instinct but it was derived from no
anterior obligation, and recognized no source more elevated than the
canons of society. Of _duty_ (that sacred word!) in its English sense,
he had not the faintest conception; and provided that his person was
protected, and his fortunes advanced, it was a matter of absolute
indifference to him what master he served, or in what cause he enlisted.
The first revolution, the empire, the restoration, and the throne of the
barricades, all found in him a willing and an able instrument, and yet
he proved faithless to all; for, though we have not circumstantial proof
of this as to the last, his growing discontent with Louis Philippe shows
clearly, that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we
make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was
surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is
impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a
particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously analyzed, its
causes would be found to resolve themselves into habits of reasoning
upon men and things from which courage, generosity, and masculine
disinterestedness, were carefully excluded. Patriotism may be pleaded in
justification--it is a ready argument, and a common defense; but, ample
as its proportions are, it will not cover every thing: besides that, in
Talleyrand's case it was a non-existence, for of that holy love of
country which the word is designed to convey, and which is the fruitful
mother of moral heroism, he had not one particle. He might be, and no
doubt was, the clever minister of a system, whatever that system chanced
to be, and we know that he carried out the views of his immediate
employers _a toute outrance_, and without the slightest regard to their
future social or political consequences; but of any grand conceptions
resting upon the rights, or contemplating the happiness of mankind, and
discriminated from the claims of an existing dynasty, be it democratical
or monarchical, he was utterly incapable. _Carpe diem_ was his motto,
and he was faithful to it; but however proper that Epicurean maxim might
have been in the mouth of a Roman poet, or however truly it might depict
the philosophy of a Roman courtesan, it is the deadly antagonist of
greatness, which it blights in the bud. Out of such a nature as this--a
nature unequal to the slightest sacrifice for the benefit of others,
conservative of itself, and indifferent