period of
nearly sixty years filled with world-shaking events, and, though it has
been printed for private circulation only, it is a perfect mine of fact,
comment and illumination. St. Luc was one of the few French noblemen to
foresee the great Revolution in his country, and, while he mourned its
excesses, he knew that much of it was justified. His patriotism and
courage were so high and so obvious that neither Danton, Marat nor
Robespierre dared to attack him. As an old man he supported Napoleon
ardently until the empire and the ambitions of the emperor became too
swollen, and, while he mourned Waterloo, he told his son, General Robert
Lennox de St. Luc, who distinguished himself so greatly there and who
almost took the chateau of Hougoumont from the English, that it was for
the best, and that it was inevitable. It was the comment of St. Luc,
then eighty-five years old and full of experience and wisdom, that a
very great man may become too great.

Lennox was noted for his great geniality and his extraordinary capacity
for making friends. Yet there was a strain of remarkable gravity, even
austerity, in his character. There came times when he wished to be
alone, to hear no human voices about him. It was then perhaps that he
thought his best thoughts and took, too, his best resolutions. In the
great silences he seemed to see more clearly, and the path lay straight
before him. Many of his friends thought it an eccentricity, but he knew
it was an inheritance from his long stay alone upon the island, a period
in his life that had so much effect in molding his character.

It was this ripeness of mind, based upon fullness of information and
deep meditation, that made him such a great man in the true sense of the
word. As a speaker he was without a rival either in form or substance in
the New World. It was said everywhere in New York that the famous
Alexander Hamilton and the equally skillful Aaron Burr went to the
courtroom regularly to study his methods. Both admitted quite freely in
private that they copied his style, though neither was ever able to
acquire the wonderful golden voice, the genuine phenomenon that made
Lennox so notable.

On one of these occasions, after making a thrilling speech, when he
filled the souls of both Hamilton and Burr with despair, a great
Onondaga sachem, in the full costume of his nation, said to his friend
Willet, once a renowned hunter:

"I always knew Dagaeoga could use more words than a