616 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (TREITSCHKE VERLAINE.) 



turned to office with a majority behind him, and 

 again brought forward his schemes for the economic 

 and financial regeneration of Greece, which were 

 interrupted by the Bulgarian annexation of East- 

 ern Roumelia, for which the Greeks demanded com- 

 pensation. The Government prepared to act, and 

 yielded only to the menaces of the Western powers, 

 whose naval forces blockaded the Piraeus. The 

 military preparations had greatly increased the 

 public debt and added to the financial difficulties 

 that stood in the way of his projects, but Trikoupis, 

 nevertheless, built roads and railroads, and, by in- 

 curring new risks and obligations on a large scale, 

 hoped to rescue Greece from financial embarrass- 

 ment by increasing the economic resources of the 

 kingdom. All his calculations depended upon the 

 value of the paper money rising to par. This as- 

 sumption was not realized, and when the Govern- 

 ment was unable longer to meet its obligations on 

 a metallic basis he attempted to effect a compromise 

 with the bondholders. He failed to make terms, and 

 in the general election of 1895 met with a crushing 

 defeat, even losing his own seat that he had held for 

 thirty years. While on his deathbed he was re- 

 turned in a by-election for the neighboring dis- 

 trict of Valtos. 



Treitschke, Heinricll von. a German historian, 

 born in Dresden, Sept. 15, 1834; died in Berlin, 

 April 28, 1896. He was the sun of a lieutenant 

 general in the Saxon army, and studied in Bonn. 

 Leipsic, Tubingen, and Heidelberg. He identified 

 himself early with the national party, looking to 

 the unification of Germany under the Prussian 

 headship, and in 1856 published a collection of 

 patriotic lyrics entitled ' Vaterlandslieder." Pur- 

 suing historical studies for his profession, he de- 

 livered to the students of Leipsic a course of lectures 

 that gained for him in 1863 the chair of History at 

 Freiburg. This he resigned in 1866, because Baden 

 sided with Austria in the war with Prussia. Pro- 

 ceeding to Berlin, Treitschke undertook the editor- 

 ship of the " Preussische Jahrbiicher." lie accepted 

 the chair of History at Heidelberg in 1867, where he 

 remained till he was invited to the same chair in 

 Berlin in 1874. On the death of Leopold von Ranke 

 he was appointed in addition historiographer to the 

 Prussian state. From the first Reichstag in 1871 

 till 1888 he had a seat from Kreuznach, and acted 

 with the National Liberal party. His chief work is 

 the " History of Germany in the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury," which was not finished. In this and in 

 his minor works, such as " Ten Years of German 

 Struggles." " Socialism and its Patrons," and " Two 

 Emperors," he glorified in brilliant style the achieve- 

 ments of German imperialism, and defended Bis- 

 marck's policy with trenchant dialectics. 



Trocliu. Louis Jules, a French soldier, born 

 near Bellisle, March 12/1815; died Oct. 7, 1896. 

 He was educated for the army at St. Cyr, served 

 with distinction in Algeria under Gen. Bugeaud, 

 and during the Crimean War was aid-de-camp to 

 Marshal St. Arnaud, and afterward commander of 

 a brigade, having been made brigadier general in 

 1854. In the Italian campaign of 1859 he fought 

 with distinction as a general of division. When 

 the war with Prussia broke out he was called from 

 retirement to organize and take command of the 

 12th Corps, formed at Chalons. On Aug. 17, 1870 

 the Emperor Napoleon appointed him Governor of 

 Paris and commandant of the forces for the defense 

 of the capital. He announced in his letter of ac- 

 ceptance that he would preserve order in Paris by 

 moral force only. He ordered the expulsion of all 

 Germans domiciled in Paris, and in consequence of 

 this decree Gambetta proposed in the Assembly 

 that all power be concentrated in the hands of the 

 general. Thus constituted dictator, he signed a de- 



cree declaring the Assembly dissolved and the Sen- 

 ate abolished, and henceforth till the surrender of 

 the city to the Germans the principal decrees for 

 the defense of the city emanated from him. In 

 1871 Gen. Trochu was elected to the Chamber by 

 seven constituencies. He took his seat from Morbi- 

 han, and voted with Gambetta. He resigned his 

 seat in 1872, and in 1875 retired from the army. 



Tuke, James Hack, an English philanthropist, 

 born in York in 1820; died Jan. 13, 1896. He came 

 from a family identified with commerce, members 

 of the Society of Friends, and founders of the York 

 Retreat for the humane treatment of the insane. 

 He first interested himself in the relief of sufferers 

 from the Irish famine of 1846-'47. In 1871 he went 

 to Paris to distribute food among the people fam- 

 ished during the siege just terminated. After the 

 failure of the crops in the west of Ireland in 1880 

 he applied himself to the work of relieving the tem- 

 porary distress, after which he studied the question 

 of permanently improving the condition of the 

 peasantry of the congested districts. After visiting 

 America for the purpose of examining the pros- 

 pects of assisted emigration, he established in 1882 

 the Tuke fund, by means of which nearly 10,000 

 Irish were transported in three years and settled in 

 America by families, for which purpose 24,000 was 

 raised by private subscription and 44,000 was 

 added by the Government. After distributing seed 

 potatoes in Mayo and the Island of Achill in isso, 

 he suggested the promotion of fisheries and local 

 industries, and the building of light railways, for 

 which the Government brought in bills. 



Verlaine, Paul, a French poet, born in Paris in 

 1844 : died there Jan. 8, 1896. His father was a cap- 

 tain of engineers. He obtained his bachelor degree 

 at the Sorbonne, and entered the municipal service 

 of Paris as a copyist. lie had published in 1865 

 a volume of verse entitled " Poemes Saturniens," 

 singular in conception and highly finished in 

 form, showing in a marked manner the influence of 

 Gautier and Baudelaire. He married the daughter 

 of a musical friend, M. de Sivry, courting her in 

 the verses collected under the title " La Bonne 

 Chanson." Verlaine served with noble courage as 

 a national guard in 1870 during the siege of Paris, 

 and under the Commune he was chief of the press 

 bureau. He left his wife, who afterward obtained 

 a divorce on account of his unfaithfulness, and he 

 was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Bel- 

 gium for wounding the companion of his wander- 

 ings, a young poet named Rimbaud, with a pistol 

 shot. While serving his sentence in Mons he was 

 converted to the Catholic faith, and under tne in- 

 fluence of religious emotion he wrote poetical mas- 

 terpieces. When he returned from prison to Paris 

 he found himself without a family and deserted by 

 his former friends, except some sympathetic poets, 

 who gave him money whenever he was in extremity. 

 He lapsed into an absinthe drunkard, pauper, vaga- 

 oond, and occasional criminal, and finally became a, 

 partial paralytic, spending his life between the hos- 

 pital and the cafe, and oscillated between licentious 

 self-indulgence and remorse, between criminal im- 

 pulse and religious ecstasy. All his moods were 

 reflected in his poetry, which is variable in substance 

 and in the quality of its inspiration, but in point of 

 artistic form is distinguished for flexibility and per- 

 fection of expression and for its melodious versifica- 

 tion. " Sagesse," containing religious poems written 

 in a monastic retreat, was published in 1881. It 

 marked him out as the leader of the symbolist 

 school of poetry, and a model for the decadents. 

 His experience in penitentiaries he described in a 

 book called " Mes Prisons," and his hospital days 

 in "Mes Ilopitaux." In his later volumes of verse 

 he sacrificed the force and clearness of the idea too 



