BOOKS.

T HIERS.* THOUGH every private during the first French Empire carried, i i imagination, a Marshal's Won in his kit, no one would have foretold for the vivacious but insubordinate lad, born at Mar- ssilles in 1797, and practising law at Aix in 1820, that he would Lair years later publish the first volume of what probably is tie best history of the Revolution extant. In three years he had set before the survivors of '89 the first picture of that p mfound European upheaval which had its issue in the "Terror." We think it is not held sufficiently in honour. No doubt our information is indefinitely greater than that at Thiers's disposal, but so many partisan accounts of the eventful years between Mirabeau's meteor rush into the dusky sky of France and the struggle of Waterloo have been poured into our ears, that words have "darkened knowledge." Even Mr. Morse Stephen can hardly have read the whole litera- t are of the period; and even at this date the latest serious Eng- lish historian is less fair than Tillers, less lucid in style, less sparing in imaginary portraits, the pet vice of modern writers, who bestow cloven feet or angelic wings on men and women without sufficient estimate of their environment. The ebb and flow of circumstance requires thoughtful and well-informed observation even more than does the action of the chief personages ; and the very defects of Thiers helped him in this direction. In 1841, Sainte Beuve said of him :—

" M. Thiers salt tout, parle de tout, tranche Bur tout. II vous (lira a la fois de quel cate du Rhin doit nattre le prochain grand homme, et combien II y a de dons dans un canon. Voila les Manta ; ii faut dire le bien. Thiers eat resprit le plus net le plus vu, le plus ourieux, le plus agile, le plus perpetuellement en fratcheur et comme en belle humour de connattre et de dire. Quand il expose il n'est pas seulement clair, il est lucide."

Thiers was Liberal; he saw that Liberalism was the winning card in the politician's pack since 1789, but he had courage, while many of the survivors were alive, to write of Robes- pierre's " Mountain " and of the Temple prison with fairness.

A cousin of Andre Chenier, he was not wanting in imagina- tive power, but he used it without ostentation ; and his sobriety of style, like good plate-glass, interposed no colour between the reader and the crowd of figures which he marshals before us. "The high road of history never before was so well paved," says Sainte Beuve, always an admirer of Thiers. The ehreivd sense, the rapid judgment, the good- humoured courage and citizen virtues of the future President, are already indicated in his literary work before he was thirty. "Let us take all things seriously, none tragically," he said, after the disaster of 1870; and he was animated by the same feeling in 1830 and 1848. Though by force of events

A. Thievs. By P. de Ithmusat, Senator, Member of the Institute. Translated by Melville B. Anderson. London T. Fisher Unwin. 12.

often temporising, he was constant in his political principles, in his admiration for English methods of government, and in his enduring friendships. Patriotism was the spring of his life's work, from his first journalism to his pathetic journey in 1870 in search of allies for France.

Thiers made his first serious mark as journalist in Comte de Remusat's " Tablettes Universelles," founded in 1823, and

it is fitting that a Remusat should write his Memoir. He then found work in the Constitutionnel, a paper which, abreast with the Globe, led the attack of the Titans on the gods of the Restoration, in which the Titans were not defeated. The Globe was more professorial and doctrinaire than the Constitutionnel, and Thiers was never doctrinaire, or, even in theory, Jacobin. Facts and action, rather than statistics, fed his faiths. Just

before Louis Philippe was set up as an imitation of our Wil- liam Ill., Thiers, with his friends Mignet and Carrel, started

the National. It was he who drew up the celebrated protest of the journalists against the Ordonnances ; he who deter- mined the candidature of the Duo D'Orleans ; and he who, at

a day's notice, made proof of the ready statesmanship which

afterwards be so often displayed. The small, shrewd man in spectacles, incarnating the Tiers Etat, checkmated the Repub- lican Lafayette, and scattered the Legitimists with such quick energy that Louis Philippe's Monarchy was a surprise

for most parties and men. The young man from Aix was at once elected as Deputy for the capital of Provence. He was at first rather talkative than eloquent, but he was steeped in common-sense ; his ideas were lucid, and his will tenacious.

