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causing the massacre of the Champ de Mars. On the day after the passing of his sentence, he was delivered over to the executioner, and put into the fatal cart, at the back of which was fas tened the red banner, as if to reproach him with having occasioned its display during his mayoralty. Whilst he was leading to execution, he was loaded with the insults of the multitude; he was covered with mud; furious men struck him with so much barbarity, that the executioners themselves were incensed at it. It was resolved that he should die on the Champ de Mars, in the very place where he had caused the seditious persons to be fired upon. The banner was burnt, and shaken all on fire over his body! A moment before he had fallen down in a fainting fit; when he returned to himself, he demanded with a sort of haughtiness, that an end might be put to his miseries. 'Dost thou tremble, Bailly?' said one of the executioners to him, seeing his limbs, weakened by age, and moistened by a cold and continual rain, quiver. Friend,' answered he, calmly, it is with cold.' At last, after having endured every species of ignominy and of ferocity, he ran himself to the scaffold, which, after having been several times displaced in his presence, had been at last fixed on a heap of dung: he died with great courage. Towards the close of his life he had been called as a witness in the queen's trial; and, as if desirous of repairing his faults towards the royal family, he had the courage to declare that the facts related in the act of accusation, drawn up against this princess, were false and forged.

Bailly was tall; his face was long and serious, and its character sometimes that of sensibility. It has been said that he resembled the minister Dundas (the late Lord Melville). He has given proofs of remarkable disinterestedness. There are several valuable works on astronomy by him: in 1800 was published the continuation of his Origin of Fables, and in 1804, a journal of his conduct in the early part of the revolution, which he appears to have made for his own use, and not to give it to the public. Those who have published it, have consulted neither their own interests nor that of his memory. Bailly was become in 1778, one of the principal chiefs of the philosophical party, and it is not surprising that he should have given himself up, at the appearance of a new order of things, to the seductions of ambition. The remembrance of his punishment must make the ambitious of all ages tremble. In 1797, Pastoret caused his widow to be set on a footing with those of the deputies who had died for their country, and obtained for her the grant of a pension; she enjoyed it but a short time, as she died in 1800. was said at the time that she had great influence over her hus

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band, and as she wanted understanding, and especially education, she contributed, in many instances, to set him in an absurd light.

BARTHELMY, (THE ABBE, JEAN JAQUES).

BORN at Cassis, near Aubagne, on the 20th of January, 1746. He studied at the oratorical college at Marseilles, where his success was rapid and brilliant. He then removed to that of the Jesuits, and devoted himself particularly to the dead languages; he applied himself to study, with an ardour so excessive as to endanger his life. When restored to health, he came to Paris, and was patronised by Boze, keeper of the cabinet of medals, who in time associated him with himself. From this period the abbé Barthélmy spent all his hours in the study and arrangement of the medals, and Boze dying in 1757, he succeeded him. Soon after he accompanied the Duke de Choiseul to Italy, and this journey gave him an opportunity of increasing the numismatic riches of France; he visited all the monuments, and received every where the most flattering attentions. M. de Choiseul being raised to the ministry, bestowed on him several pensions, which he had some difficulty in prevailing on him to accept. He employed them, however, in the most worthy manner; he educated his nephews; he collected for himself a chosen library, and shared the remainder with the poor. It was at this period that he began the Travels of the younger Anacharsis, one of the most splendid literary monuments of the 18th century, which cost him 30 years labour. Unambitious, and connected with no party, it was long before he became one of the French academy. Though he had been a member of that of inscriptions and elegant literature, ever since 1747, he was not admitted among the forty till June, 1789. The year following, the post of king's librarian was offered to him, but he declined it. Confined by inclination and by modesty to the care of the cabinet of medals, he devoted himself to it with unalterable ardour, and at last collected 40,000 antique medals, which he arranged in an admirable order. He had almost reached the end of his days, when the revolution came to cloud them, for being pointed out in 1793, as an object of suspicion, he was conveyed to the Magdelonnettes, though some pity might have been shewn to a man of 78 years of age. It was not, however, long before his cutors blushed at this useless barbarity, and he was restored to liberty four and twenty hours after his arrest; but the fatal stroke was given; from this time his strength declined, and after a fever of a few days, he peacefully expired, on the 1st of May, 1794, reading Horace. This virtuous man was the ornament of

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his age, the delight of his family, and the stay of his friends. His figure was tall and well proportioned, his face had an antique cast, and expressed mingled simplicity, candour, and dignity, the true type of his good and elegant mind. He was dear to all who knew him, particularly to his family, of whom he was the prop. The education of his nephew, who is now a senator, was owing to him. He left a great number of treatises on medals and inscriptions; also, the Loves of Calista and Polydore,' a romance translated from the Greek, and conversations of the state of the Greek music.

