Études françaises et anglaises

' Rêveur et raisonneur, dialecticien et mystique, paradoxal et naïf, subtil et puissant, ardent disciple de Hegel et tendre admirateur de Lamartine, Schérer aimait à réduire à néant toutes les argumentations, la sienne comme celle des autres, il avait des exaltations de satisfaction intellectuelle quand il arrivait à se prouver l'insuffisance des explications communes et à humilier la pensée humaine devant les irréfutables découvertes de la science. Puis, alors qu'il semblait accablé sous les ruines qu'il avait accumulées, tout d'un coup, par un mot, un soupir, un regret, il se redressait et, comme l'oiseau mortellement blessé du poète, qui veut mourir au plus haut des airs, il semblait s'élancer vers ce ciel qu'il avait fermé sur sa tête.'

Of the décade that intervened between the résignation of his chair and his establishment as a Parisian

INTRODUCTION Vil

journalist, little need hère be said. He resided mostly at Strasbourg, where he continued his theological studies, and in partnership with M. Colani maintained in the press the cause of libéral Protestantism. A volume of collected essays, Mélanges de critique religieuse, published in 1860, which included philosophie and literary studies, first attracted the attention of the lay public, and Sainte-Beuve generously welcomed a new force in criticism. In one of his Causeries he signalized ' the comparative science, the analytical and argumentative talent, the close and vigorous logic, the vigour and incisiveness ' of the new writer, and assigned him a place in the first rank of living French authors, beside M. Renan and M. Taine. ' M. Schérer,' he adds, ' ne tâtonne pas, il n'hésite pas ; c'est un esprit assis et ferme, qui a en soi de quoi prendre l'exacte mesure de tout autre esprit ; c'est un pair qui rend son verdict sur ses pairs, un vrai juge.'

In 1861 Scherer was invited to join the staff of the recently founded Temps. He removed with his family to Versailles, and, except for a brief lover's quarrel, he remained constant to that journal till his very end. He calculated that he had contributed to its columns no less than 3,500 articles de fond. This did not exhaust his journalistic activities. He acted as French correspondent for the Daily News from 1873 to 1878, besides writing articles de longue haleine on literature, which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. For the remainder of his days Scherer combined the active career of a journalist, who furnishes each day his prescribed amount of copy, and the quiet woodland ways of a philosophera life, the fallentis semita vitae that

Vlll ÉTUDES FRANÇAISES ET ANGLAISES

was Horace's idéal. He had a few intimâtes with whom he was in daily intercourse, but he held himself aloof both from the literary circles and the social life of Paris. His spécial department on the Temps was foreign affairs, and in home politics he took no active part. But in 1870 he was elected a member of the Municipal Council of Versailles, and served as président of the Commission des Logements, a spécial committee appointed to make arrangements for the quartering of the German army of occupation. His intimate knowledge of German well fitted him to play the part of intermediary with the German authorities. In the summer of 1871 he was selected by the Libéral Démocratie Committee of the Seine-et-Oise department as their candidate, and returned by a triumphant majority. In his électoral address he pronounced himself a republican, not only under présent conditions, but in theory. France had lost its faith in royalty and in the divine right of kings, and for it a republic was the only possible form of government. ' La république d'ailleurs est le régime le plus simple et le plus vrai. C'est celui des peuples qui se sentent mûrs pour se gouverner eux-mêmes. C'est celui vers lequel marchent visiblement tous les pays libres.' In the National Assembly he sat with the Left Centre, supported M. Thiers in his project for the reorganization of the constitution, and after the defeat of Thiers in May, 1873, was a steady opponent of the Broglie ministry, and contributed largely to its overthrow a year later. He rarely addressed the House, but was an active member of its committees. At the end of 1875 he was nominated a senator for life, and continued in the Senate the same