n 1743, 1749, and 1759 respectively.]

The years of Turgot exactly bridge the interval between the ministry of
the infamous Dubois and the ministry of the inglorious Calonne; between
the despair and confusion of the close of the regency, and the despair
and confusion of the last ten years of the monarchy. In 1727 we stand on
the threshold of that far-resounding fiery workshop, where a hundred
hands wrought the cunning implements and Cyclopean engines that were to
serve in storming the hated citadels of superstition and injustice. In
1781 we emerge from these subterranean realms into the open air, to find
ourselves surrounded by all the sounds and portents of imminent ruin.
This, then, is the significance of the date of Turgot's birth.

* * * * *

His stock was Norman, and those who amuse themselves by finding a vital
condition of the highest ability in antiquity of blood, may quote the
descent of Turgot in support of their delusion. His biographers speak of
one Togut, a Danish Prince, who walked the earth some thousand years
before the Christian era; and of Saint Turgot in the eleventh century,
the Prior of Durham, biographer of Bede, and first minister of Malcolm
III. of Scotland. We shall do well not to linger in this too dark and
frigid air. Let us pass over Togut and Saint Turgot; and the founder of
a hospital in the thirteenth century; and the great-great-grandfather
who sat as president of the Norman nobles in the States-General of 1614,
and the grandfather who deserted arms for the toga. History is hardly
concerned in this solemn marshalling of shades.

Even with Michel-Etienne, the father of Turgot, we have here no dealing.
Let it suffice to say that he held high municipal office in Paris, and
performed its duties with exceptional honour and spirit, giving
sumptuous fetes, constructing useful public works, and on one occasion
jeoparding his life with a fine intrepidity that did not fail in his
son, in appeasing a bloody struggle between two bodies of Swiss and
French guards. There is in the library of the British Museum a folio of
1740, containing elaborate plates and letterpress, descriptive of the
fetes celebrated by the city of Paris with Michel-Etienne Turgot as its
chief officer, on the occasion of the marriage of Louise-Elizabeth of
France to Don Philip of Spain (August 1739). As one contemplates these
courtly sumptuosities, La Bruyere's famous picture recurs to the mind,
of far o