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BARTHELEMY, (FRANCOIS),

NEPHEW of the person last mentioned, a senator. Born at Aubagne, and brought up under the direction of his uncle, he was placed, while yet very young, in the office of M. de Choiseul; the Baron de Breteuil afterwards took him to Switzerland, and thence to Sweden; and when M. d'Adhémar was appointed ambassador to that court, Barthélemy accompanied him thither as his secretary. On the recal of the minister he succeeded him as ambassador, and remained some time, even during the mission of M. de la Luzerne. At the commencement of the revolution he was sent as ambassador to England, and to him devolved the office of informing the court that Louis XVI. had accepted the constitution. In December, 1791, he went to Switzerland, in the same character; in April, 1795, he negociated and signed a peace with Prussia; in the July following he concluded a similar treaty with Spain, and shortly after with the Elector of Hesse. He was also charged to endeavour at entering into some pacific negociations with Mr. Wickham, then the English minister at Bâle; but this proved unsuccessful. Though he sometimes occasioned the expulsion of emigrants and priests from Switzerland, he behaved with great moderation there, and has been commended by all parties. Letournier having quitted the directory in June, 1797, M. Barthélemy was elected in his place; but having been raised to this eminent station chiefly by the influence of the Clichlein party, he soon shared in their downfal. It seems that without having attached himself to Carnot, and without being connected with the members of the councils, who were themselves split into several factions, he reprobated the conduct of his three other colleagues: he opposed any change in the ministry, and with Carnot, signed a protest against the decision of the majority. From that time it was determined to include him in the proscription then preparing, and though Barras, on the 17th Fructidor, had intimated to him his impending danger, if he did not tender his resignation; he disdained to withdraw from it, and that very

evening played a game at tric trac, went tranquilly to rest, and was seized in bed. The minister Sothri carried him to the Temple unrepining. His only words were, 'Oh, my country! He, Pichegru, and the other arrested deputies, were removed to Rochefort, and thence to Cayenne, where he nearly perished by disease. After several months of captivity, he escaped with six of his companions in misfortune, and his faithful Le Tellier, who had courageously followed him. He went to England, and thence passed over to the continent, where he remained till the revolution of the 18th of Brumaire, restored hope to those proscribed in the month of Fructidor; Barthélemy was one of the first recalled, and soon became a member of the conservative senate, shortly after which he was called to the institute. To great abilities, Barthélemy unites uncommon probity; and though long an ambassador, and afterwards a member of the first authority in the state, his fortune is still narrow.

BEAUMARCHAIS (P. AUGUSTE CARON DE,)

BORN at Paris the 24th of January, 1732, the son of a watchmaker. At the age of 21 he invented an improvement in watchmaking. Being passionately fond of music, and especially of the harp, he applied himself to rendering the mechanism of the pedals more perfect, and this talent gained him admittance to Mesdames, Louis XVth's daughters, to give them lessons, which was the origin of his fortune. He lost two wives successively, and then gained three considerable law suits; the papers which he published concerning each of them, and especially that against Kornmann, whose counsel Bergasse was, excited great attention. He had an affair of honour with a duke, in consequence of which he was sent to fort l'Evêque. He was employed in some political business by the ministers Maurepas and Vergennes; he supported the scheme for the bank of discount, and this bank was established; he also procured the adoption of the scheme for a firepump to supply the city of Paris with water. His plan concerning poor women was executed at Lyon, and gained him thanks from the body of merchants of this town. After the death of Voltaire, he bought the whole of his manuscripts, and not having been able to print them in France, he established a considerable press at Kell, where he succeeded in raising to this great man, a typographical monument worthy of his glory. He also had some other works printed at this same establishment, particularly the writings of J. J. Rousseau. At this period the North American colonies were shaking off the yoke of England; Beaumarchais formed advantageous speculations in their favour, in which he interested the possessors of large capitals; he collected money and vessels,

and sent them arms, men, and other assistance, of which a small part fell into the hands of the English, the remainder arrived safely, and he made the best advantage of the event, which procured him a considerable fortune; it was then that he had a magnificent house built in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He was planning the construction of a bridge over the Seine, when the revolution intervened to oppose his projects. On the 24th of July, 1789, he made a civic gift of 12,000 francs to the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine; a short time after he became a member of the first commune of Paris. In 1792, having signed a contract with the war minister, to furnish 60,000 firelocks, which he was to procure from Holland, and not having delivered one, though he had received 500,000 francs in advance, the people accused him of forming a deposit of them in his house on the Boulevard; this accusation was laid before the convention by Chabot; Beaumarchais was conducted to the Abbaye a little while before the massacres of September, but Manuel having declared himself his protector, he was set at liberty. Lecointre de Versailles renewed this accusation on the 28th of November, and obtained a decree for proceeding against him, but he had already taken refuge in England, where the ridiculous reply was forgotten which he had made in his own name to the proclamation of the English monarch, at the time of the American war. It was said at the time, that he would, from his retirement, maintain a secret correspondence with the committee of public safety; however this may be, after the 9th of Thermidor year 2, (27th of July, 1791) he returned to Paris, and was striving to collect the shattered remains of his ancient fortune, when, on May 17, 1799, he was carried off by an apoplectic fit, after a life made up of all kinds of events, and divided between literature and business. The only real talents which he shewed were intrigues of every species. His dramatic productions were highly successful. The marriage of Figaro especially, in which the author has retraced several scenes of his own life, not calculated to do him honour, was performed all over France, and particularly at the first theatre in Paris, with ridiculous solemnity. It is difficult to express the infatuation with which the court and the town came to applaud the most indecent pictures, the jests in the worst taste; and it is above all astonishing that the government of that time did not stifle these first cries of sedition. The Barber of Seville preceded Firago; this work, sketched on the same plan, had less success the Guilty Mother, which Beaumarchais wished to make the sequel to these two pieces, occasioned strong invectives, and his imprudence now met with zealous defenders of morals and good taste. The stroke which excited the most indignation, was the anagram of one of his adversaries in the foolish and odious

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