,
and is much coloured by prejudice. The Marquis de Bouille, whose gallant
conduct during the Nancy mutiny set an example which the nobility of
France were unfortunately slow to follow, and who would have saved Louis
XVI. in the Varennes flight but for ill-luck and the king's incredible
folly, has also left memoirs of value; and so has Dumouriez. The memoirs
of Louvet, of Daunou, of Riouffe, of the Duke de Lauzun, of the Comte de
Vaublanc, of the Comte de Segur, may be mentioned. The unamiable but
striking and characteristic figure of Madame Roland lives in memoirs
which are among the most celebrated of the time. A group of short but
striking accounts of eye-witnesses and narrowly-rescued victims remains
to testify to the atrocities of that Second of September, which some
recent historians have striven in vain to palliate. Many of the men of
the Revolution, of the servants of the Empire and of their wives, have
left accounts (of more or less value in point of matter) of the events
of the time, some of which have been only very recently published. Among
these latter special notice is deserved by the memoirs of Davout, of
Madame de Remusat, and of Count Miot de Melito. But with few exceptions
(those of Madame de Remusat are perhaps the principal) none of these
memoirs are of great literary importance or interest. They are often
very valuable to the historian, very curious to the student of manners
or the mere seeker after interesting and amusing facts; but no one of
them, named or unnamed, can be said to rank in literary interest with
the work which is so plentiful in the preceding century, and which
constitutes so large a part of that century's claim to a place of first
importance in the history of French literature.

[Sidenote: Abundance of Letter-writers.]

It is otherwise with letters, of which the century contributes to
literature some of the most remarkable which we possess. It is
impossible even to give a bare list of those which remain from a time
when almost every person of quality knew how to correspond either in the
natural or the artificial style; but the most remarkable (each of which
is in its way typical of a group) may be noticed with some minuteness.
Among these the correspondence of Grimm, though one of the bulkiest and
most important, may be dismissed with a brief reference; for it will be
noticed again in the succeeding chapter, and most of it is not either
the work of one man or real correspondence.