rather than a politician, that Mr. Coke's memory deserves to be perpetuated. By granting leases to his tenantry, and otherwise giving them the most liberal encouragement, as well as by costly experiments made at his own expense, he enriched himself and his tenantry, and turned his estate into a model agricultural domain. He introduced what is called the Norfolk system of the rotation of crops, the culture of turnips and maize, the crossing of the breeds of cattle and sheep, and other marked improvements; turned bare and barren land into a fine fertile soil, and raised forests where there was scarcely a blade of grass. He increased the population of the village of Holkham from one hundred and sixty-two to nine hundred, and the rental of his estates tenfold. He stated in his will that he had lately expended £500,000 in the improvement of his estate. He long enjoyed the reputation of being "the first commoner in England," but in 1837 he was raised to the house of peers by the title of Earl of Leicester. He died, June 30, 1842, at the age of ninety. A monument was erected to his memory at the cost of £4000, contributed by men of all political opinions.—J. T.
COLALTO, Antonio, born at Vicenza in 1717. His claims to authorship rest upon his having written for the French stage a piece called "Les Trois Jumeaux Venetiens," for the sake of playing the three brothers himself, which, according to the concurrent testimony of the time, he did with astonishing effect. The play was taken from the Venetian Twins of Goldoni, but Colalto wished to add a third character, so that he might exhibit wit, stupidity, and irascibility, contrasted in three different persons. Goldoni was himself so pleased that he declared the merits of Colalto's performance to be such as to entitle him to the rank of an original author. Before his appearance in France in 1759 he had acquired fame in Venice. With a fine voice and figure, he could nevertheless stoop to the mummeries of pantaloon, and under so apparently unfavourable a disguise, express every change of feeling with a grotesque air of truth that gave him perfect mastery over the tears as well as smiles of his audience. He died in Paris in 1778.—J. F. C.
COLARD, Mansion, a printer of Bruges, who lived in the fifteenth century. He was protected by Louis de Bruges, seigneur de Gruthuyse, the great patron of letters of the time. Colard was himself a classical scholar, and besides the number of Latin works he printed in the original, published translations of his own into the French language.—J. F. C.
COLARDEAU, Charles Pierre, born at Janville in Beauce in 1732; died in 1776. He was educated by a maternal uncle. Monsieur Regnard, curé of St. Salomon, at Pithiviers. His uncle's object was to have him a lawyer, and with this view he was placed in the office of an attorney or notary. The passion of poetry, however, seized on him, and his law papers were neglected. He dramatized a story from Telemaque, and the piece, after some delay, was acted with success. His next effort was a tragedy, "Calista," which seems to have failed. The literature of England now engaged his mind, and a very successful imitation of Pope's Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, was followed by a translation of Young's Night Thoughts. Colardeau became a member of the French Academy in 1776—J. A., D.
COLBERT, Auguste Marie François, Comte, was born at Paris in 1777, and entered the army a volunteer in the national guard of Tarbes in 1792. He rose rapidly in his profession, becoming an aid-de-camp to Grouchy in 1796. In the following year Napoleon raised him to the rank of captain, and he quitted Grouchy for Murat. He distinguished himself in Egypt, and then in Italy, under Dessaix, so as to receive in 1800 the cross of the legion of honour. His courageous bearing at Ulm and Austerlitz obtained for him a brigadier-generalship. Napoleon intrusted him with the conveyance to the Emperor Alexander of his final terms of peace after the battle of Austerlitz. In the eighth bulletin of the grand army, his conduct at the battle of Jena is made the subject of special praise. Towards the close of 1808 he went to Spain, having received a cavalry command under the duke of Istria. He was killed at Cacabellos in 1809, while conducting a reconnaissance—R. B.
