"As a trip into the country." Amongst the numerous treatises written by him, the most curious is one on the future extirpation of Mahometanism. His "Annals of Louis XIV." contain much curious writing, and are remarkable for a freedom of opinion, on political subjects, far in advance of the time.—W. J. P.
SAINT-PIERRE, Jacques Henri Bernardin de, was born at Havre on the 19th of January, 1737. His father, Nicholas, pretended to be a descendant of Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the celebrated mayor of Calais, whose history, however, recent research shows to be somewhat mythical. Bernardin was the eldest of the family, which consisted of three sons and a daughter. His character was chiefly moulded by his mother—a devout woman of tender and poetical temperament; and his favourite books in childhood were the Lives of the Saints and the Collections of Legends, which are found in all Roman catholic libraries. After a somewhat imperfect education at home, he was placed as boarder and pupil with a parish priest at Caen. On his return he joined to his delight in the miraculous, which the Lives of the Saints had nourished, that taste for natural history whereby he was to achieve a chief part of his renown. Ere long a passion for travelling seized him. Brother Paul, a capuchin of the neighbourhood, frequently visited the Saint-Pierre family, and was a favourite with the children, as he varied caresses with sweetmeats and amusing stories. Bernardin made an excursion with Brother Paul through Normandy, and already considered himself a traveller. But when Bernardin's godmother—the Countess de Bayard, who had, though battling with poverty, the noblest qualities of her ancestor, the Chevalier de Bayard—made him a present of Robinson Crusoe, the book so charmed Saint-Pierre that he began to dream of lovely islands far away on the ocean. Herein was seen by his father a decided preference for the life of a sailor. One of the boy's uncles, the captain of a vessel about to sail to Martinique, asked Bernardin, then little more than twelve, to accompany him. But sea-sickness and the hard work from which his uncle did not excuse him, made the voyage a penance, and not a holiday. Once more in France, Bernardin entered an institution in Caen which was under the direction of the Jesuits, who have always been famous for their skill in education. What, however, chiefly impressed Saint-Pierre, was the record of what the Jesuits as missionaries had achieved. He entertained for a moment the idea of turning Jesuit, and of seeking as a missionary the martyr's death. But this was nothing more than a transient whim. Bernardin finished his studies at the college of Rouen, obtaining, when he left the college in 1757, the first prize for mathematics. He now attended a military school for about a year, to acquire a knowledge of engineering, which he intended to adopt as a profession. Saint-Pierre received an appointment as engineer in the French army assembled at Düsseldorf. whither he went in 1760. At the battle of Warburg and other actions he displayed notable courage, and he prepared many plans and maps. But he quarreled with the engineer-in-chief, by whom he had been treated with signal injustice. A visit to Havre brought neither help nor consolation. In the spring of 1761 we find Saint-Pierre at Paris. He was promised a commission in a French expedition about to set out to assist the Maltese knights against the Turks. But he was foolish enough to go without the commission to Malta, where he was treated as an impostor, and had to suffer many indignities. Paris anew attracted him. But discovering that by giving lessons in mathematics he could not procure the very barest subsistence, he resolved to try his fortune abroad. In Holland he met friends willing to assist him. From Holland he journeyed to Lubeck, whence he sailed for St. Petersburg, in a vessel containing adventurers of every nation. On landing at St. Petersburg, it seemed as if Saint-Pierre were doomed to die of starvation. But one happy and unexpected incident after another brought him finally to Moscow, where he was introduced to the Empress Catherine, who gave him a most gracious reception, which he owed perhaps in some measure to his remarkable personal beauty. As an officer in the Russian army he served in Finland. Growing weary of Russia, he hastened, without any definite plan or fixed purpose, to Poland, where he had a love affair with a princess, which one of his biographers has chronicled with immense detail. Some of the principal German cities were next the resting-places of the restless Saint-Pierre. A dweller in his native land again at the end of 1766, he ere long renewed his wanderings. In January, 1768, he took his passage in a vessel bound for the