At thirty-three, he was Under-Secretary for Finance, and two years later Minister of the Interior. He made, however, his chief successes in foreign politics. In writing his history, he had studied them not less than the art of war, by which they are finally controlled. A review of Marshal Gouvion de St. Cyr'a career, published in 1829, proved Thiers's knowledge in both departments of national life ; indeed,

Mr. Disraeli quoted largely from it in his panegyric on the Duke of Wellington, though without acknowledgment. No weapons useful to his patriotism were neglected by the energetic bourgeois ; no minutim of details dis- couraged his zeal and memory. He was probably the most astute "Parliamentary Hand" of his century even at thirty- six, when for his literary performance he was elected Academician. By his fertility of resource and flexibility of talent, he kept his feet on the slack iope of Orleans policy. That excellent type of the Paris citizen, Jerlime Patwrot, exclaims in 1842: "He was my idol, the master of my choice.

He always took it for granted—Heaven knows how justly— that the House was ignorant of the very alphabet of things ; this showed a profound study of the human heart. Thanks to him, I came within an ace of understanding the Eastern Question. Through his efforts I learned that there is upon the Bosphorus a city named Constantinople, where the Turks are in a majority."

Though this is a satire, it shows that Thiers possessed the invaluable power of taking pains. To follow the Minister through Louis Philippe's reign, we can but refer the reader to M. Thureau-D'Angin's excellent history, though he is far from favourable to our hero ; nor can we dwell on his after-politics, except to note that he, for patriotic reasons, helped to pass the Education Bill of 1850. He always supported papal rights while he had a voice in French destinies. Thiers was largely inspired by his early patron Talleyrand ; he was as honest about the Sonderbund dispute as Lord Palmerston was shifty. It was to his credit that he suffered arrest and exile for a few months

in 1851-52; and after that he devoted himself to his fine prose epic of the Consulate and First Empire. A fuller

experience of government and of foreign relations raised it to a higher level than his history of the Revolution. An enthusiasm for his subject, always tempered by good sense, gives both its style and well-arranged matter extraordinary interest. The marvellous achievements of a new society at war with out-worn traditions, and led by the greatest of Con- dottieri, can never fail to interest. In its seventh volume and in the preface to the twelfth, the narrative of Thiers rises to the height of his theme. If he did not "shut his eyes and see statues," he seta in admirable language all the materials we need for faithful judgment. If he was criticised for mention- ing the price of tallow in one passage because it was im- pertinent to the Muse of History, the Muse might remind us that the price of tallow has a great deal to do with the desire of Russia for a southern port on which much European history is based. If he is too dogmatic in military affairs to satisfy the modern military mind, his account of Napoleon's ohief campaigns are still the best we have, pace the admirers of Marbot.

