coldness of his early minister. Moved by
the statement of the Cardinal D'Estrées, who
was old and infirm, that his seat as an
ordinary member was exceedingly
uncomfortable, and that instead of attending to the
business of the sittings, " his mind was
distracted with envy of the luxurious fauteuil
of the President," His Majesty was pleased
to present the Society with forty soft
armchairs, " in consideration of the hardness of
their benches;" and having thus provided for
the bodily accommodation of the members,
he attended also to their mental comfort, and
endowed them with six hundred volumes,
the foundation of the present magnificent
library of the Institute.

The reign of Louis the Fourteenth was the
golden age of the Academy. " Then," says
the delighted de Chambre, " was it indeed
a glorious and triumphant body; it was
clothed with the scarlet of cardinals and the
purple of chancellors; it was protected by
the most puissant sovereign upon the face of
the earth; its rooms were thronged with
princes and senators, ministers, peers, and
councillors of state, who, divesting themselves
of their proper splendour, would agreeably lose
themselves in an infinite crowd of excellent
authors without precedence or distinction."

Such prosperity unluckily conduced to
various abuses. Literary merit in a candidate
became a secondary qualification, and the
interest of any powerful person sufficed in
itself to obtain the title of Academician for
himself or his nominee. A few examples of
this meanness on the part of the Academy
can be cited. On the death of Montmor, in
1679, one Lavan—librarian indeed at the
Louvre but not the less a notoriously ignorant
person—demanded, and obtained a chair in
the Academy, as a reward for his services in
successfully negotiating the marriage of one
of Colbert's daughters with the Duke de
Montemart. In 1685 died the great Peter
Corneille. The young Duke of Maine, a
lad of fourteen, to the wants peculiar to
juvenility added a want to be an
Academician. He communicated his wish to
Racine, who called a meeting of his
colleagues and proposed the nomination of the
gracious boy. These worthy gentlemen not
only unanimously voted the young duke's
admission to the chair vacated by Corneille,
but authorised Racine to inform his Highness,
"that even if there had not been a
vacancy at the time, there was not one of
their number who would not have cheerfully
resigned his place for the express purpose
of creating one." Louis the Fourteenth—
placed by his own rank above the necessity
of tuft-hunting,—refused to ratify the
duke's election, and Thomas Corneille was
then chosen to occupy his brother's chair.
The chair vacant by the death of Tourreil,
in 1714, was hastily offered to Desmarets,
Comptroller of the Finances. " I know
nothing myself of literature," was the reply
of Desmarets, "but there is a clerk in my
office who is fit enough for that sort of thing."
This clerk was one Malet, the obscure author
of a ridiculous ode. The Comptroller's
recommendation was irresistible; Malet was
elected, and occupied one of the chairs of the
Academy for more than twenty years. To the
credit of Marshal Saxe, it must be told that he
declined an honour for which his education
rendered him unfit: "they wants," the great
commander said in a letter to one of his
mistresses—it is his own grammar and spelling
that we imitate,—" they wants to putt me in
the Cadmy; wich would soot me like a ring I
upon a catt." It was not, therefore, without
reason some years afterwards, that Voltaire
described the Academy as " a place intended
for the reception of men of title and men
in power; for prelates, soldiers, lawyers,
doctors; and where they sometimes, by way
of variety, condescended to admit a man of
genius."

The republic of letters has been outraged,
now and then, by the Academy in a way that
is still more discreditable. In the present
century alone, no less than fourteen members
have been ejected from its body for political
considerations; three of them having
subsequently been restored to their position.

The practice imposed upon every new member,
of pronouncing a panegyrical harangue
upon the memory of his predecessor, has
contributed in no small degree to throw
an air of ridicule over the proceedings of the
Academy. This practice was first introduced
by Oliver Patru, in the year 1640. Upon the
death of De Porchères, an original member
Patru, who had been chosen to succeed him,
discoursed so well upon the loss which the
Academy had sustained, that his speech was
established into a precedent in the case of all
future elections. The rule so established has
been very rarely set aside. Colbert was the first
exception to it, and in later times, and for less
complimentaiy reasons, it has been dispensed
with in favour of Chateaubriand, Maret, and
St. Jean d'Angely. It is related of the
celebrated de la Rochefoucauld that, despairing
to be excused from delivering the usual
encomiastic discourse, and conscious that his
overwhelming nervousness would render him
physically incapable of addressing the shortest
speech to a public audience, he reluctantly
forbore to become a candidate.

Louis François Richelieu, the fop and
general, had neither the scruples of Saxe
nor the diffidence of Rochefoucauld. Though
one of the most illiterate men of his rank
in France, he composed, and actually
delivered an oration, of which a copy is still
in existence, written with his own hand; a
piece of orthography that would have
astonished even Marshal Saxe. " It was
quite evident," said one of his colleagues,
"that Monsieur the Marshal had made it
himself."

Another absurd introductory discourse was