most prominent features to a man, the varied and extraordinary events of whose life resembled, it many instances, those of the Athenian hero; but who cer. tainly, heaven grant that we may be permitted to say, is, a much more perfect character. Among the many persons whose memoirs adora our preceding pages, it has never before fallen to our lot to attract the attention of the pub. lic to the history of one, whose existence or non-existence was doubiful. Yet this is the case in the present instance. GENERAL MOREAU, of whom, perhaps, the preceding PORTRAIT may now only point to the tearful eyes of those who contemplate it, the resem blance of what he was, is reported in the London Gazette (for we pay no re gard to the imperial exultation over the dignified manes of a fallen warrior) to have been dreadfully and dangerously wounded, in a cause, let us reobserve, that must, till every trace of history is sunk in the stream of time, dignify his shade. However this may be, should the death of the gallant GENERAL MoREAU be added to the classic list of those heroes who have, in former ages, indignantly arisen at the great call of nature, and endeavoured to rescue their countries from the insults of ambition and the shackles of tyranny, great indeed will be the affliction of EUROPE, greatly indeed will all civilized nations lament the fall of the Champion of the World! Sincere indeed will be the disconsolate tribute paid to his memory! His figure

be recited in

ing brass; yet his patriotic sentiments, his mental influence, and his elevated heroism, can never be fully appreciated but by those nations and countries, and we fear they will be many, that more exquisitely feel the effects of his loss.

Too long have we indulged our sor row in contemplating even the appre bended death of General Moreau; an event which we still ardently hope is far distant; let us now, as a tribute to virtue and humanity, to honour and integrity, recite such brief particulars of his life, as we have only at present been able to obtain ; yet here a difficulty occurs, which would have embarrassed eyen Plutarch himself; the iron scales wherein the political events in which the virtuous and heroic Moreau has so emi nently participated, are still suspended over the gallic land; where his virtues and his principles, opposed to the fraudu lent weights of AMBITION, INTEREST, and MALICE, of course fly upward; and upward they will fly, to meet that reward in heaven, which his ungrateful country long since denied.

Reflexion upon those political cir. cumstances, which bauished from his na tive land one of her bravest defenders and true patriots, however, avails but little; we shall, therefore, resume the subject, which digression has, for a few moments, deferred.

GENERAL MOREAU, whose father was by profession an advocate, was born in the seaport town of Morlaix, in the province of Britanny, in the year 1763.

His parent, from professional attachment, designed him for the bar his education, consequently, was at once legal and liberal; this was finished at the university at Rheims.* He was, in the year 1788, called to the bar, but how long he acted as an advocate, does not appear; we should presume but a short period, for we find that he was, in the university in which he had been educated, elected Precôt de Droit. In this situation his urbanity, his liberal endowments, the elegance of his manners, his natural talents and acquired information, qualities which were constantly rendered conspicuous in the course of bis scientific presidency, and literary avocations, soon introduced him to a higher sphere of action, and compelled him to assume the character of a defender of the privileges of that body, of which he formed one of the component paris.

The Cardinal de Brienne, minister to LOUIS XVI. a man cool, sagacious, penetrating, and persevering, elevated with the idea of his own authority, and exquisitely susceptible to every circumstance, however trifling, that might, by any tortured construction, either of terms or of sense, be deemed an encroachment upon its extension, had, although so fond of power himself, long meditated an innovation upon, or rather a repression, to a certain degree, of that of the magistracy; whom he judged, and perhaps with some truth, to have Occasionally assumed an independance which the restrictive policy of the French government did not allow, and had dared to oppose the measures of the minister, To defend the rights of his professional compatriots, Moreau was selected. The first steps he took occasioned him to be entitled The General of the Parliament; that is, for it would otherwise be stretching the expression much too far, of the provincial parliament; whose cause he warmly supported against the court, who were supposed to have been severe in their inflictions toward those magistrates who were out of its immediate

vortex.

The grievances complained of were, we have to observe, comparatively tri.

It has been stated Rennes, but we have never before learned that this city possessed a university.

+ A situation which is said to correspond in some respects to that of vice-chancellor in our universities; but as there were at that time twenty-eight of those establishments in France, its power must necessarily have been contracted in a degree commensurate,

fling; however, Moreau, it is said, dis played such talents and prudence, as, in the eyes of both parties, rendered him respectable. His foresight enabled him to avoid the snares laid for him by the Count de Bissy, military governor of Britanny, who had repeated orders to arrest but not to hurt him. However, he avoided the latter by wisely keeping out of the way of the former. NECKAR soon after was called to the administration more enlightened than his predecessor, he acted upon principles less egotistical, and, consequently, more liberal; while Moreau, discerning at, once the power of the ministerial mind, became in time a convert to the system he had opposed; and, in consequence, in favour of his monarch, took the com mand of the militia of Rennes and Nantes, for the purpose of facilitating his orders for the convocation of the STATES GENERAL.

