During this period of his life Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonyms (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Gibbon with additional notes in 1812. These works recommended him to the notice of M. de Fontanes, then grand-master of the university of France, and there was some question of attaching him in a subordinate office to the council of state. But on political subjects a radical antagonism existed between the young constitutional publicist and the spirit of the empire. This did not prevent M. de Fontanes from selecting Guizot for the chair of modern history in Paris in 1812. His first lecture (which is reprinted in his Memoirs') was delivered on the 11th December of that year. The customary compliment to the all-powerful emperor he declined to insert in it, in spite of the hints given him by his patron. He had now acquired a considerable position in the society of Paris, and the friendship of Royer-Collard and the leading members of the liberal party, including the your.g Due de Broglie. Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he was at once selected, on the recommendation of Royer-Collard, to serve the Government of Louis XVIII. in the capacity of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior, under the Abbé de Montesquiou. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba he immediately resigned, on the 25th March 1815 (the statement that he retained office under General Carnot is incorrect), and returned to his literary pursuits. The liberal professions of the emperor during the Hundred Days, though backed by Benjamin Constant, did not for a moment impose on Guizot. He was convinced that Napoleon would never govern on liberal principles, and that his power could not last. He was equally convinced that a second restoration of the Bouιbons was the only mode by which constitutional monarchy could be established in France. He therefore applied himself to promote that object, and repaired to Ghent, where he saw Louis XVIII., and in the name of the liberal party pointed out to his majesty that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy—advice which was ill-received by M. de Blacas and the king’s confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent, at the time when France was a prey to a second invasion, was made a subject of bitter reproach to Guizot in after life by his political opponents, as an unpatriotic action. “The Man of Ghent” was one of the terms of insult frequently hurled against him in the days of his power. But the reproach appears to be wholly unfounded. The true interests of France were not in the defence of the falling empire, but in establishing a liberal policy on a monarchical basis and in combating the reactionary tendencies of the ultra-royalists. It is at any rate a remarkable circumstance that a young professor of twenty-seven, with none of the advantages of birth or political experience, should have been selected to convey so important a message to the ears of the king of France, and a proof, if any were wanting, that the Revolution had, as Guizot said, “done its work.”

On the second restoration Guizot resumed office as secretary-general of the ministry of justice under M. de Marbois, but this minister resigned in 1816, and the young statesman was promoted to the council of state and to the general directorship of the departmental and communal administration of the kingdom. But the reactionary spirit of the chamber of deputies, of the royalist party, and of the successive Governments of Louis XVIII., was extremely opposed to the views of Guizot and his friends. Then it was that they endeavoured by their writings and by their speeches to apply broader principles of parliamentary government to France, and to found the party which was known by the title of the “Doctrinaires.” The opinions of the doctrinaires had more of the rigour of a sect than the elasticity of a political party. Adhering to the great principles of liberty and toleration, they were sternly opposed to the anarchical traditions of the Revolution. They knew that the elements of anarchy were still fermenting in the country; these they hoped to subdue, not by reactionary measures, but by the firm application of the power of a limited constitution, based on the suffrages of the middle class and defended by the highest literary talent of the times. Their motives were honourable. Their views were philosophical. But they were opposed alike to the democratical spirit of the age, to the military traditions of the empire, and to the bigotry and absolutism of the court. The fate of such a party might be foreseen. They lived by a policy of resistance; they perished by another revolution. They are remembered more for their constant opposition to popular demands than by the services they undoubtedly rendered to the cause of temperate freedom.

