sufficed to preserve him from the contagion. The first year of his residence at Paris was one of sadness and isolation. He fell back upon himself, like all men who, feeling themselves strong, want the means of making essay of their strength.

The following year he became attached as tutor to the household of M. Stapfer, minister for Switzerland at the French court, where he experienced almost paternal kindness, and had opened to him treasures of philosophical learning well calculated to direct and promote his intellectual development. This connexion gave him admission to the salon of M. Suard, where all the most distinguished minds of the epoch were wont to assemble, and where he saw for the first time the woman who was destined to exercise so noble and beneficial an influence over his whole life.

The circumstance which brought about the marriage of M. Guizot was somewhat tinged with romance. Born of a distinguished family, which had been ruined by the Revolution, Mademoiselle Pauline de Meulan had found resources in an education as solid as varied, and, to support her family, had thrown herself into the trying career of journalism. At the period in question, she was editing the Publiciste. A serious malady, however, brought on by excess of toil, obliged her to interrupt labours so essential to the happiness, the existence of those she loved. Her situation threatened to become very critical; she was almost in despair, when one day she received an anonymous letter, entreating her to be tranquil, and offering to discharge her task during the continuance of her illness. The letter was accompanied by an article admirably written, the ideas and the style of which, by a refinement of delicacy, were exactly modelled upon her own. She accepted this article, published it, and regularly received a similar con tribution until her restoration to health. Profoundly affected by such kindness, she related the affair in the salon of M. Suard, exhausting her imagination in endeavours to discover her unknown friend, and never thinking for a moment of a pale, serious young man, with whom she was scarcely acquainted, and who listened to her in silence, as she pursued her conjectures. Earnestly supplicated through the columns of the journal to reveal himself, the generous incognito at last went in person to receive the well merited thanks. It was the young man

just alluded to, and five years afterwards Mademoiselle de Meulan took the name of Madame Guizot.

During the five years, M. Guizot was occupied with various literary labours. In 1809, he published his first work, the Dictionnaire des Synonyme, the introduction to which, a philosophical appreciation of the peculiar characteristics of the French language, displayed that spirit of precision and method which distinguishes M. Guizot. Next came the Vies des Poetes Français; then a translation of Gibbon, enriched with historical notes of the highest interest; and next, a translation of a work of Rehfus, Spain in 1808.

All these works were produced before the author had reached the age of twenty-five, a fact from which the character of his mind may be judged.

In 1812, his talents were sufficiently well known to induce M. de Fontanes to attach him to the university by appointing him assistant professor of history in the Faculty of Letters. Soon afterwards, he obtained complete possession of that Chair of Modern History, in connexion with which he has left such glorious recollections. There was formed his friendship with M. Royer-Collard, then professor of the history of philosophy --a friendship afterwards closely cemented by time.

This first portion of M. Guizot's life was exclusively literary. It has been attempted to make him out at this period an ardent legitimist, caballing and conspiring in secret to hasten the return of the Bourbons. We have discovered no fact that justifies the assertion. By his wife, by his literary relations, and by his tastes, he belonged, it is true, to a certain class, who retained, amid the roughness of the empire, traditions of the elegance and good taste of the aristocracy of the previous age. A sort of philosophical varnish was very much in fashion among the literati of that class, whom Napoleon used to denominate idéologists. They ideologized, in truth, a great deal; but they had little to do with politics. And it is well known, moreover, that it was requisite for the pen of the Chantre des Martyrs to devote itself entirely to the task of reviving the well nigh forgotten memory of the Bourbons in the heart of a generation which had not beheld their fall.

The events of 1814 found M. Guizot in his native town of Nîmes, whither he had gone to visit his mother after a long separation. On his return, the young professor was indebted

to the active friendship of Royer-Collard for his selection by the Abbé de Montesquiou, then Minister of the Interior, to fill the post of Secretary-General in his department. This was the first step of M. Guizot in the path of politics. Although he was placed in a secondary position, his great abilities exerted a considerable influence upon the administrative measures of the time. The partisans of the liberal cause reproached him especially with having, in conjunction with Royer-Collard, prepared that severe law against the press which was presented to the Chambers of 1814 by M. de Montesquiou, and also with having taken a seat in the com mittee of censorship, by the side of M. de Frayssinous. On the other hand, the ultra-royalist faction was indignant at hearing an insignificant plebeian, a professor, a protestant. employed in affairs of state, with a court abbé, talk of con stitutional equilibrium, of balance of powers; to see him endeavouring to conciliate monarchical ideas with the new interests created by the Revolution. In the eyes of the one party, he did too little, in the eyes of the other, too much; Napoleon's return from Elba released him from his difficult position. After the departure of the Bourbons, he resumed his functions in the Faculty of Letters; and two months after, when the fall of the emperor became evident to all, he was charged by the constitutional royalists with a mission to Ghent, to plead the cause of the Charter before Louis XVIII., and to insist upon the absolute necessity of keeping M. de Blacas, the chief of the old regime party, from all participation in affairs. This is the statement of the affair given by his friends, and what seems to prove that it was in fact the object of M. Guizot's mission, is, that a month afterwards, on his return into France, the king dismissed M. de Blacas, and published the proclamation of Cambrai, in which he acknowledged the faults of his government, and added new guarantees to the Charter.

