I.31. Les 'Pensées' de Pascal. Pascal, 1623-1662. Thèse

adversaria, notes for a defence of Christianity, were found among his papers and published after his death.

Page 55. 1. 3. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1737-18 14. Theimmortal Paul et Virginie was a chapter of his Etudes de la Nature, in which he pressed final causes, those ' barren virgins dedicate to God ', as Bacon called them, to an absurdity. ' The melon is large because it is designed for the family ; the pumpkin is larger because Providence intended that it should be shared with our neighbours.'

I.13. quianonsunt. Jeremiah xxxi. 15 : ' Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.' Quoted from the Vulgate.

Page 56. 1. 9. l'esprit : ' wit,' in the older sensé of the word, as in Dryden's ' Great wits to madness sure are near allied ', will exactly render esprit. If this rendering is barred as obsolète, we must resort to ' intelligence ' or ' clearness ', but neither of them gives the point of the proverbial saying.

Thiers.

With Thiers the statesman we are not hère directly concerned, and it will be sufficient to bear in mind that at the time this essay was written the historian was greater than the politician. No one could hâve foreseen in 1860 that Thiers was destined to prove the liberator of his country from a foreign yoke, the represser of anarchy, and the inaugurator of a settled form of government.

Louis Adolphe Thiers was born at Marseilles 1797, the son of a dock labourer. He gained a scholarship at the Marseilles Lycée, studied law at Aix, and was called to the Bar. An anecdote of his youth is worth recording, as showing his precocious versatility. The Academy of Aix set as the subject of a literary compétition an éloge of Vauvenargues. Thiers sent in two essays, treating the subject from différent points of view, and obtained both the prize and the accessit.

In 1821 he went to Paris with his fellow-student and lifelong friend Mignet, and joined the staff of the Constitutionnel. He at once made his mark as a political leader-writer, and became one of the principal shareholders in that important paper. Talleyrand's untranslatable mot is worth remembering, ' Ce jeune homme n'est pas parvenu, il est arrivé.'

In 1823 appeared the first two volumes of his Histoire de la Révolution française, completed in ten volumes in 1827. His professed object was, when first it was possible, after the passions

NOTES. PAGES 54-58 l6l

of the time had cooled down, to write in cold blood {sine ira aut studio) a full and impartial narrative of events. As he puts it in the préface : ' J'ai tâché d'apaiser en moi tout sentiment de haine ; je me suis tour à tour figuré né sous le chaume, animé d'une juste ambition, je voulais acquérir ce que l'orgueil des hautes classes m'avait justement refusé ; ou bien qu'élevé dans les palais, héritier d'antiques privilèges, il m'était douloureux de renoncer à une possession que je prenais pour une propriété légitime. Dès lors, je n'ai pu m'irriter ; j'ai plaint les combattants, et je me suis dédommagé en adorant les âmes généreuses.' As a fact, it is a rehabilitation of the great revolutionary epic, an exposition of Thiers' guiding principle as an historian, 1 Whatever is is right,' a prélude to his opus magnum, which might well be named the Napoleoniad.

He was a leader in the july Révolution, and the National, which he founded at the beginning of 1830, had no small influence in bringing it to pass. It was Thiers who drew up the protest of the journalists and the Orleanist déclaration, published in the National, and it was Thiers who headed the deputation that waited on Louis-Philippe at Neuilly, inviting him to proclaim himself king. His theory of monarchy is summed up in his famous saying, ' Le roi règne et ne gouverne pas.' Turned out of office by Guizot, his rival both in literature and in politics, Thiers in 1840 resumed his work as an historian. In 1845 appeared the first volume of L'Histoire du Consulat, and ten years later the last volume of L'Histoire de l'Empire. In 1855 tne complète work in twenty volumes was published, L'Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire. We reserve for the notes such observations and criticisms as seem required for a full understanding of the scope and value of the history.

To conclude the life, Thiers took no part in the Révolution of 1848. He accepted republicanism as a pis aller : ' La République est le gouvernement qui nous divise le moins.' Arrested after the coup d'État, he suffered a year's banishment. In 1863 hewas re-elected to tbe Chamber. After the downfall of the Second Empire he conducted with consummate ability the negotiations for peace, and was chosen first Président of the Republic, a post which he held till 1873. He died in 1877.

Thiers.

