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CHO Cardinal Bernis as minister of foreign affairs, and being created duke and peer, rose to the highest point of favour with Louis XV., and subsequently received the ministries of war and marine. Many circumstances advanced the interest and reputation of Choiseul at the court of Louis XV. He was a favourite with the king's mistress, madame de Pompadour, and to be a favourite of the mistress was to be master of the monarch. He played with one of the king's chief prejudices, viz. his dislike to the dauphin (the father of Louis XVI.), and sacrificed to the living sovereign all chance of success with his probable successor. His personal character, moreover, fitted him admirably for the court of the king he served. Few men ever lived in a sphere more perfectly adapted to their peculiar gifts. Under Louis XIV. Choiseul would have appeared frivolous. The genius of the age would have been beyond his power to grasp and direct. Under Louis XVI., the influence of the throne being greatly lessened, and the stormy dissensions of the Revolution wakening their discords, his peculiar courtly powers of fascination would have had no free scope. The troubled dawn of revolution is no time for developing the skill of the polished gentleman. Choiseul was precisely fitted for the age of Louis XV., an age when the royal prestige was weakened but not destroyed, and ready to make popular concessions if so be the matter could be managed in a gentlemanly way; and when the people, not grown conscious of the terrible use to which their powers could be subservient, were willing to honour and to accept in good part monarchical measures gracefully commended to them. Choiseul, adapting himself naturally to these circumstances, managed to unite the powers both of a courtier and a tribune, and played this double part without injuring the elegant freedom of his character. Fortune also had been prodigal to Choiseul of gifts which nature had refused. Nobly born, he inherited no patrimony wherewith to forward his undisguised ambition; but a marriage with the sister of the duchesse de Gontaut made him rich. A certain capacity for business was united to his lighter accomplishments, so that he could direct the concerns of the state without making them troublesome—an enviable gift in the minister of a monarch who loved his ease, and yet wished to feel himself a king. From this sketch it will appear how precisely the age and the character of Louis XV. furnished the circumstances under which a duc de Choiseul could become the most successful of men. While minister of foreign affairs, Choiseul concluded the famous Family Compact in 1761 between France, Spain, Parma, and Naples, to cement a perpetual union among the members of the house of Bourbon. When really first minister of the crown, although without the title, he consented to the expulsion from France of the jesuits in 1764, and effected this measure in spite of the opposition of the dauphin. Whenever the liberal party became troublesome, this act was constantly appealed to on Choiseul's behalf, and did him good service in securing his popularity when it was threatened by more obnoxious proceedings. Named minister of war and marine at a disastrous epoch, when France had been forced to abandon her German conquests and cede many colonies to the British, he employed himself in preparing for the more successful resumption of the war. He reorganized the army, established new schools for the different services, and introduced a wiser economy. In less than four years he managed to create a considerable fleet. The death of madame de Pompadour in 1764 deprived Choiseul of a powerful friend. Madame du Barry became the reigning favourite, and, being met by Choiseul with disdain, at once became the eager ally of his foes. The enmity between the minister and the favourite increased day by day, and it could not be long doubtful on which side a Louis XV. would declare himself. The duc de Richelieu directed the policy of madame du Barry, and Maupeou, the Abbé Terray, and the duc d'Aiguillon combined themselves together to grasp the power of the chief whose fall was near—a triumvirate now to engage in a contest against the parliament of the kingdom with the rashest party upon which a feeble government ever relied. The king at first hesitated, but at last yielded to the pleadings of madame du Barry, and on the 24th of December, 1770, signed the lettre de cachet exiling Choiseul to Chanteloup. Some hours after receiving the letter, Choiseul left the court more powerful in France than the king himself. So surrounded was the fallen minister with testimonies of national homage, so visited and courted by the noblest of the