received the promotion to which he thought himself entitled. The

life of a court, too, was more congenial to his nature than life in the camp. He had all the qualities that fitted him for an agreeable attendant upon royalty. Wealth, rank, and fine manners made him popular with other courtiers, and he found intense gratification himself in noting down in his journal details of his daily experience, which he gathered up with singular sagacity and power of observation. The king, displeased at his quitting the army, looked coldly on him. Disapproving also of the duke's tenacity in upholding the most trifling privileges of his order, his majesty conferred no office of importance on his godson. The portrait of the grand monarque in the "Memoirs," therefore, though no doubt faithful, is not set off by any roseate hues of flattery. With the duke of Orleans Saint-Simon was on much better and more intimate terms, and upon the establishment of the regency the latter was made a member of the council of state, and enjoyed a large measure of the regent's confidence. Too fastidious and finical for the conduct of great affairs, however, Saint-Simon never rose to the position of a statesman, finding enough to do in the petty intrigues of the court, and in contributing to the controversy then carried on between the nobility and the parliament. One weapon he used against these gentlemen of no descent, recoiled upon himself. His dignity of peer was keenly hurt by a statement that the pretences of the family of Saint-Simon to ancient lineage were unfounded; that "the vanity and folly of this little duke are so great that, he has traced the descent of a citizen judge styled Le Bossu (Hunchback), who married one of his relatives, to the house of Bossu." Saint-Simon published a reply to this memoir of the parliament, full of rage, and seized every opportunity of decrying them and their proceedings. His dislike, however, of the Jesuits was greater than his hatred of the magistrates, and he is credited with advising the regent not to suppress the parliament, which proceeding Dubois recommended. In 1721 he was sent to Madrid to negotiate the marriage of the regent's daughter to the prince of Asturias. On the way he was attacked by the small-pox, but recovered, and was made a grandee of Spain. After the death of the regent he quitted the court and retired to his seat La Ferté, where he passed many years composing his voluminous memoirs. He died in Paris at a great age, on the 2nd of March, 1755. The celebrated "Memoirs" were written with far too much frankness and candour to be allowed to see the light before the Revolution. Glimpses of them were caught occasionally by a favoured few, but nothing like a correct edition appeared until 1829, when they were received with the eagerness usually reserved for sensation novels. Later and more correct editions have appeared in twenty and more volumes. In 1857 Mr. Bayle Saint-John published an admirable English translation, abridged in four volumes.—R. H. SAINT VINCENT, John Jervis, Earl of, a distinguished English naval officer, was born on the 9th of January, 1734, and was the son of Swynfen Jervis, Esq., counsel and solicitor to the admiralty, and treasurer of Greenwich hospital. Young Jervis having manifested such a strong predilection for the sea, that he ran away from school in order that he might be a sailor, his father, who had intended him for the law, wisely yielded to his son's wish, and placed him on board the Gloucester under Commodore Townsend in 1748. Six years later the youth was nominated lieutenant. He distinguished himself greatly at the siege and capture of Quebec in 1759, and was in consequence promoted to the rank of commander, and appointed to the Porcupine sloop of war. In 1760 he was made a post-captain. He commanded the Foudroyant in the engagement between Admiral Keppell and Count d'Orvilliers off Ushant in July, 1778. In the same vessel he captured the Pègase, a French 74, off Brest harbour in 1782, and was rewarded for this gallant exploit with the order of a knight companion of the bath. In 1793 he was appointed, conjointly with Sir Charles Grey, to the command of the expedition sent against the French Caribee islands, and succeeded in reducing Martinique, St. Lucien, and Guadaloupe; but the last mentioned of these islands was retaken by the French, and the British forces suffered severely from the rainy season and the yellow fever. In 1795 Sir John Jervis attained the rank of full admiral, and on the resignation of Lord Hood was appointed to the command of the British fleet in the Mediterranean. While holding this post he rendered important service to the country by the activity and skill which he displayed in blockading the French fleet in Toulon, and protecting British