In the eyes of this celebrated party, and in the sanguine spirit of the times, the French Revolution had run its course. It had exhausted the popular excesses of the convention and the military despotism of the empire. The victory of the Revolution over the arbitrary powers of the crown and the unjust privileges of the aristocracy was complete. Power was transferred to the middle classes of society, and their leaders hoped to establish cn the basis of a limited suffrage all the essential rights and liberties of a free people. They hoped at the same time, by the diffusion of education amongst the people, to qualify them more and more for the exercise of these rights. They combated the reactionary and intolerant influence of the church. They opposed the high prerogative doctrines of the ministers of the crown. Their policy was described by the term “juste milieu”—a via media between royal authority and popular government. In those days none foresaw that they were building on the sand, and that before another generation had passed away, their scientific structure of government would crumble into ruins, and France would again traverse the dreary cycle of popular revolutions and imperial despotism. In 1821, when the reaction was at its height after the murder of the Due de Berri, and the fall of the ministry of Due Decazes, Guizot’s relations to the Government of Μ. de Villèle became decidedly hostile. He was deprived of all his offices, and in 1825 even his course of lectures was interdicted. During the five succeeding years he played an important part among the leaders of the liberal opposition to the Government of Charles X., although he had not yet entered parliament, and this was also the time of his greatest literary activity. Within this period he published his lectures on representative government; a work on capital punishment for political offences; a collection of memoirs of the history of England in 26 volumes, and of memoirs of the history of France in 31 volumes j rand a revised translation of Shakespeare. The most remarkable work from his own pen was the first part of his History of the English Revolution from the Accession of Charles I. to that of Charles II∙∙>— a book of great merit and impartiality, which he resumed and completed during his exile in England after 1848. The Martignac administration restored Guizot in 1828 to his professor’s chair and to the council of state. Then it was that he delivered the celebrated courses of lectures which raised his reputation as an historian to the highest point of fame, and placed him amongst the best writers of France and of Europe. These lectures formed the basis of his general History of Civilization in Europe, and of his History of Civilization in France. Our space does not allow us to offer any remark on these well-known publications. But they must ever be regarded as classics of modern historical research, and precursors of the great advance in the treatment of modern history which has marked the last half century.

Hitherto Guizot’s fame rested on his merits as a writer on public affairs and as a lecturer on modern history. He had attained the age of forty-three before he entered upon the full display of his oratorical strength. In January 1830 he was elected for the first time by the town of Lisieux to the chamber of deputies, and he retained that seat during the whole of his political life, that is, for eighteen years. The moment was critical for a representative of liberal principles and an aspirant for power. The Polignac ministry had engaged in a mortal contest between Charles X. and the national legislature, and the election of a popular man of letters by an important constituency was hailed as a triumph of the liberal cause.

Guizot immediately assumed an important position in the representative assembly, and the first speech he delivered was in defence of the celebrated address of the 221, in answer to the menacing speech from the throne, which was followed by the dissolution of the chamber, and was the precursor of another revolution. On his returning to Paris from Nîmes on the 27th July, the fall of Charles X. was already imminent. Guizot was called upon by his friends Casimir Périer, Laffitte, Villemain, and Dupin to draw up the protest of the liberal deputies against the royal ordinances of July, whilst he applied himself with them to control the revolutionary character of the late contest. Personally, Guizot was always of opinion that it was a great misfortune for the cause of parliamentary government in France that the infatuation and ineptitude of Charles X. and Prince Polignac rendered a change in the hereditary line of succession inevitable. The chamber of deputies assumed the powers of a convention, and placed the duke of Orleans on the throne. A ministry was formed under M. Laffitte, and although it comprised the great names of Count Molé, Marshal Gérard, Casimir Périer, and the Due de Broglie, the department of the interior, then the most difficult and important in the state, was allotted to Guizot. Nor was his an inactive administration. The waves of the great tempest w hich had just passed over France were to be stilled, the lives of the fallen ministers to be saved, stability to be given to the throne, confidence in the maintenance of peace to Europe; and, although the Laffitte cabinet was of short duration, these objects were attained. In 1831 Casimir Périer formed a more vigorous and compact administration, which was terminated in May 1832 by his death; the summer of that year was marked by a formidable republican rising in Paris, and it was not till the 11th October 1832 that a stable Government was formed, in which Marshal Soult was first minister, the Due de Broglie took the foreign office, Thiers the home department, and Guizot contented himself with the department of public instruction. This ministry, which lasted for nearly four years, was by far the ablest and most comprehensive that ever served Louis Philippe; it combined men of the highest talents and character, and it rendered incalculable services to the nation and the crown. Guizot, however, was already marked with the stigma of unpopularity by the more advanced liberal party. He remained unpopular all his life, “not,” said he, “that I court unpopularity, but that I think nothing about it.” Yet never were his great abilities more useful to his country than whilst he filled this office of secondary rank but of primary importance in the department of public instruction. The duties it imposed on him were entirely congenial to his literary tastes, and he was master of the subjects they concerned. He applied himself in the first instance to carry a large measure for the education of the people, and to a great extent founded the existing educational establishments of the people of France. In fifteen years, under the influence of this law, the number of primary schools rose from ten to twenty-three thousand; normιl schools for teachers, and a general system of inspection, were introduced; and boards of education, under mixed lay and clerical authority, were created. The secondary class of schools and the university of France were equally the subject of his enlightened protection and care, and a prodigious impulse was given to philosophical study and historical research. The branch of the Institute of France known as the “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques,” which had been suppressed by Napoleon, was revived by Guizot. Some of the old members of this learned body—Talleyrand, Siéyès, Roederer, and Lakanal —again took their seats there, and a host of more recent celebrities were added by election for the free discussion of the great problems of political and social science. The “Société de ΓHistoire de France” was founded for the publication of historical works; and a vast publication of mediaeval chronicles and diplomatic papers was undertaken at the expense of the state.

