a long research for the rarest virtues, and who feel, beating in your breast as noble and loving a heart as ever animated a human form." Here the brilliant light faded slowly away. The lamp was extinguished, and the blackened, logs gave forth no glimmer of light. {88} The baron gained, by feeling his way, his bed, and laid himself on it, feeling himself full of an unknown joy, understanding the duties of a Christian, and resolved to perform them. He fell asleep in thinking of that happy day when should be restored to him that wife whom he had never ceased to love. The next morning, when he descended to the saloon where all the family were united, he embraced his friend's wife, and kissed, one after another, her children and grandchildren, who were all there that day at the castle; and all this with a demonstration of joy so contrary to his usual phlegmatic manner that it for the moment gave cause to fear for his reason; and then, approaching the count, who regarded him with stupefaction, he embraced him vigorously, and said to him, while wiping his eyes, humid with tears of joy: "Ah! you are right, my dear friend; I shall see again my Gertrude!" ---------- Talleyrand, by Lytton Bulwer.[Footnote 18] [Footnote 18: _Historical Characters. By Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B. Two vols., 8vo. Richard Bentley, New Burlington street, London_. 1868.] Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer has presented the public with sketches of some eminent men, and has done his work well. It is not a series of biographies, but rather a finished outline of their prominent characteristics and of their achievements. In advance of the memoirs of Talleyrand, written by himself, and now in course of publication, this illustrious Frenchman is placed among the number, and in a new light. He is no longer the inscrutable being he appeared to his contemporaries, and as he has appeared since to their children. His name has been intimately associated with the great men and events of the last years of the unfortunate reign of Louis XVI. of France, near the close of the last century. Still more prominently is the memory of him associated with the convocation of the States-General and the National Assembly. By accident, he had the good fortune to be free from the odium attached to the Legislative Assembly and the atrocities of the National Convention, with the attendant horrors of the Committee of Public Safety in the Reign of Terror.