and his translation of the _Optics_ of NEWTON, which was covered by the name of _M. de Beauzée_, and published in 1788, was at once crowned by the very Academy which had rejected him. “His political work during these years was confined to a treatise, in imitation of BECCARIA, on the subject of Punishments. The approach of the States-General, however, revived his political enthusiasm, and in the March of 1789, when he believed himself to be dying, he published his _Offrande à la Patrie_, which was followed in quick succession by a supplement and other pamphlets. Of these, distinctly the most able is the _Tableau des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise_, which he presented to the Assembly in September, 1789. In it he points out what he had learnt in the popular societies of England, that the English people was by no means so well governed as it was supposed to be; that the influence of the king and the ministry was overwhelming through the extent of patronage, and that the rich there bought seats in the House of Commons as they bought estates. “MARAT then felt that he could not express himself frequently enough in pamphlets, and on September 12 appeared the first number of a journal written entirely by himself, called the JOURNAL DU PEUPLE, which title was changed to that of _Ami du Peuple_, or _The People’s Friend_, with the fourth number. “To understand the man, it is necessary to get rid of preconceived ideas. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive to an extreme, he attacked everybody, and attacked them all with unaccustomed violence; but with all this, he was in private life a highly educated gentleman. The extent of his attainments appears from his numerous works, and it must be remembered that he could not for years have been a fashionable physician and held a court appointment without being perfectly polite and well-bred. His faults arose from his irritable and suspicious nature, and years of persecution made him half-insane towards the end of his life; but in September, 1789, he was in perfect possession of his senses, and the very popularity of his journal showed how congenial his gospel of suspicion was to the Parisians.”—[ED.] JEAN PAUL MARAT’S SISTER. The Right Hon. J. W. Croker, in a letter to John Winter Jones, dated 23rd October, 1854, says that COLIN, who had been Marat’s printer or publisher, “introduced him to Marat’s sister, who was as like her brother, he said—and as from all pictures and busts I readily believed—as ‘_deux gouttes d’eau_’. She was very small, very ugly, very sharp, and a great politician. Her ostensible livelihood was making watch-springs, but she told me she was pretty easy in her circumstances, and I either gathered from her, or saw cause to suspect, that she had some secret charitable help.”—[ED.] LARÉVEILLÈRE-LEPAUX (page 283).