The object of the cabinet of October 1832 was to organize a conservative party, and to carry on a policy of resistance to the republican faction which threatened the existence of the monarchy. It was their pride and their boast that their measures never exceeded the limits of the law, and by the exercise of legal power alone they put down an insurrection amounting to civil war in Lyons and a sanguinary revolt in Paris. The real strength of the ministry lay not in its nominal heads, but in the fact that in this Government and this alone Guizot and Thiers acted in cordial cooperation. The two great rivals in French parliamentary eloquence followed for a time the same path; but neither of them could submit to the supremacy of the other, and circumstances threw Thiers almost continuously on a course of opposition, whilst G uizot bore the graver responsibilities of power.

Once again indeed, in 1839, they were united, but it was in opposition to M. Molé, who had formed an intermediate Government, and this coalition between Guizot and the leaders of the left centre and the left, Thiers and Odilon Barrot, is justly regarded as one of the chief inconsistencies of his life. Victory was secured at the expense of principle; but none of the three chiefs of that alliance took ministerial office, and Guizot was not sorry to accept the post of ambassador in London, which withdrew him for a time from parliamentary contests. This wa3 in the spring of 1810, and Thiers succeeded shortly afterwards to the ministry of foreign affairs.

Guizot was received with marked distinction by the queen and by the society of London. His literary works were highly esteemed, his character was respected, and France was never more worthily represented abroad than, by one of her greatest orators. He was known to be well-versed in the history and the literature of England, and sincerely attached to the alliance of the two nations and the cause of peace. But, as he himself remarked, he was a stranger to England and a novice in diplomacy; and unhappily the embroiled state of the Syrian question, on which the French Government had separated itself from the joint policy of Europe, and possibly the absence of entire confidence between the ambassador and the minister of foreign affairs, placed him in an embarrassing and even false position. The warnings he transmitted to Thiers were not believed. The warlike policy of Thiers was opposed to his own convictions. The treaty of the 15th July was signed without his knowledge and executed in the teeth of his remonstrances. For some weeks Europe seemed to be on the brink of war, until the king put an end to the crisis by refusing his assent to the military preparations of Thiers, and by summoning Guizot from London to form a ministry and to aid his Majesty in what h·e termed “ma lutte tenace contre l’anarchie.” Thus began, under dark and adverse circumstances, on the 29th October

1840, the important administration in which Guizot remained the master-spirit for nearly eight years. He himself took the office of minister for foreign affairs, to which he added some years later, on the retirement of Marshal Soult, the ostensible rank of prime minister. His first care was the maintenance of peace and the restoration of amicable relations with the other powers of Europe. If he succeeded, as he did succeed, in calming the troubled elements and healing the wounded pride of France, the result was due mainly to the indomitable courage and splendid eloquence with which he faced a raging opposition, gave unity and strength to the conservative party, who now felt that they had a great leader at their head, and appealed to the thrift and prudence of the nation, rather than to their vanity and their ambition. In his pacific task he was fortunately seconded by the formation of Sir Robert Peel’s administration in England, in the autumn of

1841. Between Lord Palmerston and Guizot there existed unhappily an incompatibility of character exceedingly dangerous in the foreign ministers of two great and in some respects rival countries. With Lord Palmerston in office, Guizot felt that he had a bitter and active antagonist in every British agent throughout the world; the combative element was strong in his own disposition; and the result was a...