Note 42 — Chapter X · 1833.

Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo was a native of Corsica, born at Ajaccio, in 1764. His efforts, along with those of Paoli, to accomplish the liberation of Corsica from the French power, and place it under the protection of England, produced in him a decided leaning against France through his whole career. In 1803 he entered the diplomatic service of Russia, in which he continued for the remainder of his long life, under both the emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. He was Russian ambassador at Paris from 1815 to the time of his death, with temporary absences in London on special missions. He died in 1845. At the period of Mr. Buchanan’s visit to Paris, di Borgo was seventy years old, with as full and varied a diplomatic experience as any man of his time. He was celebrated for the brilliancy of his conversation in the French language. In the private journal of the late Mr. George Ticknor, written at Paris in ——, I find the following passage: “I do not know how a foreigner has acquired the French genius so completely as to shine in that kind of conversation from which foreigners are supposed to be excluded, but certainly I have seen nobody yet who has the genuine French wit, with its peculiar grace and fluency, so completely in his power, as M. Pozzo di Borgo.” In a note to this passage Mr. Ticknor adds: “I have learned since that he is a Corsican, and by a singular concurrence of circumstances, was born in the same town with Bonaparte, and of a family which is in an hereditary opposition to that of the emperor.” It was no doubt with singular zest, that di Borgo, in 1814–15, took part in the great European settlement which dethroned Bonaparte.