its author did not know that the bulky Count de Provence (afterwards, as Thackeray irrev erently styles him, "that unwieldy monarch, Louis XVIII.”) had occasionally taken a secret share in Suard's outpourings of sarcasm and malignity. It was easy to persuade the prince that the satire was aimed at himself; but, mortified as he was at the unlooked-for retort his critical progeny had provoked, he was too sagacious to avow his part in Suard's handiwork. Sinking, therefore, all allusion to the "insect of the night," he took an opportunity to point out to his brother that by lions and tigers the insolent demagogue referred to nothing less than the king and queen; animals to which those amiable and unfortunate personages were never perhaps before or since accused of bearing a resemblance. Already provoked against the writer of the Marriage of Figaro, Louis gave vent to his irritation in a manner not unprecedented, but very unwise and very unjust. Without rising from the table, where he appears to have been engaged in some social amusement, he wrote with a pencil on a playing-card an order for the poet's instant confinement in the

prison of St. Lazarus. This was at that time a sort of house of correction; a jail peculiarly for the benefit of young profligates whose debaucheries were not such as to render it desirable to send them to the galleys, yet were too gross to be winked at by the law. To put a grave merchant of fiftythree in the same category with the loosest young men of the town was a thing, to say the least, very unexpected. In fact, we are told that, on the morning of the 9th of March, 1785, when people learned that Beaumarchais, in the very height of his prosperity, had on the night previous been cast, without any cause assigned, into St. Lazarus, the ludicrousness of his position overcame all other considerations, and a universal titter spread through the town. But presently the public, as well as himself, began to be inquisitive about his offence, and to ask questions that could not well be answered. The government, ashamed to say that it was because he was suspected of insinuating a likeness between the king of Frenchmen and the king of beasts, was disturbed by the murmurs that arose on every side. No man in Paris, it was said, can now know in the morning whether he shall not sleep within the walls of a prison. The king was soon as anxious to get Beaumarchais out, as he had been to get him in; but he, probably receiving an inkling of the truth, positively refused to go till the charge against him was declared. The natural good sense and kindly feelings of Louis XVI., however, brought him to reflection, and Beaumarchais was dismissed with every possible compensation to his wounded pride for his five days of captivity.

But his imprisonment seems to have been the turning point in his history. Despite of ministerial regret and popular sympathy, the prestige of his name was gone. His social position was found to be no longer impregnable. Erelong, he was involved in a stock operation with certain bankers in Paris. While he was an extensive holder, they had speculated largely on the prospect of a fall. To depreciate the stock, they engaged the pen of the young and (save for the wildest excesses) almost unknown Mirabeau. As penniless as unprincipled, but in the full vigor of his wonderful genius, Mirabeau leaped into the arena like a practised gladiator.

Never exceeded in powers of invective and contumely, by fair blows and by foul, he so terribly battered the reputation of Beaumarchais as to leave it very unpleasantly affected in the public esteem. The most that the victim could do was to liken his enemy to Demosthenes, and to compare the philippics of the one with the mirabelles of the other. Less capable, but not less scurrilous and virulent, was a certain M. Bergasse, an advocate shortly after employed to conduct a trumped up lawsuit against Beaumarchais; and though in deciding for the defendant the court punished the advocate exemplarily for his calumnies, the injurious effects of so much public defamation were irreparable. The operatic spectacle of Tarare, which he brought upon the stage in 1787, though it had more success than it deserved, could not have tended to increase his fame. It was received, as we are told, (and can readily believe,) with more surprise than admiration. But he was still wealthy; still full of the same old gayety of heart and audacity of spirit that characterized his earlier days. Past troubles were to him things past; he never suffered them to overcloud the present; while in the future he could see nothing to fear. If the sea were calm and bright, it was well; but if the waves ran wild and high, and the heavens frowned, his disposition was such as to find a fierce pleasure in the turmoil of the elements, and to triumph in mastering the storm. His philosophy was, to a certain extent, that of Rochefoucault: "Il vaut mieux employer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent, qu'à prévoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver." In 1789, he was absorbed in the erection of a mansion, sumptuous even beyond the measure of that superb city of which it was to be one of the local wonders. The various political disorders that so soon ensued kept his pen idle till 1791, when he produced La Mère Coupable, a meritorious drama, in which he manages, by the way, to settle accounts with his enemy Bergasse. In the following year, he undertook the purchase, in Holland, of a quantity of fire-arms for the French government. The results of this affair were disastrous. He fell into suspicion; his house was searched by the mob, and he himself cast into the Abbaye, whence he was released but two days before the

massacres of September; and finally, having again passed into Holland on the interminable business of the sixty thousand muskets, he was accused of secret correspondence with Louis XVI., and his property was attached by the Convention. A year later-in March, 1793-he hazarded a return to Paris to vindicate himself, and once more was sent back for the muskets, while the Convention retained possession of his effects. During this mission, his name was placed on the list of émigrés; his family at Paris were arrested and imprisoned; and he himself was left friendless and destitute at Hamburg. It was not till July, 1796, that, by favor of the newly appointed Directory, he obtained permission to return to Paris. He was now an old man, and his affairs were in a state of the utmost dilapidation and confusion; but his spirit was still unbroken and rampant. The brief remainder of his days was spent in the fulfilment of his social duties; the reconstruction of his shattered fortunes; and a constant intermeddling, pro more suo, in national politics. His life ebbed away, so far as we learn, with but little pain. At length, on the morning of the 18th of May, 1799, having retired, on the evening previous, from a singularly cheerful party of friends in his own house, he was found dead in his bed. A stroke of apoplexy had surprised him, and he probably passed away, almost unconsciously, at the age of sixty-seven years and three months.

The history of the life of Beaumarchais is one of the most dramatic that biography exhibits; and the events on which it hinges are of large historical importance. The volumes we have here noticed cannot fail to gratify the fancy of every intelligent reader; if they are not found as instructive as entertaining, the fault must be his own.

ART. VII.- Village and Farm Cottages. The Requirements of American Village Homes, considered and suggested, with Designs for such Houses, of Moderate Cost. By HENRY W. CLEAVELAND, WILLIAM BACKUS, and SAMUEL D. BACKUS. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1856.

THE study of the outward forms of nature, with reference to the improvement of landscape, is a modern exercise of the taste, and the result of a civilization not attained by any of the ancients. The Greeks and Romans had their architecture, their sculpture, and their painting; they could fully appreciate the beauty and the grandeur of art; but we have little proof that they felt as we do the full influence of nature. In the progress of the human mind, the power of appreciating art seems to precede the development of that sentiment which causes one to be delighted with the contemplation of real landscape. The majority of men can feel and understand the value of paintings, without any poetic sensibility or any extraordinary mental cultivation. Even a fine landscape painting affords delight to many who would look with indifference upon the scene represented.

It may be remarked, however, that in the case of pictures the spectator's vision is assisted by the genius of the artist, who not only circumscribes the view, but selects such objects, and places them in such harmonious relations to one another, that one whose imagination is too dull to feel the influence of the same scene in nature, is with these aids enabled both to feel and to admire. But the apparent love of paintings, and of other productions of the fine arts, is often the mere affectation of persons who wish to be in fashion. Paintings have in all ages been fashionable, because they are costly; Nature has always been unfashionable, because she is cheap. When one has become the possessor of a fine picture, his ambition tempts him to study its beauties, and to exalt it by his praises in the opinion of others. But let a man become the possessor of a beautiful landscape, under the open heavens, if his sense of its beauty or his ambition had tempted him to speak its praises, the crowd both of rich and poor, in a