To his father, Lebrun was little indebted for the goods of fortune, but in lieu he received from him an excellent education. He was not only acquainted with several ancient and modern languages, but he made great progress in the study of moral and metaphysical science. Of natural and civil law he was particularly fond, and he perfected his knowledge in this comprehensive branch of learning by visiting several countries, and investigating their institutions and laws. On his return he was at some loss for a profession. He fixed on the bar, where he acquired celebrity, and was besides presented with one or two lucrative, though not important, posts under the government of Louis XV. He took part in the political intrigues of the time, especially in the disputes of the Breton parliament with the royal government. He seems, however, to have been interested in such affairs only as they related to his friend the Chancellor Maupeou, to whom he was indebted for his places. But on the accession of Louis XVI. the chancellor was disgraced, and Lebrun shared in his fall. The latter then retired to a country residence, and employed his time in literary and agricultural pursuits, and with more pleasure still, perhaps, in superintending the education of his children.

After Lebrun had passed fifteen years in retirement, -- years which he afterwards remembered with regret, he considered himself bound, as an honest citizen, not to remain either a silent or an idle spectator of the crisis then approaching. In 1789, he published an able and temperate work, 'La Voix du Citoyen,' in which he demonstrated the necessity of a liberal constitution for the restoration of internal peace. But in advocating the rights of the people, he no less upheld the privileges of the higher orders; and he warned both against the consequences that would ensue from the disregard of either. He spoke to the winds: passion was too violent to be stilled, and pride too stubborn to be bent. A dreadful commotion followed; and he himself, notwithstanding the wisdom of his opinions, and the moderation of his principles, and an unblameable life, was in continual danger of being swallowed up in the vortex. When by slow, almost insensible degrees, the fearful swell had subsided, full justice was done to the soundness of his views, and the excellence of his intentions. After the 18th Brumaire, -- a revolution in which he had no share, -- he was, without any solicitation on his part, nominated Third Consul. Perhaps by this popular choice, Buonaparte wished to give the nation a pledge as to the moderation of his views, and to reassure the aristocratic party, which might naturally feel alarmed at the audacious ambition of this military adventurer.

In this honourable station, it was the peculiar good fortune of this harmless man to make no enemies. He did all he could to mitigate the severities of his colleague and master. Under the imperial sway, he was nominated prince and arch-treasurer of the empire, and subsequently ranked among the great feudatories as Duke of Placentia. Much of his success he doubtless owed to his own personal virtues; but, more, perhaps, to the facility with which he obeyed the injunctions of Napoleon.

On the abdication of Louis Buonaparte, Lebrun was appointed governor-general of Holland, where he remained about three years. His conduct appears to have given satisfaction to the Dutch. In November 1813, when the whole nation was rising to expel the French, a poor inhabitant of the Hague, who was unwilling that he should suffer any harm, called on him, and in the simplicity of his heart, thus addressed him: "You French are become feeble; we are strong; you will therefore do a very wise thing if you leave us with all possible speed. Take care of yourself, friend -- governor no longer! The sooner you are away, the more insults you will escape, -- perhaps dangers." The advice was homely, but it was too judicious to be neglected. Lebrun hastened to Paris, where he had the mortification to witness the downfall of the master whom he could not avoid regarding with gratitude.

During the first short reign of Louis, the duke was created a French peer, and employed on a mission to Caen. On Buonaparte's return, he had not virtue sufficient to fulfil the oath he had lately taken, and he joined the usurper. For this reason he was excluded by the king from the chamber of peers, but was restored by a royal ordinance of 1819. Being now, however, in his eightieth year, he retired to his house in the country, where he died a short time ago.

Lebrun was always attached to literature. Under the monarchial government, he published a translation, in prose, of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; but his version is said to be more remarkable for elegance than fidelity. About the same time he committed to the press a more arduous translation, which he commenced at college in his youthful days -- the Iliad, also in prose, in three volumes, octavo. This latter work is more popular than the other, and is often reprinted in a smaller size.

"The constitution," says Madame de Staël, whose opinion of the two associates of the first consul will be read with interest, "gave Buonaparte two colleagues. He chose, with singular sagacity, for his assistant consuls, two men who were of no use but to disguise the unity of his despotism. The one was Cambaceres, a lawyer of great learning, who bad been taught in the Convention to bend methodically before terror; the other, Lebrun, a man of highly cultivated mind, and highly polished manners, who had been trained under the Chancellor Maupeou, -- under that .minister who, satisfied with the degree of arbitrary power which he found in the monarchy as it then existed, had substituted for the parliaments of France one named by himself. Cambaceres was the interpreter of Buonaparte to the revolutionists, -- Lebrun to the royalists. Both translated the same text into two different languages. Thus two able ministers were charged with the task of adapting the old system and the new to the mixed mass of the third. The one, a great noble, who had been engaged in the revolution, told the royalists, that it was their interest to recover monarchical institutions, at the expense of renouncing the ancient dynasty. The other, who, though a creature of the era of disaster, was ready to promote the re-establishment of courts, preached to the republicans the necessity of abandoning their political opinions in order to preserve their places."