The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-12 00:00:00

EVENING, SEPTEMBER 12,

nowned Balsams° from the lip of Talleyrand himself,
who then first beheld the necromancer :

" Caglicatro wire then a man in the very flower of his
age, of exceedingly prepossessing appearance. Ilia
person, although small, was so well and firmly knit that•
its proportions seemed those of a much larger man. His
countenance was remarkably keen and penetrating,
being formed of a succession of sharp angular lines,
which gave him a look of cunning that he w ould wil-
lingly have disguised, and with which the solemn tone
and mysterious aspect were altogether at variance. His
sharp piercing eyes I shall never forget; they absolutely
seemed to light up the obscurity of the chamber, and,
as they flashed from the one to the other of his visitors,
they seemed to belong to some wild bird of prey hesitat-
ing between two victims which to devour first. His
beard and eyebrows were black and bushy, with here and
there a stre f grey amid their jetty blackness, telling
more of the hand of woe than of the passage of time.
When we entered, ho had upon his head a velvet cap,
which, with gentlemanlike courtesy, he doffed when he
addressed us, and then I perceived that the summit of
his crown was aha ady bald, although his hair curled
downward upon his neck and shoulders in a thick and
silky mass. The hand which rested upon the table, and
upon which he seemed to be leaning his whole weight as
he stood in graceful and theatrical attitude, awaiting cur
communication, was small and delicate as that of a lady
of the court, and shone out upon the dark green velvet
as white as snow; and yet it needed not any very pro-
found knowledge of anatomy to enable the beholder to
discern at once that it was the hand of a man possessed
of most herculean strength and power, so vigorous were
the firm knit muscles, so well strung the tightened, cord-
like nerves. I think he observed with some displeasure
the curiosity with which I gazed towards it, for he with-
drew it suddenly, and let it fall by his side."
The Prince also beheld on one occasion a much more
wonderful man—Voltaire. Here is his sketch of the
philosopher :
"M. de Voltaire was seated on the edge of his bed,
attired in one of those short loose dressing-gowns much
worn at the time, and which displayed his spindle legs
and shrunken feet in all their unveiled ugliness. Never
have I behold a form so withered, so diminished; every
vein in his whole frame was visible and defined, like those
in an anatomical study. The later portraits of M. do
Voltaire give a very just idea of his appearance, but they
generally fail in expressing the singular look of the eyes
—au expression which I never have seen in any one since
that time—an anxious, unquiet, restless look—a hungry,
thirsty, keenly-searching ,glance-(hunger' and thirst of
praise), and searching with avidity for admiration, which,
such was the Voltairian fever of the ' time, he never
failed to obtain, and yet, as l'appftit vient en mangeant,'
never wholly satisfied his craving."
He says further on,—
"Every line of that remarkable countenance is en-
graven on my memory. I see it now before me—the
small fiery eyes staring from the skrunken sockets, not
unlike those of a cameleon; the dried and withered
cheek traversed in every direction by deep cut lines; the
compressed lips and puckered mouth, round which
played a perpetual, sarcastic smile, giving him altogether
the air of a merry friend."
As a companion sketch here is M. Colmache's por-
traiture of the Prince himself :
"It is, in fact, one of the most extraordinary qualifi-
cations of this great man, and forms a parallel to what is
told of the fascinating influence of Napoleon. His power
of pleasing are so great, that he can .with justice boast
of never having to combat enmity and prejudice. Those
who are accustomed to the bland and polished courtesy
of his old age can readily imagine that in youth his in-
fluence must have been all-powerful. With this fascina-
tion of manner he must have also been possessed of the
most aristocratic and handsome person, from the dignity
of which, strange to say, the deformity of his foot never
detracted. He was very fair, of most brilliant yet deli-
cate complexion, with eyes of a soft dark blue, much
covered by the lids, a hich contributed greatly to the air
of quiet recuih'ement, misconstrued by many into an
expression of cunning, which was habitual to him. His
hair has always been considered one of his greatest at-
tractions, being of the bright golden hue, so uncommon
even in the north; and when he wore it loose over his
shoulders, neither discoloured by powder nor disfigured
by the torturing iron of the perruquier, it must have
been most beautiful. Even to this very hour, you can-
not fail to remark its rich luxuriance. It is not yet
wholly white, but merely grey, and its original golden
colour still shines bright amid the silver."

