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of Paris, to undertake the task of organising the movement for establishing lecture-halls and libraries in each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris.

For some time he commanded the second battalion of volunteers in the National Guard, which was dissolved by General Clément Thomas, when the volunteers were replaced by the mobilised National Guard.

M. Claretie was present at most of the engagements that took place under the walls of Paris during the Franco-German war. He rendered signal service to his country on the 20th. January 1871, when, in the capacity of a staff-officer, he negotiated with the aide-de-camp of the Crown Prince of Prussia for a truce, which gave an opportunity for removing the dead from the field of battle at Buzenval.

In February 1871, he was a candidate for the general elections, and offered his services to the Department of Haute- Vienne as a republican. Being unsuccessful, he once more resumed a literary career and devoted himself to it with his characteristic energy, for he wrote some thirty volumes or more of causeries^ and works of history and fiction. His historical works were for the most part suggested by the Franco-Prussian war, and they have appealed strongly to the patriotic feeling's of his