Albert Gallatin | Page 4

a matter of association as of scholarly acquirement. The influence of the companion is as strong and enduring as that of the master. Of this truth the career of young Gallatin is a notable example. During his academic course he formed ties of intimate friendship with three of his associates. These were Henri Serre, Jean Badollet, and Etienne Dumont. This attachment was maintained unimpaired throughout their lives, notwithstanding the widely different stations which they subsequently filled. Serre and Badollet are only remembered from their connection with Gallatin. Dumont was of different mould. He was the friend of Mirabeau, the disciple and translator of Bentham,--a man of elegant acquirement, but, in the judgment of Gallatin, "without original genius." De Lolme was in the class above Gallatin. He had such facility in the acquisition of languages that he was able to write his famous work on the English Constitution after the residence of a single year in England. Pictet, Gallatin's relative, afterwards celebrated as a naturalist, excelled all his fellows in physical science.
During his last year at the academy Gallatin was engaged in the tuition of a nephew of Mademoiselle Pictet, but the time soon arrived when he felt called upon to choose a career. His state was one of comparative dependence, and the small patrimony which he inherited would not pass to his control until he should reach his twenty-fifth year,--the period assigned for his majority. It would be hardly just to say that he was ambitious. Personal distinction was never an active motor in his life. Even his later honors, thick and fast though they fell, were rather thrust upon than sought by him. But his nature was proud and sensitive, and he chafed under personal control. The age was restless. The spirit of philosophic inquiry, no longer confined within scholastic limits, was spreading far and wide. From the banks of the Neva to the shores of the Mediterranean, the people of Europe were uneasy and expectant. Men everywhere felt that the social system was threatened with a cataclysm. What would emerge from the general deluge none could foresee. Certainly, the last remains of the old feudality would be engulfed forever. Nowhere was this more thoroughly believed than at the home of Rousseau. Under the shadow of the Alps, every breeze from which was free, the Genevese philosopher had written his "Contrat social," and invited the rulers and the ruled to a reorganization of their relations to each other and to the world. But nowhere, also, was the conservative opposition to the new theories more intense than here.
The mind of young Gallatin was essentially philosophic. The studies in which he excelled in early life were in this direction, and at no time in his career did he display any emotional enthusiasm on subjects of general concern. But, on the other hand, he was unflinching in his adherence to abstract principle. Though not carried away by the extravagance of Rousseau, he was thoroughly discontented with the political state of Geneva. He was by early conviction a Democrat in the broadest sense of the term. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more perfect example of what it was then the fashion to call a citoyen du monde. His family seem, on the contrary, to have been always conservative, and attached to the aristocratic and oligarchic system to which they had, for centuries, owed their position and advancement.
Abraham Gallatin, his grandfather, lived at Pregny on the northern shore of the lake, in close neighborhood to Ferney, the retreat of Voltaire. Susanne Vaudenet Gallatin, his grandmother, was a woman of the world, a lady of strong character, and the period was one when the influence of women was paramount in the affairs of men; among her friends she counted Voltaire, with whom her husband and herself were on intimate relations, and Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, with whom she corresponded. So sincere was this latter attachment that the sovereign sent his portrait to her in 1776, an honor which, at her instance, Voltaire acknowledged in a verse characteristic of himself and of the time:--
"J'ai baisé ce portrait charmant, Je vous l'avo?rai sans mystère, Mes filles en out fait autant, Mais c'est un secret qu'il faut taire. Vous trouverez bon qu'une mère Vous parle un peu plus hardiment, Et vous verrez qu'également, En tous les temps vous savez plaire."
At Pregny young Gallatin was the constant guest of his nearest relatives on his father's side, and he was a frequent visitor at Ferney. Those whose fortune it has been to sit at the feet of Mr. Gallatin himself, in the serene atmosphere of his study, after his retirement from active participation in public concerns, may well imagine the influence which the rays of the prismatic character of Voltaire must have had upon the philosophic and