394 EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC. 



tific man, and there are very few such men in any century. Those 

 who knew him say that he was a charming companion, and loved con- 

 versation. He was frequently consulted upon knotty scientific points, 

 and his talk, which at first was general, began to turn by degrees to 

 the point in question, and gradually the true solution came forth in a 

 manner which seemed to delight himself as much as the propounder 

 of the question. All speak of his keen sense of wit and humor, 

 and here and there in different periodicals can be found little poem9 

 which testify to his versatility of mind. He was, moreover, a very 

 religious man, and showed the fulness of his nature by his deep and 

 reverential interest in all the problems of life and mind which are 

 concerned in a belief in a future state. 



EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC. 



The death of Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, in the sixty- 

 sixth year of his age, brought to a sudden close a career of remark- 

 able singleness of purpose, independence of character, industry, and 

 success. He was the son of a well-known archaeologist and man of 

 letters, who was attached to the court of Charles X., holding the 

 office of Conservateur des Batiments Royaux. Our associate early 

 manifested the remarkable powers of observation and delineation 

 which have added such brilliancy to his achievements in letters and in 

 art. It is said that even in his childhood he used to amuse the king 

 with portraits of the personages about the court. He was educated at 

 the Lycee Bourbon ; but instead of going to the Ecole Polytechnique, 

 to which he had been destined, and to which the character of his mind 

 seemed particularly to be adapted, he chose to place himself in the 

 atelier of the architect Achille Leclerc. But though he thus seemed 

 to abandon science for art, it soon appeared that the difference was 

 rather in the subject-matter of his study than in the spirit and aim 

 with which it was to be pursued. He soon found that for the purely 

 aesthetic spirit in which the study of architecture was followed at 

 the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he had but little sympathy. The methods 

 which aimed to develop the creative faculty and the powers of design 

 through the cultivation of the taste and imagination were repugnant to 

 him. Architecture, to his mind, was a thing to be investigated, reasoned 

 out, and thoroughly understood ; and he believed that it was to be un- 

 derstood only through a scientific study of the constructive processes 

 upon which it is based, and a scientific study of the monuments that 

 have marked its historical development. Refusing, accordingly, to take 



