mansion, now stands. About 1818 most of the Indians were expelled from the vicinity, and a settlement was made by the whites. In 1824 Tallahassee, then virtually uninhabited, was formally chosen by the United States Government as the capital of the Territory of Florida, and it continued as the capital after the admission of Florida into the Union as a state in 1845. It was a residential centre for well-to-do planters before the Civil War, and Bellair, 6 m. S., now in ruins, was a fashionable pleasure resort. On the 10th of January 1861 a state convention adopted at Tallahassee an Ordinance of Secession.
TALLBOY (partly a translation and partly a corruption of the French hautbois), a double chest of drawers. Whereas the chest of drawers in its familiar form (sometimes in the 18th century called a " lowboy ") contains three long and two short drawers, the tallboy has five, six, or seven long drawers, and two short ones. It is a very late 17th-century development of the smaller chest. The early examples are of walnut, but by far the largest proportion of the many that have survived are of mahogany, that being the wood most frequently employed in the 18th century for the construction of furniture, especially the more massive pieces. Occasionally the walnut at the beginning of the vogue of the tallboy was inlaid, just as satinwood varieties were inlaid, depending for relief upon carved cornice-mouldings or gadrooning, and upon handsome brass handles and escutcheons. The tallboy was the wardrobe of the 18th century, but it eventually gave place to the modern type of wardrobe, which, with its sliding drawers, was speedily found to be not only as capacious as its predecessor but more convenient of access. The topmost drawers of the tallboy could only be reached by the use of bed steps, and the disappearance of high beds and the consequent disuse of steps exercised a certain influence in displacing a characteristic piece of furniture which was popular for at least a century.
TALLEMANT, GEDEON, SIEUR DES REAUX (1619–1692),
French author, was born at La Rochelle on the 7th of November
1619. He belonged to a wealthy middle-class family of Huguenot
persuasion; the name des Reaux he derived from a small property
purchased by him in 1650. When he was about eighteen
years of age he was sent to Italy with his brother Francois, abbe
Tallemant. On his return to Paris, Tallemant took his degrees
in civil and canonical law, and his father secured for him the
position of conseiller au parlement. The profession was distasteful
to him, and he decided to ensure himself a competence
hy marriage with his cousin Elisabeth de Rambouillet. His
half-brother had married a d'Angennes, and this connexion
secured for Tallemant an introduction to the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Madame de Rambouillet was no admirer of Louis XIII.,
and she gratified Tallemant’s curiosity with stories of the reigns
of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of real historical value. But
the society of the Hotel de Rambouillet itself opened a field
for his acute and somewhat malicious observation. In the
Historiettes he gives finished portraits of Voiture, Balzac, Malherbe,
Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and many others; Blaise
Pascal and Jean de la Fontaine appear in his pages; and he
chronicles the scandals of which Ninon de l’Enclos and
Angelique Paulet were centres. They are invaluable for the
literary history of the time. It has been said that the malicious
intention of his work may be partly attributed to his bourgeois
extraction and that the consequent slights he received are
avenged in his pages, but independent testimony has established
the substantial correctness of his statements. In 1685 he was
converted to Catholicism. It seems that the change was not
entirely disinterested, for Tallemant, who had suffered con-
siderable pecuniary losses, soon- after received a pension of
2000 livres. He died in Paris on the 6th of November 1692.
Des Réaux was a poet of some merit and contributed to the Guirlande de Julie, but it is by his Historiettes that he is remembered. The work remained in manuscript until it was edited in 1834–6 by MM. de Châteaugiron, Jules Taschereau and L. J. N. de Monmerqué, with a notice on Tallemant by Monmerqué. A third edition (6 vols. 1872) contains a notice by Paulin Paris. Tallemant had begun Mémoires pour la régence d’Anne d’Autriche, but the manuscript has not been found.
TALLEYRAND-PÉRIGORD, CHARLES MAURICE DE (1754–1838), French diplomatist and statesman, was born at Paris on
the 13th of February 1754, though some accounts give the date
as the 2nd of February. His father was Lieutenant-General
Charles Daniel de Talleyrand-Perigord, and his mother was
Alexandrine (née) de Damas Antigny. His parents, descended
from ancient and powerful families, were in constant attendance
at the court of Louis XV., and (as was generally the case then
in their class) neglected the child. In his third or fourth year,
while under the care of a nurse in Paris, he fell from a chest of
drawers and injured his foot for life. This accident darkened
his prospects; for though by the death of his elder brother he
should have represented the family and entered the army, yet
he forfeited the rights of primogeniture, and the profession of
arms was thenceforth closed to him. Entrusted to the care of
his grandmother at Chalais in Périgord, he there received the
only kind treatment which he experienced in his early life, and
was ever grateful for it. He was removed at the age of eight
to the Collège d’Harcourt at Paris (now the Lycée St Louis),
where his rich intellectual gifts enabled him to make good by
private study the defects of the training there imparted. At
the age of twelve he fell ill of smallpox, but his parents showed
little or no interest in his recovery. Destined for the church
hy the family council which deprived him of his birthright, he
was sent when about thirteen years of age to St Sulpice, where
he conceived a dislike of the doctrines and discipline thrust
upon him. After a visit to his uncle, the archbishop of Reims,
he returned to St Sulpice to finish his preliminary training for
the church, hut in his spare time he read the works of Montesquieu,
Voltaire, and other writers who were beginning to
undermine the authority of the ancien régime, both in church
and state. As subdeacon he witnessed the coronation of
Louis XVI. at Reims, but he did not take priest’s orders until
four years later. Recent researches into his early life discredit
most of the stories that have been told respecting his profligacy
and his contempt for the claims of the church; and it is admitted
that, while rejecting her authority in the sphere of dogma
and intellect, he observed the proprieties of life (gambling being
then scarcely looked on as a vice) and respected the outward
observances of religion.
During his life at Paris he had opportunities of mixing in the circles of the philosophers and of others who frequented the salon of Madame de Genlis, and he there formed those ideas in favour of political and social reform which he retained through life. After taking his licentiate in theology in March 1778, he gave little more attention to theological studies. Nevertheless the acuteness of his powers, added no doubt to his social position, gained for him in the year 1780 the position of agent -general of the clergy of France, in which capacity he had to perform important administrative duties respecting the relations of the clergy to the civil power. The growing claims of the state on the exchequer of the clergy made his duties responsible, his colleague as agent-general being of little use. At the extraordinary assembly of the clergy in 1782 he made various proposals, by one of which he sought, though in vain, to redress the most glaring grievances of the underpaid curés. Though the excellence of his work as agent-general in the years 1780–86 was fully acknowledged, and earned him a special gift of 31,000 livres, yet he did not gain a bishopric until the beginning of the year 1889, probably because the king disliked him as a free-thinker. He now became bishop of Autun, with a stipend of 22,000 livres, and was installed on the 15th of March.
The first rumblings of the revolutionary storm were making themselves heard. The elections for the States General were soon to take place; and the first important act of the new bishop was to draw up a manifesto or programme of the reforms which he desired to see carried out by the States General of France. It comprised the following items: the formation of a constitution which would strengthen the monarchy by calling to it the support of the whole nation, the drafting of a scheme of local self-government on democratic lines, the reform of the administration of justice and of the criminal law, and the
