1819] Sismondi 129 



claiming descent from the noble Pisan family of that name. 

 At this time (1819) he was a person of importance in the 

 literary world, having lately completed his history of the 

 Italian Republics, the work which made his fame. He had 

 passed through great troubles and dangers in early life. At 

 the time of the Terror in Paris (1794), there was a similar 

 outburst of democratic fury at Geneva, and he and his 

 family narrowly escaped being massacred. They fled to 

 Tuscany, losing most of their property. On getting back to 

 Geneva Sismondi devoted himself to literature, and attached 

 himself to the circle of Mme de Stael at Coppet. At this 

 time, being quite poor, he wrote hundreds of articles in 

 Michaud's Biographie Universelle at six francs an article. 

 It was just about the time of his engagement that he began 

 his great Histoire des Franqais, at which he worked some 

 eight or ten hours a day for twenty -three years. He died 

 when finishing the 28th volume. One more was added after 

 his death to complete the work. It was the first continuous 

 history of France, and made him the foremost historian of 

 his time. St Beuve, in one of his Nouveaux Lundis (Vol. vi., 

 1866), gives it great, though curiously qualified praise: " Si 

 j'avais a conseiller a une jeune personne serieuse, a une 

 lectrice douee de patience, un livre d'histoire de France qui 

 ne faussat en rien les idees, et ou aucun systeme artificiel 

 ne rnasquat les faits, ce serait encore Sismondi, que je 

 conseillerais de preference a tout autre." 1 Sismondi 

 wrote several books on Political Economy, wherein he 

 attacked tooth and nail the fundamental principles of the 

 orthodox economists. Some of his denunciations of com- 

 petition, machinery, etc., remind one of the utterances of 

 Ruskin. He advocated what we now know as ' profit- 

 sharing." 



In earlier and later life Sismondi gave proofs that he was 

 a man of courage. During the Terror of 1794 a proscribed 

 Syndic fled for refuge to the country-house of Sismondi's 

 mother, which touched the French frontier. There the f ugi - 

 tive was hidden in a pavilion in the garden. At midnight 

 troops were heard approaching. Sismondi rushed to wake 

 the Syndic, but could not rouse him ; whereupon he tried, 

 alone, to resist the soldiers as they attacked the door of the 



1 Sir George Trevelyan, in commenting on this passage in a letter 

 to a friend, writes: " I have no doubt whatever that the quotation 

 from St Beuve refers to Michelet's History, which is at the same 

 time the best history of France and the most nastily improper 

 history in existence." 



