a reforming National Assembly, still less the Mayor of Paris, during a
revolutionary effervescence. The author may make Charles V. say that he
will discard favour, and will call in renown to select his
representatives; it will appear to him that taxes ought to be laid on
riches and spared on poverty; he may even exclaim that oppression
awakens ideas of equality. His temerity will not overleap this boundary.
Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, made the Chair resound with bold words
of another description.

I am far from blaming this scrupulous reserve; when moderation is united
to firmness, it becomes power. In a word, however, Bailly's patriotism
might, I was about to say ought to, have shown itself more susceptible,
more ardent, prouder. When in the elegant prosopopoeia which closes
the eloge, the King of England has recalled with arrogance the fatal day
of Poitiers, ought he not instantly to have restrained that pride within
just limits? ought he not to have cast a hasty glance on the components
of the Black Prince's army? to examine whether a body of troops,
starting from Bordeaux, recruiting in Guienne, did not contain more
Gascons than English? whether France, now bounded by its natural limits,
in its magnificent unity, would not have a right, every thing being
examined, to consider that battle almost as an event of civil war? ought
he not, in short, to have pointed out, in order to corroborate his
remarks, that the knight to whom King John surrendered himself, Denys de
Morbecque, was a French officer banished from Artois?

Self-reliance on the field of battle is the first requisite for
obtaining success; now, would not our self-reliance be shaken, if the
men most likely to know the facts, and to appreciate them wisely,
appeared to think that the Frank race were nationally inferior to other
races who had peopled this or that region, either neighbouring or
distant? This, let it be well remarked, is not a puerile susceptibility.
Great events may, on a given day, depend on the opinion that the nation
has formed of itself. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel,
afford examples on this subject that it would be well to imitate.

In 1767, the Academy of Berlin proposed a prize for an eloge of
Leibnitz. The public was somewhat surprised at it. It was generally
supposed that Leibnitz had been admirably praised by Fontenelle, and
that the subject was exhausted. But from the moment that Bailly's essay,
crowned in Pr