commerce in the Levant. In 1797 Admiral Jervis gained the famous victory from which his title was taken, and which obtained for him a place in the foremost rank of naval commanders. On the 14th of February, with only fifteen ships of the line, seven frigates and two sloops, he encountered off Cape St. Vincent a Spanish fleet of twenty-six sail of the line, twelve frigates and a brig, and after an obstinate engagement, which lasted ten hours, completely defeated them, capturing four of the enemy's largest ships. The thanks of both houses of parliament were voted to the fleet for this brilliant and decisive affair, which had a most important influence on the prosecution of the war, and Admiral Jervis was rewarded with a peerage. A few months later, the fleet which had performed this important service, while cruizing before Cadiz, was agitated by some conspirators, who attempted to persuade the sailors to follow the example of the mutineers at Spithead. But by the resolute and sagacious conduct of Lord St. Vincent the mutiny was speedily suppressed, and the ringleaders met with condign punishment. Ill health compelled the earl to resign his command and return home in 1799. On the retirement of Lord Bridport, however, in the following year. Lord St. Vincent was appointed to the command of the Channel fleet. In 1801 he was made first lord of the admiralty in the ministry of Mr. Addington, and by instituting the celebrated commission of inquiry, brought to light numberless instances of corruption and extravagance which had long wasted the resources, and crippled the energies of the navy. It was discovered that the dockyards alone were plundered to the amount of a million sterling annually; and the other departments suffered in the same proportion. The inflexible honesty and resistless energy of Lord St. Vincent succeeded after a severe struggle in suppressing these monstrous and deep-rooted abuses, but at the expense of incurring the deadly hatred of the whole nest of defeated plunderers and jobbers. An unfortunate quarrel at this period took place between Jervis and Lord Cochrane, in which the conduct of the head of the admiralty cannot be vindicated. On the downfall of the Addington administration in 1804, Lord St. Vincent retired from office; but in 1806 the exigencies of the state caused him to be summoned from his well-earned retirement, at the age of seventy-two, to take the command of the Channel fleet, and of the expedition sent to Portugal, in the conduct of which he displayed characteristic energy and address. In the following year, his impaired health and advanced age compelled him finally to retire from active service. He survived, however, till 1823, and died on the 14th of March in that year, at the age of eighty-eight. Lord St. Vincent was not only a great naval commander, but a profound and sagacious statesman, a steady and consistent friend of liberal principles, and a kind-hearted friend. "All good officers," it has been justly said, "all good men employed under him, whether in civil or military service, spoke of him as they felt—with admiration of his genius approaching to enthusiasm "—(Brenton's Life of Earl St. Vincent.)—J. T. SAINTE-BEUVE, Charles Augustin, critic and miscellaneous writer, was born at Boulogne in 1804, and educated there and at Paris. He studied medicine and practised it for a time, but his tendencies towards literature were strong. He became a contributor to the Globe, the organ of young France as it was before the revolution of the Three Days, and abandoned his profession. He published poems, novels, a well-written history of French poetry in the sixteenth century, contributed to the Revue des deux Mondes, and in 1840 gave to the world the first volume of his history of "Port Royal," the most elaborate of his books. It is as a critic, however, that M. Sainte-Beuve is best known. In 1850 he began to contribute to the Constitutionnel a series of weekly criticisms on books, called from the day of their appearance, "Causeries du Lundi," and which have had many readers and admirers even in England. Delicacy of insight, catholicity of judgment, and general good sense distinguish these papers, which have been collected into volumes. Some years after the coup d'état he was appointed professor of Latin poetry in the Collège de France; but the students, indignant at his political tergiversation, disturbed his inaugural lecture, and his professorship became merely nominal. He died in October, 1869.—F. E. SAINTE-PALAYE, Jean Baptiste de la Curne de, was born at Auxerre in 1697, and in 1724 was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. In 1758 he became a member of the French Academy. He wrote "Memoirs on Chivalry," and a History of the Troubadours, published after his death.