A less amiable captive than Marmontel and Morellet next claims our attention. Though he was by no means destitute of talent or information, Victor Riquetti, Marquis of Mirabeau, owes the redemption of his name from oblivion less to his numerous literary productions than to his being the father of the celebrated Mirabeau. The marquis, who was descended from a Florentine family, was born at Perthes in 1715. He became a disciple of Quesnay, and published many works, to disseminate the doctrines of the political economists. His compositions are disfigured by a detestable style, great affectation, and a want of method. Of his labours, which amount to more than twenty volumes, it will suffice to mention L’Ami des Hommes and the Théorie de l’Impôt. With reference to the former, Voltaire satirically speaks of Mirabeau as “the friend of man, who talks, who talks, who talks, who decides, who dictates, who is so fond of the feudal government, who commits so many blunders, and who gets so often into the wrong box—the pretended friend of the human race.” He bestows equal contempt on the second work—“I have read the Theory of Taxation,” says he, “and it seems to me no less absurd than ridiculously written. I do not like those friends of man, who are for ever telling the enemies of the state ‘we are ruined;—come;—you will have an easy task.’” The government seems to have been of the same opinion as Voltaire, for the Theory of Taxation procured for its author a lodging in the Bastile. Mirabeau, however, continued to write and to publish till nearly his last moments; he died in 1789. This pretended friend of the human race, as Voltaire with justice calls him, deserved abhorrence in all the relations of social life. He was an oppressive master, and a tyrannical and brutal husband and father. He was perpetually soliciting for lettres de cachet to plunge some branch or other of his family into a dungeon. Of those letters he is said to have obtained fifty-four, many of which were enforced against his highly-gifted though erring son, the Count de Mirabeau, whom he hated, and whom, by his persevering cruelty, he contributed to drive into desperate courses.