[THREE years ago, at a soirée at the house of M. Thiers, the author of this biography asked his assistance in collecting materials for a sketch of his eventful life. He kindly said, "I will give you every assistance in my power. Call on me in the mornings, when I am not so much absorbed by visitors-at six o'clock, if you like. Bring a list of questions. Question me without fear of giving offence. I shall answer truthfully, asking nothing of your friendship, but something of your indulgence.' He was as good as his word. To render him the justice he deserves longer explanations would be needed than the space in these pages can afford.-E. C.]

THE French Revolution had a first and second growth. That of 1789 was associated with the storms, the showers, the sunshine, the wild blasts, the freshness, bloom, and promise of spring. It came up in Floréal and Prairial, and ripened in Thermidor and Fructidor. That of 1830 was brilliant, but autumnal. Its flowers came out on the eve of a long winter, and, save in a few exceptional plants, had no great development. The men of the States-General were impelled by lofty motives; in working for France they conceived they were working for the world. In their estimation the loss of a colony was of small importance compared to the denial of a principle. No. 217.-VOL. XXXVII.

Splendid talents were not wanting in the generation of 1830. But they were deficient in the vis vitæ of youth and the sacred fire that inspires noble aims. Of this second growth M. Thiers was one of the highest types. His long life is closely bound up in the French history of the last half century. The fierce light of journalism which played on him in his zenith, showing with prosaic distinctness his public and private failings, was, as the evening of his career drew nigh, succeeded by a semi-obscurity, which presaged one of the worst political hurricanes of modern times. In his seventy-third year he emerged from the partial retirement in which he had lived after the coup d'état, to save France from wreck. He succeeded beyond the hopes of friends. confident in his great abilities. The task he accomplished has no parallel in history. The difficulties he had to deal with were many and stupendous. He compared himself to a pilot engaged to bring a shattered hulk safely into port in the face of a raging and dangerous sea, with a jealous captain, and a mutinous crew, who threw him overboard the moment he had refitted the ship. Thiers, President of the Third Republic, well redeemed the errors into which intemperate love of action, passion for his country's glory, and ambition, had hurried him in younger life. His political sun

may be said to have set when he was ejected from the Presidency in 1873. But after it went down its rays shot up from below the horizon, and cast upon the illustrious octogenarian a brighter glow than it ever did at any carlier period of his career.

There was not much that was epic in the astonishingly rapid and successful struggles of M. Thiers-first against poverty, and then for fame and power. It was not that he was destitute of courage, for in him that quality was carried to the extreme of intrepidity and audacity. But it was allied with an amount of address which we do not generally associate with the heroic character. He was rather the hero of a child's story, than of a poem intended to celebrate great faculties and surplus activities devoted to great ends, although he was in no small measure endowed with both. From youth to old age, when a nettle was raised to strike him, he never shrank from roughly handling it. But he preferred, when it was possible, to talk the person who flourished it into laying it down. Violent conflict with an enemy was repugnant to him. He was often called a worshipper of force, but in reality he had small sympathy with it when not manifestly directed by intellect. In northern races, the barbarian constantly breaks out in the finest gentleman. There was not a trace of barbarism in Thiers, notwithstanding the poverty in which he was reared. Bismarck, who is not a man of very delicate feeling, was charmed with his super-civilisation, and at Versailles complimented him upon it. "Talk on, talk on, I beseech you," he said to him, when they had laid aside grave business for lighter conversation. "It is delightful to listen to one so essentially civilised." There was not a trace of the primitive man in Thiers. He was the heir, truly, of all the ages in the foremost rank of time, and of the races who made the Mediterranean basin the centre of antique civilisation.

M. Thiers was born in a troublous

period of the world's history. The eighteenth century was going out in social and political storm and upheavals at the time of his birth, which happened at Marseilles on the 16th of April, two years and nearly nine months before the nineteenth century, with its mechanical and industrial revolutions, came in.

In the diary of the physician who attended at this event, this curious entry was made-" A cinq heures ce matin, j'ai assisté à l'accouchement de la fille d'Amic. Douleurs des plus vives, et prolongés pendant vingt heures. Présentation mauvaise. Temps de gestation presque dix mois. Enfant du sexe masculin, turbulent, et très viable, quoique ses membres inférieurs sont peu développés. La jeune mère était en proie à des grands chagrins, ce qui explique ces accidents. Son mari s'est sauvé de chez lui, et elle ne sait pas ce qui lui en est devenu. femme Lhommaça s'est trouvée auprès de sa fille."

La

An inauspicious entrance truly on life's stage! The deserted young wife, whose miseries are thus briefly recorded, had, ten months previously, made a love match, and in consequence quarrelled with her family. They were of Levantine origin, and, among themselves, spoke in the Greek dialect. "The woman Lhommaça" was the aunt of the poet Chénier, and the wife of an enterprising and rich merchant named Amic. Taking pity on her daughter in her distress, she gave her and a tribe of step-children shelter in a house belonging to herself, which happened to be unlet. It was then numbered 15, in the fifth isle, or block, of the Rue des Petits Pères, a new street, connecting the Place St. Michel with the suburb of La Plaine, and called after a Jesuit confraternity which had formerly established itself on a property through which it ran.

"40"

is the number this house now bears. It is valued at 22,000 francs, but was not worth half that sum in 1797. Madame Amic mortgaged it in 1816,