CHARACTERS. THE COUNT D'ARTOIS.* The Comte d'Artois sustains still better the representation of his place. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided character, full of energy and activity. In a word he is a brave, honourable, and accomplished cavalier. Their brethren of royalty, if they were true to their own cause and interest, instead of relegating these illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit them to, what they would speedily obtain, the esteem, respect, and affection of mankind. BRISSOT. THIS Brissot had been in the lowest and basest employ under the deposed monarchy: a sort of thief-taker, or spy of police, in which character he acted after the manner of persons in that description. He had been employed by his master, the lieutenant de police, for a considerable time in London, in the same or some such honourable occupation. The revolution which *Now Monsieur. has brought forward all merit of that kind, raised him, with others of a similar class and disposition, to fame and eminence. On the revolution he became a publisher of an infamous newspaper, which he still continues. He is charged, and I believe justly, as the first mover of the troubles in Hispaniola. There is no wickedness, if I am rightly informed, in which he is not versed, and of which he is not perfectly capable. His quality of news-writer, now an employment of the first dignity in France, and his practices and principles, procured his election into the assembly, where he is one of the leading members. CARDINAL BUON CAMPAGNA. THERE is in the ecclesiastical state, a personage who seems capable of acting (but with more force and steadiness) the part of the Tribune Rienzi. The people once inflamed will not be destitute of a leader. They have such an one already in the Cardinal or Archbishop Buon Campagna. He is, of all men, if I am not ill informed, the most turbulent, seditious, intriguing, bold, and desperate. He is not at all made for a Roman of the present day. I think he lately held the first office of their state, that of great chamberlain, which is equivalent to high treasurer. At present he is out of employment, and in disgrace. If he should be elected Pope, or even come to have any weight with a new Pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratic spirit in that country. He may indeed be able to effect it without these advantages. The next interregnum will probably shew more of him. RICHARD BURKE. Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shewn himself inferior to the duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. HE would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring, of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. **** He was sometimes a little dispirited by the disposition which we thought shewn to depress him and set him aside; yet he was always buoyed up again; and on one or two occasions, he discovered what might be expected from the vigour and elevation of his |