Page 58. 1. 7. // gagnerait la bataille de Waterloo. A délicate pièce of satire wrapped up in a compliment. Scherer's prophecy was more than fulfilled. Thiers' Battle of Waterloo is the apotheosis of his hero. It is the éléments themselves that bring

about the defeat : ' Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Thiersi.' Colonel Charras, no less than English critics, bas pointed out his travesty of fact. The treatment of the same subject by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, and by Erckmann-Chatrian, should be compared.

1. 16. comme journaliste. See Introduction. As an orator Thiers showed the same qualities as a writer — fluency (a greater quality in a speaker than in a writer), lucidity, and logical arrangement.

1. 22. F exactitude des recherches. He tells us in the introduction to his History : ' J'ai lu, relu, et annoté de ma main les innombrables pièces contenues dans les archives de l'État, les trente mille lettres composant la correspondance personnelle de Napoléon, les lettres non moins nombreuses de ses ministres, de ses généraux, de ses aides de camp, et même des agents de sa police, enfin la plupart des mémoires manuscrits conservés dans le sein des familles. . . . J'ai de la sorte employé quelquefois une année à préparer un volume que deux mois me suffiraient à écrire, et j'ai fait attendre le public, qui avait bien voulu attacher quelque prix au résultat de mes travaux.'

Page 59. 1. 5. Vun des ministres. Directly after the July Révolution he was made a Councillor of State, and attached to the department of finance. He was in the ministry of Laffitte and of Casimir Périer, and in 1832 was Home Secretary under Marshal Soult, and Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1836.

1. 19. Les Girondins appeared in 1847. Jullian calls it ' la plus belle œuvre de prose qu'un poète ait écrite,' but it is a romance rather than a history.

I.27. l'intelligence. Thiers explains admirablywhathemeans by the word. ' On remarque souvent chez un enfant, un ouvrier, un homme d'Etat, quelque chose qu'on qualifie d'abord par le nom d'esprit, parce que celui qui en paraît doué saisit sur-lechamp ce qu'on lui dit, entend à demi-mot, comprend s'il est enfant ce qu'on lui enseigne, s'il est ouvrier l'œuvre qu'on lui donne à exécuter, s'il est homme d'État les événements, leurs causes, leurs penchants, la conduite qu'il faut en attendre, et n'est surpris, embarrassé de rien, quoique souvent affligé de tout. C'est là ce qui s'appelle l'intelligence, et bientôt à la pratique cette simple qualité, qui ne vise pas à l'effet, est de plus grande utilité dans la vie que tous les dons de l'esprit, le génie excepté, parce qu'il n'est, après tout, que l'intelligence elle-même, avec l'éclat, la force, l'étendue, la promptitude.'

Page 60. 1. 3. Carlyle. In his Heroes and Hero-Worship — the hero as priest,king, poet, &c. — Emerson. In his Représentative M en.

1. 10. l'homme à la redingote grise. As in Béranger's On parlera de sa gloire.

1. 12. Canova. His colossal marble statue of Napoléon was exhibited in Paris in 1812. It is thus described by Quatremère: ' Cette figure, n'ayant d'autre vêtement qu'une draperie tombant du bras gauche, tient de la main droite, avancée et isolée du corps, une petite statue de la Victoire en métal, et, de la main gauche, un long sceptre, qui, dans la plus grande partie de sa hauteur, se trouve accoté à la draperie. Un tronc d'olivier sert d'accompagnement à la cuisse et à la jambe droite, et de soutien obligé à la masse totale. Un large sabre est attaché à ce tronc de manière à rompre l'uniformité des lignes.'

1. 31. chauvinisme, nearly équivalent to our ' jingoism ', though the latter is applied only to bellicose sentiments. American 1 spreadeagleism ' is a closer équivalent. The word is taken from a character in one of Scribe's plays, Le Soldat laboureur. Chauvin is a soldier of the Grande Armée.

1. 33. Victoires et Conquêtes. The full title is Victoires et Conquêtes des Français, an anonymous miscellany which appeared between 18 17 and 1829, and ran to fifty-eight volumes. An embodiment of Chauvinism.

Page 61. 1. 2. appréciations, ' judgements,' favourable or unfavourable.

1. 6. certains actes politiques de Napoléon. A good instance is his comment on the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, of which he disapproves, but adds, ' Douloureux spectacle, où tout le monde était en faute, même les victimes.'