“The four sides of the altar are ornamented with as many bas-reliefs, well chosen, and representing the following events connected with the life of La Fayette. The first bas-relief represents the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. La Fayette, with the generals and the respective staffs of the French and American army, receives General O’Hara, as he delivers the sword of Cornwallis to Washington. The second bas-relief represents La Fayette taking the civic oath to the French Federation, July 14, 1790.
“The third bas-relief represents the visit of the Duke of Orleans, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, to the Hôtel de Ville, July 31, 1830.
“The fourth bas-relief represents the distribution of the standards to the National Guard at Paris, Aug. 29, 1830.”
The room which now serves for the museum was formerly the entrance to the apartment of Madame La Fayette. After her death, La Fayette ordered the door of communication to be walled up, so that the room could only be entered by himself through a back door. On stated days the marquis repaired thither, either alone or with his children, to pay sad homage to the memory of her who was enshrined in their hearts with an undying affection.
The museum is filled with numerous objects, such as models of machines, etc., many stuffed birds and reptiles, shells and minerals, together with a quantity of weapons of all kinds, and numberless Indian curiosities collected by La Fayette during his several visits to America.
The inmates of La Grange were illustrious for their many deeds of benevolence. Their poorer neighbors were constantly aided by the general and his children. In times of special sickness among the poor, large sums were expended by La Fayette and his family in their behalf. Many charming fêtes were held at the Château, and La Fayette was always the centre of a brilliant circle. The venerable marquis was a model host. His guests enjoyed freedom without restraint, and the most delightful entertainment without officiousness. His children and grandchildren seem to have inherited many of his fine traits of mind and character; and there are few instances given in history of such a perfect home-life as was witnessed at La Grange, especially before the removal of her who was the centre of all its sunshine and the guiding star of her illustrious husband.
The character of La Fayette was singularly lofty, and he was strongly attracted towards all that was good, great, noble, or generous in human nature. His moral and intellectual faculties were keen, his reason was solid, and his judgment was sure. He was not led into impracticable theories by too ardent an imagination, and his enthusiasms were always based upon his conscience and his reason.
His views of morality and politics were very comprehensive, but his beau ideal of life was always held within the bounds of possibility, and governed by the claims of usefulness, justice, and honor. He was great even in small circumstances, for he lifted the little to a place of importance by the exact attention he bestowed upon it. He judged mankind by his own exalted nature, and his illusions regarding them arose from the impossibility of such an upright mind as he possessed being capable of perceiving or believing that others were so far beneath the high motives which governed his own thoughts and actions. “His conscience was his guiding star, his courage the pilot that led him safe through the storm by which France was overwhelmed, and his progress through that grand epoch was marked by patriotism, civic courage, and a series of advantageous reforms and liberal institutions, with which he assisted to ameliorate the condition of France.”
La Fayette passed untainted through an age of corruption, and was proof against the seductive excesses of the court of Louis XV., and retained his moral integrity in the midst of the temptations and the terrible whirlwinds of political storms which raged with relentless fury during the reign of the unfortunate Louis XVI. To his early avowed principles of liberty and patriotism he was ever true as the needle to the magnet. No emoluments could bribe him to advocate a wrong principle; no terrors could deter him from stanchly and fearlessly upholding what his conscience acknowledged to be the cause of truth and liberty.
“La Fayette loved truth above all things, and rejected all that could change or corrupt its nature. Like Epaminondas, he would not have suffered himself, even in joke, to utter the slightest falsehood. He was the mirror of truth, even in the midst of political parties, whose condemnation he pronounced by presenting to them the hideous image of their passions. He thus offended without convincing them, and the mirror, being declared deceitful, was destined to be broken.” He was heard to say: “The court would have accepted me had I been an aristocrat, and the Jacobins, had I been a Jacobin; but, as I wished to side with neither, both united against me.”