Page:The English Historical Review Volume 36.djvu/607

600 compares Boisgelin's early intrigues for rich sinecures and a rather cheap literary fame with the disinterested zeal and hard work of his old age to draw interesting conclusions. In dealing with Boisgelin's own career, M. Lavaquery brings in a number of curious and interesting facts, such as the instructions to the preacher who was to deliver from the court pulpit the official panegyric of St. Louis that (in order to satisfy an enlightened age) no mention need be made of the Crusades', or the careful solicitude of Napoleon's government in instructing four newly-made cardinals not to give the same present to the Roman messenger who announced their promotion. The letters of Boisgelin's father are delightful: he objects to his son's expenses at the Sorbonne ('vous vous imagines que je dois tout prodiguer pour un tres petit cadet qui n'a pas mille livres de rentes de sa mere et qui prend audacieusement son pere pour son caissier'), and yet pays all his bills. He is continually urging his son to obtain preferment ('Il faut penser a une abbaye. Que tous les autres objets cedent a celuy-la, que toutes vos demarches y tendent '), and yet does not wish him to secure a place at court (' Les mceurs y sont bien exposees, l'air y est contagieux. Vous scaves que c'est un etat oisif').

Perhaps the greatest testimony to Boisgelin's character was not his ability to realize—in spite of his own past, and of surroundings as an emigre—that the future of the Church must not blinked with the future of the Bourbons, but his patient dealings with a nagging anti-clerical prefect at Tours. Thirty years previously Boisgelin had practically ruled a province; he was now, as an archbishop and a cardinal, hampered at every turn—in spite of the wishes of the higher civil powers—by a minor functionary who could be foolish enough to issue an official calendar ordering the Tourangeaux to use Confucius, Zoroaster, Popilius, Lois, and Aspasia as names for their children. But, although he could take the 1 new Charlemagne ' pose of Napoleon with apparent seriousness, Boisgelin had a sense of humour. In the first frenzy of the Revolution he could tell the story of the garde national who took his son to swear to the constitution in Notre-Dame, and- gave his orders: 'Jure, mon enfant.'—'Quoi, Papa?'—'Jure, te dis-je.'—'Ah non, Papa.'—’Veux-tu bien jurer, petit coquin!'—'Eh bien, Papa, sacre matin!'.

has written this account of William Bolts in order to make available new 'material. . . regarding the relations of the East India Company and its servants with the country powers, with the natives of India in general, and with rival European traders'. On all these aspects of the Company's life the book does afford valuable illustration. The East India Company, though the descendant of an ancient stock, was to diverge widely from the track of tradition. Conditions in the East new to Englishmen forced it into territorial holdings ; new ideas at home turned the separate ventures into a joint stock with an organized series of courts of shareholders and directors, and, more important than all, entangled it in the network of patronage and party by which in the