CHRISTIEN GUILLAUME DE LAMOIGNON DE, minister and last counsel to Louis XVI., was born at Paris on the 6th of December 1721. He was descended of an illustrious family, which had occupied the highest offices in the magistracy, being son of the chancellor of France, William de Lamognon, and grandson of the celebrated advocate-general Lamognon. His early education he received at the Jesuits' College, and afterwards applied himself with great assiduity to the study of law, history, and political economy. He was chosen a counsellor of the parliament of Paris at the age of twenty-four, and succeeded his father as president of the Court of Aids in the year 1750, and received the superintendence of the press, which, in his hands, became the means of promoting liberty to a degree beyond all former example in that country. Through his favour, the *Encyclopédie*, the works of Rousseau, and many other free speculations, issued from the press, in defiance of the terrific anathemas of the Sorbonne. The superintendence of the press having been taken from him, and conferred upon Maupeou, he was only the more intent on fulfilling the duties of his presidency, and opposing arbitrary power. Having presented a remonstrance to the king, containing a free protest against the enormous abuses of *lettres de cachet*, he was banished to his country seat by a *lettre de cachet*, and the Duc de Richelieu, at the head of an armed force, abolished the tribunal. On the accession of Louis XVI. to the throne in 1774, he was chosen minister of state. In this elevated station he was only ambitious to extend the sphere of his usefulness. His first care was to restore to liberty the innocent victims of the former reign, and to encourage commerce and agriculture—endeavours in which he was supported by Tartot, comptroller-general of the revenue. He resigned his office in the month of May 1776. He then set out upon a journey through France, Switzerland, and Holland, and after an absence of some years, he returned to his favourite mansion, fraught with such a stock of valuable knowledge as his age and experience qualified him to appreciate. When, by a decree of the National Convention, Louis was to be tried for his life, Malesherbes, nobly forgetting the manner in which he had been banished from his councils, generously offered to plead his cause. He was the person who announced to the unfortunate monarch his cruel fate, and one of the last who took leave of him when taken out to suffer. In the first days of December 1793, three members of a revolutionary committee of Paris came to his country seat to arrest his eldest daughter and his son-in-law M. de Rosambro, and next day new emissaries appeared, and carried him off with his children. The tribunal of blood would scarcely deign to hear him who had been so long the oracle of justice, and by whom so many victims had been saved from death. Malesherbes heard his sentence without emotion, and marched to death with undisturbed serenity. He perished by the guillotine, with his whole family, at the age of seventy-two, on the 22d of April 1794.

Grave errors may be laid to the charge of Malesherbes, but all of these had their source in that love of good which in him was as much a passion as a principle. Malesherbes left a number of MSS. which were dispersed by the vandalism of the Revolution, particularly Observations sur le Melèze, sur le Bois de Sainte Lucie, sur les Pins, sur les Orchis; Mémoire sur les Moyens d'Accélérer les Progrès de l'Economie Rurale en France; Idées d'un Agriculteur, Sc.; Mémoire pour Louis XVI.; Observations sur l'Histoire Naturelle de Buffon et Daubenton; Mémoires sur la Librairie et la Liberte de la Presse; Introduction à la Botanique; three letters in the Journal des Savants on the geological phenomena of the environs of Malesherbes. Under the title of Œuvres Choises have been printed (Paris, 1809) extracts from his most celebrated remonstrances; and we have also Pensées et