motion, France went into mourning for Franklin. His bust was a
favorite ornament, and, during the festival of Liberty, it was carried,
with those of Sidney, Rousseau, and Voltaire, before the people to
receive their veneration.[45] A little later, the eminent medical
character, Cabanis, who had lived in intimate association with Franklin,
added his testimony, saying that the enfranchisement of the United
States was in many respects his work, and that the Revolution, the most
important to the happiness of men which had then been accomplished on
earth, united with one of the most brilliant discoveries of physical
science to consecrate his memory; and he concludes by quoting the verse
of Turgot.[46] Long afterwards, his last surviving companion in the
cheerful circle of Madame Helvetius, still loyal to the idea of Turgot,
hailed him as "that great man who had placed his country in the number
of independent states, and made one of the most important discoveries of
the age."[47]

But it is time to look at this verse in its literary relations, from
which I have been diverted by its commanding interest as a political
event. Its importance on this account must naturally enhance the
interest in its origin.

The poem which furnished the prototype of the famous verse was
"Anti-Lucretius, sive de Deo et Natura," by the Cardinal Melchior de
Polignac. Its author was of that patrician house which is associated so
closely with Marie Antoinette in the earlier Revolution, and with
Charles X. in the later Revolution, having its cradle in the mountains
of Auvergne, near the cradle of Lafayette, and its present tomb in the
historic cemetery of Picpus, near the tomb of Lafayette, so that these
two great names, representing opposite ideas, begin and end side by
side. He was not merely an author, but statesman and diplomatist also,
under Louis XIV. and the Regent. Through his diplomacy a French prince
was elected King of Poland. He represented France at the Peace of
Utrecht, where he bore himself very proudly towards the Dutch. By the
nomination of the Pretender, at that time in France, he obtained the hat
of a cardinal. At Rome he was a favorite, and he was also, with some
interruptions, a favorite at Versailles. His personal appearance, his
distinguished manners, his genius, and his accomplishments, all
commended him. Literary honors were superadded to political and
ecclesiastical. He succeeded to the chair of Bossuet at the Academy. But