itself, his name was hailed with new honor; and this was natural, for the great Revolution was the outbreak of that spirit which had risen to welcome him.  In snatching the sceptre from a tyrant he had given a lesson to France.  His death, when at last it occurred, was the occasion of a magnificent eulogy from Mirabeau, who, borrowing the idea of Turgot, exclaimed from the tribune of the National Assembly,—­“Antiquity would have raised altars to the powerful genius, who, for the good of man, embracing in his thought heaven and earth, could subdue lightning and tyrants."[44] On his motion, France went into mourning for Franklin.  His bust was a favorite ornament, and, during the festival of Liberty, it was carried, with those of Sidney, Rousseau, and Voltaire, before the people to receive their veneration.[45] A little later, the eminent medical character, Cabanis, who had lived in intimate association with Franklin, added his testimony, saying that the enfranchisement of the United States was in many respects his work, and that the Revolution, the most important to the happiness of men which had then been accomplished on earth, united with one of the most brilliant discoveries of physical science to consecrate his memory; and he concludes by quoting the verse of Turgot.[46] Long afterwards, his last surviving companion in the cheerful circle of Madame Helvetius, still loyal to the idea of Turgot, hailed him as “that great man who had placed his country in the number of independent states, and made one of the most important discoveries of the age."[47]

But it is time to look at this verse in its literary relations, from which I have been diverted by its commanding interest as a political event.  Its importance on this account must naturally enhance the interest in its origin.

The poem which furnished the prototype of the famous verse was “Anti-Lucretius, sive de Deo et Natura,” by the Cardinal Melchior de Polignac.  Its author was of that patrician house which is associated so closely with Marie Antoinette in the earlier Revolution, and with Charles X. in the later Revolution, having its cradle in the mountains of Auvergne, near the cradle of Lafayette, and its present tomb in the historic cemetery of Picpus, near the tomb of Lafayette, so that these two great names, representing opposite ideas, begin and end side by side.  He was not merely an author, but statesman and diplomatist also, under Louis XIV. and the Regent.  Through his diplomacy a French prince was elected King of Poland.  He represented France at the Peace of Utrecht, where he bore himself very proudly towards the Dutch.  By the nomination of the Pretender, at that time in France, he obtained the hat of a cardinal.  At Rome he was a favorite, and he was also, with some interruptions, a favorite at Versailles.  His personal appearance, his distinguished manners, his genius, and his accomplishments, all commended him.  Literary honors were superadded to political and ecclesiastical.  He succeeded to the chair of Bossuet at the Academy.  But he was not without the vicissitudes of political life.  Falling into disgrace at court, he was banished to the abbacy of Bonport.  There the scholarly ecclesiastic occupied himself with a refutation of Lucretius, in Latin verse.