Every one knows what violent storms agitated the Chamber of 1815, composed of the most heterogeneous elements, and wherein the majority, more royalist than the king himself, constantly opposed every measure calculated to reconcile the country to the dynasty of the Bourbons. To say that M. Guizot then filled the office of Secretary-General, in the lepartment of justice under the Marquis de Barbé-Martois,

is to say that, whilst he conceded much, too much, perhaps, to the demands of the victorious party, he endeavoured to arrest, as far as he could, the encroaching spirit of the partisans of absolute royalty. His first political pamphlet, Du Gouvernement Representatif, et de l'Etat actuel de la France, which he published in refutation of a work by M. de Vitrolles. gave the criterion of his governmental ideas, and placed him in the ranks of the constitutional royalist minority, represented in the Chamber by Messrs. Royer-Collard, Pasquier, Camille Jourdain, and de Serres. It was about this epoch, after the victory of the moderate party, the dissolution of the Chamber of 1815, and the accession cf the ministry of the Duke Decazes, that a new word was introduced into the political language of France. It has not been consecrated by the dictionary of the French Academy, for want, perhaps, of ability to give it a precise definition; but it appears to us desirable to furnish, if not its signification (which would be a difficult matter), at least its history.

It is well known that prior to 1789, the Doctrinaires were an educational body. M. Royer-Collard had been educated in a college of Doctrinaires, and in the debates of the Chamber his logical and lofty understanding always impelling him to sum up the question in a dogmatical form, the word doctrine was often upon his lips, so that one day a wag of the royalist majority cried out, Voilà bien les doctrinaires! The phrase took, and remained as a definition, if not clear, at all events absolute, of the political fraction directed by Royer-Collard.

Let us now explain the origin of that famous canapé de la doctrine, which awakens ideas as vague as the divan of the Sublime Porte. One day, Count Beugnot, a doctrinaire, was asked to enumerate the forces of his party. "Our party," he replied, " could all be accommodated on this canapé (sofa)." This phrase also was successful, and the changes were rung on it to such a degree that the multitude came to regard the doctrinaires as a collection of individuals, half-jesuits, half-epicureans, seated like Turks, upon downy cushions, and pedantically discoursing about public affairs.

The reaction consequent upon the assassination of the Duke de Berri is not yet forgotten. The Decazes ministry fell, and the firmest supporters of the constitutional party were driven

from office. Messrs. Royer-Collard, Camille Jourdain, and de Barante left the council of state; M. Guizot accompanied them, and from that moment until the accession of the Martignac cabinet, of 1828, his political life was an incessant struggle against the administration of Villèle. Whilst the national interests of France had eloquent defenders in the Chambers, M. Guizot, who was still too young to be permitted to ascend the tribune, sustained the same cause in writings, the success of which was universal. We cannot here analyze the entire series of the occasional productions of M. Guizot from 1820 to 1822. In one he defends the system of the Duke Decazes, trampled upon as revolutionary by the counter revolution; in another he investigates the cause of those daily conspiracies which appear to him to be insidiously provoked by the agents of government for the overthrow of constitutional institutions. Elsewhere, in his work, entitled La Peine de Mort Matière Politique, without pretending to erase completely from our laws the punishment of death, even for political crimes, he demonstrates, in a grave and elevated style, that power has a deep interest in keeping within its scabbard the terrible weapon which transforms into persecutors those who brandish it, and into martyrs those whom it smites.

Among these political lucubrations, there is one which strikes us as worthy, in many respects, of special mention. In his treatise upon Des Moyens d'Opposition et de Gouvernement dans l'Etat actuel de la France, published in 1821, M. Guizot completely lays bare the nature of his political individuality, and furnishes both an explanation of his past, and the secret of his future career. It was not an ordinary opposition, that of M. Guizot. He defends th public liberties, but he defends them in his own way, which is not that of all the world. He may be said to march alone in his path, and if he is severe towards the men whom he combats, he is not less so towards those who are fighting with him.

In his view, the capital crime of the Villèle ministry was not the abuse of power in itself, but rather the consequences of that abuse which placed in peril the principle of authority by exposing it to a fatal conflict.