Dumont was of different mould.

He was the friend of Mirabeau, the disciple and translator of Bentham,--a man of elegant acquirement, but, in the judgment of Gallatin, "without original genius." De Lolme was in the class above Gallatin.

He had such facility in the acquisition of languages that he was able to write his famous work on the English Constitution after the residence of a single year in England.

Pictet, Gallatin's relative, afterwards celebrated as a naturalist, excelled all his fellows in physical science.
During his last year at the academy Gallatin was engaged in the tuition of a nephew of Mademoiselle Pictet, but the time soon arrived when he felt called upon to choose a career.

His state was one of comparative dependence, and the small patrimony which he inherited would not pass to his control until he should reach his twenty-fifth year,--the period assigned for his majority.