This military debut of our hero had, it appears, so far increased his reputation, that, when the infernal revolutionary explosion took place in 1792, he was elected commander of one of those battalions raised, as it was said, for the protection of the monarchy. From this period he reversed the Latin position, cedant arma toga, for he resigned his gown and girded his sword. In other words, he relinquished the forensic, and entirely devoted his talents to the mili tary profession. Yet, even in this, his milder virtues, as circumstances elicited, displayed themselves. Amidst ferocious bands he stood alone, conscious of his mental dignity, and, as he then thought, with respect to the cause which he had espoused, moral rectitude, he kept aloof from popular societies; nor was his name ever disgraced by its enrolment in the jacobinical list.

The genius and valour of Moreas soon attracted the public attention; he was promoted to the rank of colonel in the year 1792; and, when his battalion joined the army of the Moselle, to the surprise of his fellow-soldiers, advanced to the rank of general of brigade. Success did not crown his first efforts. Our young commander, perhaps with more ardour than prudence, attacked that veteran chief the Duke of Brunswick, who completely vanquished him; yet even from this defeat he derived honour, as the Duke, with that generosity which is the concomi tant of magnanimity, in the Prussian account of the battle, did ample justice to his talents.

-As we do not mean to entangle either ourselves or our readers in the labyrinths of those military operations, which are, in the series of Gazelles, much more correctly explained than we, whatsoever pains we might take, should be able to explain them, we shall only touch upon the promineat points of those great events which have chequered the life of General Moreau; and first observe, that one circumstance, which indeed ⚫ seems a file upon which many others were suspended, arose from the defeat that we have just mentioned. This complete repulse, which raised the hopes of Europe, introduced Moreau to the acquaintance of General Pichegru, then commander-in-chief of the army of the RHINE; and such was his opinion of him, that when he was ordered to exchange his station for the command of the northern army, he made it a condition of his compliance, that Moreau should accompany him; this was conceded, and the latter was accordingly promoted to the rank of general of division. In this situation he distinguished himself in a manner that firmly fixed his military character. His political, or rather, we should say, his patriotic bias, we have no doubt, took its colour from the following tragical, we wish we could add, and singular circumstance :-At the moment that General Moreau was mounting his horse, to direct the operations of the siege of the Flemish town of Sluys, a letter arrived, informing him that his venerable father, a man whose life had been as irreproachable as his death was horrid, had been guillotined at his natal town Morlaix. How the general was able to bear this shock, which burst upon him at the instant he was venturing his life in the service of the murderers of his parent, it is impossible for even apathy itself to conjecture; discretion and fortitude, combined to enable him, however, at that instant, to repress his feelings. It may be presumed, the prospective evils that he would have to encounter, the immediate dangers by which he was surrounded, and the impossibility either of resistance or revenge, flashed upon his mind; he, consequently, bowed to the decree of Providence, returned his sword into its seabbard, and mentally resolved to wait for better times.

The conquest of Holland closed the Belgic career of Pichegru. He was appointed to a command then considered of far greater importance, that of the army of the Rhine. MoreAc, whose

activity and talents had, even as a ge meral officer, elevated him far above his compeers, was appointed commander-inchief of the army in the Netherlands. In June 1796, General Moreau, oppos ing himself to a well-appointed army of Imperialists, stationed at Rastadt, and commanded by the Archduke Charles; the Austrians were defeated in two battles, the result of which was, that the French became sole masters of the bank of the Neckar. Yet, in the varied events of this desultory warfare, the conqueror was himself obliged to effect a retreat into FRANCE; which retreat was, by the Gallic writers, who never spare hyperboles, exalted far above that of the ten thousand Greeks under XENOPHON.

However, Moreau's secession was certainly allowed by all to have been masterly, and, according to circumstances, well-timed. It was not the policy of the Directory of France to keep generals long in the same situation; Moreau was, therefore, appointed to the command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse. In this commission, as jealousy and suspicion, the two great branches of republicanism, had begun, at Paris, to expand, he was su perseded by Hoche; and, perhaps, to, dulcify this unpalatable draught, and at the same time find him employment more remote, invested with the chief command of the army of the Rhine. He crossed the river, and again defeated the dustrians; but the peace of Leoben, which soon after ensued, effectually stopped his victorious career.

