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 THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 499 a little book of Letters about England, written by Voltaire, which gave him some idea of a free country. The author of the Letters dwelt upon the freedom of thinking and printing that prevailed in England, and described the Exchange at London, where the Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Church of England men and Dissenters, Quakers and Deists, all mingled peacefully together and transacted business without inquiring into one another's creed. The author mentioned other things of the same nature, which were very strange and captivat- ing to the inhabitants of a country governed so despotic- ally as France was when Lafayette was a boy. The book made an indelible impression upon his eager and susceptible mind. He used to say in after years that he was " a republican at nine." He was, nevertheless, a member of the privileged order of his country, and if he had been born in another age he would in all probability have soon outlived the romantic sentiments of his youth, and run the career usual to men of his rank. In the summer of 1776, when he was not yet quite nineteen, he was stationed with his regiment at Metz, then a garrisoned town near the eastern frontier of France. An English prince, the Duke of Gloucester, brother to the King of England, visited this post a few weeks' after Congress at Philadelphia had signed the Declaration of Independence. The French general in command at Metz gave a dinner to the prince, to which several officers were invited, Lafayette among the rest. It so happened that the prince received that day letters from England, which contained news from America. The news was of thrilling interest : Boston lost — Inde- pendence declared — mighty forces gathering to crush the rebellion — Washington, victorious in New England, pre- paring to defend New York ! News was slow in travel- ing then ; and hence it was that our young soldier now