consolation mingled in the cup from the consideration that he had
died for his country. And when the youthful mind was awakened to
meditation upon the rights of mankind, the principles of freedom,
and theories of government, it cannot be difficult to perceive in
the illustrations of his own family records the source of that
aversion to hereditary rule, perhaps the most distinguishing feature
of his own political opinions and to which he adhered through all
the vicissitudes of his life....

Lafayette was born a subject of the most absolute and most splendid
monarchy of Europe, and in the highest rank of her proud and
chivalrous nobility. He had been educated at a college of the
University of Paris, founded by the royal munificence of Louis XIV.,
or Cardinal Richelieu. Left an orphan in early childhood, with the
inheritance of a princely fortune, he had been married, at sixteen
years of age, to a daughter of the house of Noailles, the most
distinguished family of the kingdom, scarcely deemed in public
consideration inferior to that which wore the crown. He came into
active life, at the change from boy to man, a husband and a father,
in the full enjoyment of everything that avarice could covet, with a
certain prospect before him of all that ambition could crave. Happy
in his domestic affections, incapable, from the benignity of his
nature, of envy, hatred, or revenge, a life of "ignoble ease and
indolent repose" seemed to be that which nature and fortune had
combined to prepare before him. To men of ordinary mold this
condition would have led to a life of luxurious apathy and sensual
indulgence. Such was the life into which, from the operation of the
same causes, Louis XV. had sunk, with his household and court, while
Lafayette was rising to manhood surrounded by the contamination of
their example. Had his natural endowments been even of the higher