With this profile likeness, we must terminate our
remarks upon the reminiscences of the Prince of
Beneventum. The recollection of his ingratitude to
his Imperial master will survive with the remem-
brance of his diplomatic genius and with the memory
of the kindred ingratitude of the Prince of Ponte
Corvo, of the Duke of Dalmatia, of the Duke Ragusa,
of the Duke of Otranto, of the Duke of Castiglione,
and of the great arch-traitor the Prince of Wagram
and Prince of Neuchatel those men who had
received from the lavish hands of Napoleon, the
Emperor and King, dukedoms and principalities.

COURT CIRCULAR.
BALMORAL, SATURDAY.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

18-IP.

cent. The ten millions 'stink in irrhind ere re much
13ritisli capital stasteti, so much wiihdrawn from the
stanoling.fund, for the emplo3 merit of British labour; and
a very serious deduction from the annual demand for
British manufactures.,
_This effect ought !lover to be lost
sight of,ivhen advanced for the relief 'of the. sister king-
dom are prop6.-ed; 'particularly in the pre-cut very
critical condition of our own labour market, and

with a population pressing on the very verge of
penury.... It may be' necessary to make such sacrifices
on very rare emergenCies, but let it not. be forgotten
for- a moment that they are sacrifices, and that, fur

. -
every Irish family kept from starving, an English or
Scotch infallibly- be 'pinched. To illustrate
the effect's of the revolutilinarY movements of the last
`eight months, it is enough to point to France, which,
instead •Of tel three milllOns and a half of British

exports, as she did last' year; will probably not tt.ke a
million 'daring' this. 'That strati a '<Reline, arising from
circumstances over whibh wd lave tin contrtil, also illus-
trates one of the knoi,ii and • admitted disalvantages of
foreign 'commerce, is lindeniatle. 'But the most rabid
Pro., ctienist—even Colonel Sibthorp or Mr. Newd,Tate
—Wou!d 'not piarposo—thst ‘,4) shoo:el give up Feench
wines es well as French slks, and be literally sell-de-
pendent ; and a' little calm la fkotion will convince any
elan open to conviction, that Great Britain cannot break
off or materially lessen her commercial relations, with-
out deseending rapidly in the rcale of greatneas, and
(what is worse) without pasing through a series of ap-
palling struggles in' her deident. What is to become of
the workmen and mechanics who are employed
is preparing our 'sixty," millions of 'exports, if
we give tip the notion- of continuing an ex-
porting nation—which, by the way, we were essentially
'long before' Sir Robert Peel and his colleaguei
burred the censure .of that 'enlightened,- unassuming,
and candid section of the Conservative party who
tight under the banners of Lord Stanley and Lord
Georgerßentinck.. The great and characteristic merit of
Sir Robert Peel's statesmanship is to disco'ver the pre-
cise wants and tendenCies of 'the -period, 'and adapt his
measures to them. He saw that the country was ripe
for an onward inoyement, and he made it; but it would
have been made not long afterwards whether he had
promoted or resisted it. It is a perfect chimera to sup.
pose, that: the corn-laws, or any class interest, could be
permanently upheld against the convictions of nine-
tenths of the most intelligent men of the day; and, for
the same reason, the Protectionists may rest assured that,
the knell of the navigation-laws has sounded. Far from
admitting that the measures of the last Conservative Ad-
ministration have failed, we believe them to have been
eminently successfuL and ' most felicitously timed.
In fact, it is perfectly idle and paradoxical to contend
that the removal or reduction of import duties on arti-
cles of food, in times of scarcity, has done harm; and if
on the one hand the extravagant promises of Mr. Mac-
gregor have not been realised, let it be remembered, on
the other, that the equally extravagant alarms of the
protection prophets have proved false. These cannot •
deny that, if losses have been iecurred in any branch of
industry since the crowning act of Sir Robert Peei's
alleged apostacy, they are not of the kind anticipated.
'Neither farmers nor landlords have been ruined whole-
sale, and it would be difficult to persuade the unem-
ployed workmen of Nottingham or Bradford that
rtheir want of work arises from the admission of
American breadstuffs or French cattle. It is obviously
for the advantage of the manufacturing class, at any rate,
that we should exchange manufactured goods for food,
instead of grovvitig it; and our best course, as regards
them (the chief sufferers from late events), evidently is,
to secure the largest possible vent for their commodities.
The United States take more than eight millions worth
of British goods per annum; more than is taken by the
whole of our colonies put together, exclusive of the East
Indies; and they are readf to take more so soon as we
are prepared to meet them on a perfect footing of mutual
confidence and reciprocity. We repeat, therefore, confi-
dently and advisedly, that sound policy requires us to
proceed steadily in the track indicated by Mr. Pitt,
opened by Mr. Huskisson, and trodden with unfaltering
firmness, and in an almost unparalleled spirit of self-sa-
crifice, by Sir Robert Peel.