Note 870 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

The Duke of Bedford, no bad judge of character, said in 1794, that La Fayette's ‘whole life was an illustration of truth, disinterestedness, and honour.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 664. So, too, the continuator of Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxx. p. 355), ‘La Fayette, le chevalier de la liberté d'Amérique;’ and Lamartine (Hist. des Girondins, vol. iii. p. 200), ‘Martyr de la liberté après en avoir été le héros.’ Ségur, who was intimately acquainted with him, gives some account of his noble character, as it appeared when he was a boy of nineteen. Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. pp. 106, 107. Forty years later, Lady Morgan met him in France; and what she relates shows how little he had changed, and how simple his tastes and the habits of his mind still were. Morgan's France, vol. ii. pp. 285–312. Other notices, from personal knowledge, will be found in Life of Roscoe, vol. ii. p. 178; and in Trotter's Mem. of Fox, pp. 319 seq.