ruelty to animals at the hands of slaves was almost universal. A man
who lived till fifty, remarkable for a singular gentleness and
placability, ought not to be believed sanguinary from that time forward,
on the strength of the unsupported charges of his disappointed enemies.

Piety was also his undisputed early characteristic. A slave bringing to
the subject of religion the aptitude of the negro nature, early treated
with kindness by a priest, evincing the spirit of piety from his infant
years, finding in it the consolations required by a life of slavery, and
guided by it in a course of the strictest domestic morality, while
surrounded by licentiousness, _may_ well be supposed sincere in his
religion, under a change of circumstances occurring after he was fifty
years of age. The imputation of hypocrisy is not, however, much to be
wondered at when it is considered that, at the time when the first
notices of Toussaint were written at Paris, it was the fashion there to
believe that no wise man could be sincerely religions.

As for the charge of general and habitual dissimulation, it can only be
said that while no proof of the assertion is offered, there is evidence,
in all the anecdotes preserved of him, of absolute frankness and
simplicity. I rather think that it was the incredible extent of his
simplicity which gave rise to the belief that it was assumed, in order
to hide cunning. The _Quarterly Review_ quotes an anecdote thoroughly
characteristic of the man, which is not introduced into my story,
because, in the abundance of my materials, I found it necessary to avoid
altogether the history of the English transactions in Saint Domingo. It
was only by confining my narrative to the relations between Toussaint
and France that I could keep my tale within limits, and preserve the
clearness of the representation. There are circumstances, however, in
his intercourse with the British, as honourable to Toussaint's character
as any that I have related; and among them is the following, which I
quote from the _Quarterly Review_.

"General Maitland, previous to the disembarkation of the troops,
returned the visit at Toussaint's camp; and such was his confidence in
the integrity of his character, that he proceeded through a considerable
extent of country, full of armed negroes, with only three attendants.
Roume, the French Commissary, wrote a letter to Toussaint, on this
occasion, advising him to seize his guest, as an act o