“I have seen several portraits of the prince, taken in his youth. There is one, a miniature, which, set in a bracelet, has met my eye every day for some years past, upon the arm of the fair Duchess de D., which never fails to arrest my attention, and to inspire me with the same interest, the same dreams and illusions of the past, as though, upon each occasion I behold it, it was for the first time. The likeness may be strongly traced even now. The features are moulded with a delicacy peculiar to the race of the Perigords, and the countenance is one which might certainly have been suspected of having greatly aided his varied talents and endowments, in the success for which he was so applauded and so envied. The costume in this picture is of about the year 1775, when Talleyrand was in the prime of youth, and when he had not long emerged from St. Sulpice; and yet the portrait is rather that of a young man of fashion of the time than of a youth vowed to a life of penance and austerity. The hair, of which he was always proud, hangs loose and unshorn over his embroidered coat; no sign of monkish scissors or of priestly tonsure is there. There does not exist a picture of the prince either as Abbé de Perigord or as Bishop of Autun. So completely did he ever separate himself from the state of life into which he had been thrust by the force of circumstances, that he never would consent to have a palpable record of his profession brought in after times as a memorial against him. There is a beautiful portrait of Talleyrand when Prince de Benevent and Vice Grand Elector, painted by Gerard, and one of the best performances of that artist, now at Rochecotte, wherein the physiognomist might have _beau jeu_, for the countenance in this picture bears the most lively and _spirituel_ expression that could possibly be represented by art. The painting by Scheffer, which has been engraved in London, and published by Colnaghi, is the best in existence as to the likeness, which is most striking. The artist has represented, in a manner almost sublime, the peculiar _mélange_ of melancholy and _finesse_ which the countenance of the prince always wears when in meditation,—an expression which sometimes inspires me with a feeling of the deepest sadness; it is the cheerfulness of the mind contending against physical infirmity and pain.