Perhaps enthusiasm for the first Emperor made him more

tolerant of " " during his reign of dreams shadowed by secret societies ; and Thiers never let personal offence come in the way of his patriotism. -Until 1863, however, he did not seek re-election, but during the Crimean and Italian wars his conversations with Mr. Senior show sound estimates of their probably disastrous consequences to France. His independ- ence, tact, and courage in speaking when he had but five deputies to support him in the Chamber, give him quite a different value to that of the strutting Minister of 1840, who lowered all European funds, and made the hearts of pion- pious rejoice by his threats of war. In 1863, the historian of the first Empire realised, as none of the vain and venal courtiers did, that Paris might be again a prey to foreign armies. When the Emperor let the Duchies of Schleswig Holstein be transferred without a protest, Thiers realised the ebbing prestige of his country. Sadowa and the creation of Italy were but the preface to Sedan ; Savoy the example of territorial cession. Even in January, 1870, he uttered a warning which might have saved France the defeat of the autumn. He was supported by thirty-two members against two hundred and twelve, in a scene of violence which was a fitting prelude to that, in a different key, which broke out when disaster brought the rags and tatters of govern- ment to his feet, as the wisest and most capable of French citizens. Thiers would accept no post in the Provisional Council, but all the Members of it urged him to undertake a mission to the principal Cabinets of Europe. At seventy- three, facing a winter which promised to be of exceptional severity, the old man did not flinch from the humiliating task. By the last train that crossed the bridge at Creil he hurried to London, and was received by Lord Granville as an old friend. The Cabinet, however, would not intervene unless Russia was first to attempt the part of peacemaker, which no doubt grati- fied Baron Brunnow as much as it disappointed Thiers. Let us respect the brave old patriot who, not able to reach St. Petersburg directly, travelled by Cherbourg and Tours over the Mont Cenis. He reached Sasa to hear that Italian troops had captured Rome. He did not pause in his journey, except at Vienna, to claim from Count Benet the help that he was said to have promised ; of course, in vain. After sixty hours of train, Thiers reached the Tsar. All that potentate who "rode on the whirlwind" would promise, was to write to ask the King of Prussia that Thiers might visit the King's head- quarters to treat for an armistice. Back turned the uncon- querable veteran to sue for reluctant approval of an armistice not only from the Courts of Vienna and Florence, but from the fragmentary Governments of Tours and Paris. Perhaps his hardest work MS to combat the pride of Paris and the illusions of Gambetta. In the pastoral carriage of the Bishop of Orleans, Thiers arrived at Versailles, and on the way he heard of Bazaine's questionable conduct at Metz. Let us admire with wonder his constancy and moral strength. To consult the chiefs in Paris he had to cross the Seine at Sevres in a small boat, while shells were falling fast. "Do you know what I would call the picturesque in history ?" he remarked to the German officer who went with him. "The destruction of this skiff, which bears deliverance and peace to Paris, by a French bomb." Paris was in effervescence, and Thiers, with some risk, re- turned to Versailles. Every day demanded new resources of tact and self-reliance. Often disavowed by the people he laboured to save, he steadily forged through all obstacles, and at last secured the election of a Chamber and the cessation of war. All this is historical, but in the confusion and dust of the battle the figure of the little Provençal is hardly sufficiently honoured by us. He was returned for twenty- seven constituencies to the new Assembly, and almost unani- mously chosen Chief of the Executive of France, as he deserved to be, by right of sagacious and untiring statesman- ship. His was an almost impossible compromise between the parties who, for more or less selfish reasons, struggled for power over the almost inanimate country. He pursued his course with a tact and economy of language that was, of course, very generally misinterpreted. Seen in the perspective of twenty years, and judged by subsequent events, Thiers remains the hero of the French revival, the true Liberal, who, while perhaps still attached by theory to Constitutional Monarchy, allowed the country to establish the republic it desired. While maintaining social order, he firmly checked conspiracy in every quarter. To him, France was more than forms of government ; to save Belfort was a more pressing duty than to interview the pretenders to the throne. We do not say that Thiers was always dignified, or always a hero, or perhaps even a gentleman ; but he was a master in political sagacity of the less noble kind, and in that shrewd judgment which can make the best use of men and their performance, which keeps the balance steady between genius and mechanical labour. It required a very real and rare genius to observe the juste ntilien in steering the water-logged ship of France through the currents of 1871. "His passionate insistance, his iron will, enabled him to carry his points even with the most obdurate," writes his biographer. He looked after details like his hero the first Consul, that very different personage from the Emperor of 1812. No doubt Tillers was an opportunist ; a politician who watched the signs of the times rather than a doctrinaire, but his op- portunism was of a wider scope than that of the Radicals who have since ruled France. He allowed for inevitable reactions, and left a margin for the unexpectedness of men and of events.. He was in his later life Liberal, to the extent of protecting liberty when necessary by extremely Conservative action.

France may be proud of her bourgeois, who so nobly repre- sented some essentially French qualities which we in England do not sufficiently recognise—reasonableness of intelligence, prudence, and tenacity of purpose with indefatigable working power. He could say in his last speech with truth : "I do not fear for my memory, for I shall not be tried before the tribunal of parties ; before them I should be found wanting. But I shall not be condemned at the bar of history, and to that tribunal I appeal." After he had resigned the Presidency, he spent four years in scholarly retirement among the objects of art which made his house a museum. His pen was not, idle, and he finished a book on scientific philosophy ; but it was his last pamphlet, a summary of the principles which had guided his life, which became a primer of Liberalism for his party. He did not live to see it printed, for death touched him, pen in hand, and in September, 1877, he ended his eighty years of more than common labour. Perhaps the tribute- paid to him by the Chamber on the day of its dissolution four months before had shaken his health. Marshal MacMahon's Minister of the Interior having claimed for his Government the final liberation of France, an immense majority of the Members rose and stretched their hands towards Theirs, and, with a shout, proclaimed his sole right to the name of Liberator. There was but one sentiment in Paris, and its people gave their petit bourgeois a splendid funeral. Was he the last of great Frenchmen, we regretfully ask. It does not indeed seem that modern France has kept up the brilliant race born just after the first Revolution ; but who can tell what reputations are yet to be made ?—not, we trust, by disaster similar to that in which the Minister of Louis Philippe, so disliked by us at one time, proved a civic merit, and even a heroism, which entitles him to the enduring honour not only of France, but of all Europe.