458 LOmS ADOLPHE THIERS. 



blocks of material, with which they built and are still building. He 

 seems to have had no conception whatever of the modern science of 

 Energy or even of the principle of equivalent transformations, and yet 

 this whole branch of knowledge has grown up since he began to work, 

 and he himself largely, though indirectly, contributed to its growth. 

 Let us not undervalue his rare and beautiful talent, — a talent which 

 rose almost to the level of genius. For, if there are higher qualities 

 of intellect, there are none which are upon the whole more useful, 

 or which contribute more to the advancement of physical science. 



LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 



Louis Adolphe Thiers, the veteran Statesman and Historian of 

 France, died near Paris on the 3d of September last, in the eighty- 

 first year of his age. He was born at Marseilles, on the 16th of April, 

 1797. Without any early advantages of family or fortune, he won 

 for himself a name and a fame which will not soon be forgotten. He 

 was a man of untiring industry, of extraordinary intellectual vigor, 

 and of intense ambition. Distinguishing himself first as a Journalist 

 in Paris, he soon turned his pen to the preparation of a History of the 

 French Revolution from 1789 to 1799, and had published ten volumes 

 before he had reached his thirtieth year. After an interval of twenty 

 years, he resumed his historical labors; and, between 1845 and 1857, 

 sixteen or seventeen volumes of his great work, " L'Histoire du Con- 

 sulat et de I'Empire," were given to the press. Meantime, he had 

 been a leading and devoted member of the Chamber of Deputies, and 

 more than once a Minister of State, under Louis Philippe. But his 

 most important political services were rendered after the fall of the 

 Second Empire. His negotiations with Bismarck, and his liberation 

 of the territory of France from foreign occupation, were conducted in 

 a maimer, and with a success, which commanded the admiration of his 

 whole country ; and he was soon hailed, almost by acclamation, as the 

 First President of the new Republic. He had resigned that office 

 before his death ; but the Republicans of France still looked to him as 

 their ablest and most skilful counsellor, and relied on him in every 

 hour of difficulty and danger. He maintained to the last that the 

 Republic was the only form of government then possible for his coun- 

 try, and never ceased to urge upon the people to show that " the 

 Republic is a government of order, peace, and liberty." While Thiers, 

 at the period of his death, thus stood foremost among the statesmen 

 of France, he held also no second rank as a writer and an author ; 



