[From the marble in the Louvre, by Coysevox. He wears the Cardinal’s robe, with the Order of the Holy Spirit. Modelled from some of the painted portraits of the time. There are two statues of him at Versailles, one by Ramey, dated 1819, the other by Duret, 1836.]
292A. Cardinal Richelieu. Minister of France.
[A mask.]
293. Cardinal Mazarin. Minister of France.
[Born at Rome, 1602. Died at Vincennes, in France, 1661. Aged 59.]
The pupil, protégé, and successor of Cardinal Richelieu, by whom he was recommended to Louis XIII. on his death-bed, and whom he surpassed in cunning, finesse, intrigue, and in the skill with which he turned all his public acts to his own private advantage. His avarice was excessive, and his coffers groaned with the wealth of the country which he ruled and impoverished. France was indebted to him for the treaties of Westphalia and of the Pyrenees, and these constitute his best claim to the consideration and gratitude of the French people. Another service must not be forgotten. He beggared the French nation, but he endeavoured to make amends by bequeathing to Louis XIV. the sagacious Colbert, under whose strong hand the finances of France rapidly recovered. The character of Mazarin has been variously described. By some he is regarded as a great Minister of State, equal to Richelieu; by others as a man of indifferent abilities, with an inordinate share of craftiness and diplomatic trickery. It is certain that he was deeply versed in the knowledge of man. Louis XIV. was in leading-strings whilst Mazarin lived, but sole and absolute monarch from the day of his Minister’s death until the hour of his own. Mazarin founded the first public library established in France, but he kept the young monarch who was entrusted to his hands, in shameful ignorance of all that it concerned the youthful prince to know.
[From the marble in the Louvre by Coysevox.]
294. Blaise Pascal. Theologian and Philosopher.
[Born at Clermont-Ferrand, in France, 1623. Died in Paris, 1662. Aged 39.]
Of a genius so rare as to seem supernatural. In tender years the boy, debarred from mathematical books, with charcoal, on the wall of a garret, worked out for himself problems answering to nearly the first book of Euclid—without definitions or terms,—calling a circle a round, and a right line a score. Whilst still young, he was a discoverer in physics. The rise of water in pumps, and of quicksilver in the barometer, had, till his time, been ascribed by the philosophers to the “horror of Nature for a vacuum.” He guessed that the cause was the pressure of the atmosphere, and verified his conjecture by carrying the barometer up a mountain. He saw, agreeably to his expectation, that as by the ascent the pressure gradually diminished, the quicksilver as gradually fell. He had a subtle and profound metaphysical intellect, with great power to express abstruse thoughts clearly and precisely. His temperament was melancholy. A singular hallucination hung by him—without otherwise disturbing the sound use of his faculties—that at his side a visible gulph was ever yawning. The melancholy took a deeper hue as he advanced towards the close of his brief life. He became religiously austere, and subjected himself to personal mortification and trials, under which elasticity and health gave way. Yet the pious philosopher was not without the lighter qualities of the mind. His celebrated “Provincial Letters,” written in defence of the doctrines of the Abbey of Port Royal, against the Jesuits, are bright with the keenest satire. Pascal was a great mathematician, a true philosopher, and one of the purest of men.