to the generally received accounts, he was lamed by an accident when in his first year, in consequence of which, disqualifying him as it did for the profession of arms, he was disinherited, his birth-right being given to his second brother, and he was forced against his own wish to enter the church, a fact which ought to be remembered in mitigation of his subsequent ecclesiastical career. At twenty Talleyrand was thrown upon the world of Paris, a clever, dissolute, young abbé of the old régime. Two years afterwards Voltaire paid a visit to Paris, and the Abbé de Perigord, it is asserted, received the mock benediction of the patriarch-philosopher. Four years later he had inspired a belief in his capacity for administration and business, for he was then appointed "agent-general" of the clergy, an important and responsible office. In 1788 the disciple of Voltaire, and now the friend of Mirabeau, became bishop of Autun. In this capacity he was a member of the states-general, the convocation of which, in 1789, produced the first French revolution. He was one of the leaders of the body of clergy who resolved to join the tiers etat, when the latter on the 17th of June, 1789, proclaimed itself the national assembly, and he had thus early resolved to throw in his lot with the now inevitable revolution. In the assembly Talleyrand played an important part. He was active in discussing and preparing its new organization of the finances, and in promoting its sweeping measures for the sale of church lands. A still more notable item of his senatorial policy was the support which he gave to the ecclesiastical revolution, by which the clergy received a civil constitution; and it was Talleyrand, with the aid of two bishops in partibus, who consecrated the first prelates appointed under the new constitution of the French church. For this daring step he was excommunicated by the pope, and finding it impossible to reconcile catholicism with democracy, he resigned his bishopric. It was after this event that he commenced his purely political career. In 1792 he was twice sent to England to endeavour to procure the neutrality of the cabinet of London—thus early had his tact and manners marked him out as the person best qualified for the most delicate diplomatic negotiations. His mission came to nothing, and he was in Paris when the new revolution of the 10th of August, 1792, overturned the French monarchy. Suspected of having been in correspondence with the fallen king, Talleyrand fled to London; and proscribed as a royalist in France, he was regarded by the English ministry as a jacobin, and ordered to quit the country. He took refuge in the United States. Meanwhile the Reign of Terror ran its course to a close, and the government of the directory succeeded. At the beginning of 1796 Talleyrand was permitted to return to Paris; his name was erased from the list of emigrants; and he was elected a member of the Institute. Before this body he read two elaborate papers on the importance of new colonies to France, and on the commercial relations of the United States and England, papers which were aided in their effect by the influence of Madame de Staël, whom he had known in her father's house, and who had already exerted herself to procure his return from exile. The result was that in July, 1797, he was appointed minister of foreign affairs under the directory. When he saw that the directory was tottering he resigned, after holding office for two years, and attached himself to Napoleon, who a few months afterwards returned from Egypt. Lending his influence to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, which established the consulate, Talleyrand was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, Napoleon deeming him the fittest person to deal with the diplomatists of the old governments of Europe. He aided effectively in negotiating the concordat with the pope, who as a reward released from his former vows the ex-bishop of Autun, and thus enabled him to marry his mistress. In his relations with Napoleon he preserved a certain independence. Talleyrand had a foreign policy of his own, much more pacific than that of his master, whom he warned against the consequences of a usurping policy in the Iberian peninsula. In 1806 he had been appointed grand chamberlain, and created Prince of Benevento. In the following year continued differences of opinion led him to resign the portfolio of foreign affairs, and to soften his fall Napoleon made him vice-grand elector of the empire. Foreseeing, as years wore on, the fall of the empire, Talleyrand made his dispositions accordingly, and when the allies entered Paris for the first time it was at Talleyrand's hotel that the Emperor Alexander of Russia took up his abode. With his usual sagacity Talleyrand saw that the choice lay between the Bourbons and Napoleon himself, and advised for Louis XVIII. He exerted his influence with the new monarch to procure the acceptance of a constitutional charte, and was sent to represent France at the congress of Vienna, where he pursued his old policy—that of an alliance with England and Austria against Russia, and, in this case, against Russia and Prussia—the czar demanding Poland; Prussia, Saxony. From these discussions he was called away by the reappearance of Napoleon, whom he now opposed heart and soul. Appointed minister of foreign affairs after the battle of Waterloo, he offended the court by his pleadings for constitutional freedom, and displeased the continental members of the coalition by his protests against the terms which, as conquerors, they imposed upon France. The consequence was that he resigned in August, 1815. He now became a quiet but effective leader of the liberal opposition to the system of the government of the Restoration, and he found the wisdom of his policy confirmed when the revolution of 1830 drove Charles X. from the throne. To conciliate England was a main object of Louis Philippe, and Talleyrand was sent at once as French ambassador to London. While ambassador he co-operated with Lord Palmerston, procuring the independence of Belgium and the establishment of the quadruple alliance. At the close of these negotiations he returned to France, and died at Paris on the 20th of May, 1838, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. He left behind him, with injunctions that they should not be published until after the lapse of thirty years, memoirs of his life, which he had been in the habit of reading from to his friends. That of the convention excepted, he had served every government in France from the revolution of 1789 to his death. Yet though ever attentive to his own interests, and seemingly unburdened by conscience or scrupulosity, he had his merits even as a politician, and opposed courageously what he thought unwise in the system of Napoleon, unwise and unpatriotic in that of the Restoration. He was celebrated for his polished and caustic wit. Among his many mots one of the most famous is the well-known and characteristic—"Language was given to man to conceal his thoughts." The late Lord Jeffrey met Talleyrand at Holland house in 1832, and thus wrote of him to a friend:—"He is more natural, plain, and reasonable than I had expected; a great deal of the repose of high breeding and old age, with a mild and benevolent manner, and great calmness of language, rather than the sharp caustic, cutting speech of a practical utterer of bon mots."—F. E.
TALLIEN, Jean-Lambert, a noted French revolutionist, was born at Paris in 1769. His father was house-steward to the Marquis de Bercy, who became interested in the boy, and undertook the charge of his education. Young Tallien spent some time in a lawyer's office, and for a brief period also was connected with the Moniteur. When the Revolution broke out, it was not long until he attracted great attention as a leading "patriot." This eminence he owed to his fluency of speech, and the zeal with which he propagated extreme ideas. He was on terms of the closest intimacy with Marat, Danton, and the rest, and had his full part in the atrocious September massacres and the other incidents of that fearful time. Being sent in 1793 as commissioner to Bordeaux, he and his colleague Isambeau literally revelled in bloodshed. Returning to Paris in 1794, he found his party prostrated. Robespierre's star was now in the ascendant; and Tallien made it convenient to bow before the new influence. He thus managed to be appointed president of the convention; yet Robespierre always suspected him, and a struggle between the two ensued, which was only ended on the memorable 9th Thermidor (27th July, 1794), when Tallien denounced the dictator, and that denunciation had a triumphant issue. After the fall of Robespierre, however, Tallien lost his former importance. His subsequent career presents little that is worthy of notice. He was employed by Bonaparte in the expedition to Egypt, but was dismissed and sent back to France in 1801. He survived the Restoration, and died at Paris in great poverty on the 16th November, 1820.—T. J.
TALLIS, Thomas, a musician, was born early in the reign of Henry VIII. Very little is known of his personal history. He is said to have been organist of the royal chapel during the latter part of the reign of Henry, and of his immediate successors; but the inscription on his gravestone warrants no such assertion. He was simply a gentleman of the chapel, and served for sevenpence-halfpenny per diem. It appears from the title of the noble collection of sacred music, the "Cantiones Sacræ," published jointly by him and Byrd in 1575, that they were