COLBERT, Jean Baptiste, born in 1619; died in 1683; one of the most illustrious statesmen of France; inferior in intellect to neither Sully, nor Richelieu, nor Mazarin; superior to them all in integrity. Colbert was discovered by Mazarin, who, a short time before his death, presented him to Louis XIV., with these words—"Sire I owe everything to your Majesty; but I believe that, in so far, I pay my debt by giving you Colbert." Louis accepted the gift; it would have been well for himself, for France, and for Europe, had he known thoroughly to appreciate it! The finances of his kingdom having fallen into utter confusion under the worthless Frequet, Colbert was happily installed as controller-general, and he finally became finance minister, or rather prime minister of the king. It were wearisome to narrate the measures, through means of which his sagacity and convictions of justice enabled him to draw France back from the verge of the gulf of bankruptcy; and every one of these sound provisions would have borne limits, but for the restless and reckless ambition of Louis, fostered by the able but unprincipled Louvois. War was expensive then as it is now. The ordinary revenue would not bear the burden of the enterprises of 1672, and Louvois insisted on loans for the king. Colbert, foreseeing the result, energetically opposed having recurrence to an expedient whose issues he knew so well. He was overruled in the council, chiefly by Louvois and the president Lamoignon. "You triumph," said he to Lamoignon; "but have you done this as an honest man? Do you fancy I did not know as well as you that money can be had by borrowing? But do you know as well as I do, the character of the person with whom we have to do—his passion for show, for great enterprises, and all sorts of expenditure? Now the career is open to borrowing, and therefore to expenditure and taxation illimitable! Answer for what you have done to the nation and to posterity!" The history of this great but unfortunate reign is known to the world. Colbert could not restrain the magnificent king, whose extravagance in everything recognized no bounds. His honest minister remonstrated when he could—ever in vain. "The fourth class of expenses," says he in one of his reports, "the expenses of the court, ought to be subjected to all possible retrenchment and economy, in accordance with the following maxim, let even five sous be saved in reference to unnecessary demands, in order that we may have millions to expend in support of your Majesty's glory! I declare, for my own part, that a feast costing three thousand livres gives me inexpressible pain, while, when the question is concerning millions of gold for Poland, I would sell all my goods; I would pledge my wife and children; I would trudge barefoot through life, in order to contribute towards it what was necessary." Colbert struggled in vain. Louvois and Louis prevailed; and, having first been insulted, the intrepid minister was disgraced. He died soon afterwards at the age of sixty-four.—Colbert's name seldom appears to advantage in our modern histories of political economy. He is presented usually as the systematic originator of the now unfashionable protective system; and every one has heard the famous reply of some merchants to him—"Laissez aller." This, however, cannot be received by any philosophic thinker without much reservation. In so far as regarded the exterior, or other nations, his policy was protective; within France itself he delivered industry from every bond and burden that he could remove. As to protection in a national point of view, there is a difficulty grave enough to puzzle even a brain like Colbert's. Not a doubt can exist that the largest amount of material wealth must issue from the installation of the principle of the division of labour carried to its very extreme; but whether a policy having regard to that principle alone, will best conduce to the development of the intellectual and moral activity and well-being of a nation (which after all is its true wealth), is wholly a different question. Or to descend to a lesser problem, it is quite conceivable that a nation having great natural capabilities, originating in its climate and soil, may be unable to start on the special industries suited to it, through its incapacity to contend, at the outset, with other nations already exercised in these special industries. Both considerations occupied and influenced Colbert; and whether theoretically correct or not, the merit cannot be denied to him of having evolved the productive energies of France to an extent never hoped for before, and created a force that has borne her since through the disasters of successive and deplorable revolutions. His country is entitled to venerate him as the founder of those industries which are still its pride. He evolved the silk trade of Lyons; he established the manufacture of lace; he destroyed in everything the monopoly of Venice; and, as already hinted, he benefitted every mode of labour by the equity and order of his fiscal laws. Nor was his capacious mind absorbed by the requisition of mere material industry. The present Imperial Observatory, the Jardin des Plantes, the Academy of
