OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : MAY 28, 1867. 321 



completed till 1840. A quarto volume of the previously unpublished 

 writings of AbeLird appeared under his editorial care in 1836, and 

 three years afterwards he published his translation of Tennemann's 

 Manual of the History of Philosophy. 



These were only editorial labors expended upon the writings of 

 others. The most important of his own philosophical works, many of 

 which had previously passed through several editions, reappeared in a 

 collected form in 1847, in twenty-two volumes. But his literary 

 activity was not even then exhausted. Turning from philosophy prop- 

 er to history and helles-lettres, he found amusement and occupation for 

 his declining years in writing about a dozen volumes of biographical 

 sketches and memoirs, illustrative of the state of French society and 

 politics in the seventeenth century, and perhaps a score of miscel- 

 laneous publications, many of which first appeared in Reviews and 

 other periodical collections. Separate notice should also be taken of 

 his labors in the cause of public education ; two elaborate and exten- 

 sive reports, made by him, under government authority, on the state of 

 primary and public school instruction, the one in Holland, and the 

 other in Prussia and other portions of Gei'many, appeared in 1838 and 

 1840, and had considerable influence in modifying the school system 

 not only in France, but here in America. On the whole, a busier and 

 more productive life, and one more efficient in its action upon the 

 opinions and conduct of men, could hardly be found anywhere in 

 the annals of letters and philosophy. 



Cousin visited Germany for the first time in 1817, and there became 

 personally acquainted with Hegel, whose conversation and writings had 

 a marked influence upon his subsequent speculations in philosophy ; but 

 after the revolution of 1848 he forsook and disavowed this school of pan- 

 theistic metaphysics. Then, also, after he had been for a quarter of a 

 century a leader of the liberal and doctrinaire party in the long warfare 

 between the University and the Church, he read his palinode, and joined 

 heartily in the attempt made by his philosophical associates in the 

 Institute to re-establish, by a series of brief popular treatises, the main 

 doctrines of morality and religion, of order and law, in the minds of a 

 deluded and exasperated populace. His contribution to this combined 

 effort was a singular one ; it was a republication of Rousseau's well- 

 known " Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Truth," with notes and a brief 

 preliminary treatise, both even more earnestly religious in tone than 

 the text. It must have been edifying to the numerous students of the 



VOL. VII. 41 