Isle of France, where he had accepted a situation as engineer. Rich with the most various experiences he, in June, 1771, changed the tropics and the sea for the French capital. He had not been at Paris above a month or two, when he became acquainted with Rousseau, respecting his intercourse with whom he has written some most charming pages. In 1773 he published his "Voyage to the Isle of France," which has an unfading interest from its fresh and delicious pictures. Then came, after an interval of rather more than ten years, the "Studies of Nature," and then in 1788 the book which has its chosen place in the universal literature of the world, "Paul and Virginia." A work of kindred beauty, and of not much later date, was "The Indian Cottage." At a somewhat mature age Saint-Pierre married a daughter of Peter Francis Didot, who was a member of the great Paris publishing house, and who had paper-mills at Essonne. In the neighbourhood of Essonne Saint-Pierre for a considerable time resided. The Revolution had just broken out when he was made superintendent of the garden of plants and of the cabinet of natural history at Paris; but having occupied the office for a brief season he went back to the country. His wife dying after having made him the father of two children—Paul and Virginia—he married, when sixty-five, as his second wife, the daughter of the marquis of Pelleport, a young lady of eighteen. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was cut off by apoplexy at his country-house, Eragny, on the banks of the Oise, on the 21st of January, 1814. Louis Aimé Martin, himself a well-known author, married Saint-Pierre's widow, and adopted his daughter. The first copious and elaborate biography of Saint-Pierre, and the first complete edition of his works, were from the hand of Aimé Martin, but whose taste and statements have both been questioned, however excellent his intentions. Saint-Pierre's daughter, Virginia, died young as the wife of General De Gazan. One of Saint-Pierre's important and interesting productions, "The Harmonies of Nature," and numerous fragments, did not appear till after his death. Perhaps there is no French writer better worthy of being made a companion than Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, alike from his noble moral aims, his fidelity to nature, and his enchanting style; though there are morbid sentimentalities in his books as there were follies and feeblenesses in his career.—W. M—l.
SAINT-REAL, Cesar Vichard, commonly called Abbé of, was a Savoyard by birth, but he was adopted by France as one of her eminent prose writers, when Savoy still belonged to the crown of Piedmont. He was born at Chambéry in 1639, and at the age of sixteen was sent to Paris and educated by the Jesuits. He early devoted himself to study, and became imbued with the spirit of classicism which then characterized French literature. A pure and exact style was then the chief object of literary ambition, and the eminence of Saint-Real is founded upon his success in achieving this kind of excellence. He became intimately connected with Varillas, and subject to his influence learnt to write history with the embellishments that are proper to fiction only. Thus Saint-Real's greatest work, "The Conspiracy of 1618 at Venice," contains dramatic pictures of nocturnal meetings, eloquent speeches, and even characters that never existed. A devoted admirer of Sallust, the author sought, says Ste. Beuve, to write a fine supplement to the conspiracy of Catiline. The English dramatist Otway was inspired by Saint-Real's book to write Venice Preserved. Saint-Real though a man of studious retirement was caught by the fascinations of Hortense Mancini, duchesse of Mazarin, while she was residing in 1676 at Turin in the house of one of the abbé's relatives. He followed her to England, and formed with Saint-Evremond a part of the brilliant circle which it was the pride of the duchess to gather round her. He wrote her memoirs; but unable to bear the life of dissipation of which her house was the scene, he returned to Paris, and obtained a small allowance from the royal library. In 1679 he returned to Turin, and was made historiographer of Savoy. In 1690 he was again in Paris, charged with some secret negotiations with the duke of Orleans. About this time he had a controversy with Arnauld, who had charged him with Socinianism. He returned in 1692 to Turin, where he died in September of that year.—(For a list of his works see Querard, La France Litteraire, viii. )—R. H.
SAINT-RUTH, (General), a distinguished French officer, who took a prominent part in the war in Ireland on the side of King James, was born in the early part of the seventeenth century. His courage, activity, and resolution, gained him high rank in