land, that Chanteloup seemed to render Versailles a desert. The honour paid to Choiseul was in truth a testimony of the degradation into which the royal authority had fallen, and a warning that men began to foresee those days in which ambition would have more hope in opposing than in serving the monarchy of France. The three years of this disgrace proved the happiest of Choiseul's life. Recalled from exile upon the accession of Louis XVI., he received from that prince an honourable welcome, but never regained political power. The gaiety of his disposition led him to treat the loss of power as of little import, but shrewd sarcasms on public affairs constantly betrayed the spirit of a dismissed minister. Choiseul died in May, 1785, leaving princely legacies to those by whom he had been faithfully served.—L. L. P.  CHOISEUL,, Duc de, born in 1760, succeeded to the family honours in 1785; his relative, the celebrated minister of Louis XV., by whom he was beloved almost as a son, dying childless in that year. His share in the king's unfortunate attempt at flight in 1791, and the attachment which he manifested to Louis XVI. when a prisoner in the temple, rendered his own attempt to escape from the scene of revolution peculiarly difficult. It succeeded, however, and almost till the epoch of the restoration, M. de Choiseul was numbered amongst the most unfortunate, as he was certainly one of the most able and patriotic of the emigrés. On the return of the Bourbons, he took his seat in the chamber of peers, where he played a conspicuous and honourable part till his death in 1838.  , Comte de, born in 1752; died in 1817. This accomplished nobleman was the author of a "Voyage Pittoresque en Grèce," which was received with equal admiration by scholars and the unlearned public, and which secured its author's admission into the Academy of Inscriptions. At the Revolution he was ambassador at Constantinople, and being proscribed as a traitor to the republic, fled into Russia, where he won the favour of Paul I., and was created a privy councillor. On the return of the Bourbons, he was made a minister of state, and a peer of France.—J. S., G.  CHOISY,, Abbé de, born at Paris 1644. Descended from two great chancellors, one of whom, the chancellor L'Hospital, was amongst the greatest men of his own or any other country, Choisy, nevertheless, betrayed in his early years a levity and vicious effeminacy which, had he not subsequently reformed, would have rendered his name a blot on the family escutcheon. Up to eighteen years of age he wore female costume, to which he had taken such a perverse fancy that when induced to set it aside for more becoming habiliments, he could not overcome the custom, and resumed them once more. Stung by reproofs in the capital, he withdrew to a chateau in the neighbourhood of Bourges, under the name of the countess de Barres. He travelled through Italy, attending all the gambling tables, and returned having lost all his money, but still dressed as a woman. Having caught a fever on his return home, his mind became sensible of the odious follies of his past life, and he resolved, if spared, to make amends for his transgressions. Yielding his mind to severe studies, he proved that under contemptible appearances there had lain a spark of the ancestral spirit. He wrote dialogues on the soul, on God, on Providence, and on religion. Not satisfied with intellectual speculation, he thirsted for action, and hearing that the king, Louis XIV., was sending an ambassador to Siam, he asked leave to accompany the mission, (March 1685) with the view of converting the pagan monarch to christianity. It was on the voyage out that he was ordained, and said his first mass on shipboard. He failed in his attempt to convert the king of Siam, and on his return in 1686, instead of being received with favour was treated with coldness. His knowledge of the language, however, rendered him necessary to the court. The rest of his life he passed in penitence, but yet retained so much of the courtier as to introduce into his life of Solomon many pointed compliments to the king. Amongst his other works is a translation of the immortal Imitation of Jesus Christ. He died 1724.—J. F. C.  * CHOISY,, a Genevese botanist of the present century, has contributed several valuable works on botany; among others a monograph of the hypericaceæ, and memoirs on the selaginaceæ and hydroleaceæ. He has also written a monograph of convolvulaceæ, and he revised that order in Decandolle's Prodromus.—J. H. B.  CHOPIN,, a pianist and composer for his instrument, was born at Zelazowawola, near Warsaw, in 1810, and died at Paris, 17th October, 1849. He studied his art at the conservatory of Warsaw, where his instructors were 