George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[87] or matters of little importance. Conforming to the

Chap. VII.} 1774. July.

public wish, he began by dismissing the ministers of the late king, and then felt the need of a guide. Marie Antoinette would have recalled Choiseul, the supporter of an intimate friendship between France and Austria, the passionate adversary of England, the prophet and the favorer of American independence. But filial respect restrained the king, for Choiseul had been his father's enemy. He turned to his aunts for advice; and their choice fell on the Count de Maurepas from their regard to his experience, general good character, and independence of the parties at court.

Not descended from the old nobility, Maurepas belonged to a family which, within a hundred and fifty years had furnished nine secretaries of state. He had himself held office in the last days of Louis the Fourteenth; and had been sent into retirement by Louis the Fifteenth for writing verses that offended the king's mistress. At the age of seventy-three, and after an exile of twenty-five years, he was still as he had been in youth, polite, selfish, jealous, superficial, and frivolous. Despising gravity of manner and airs of mystery as ridiculous, and incapable of serious passion or profound reflection, he charmed by the courtesy and ease of his conversation. He enjoyed the present moment, and was careless of the future which he was not to share; taking all things so easily, that age did not wear him out. Full of petty artifice in attack, of sly dexterity in defence, he could put aside weighty objections by mirth and laugh even at merit, having no faith in virtues that were difficult, and deriding the love of country as a vain boast or a