We have just hinted, that Commen wealths carry within themselves the seeds of their own dissolution. The green-eyed monster Jealousy, who had long been prowling for prey among men, who were (even here) represented to be the most perfect of the human, race, found in the Gallic revolution of the 4th September 1797, food whereon he gorged even to satiety.

Among the objects marked by the great revolutionists on this memorable occasion; and it must be observed, that from the supreme heads of the executive government, to the curled pale of a printer's devil, none were considered either as too high or too low for punishment; among these, we say, GENERAL MOREAU, the man who had sacrificed his feelings to what he conceived to be his duty, who had led the directorial troops to victory; the man whom no one dared openly to accuse, was whispered into disgrace, and become an ob,

jett of dark and secret suspicion. The real cause of this suspicion still remains inscrutable. That which was avowed was stated to have been his seizure of a carriage belonging to the Austrian Geberal Kinglin; in which was a trunk, supposed to contain some documents of the utmost importance, as they related principally to a negociation for the re storation of the unfortunate race of BOURBON. This precious depository General Moreau kept to himself, nor did he make any report of its contents, at that time, to the directory. However, spies, the diabolical agents of contracted minds, developed the mystery, and the papers were afterwards sent to PARIS; but as their consequences, with respect to those individuals whom the correspondence implicated, are well known, it would be as unnecessary as unpleasant to dwell upon them.

GENERAL MOREAU, having, it appears, weathered this storm, in a manher which reflected the highest honour upon his characteristic generosity, was, in the year 1799, again employed, although not as commander-in-chief, but only as inspector-general of the army of italy, under General Sherer, an office, the power of which is undefinable; and which was, in fact, in consequence of the ill success of the chief, who was every where defeated, and who retreated to Paris before he was recalled by the directory, he was soon transformed to that of the sole command of the Italian army. In the wide, though bounded, field of Italy, GENERAL MOREAU found ample room for the exercise of his military taJents, and the expansion of his military genius; surrounded with difficulties, na tural as well as artificial, his strength of mind, courage, and perseverance, enabled him to surmount, combat, and conquer them. This campaign, in the opinion of military men, at once placed him on a level with the greatest leaders, ancient or modern. He was, even by his enemies, termed The Gallic Fabius. Justly indeed did he merit all the encomiums with which he was honoured by the public voice; as he opposed an undisciplined army, without pay, magazines, or hope of relief, to myriads after myriads of regular troops, in possession of all those and many other advantages.

On his arrival at Paris, an insidious proposal was made to him, the object of which, as stated, was, to effect a revolution; this, as at once he perceived its purport, he unequivocally declined,

At this period BUONAPARTE arrived from Egypt MOREAU and he then saw each other for the first time. At the grand civic banquet, subsequently given in the church of St. Sulpice, Paris, it is said that Moreau and Buonaparte seemed to be very friendly to each other: certainly they were both too well versed in po litics, if they had any enmity, to let it appear to the públic. Buonaparte had, it is said, communicated his plans to Moreau; who, whatsoever he might think, either of their stability, practica bility, or extent, was certainly too wise to state his opinion upon these subjects: He, however, although he did not, nor indeed, he could not, oppose the elevavation he foresaw, it is said, even in its outset, found no reason to rejoice at that event; and, in a very short time after, sincerely repented of the part he had taken in its progressive promotion.

The trial of GENERAL MOREAU, which, probably, emanated from latent circumstances, has lately been published. It appears that he was received in the hall and cheered during its process with enthusiastic applause; and, after an investigation, that continued nearly three weeks, from nine in the morning until six o'clock in the evening; in the course of which he displayed the firmness of a Stoic, and, in a great degree, the professional talents of an advocate; he was only found guilty of Indiscretion, and for this (whether the indiscretion was political or military, does not appear) he was sentenced to two years imprison ment! a heavy sentence for an offence, from which the smallest instance of moral turpitude could not, by the most ingenius contortion of argument, be extracted.

The friends of General Moreau, shocked at the weight of the sentence compared with the lightness of the misdemeanor, advised him to apply for its commutation to permission to retire to America. This was conceded, on condition of his not returning to France without permission. Madam' Moreau is said, upon this occasion, to have addressed a very spirited letter to Buonaparte: but this, it does not appear, was attended with any good effect.

It is well known, that General Moreau, accompanied by a French officer of the name of Henry, proceeded to Cadiz, and from thence, the former to the place of his ultimate destination.

From America, inspired by the hope that he should, from his military know