392 



GUIZOT, FRANCOIS P. G. 



was, moreover, a strange blindness in regard 

 to the future on the part of the statesman. 

 Already, the first mutterings of the storm 

 which, in 1848, was to send Louis Philippe 

 and his family once more into exile, were be- 

 ginning to be heard ; but Guizot heard them 

 only with scorn. In 1844, when the voices of 

 the opposition in the Chamber of Deputies 

 were ringing in thunder-tones of denunciation 

 against his course, he looked down upon them 

 from the tribune coldly and calmly with the 

 bitter but characteristic expression, " These 

 insults cannot reach to the level of my con- 

 tempt." But at length the deluge came, and 

 Guizot, as well as his royal master, was well 

 pleased to have an England to which he might 

 escape. In a little more than a year he re- 

 turned, and was defeated as a candidate for 

 the Legislature, but sought to bring about a 

 coalition of the two monarchical parties. For 

 some years he employed his leisure time in 

 writing political essays, which, first appearing 

 in periodicals, were subsequently republished 

 in a collected form. These, though able, do not 

 seem to have exerted much influence on the 

 nation, for he was not on the popular side. 

 The on-coming years, however, brought greater 

 calmness and discretion, and Guizot, always -a 

 diligent literary worker, returned to the voca- 

 tion in which he was truly great, and in which 

 he will be longest and best remembered. He 

 possessed many of the qualifications for an his- 

 torian, and his historical works have great 

 merits with some defects. His style is admi- 

 rable, giving evidence of great research and 

 clear insight of his subject, a diction stately, 

 elegant, and grand, not so vivacious as some of 

 his compatriots, but also not so frivolous, yet 

 always interesting and attractive. Though a 

 Protestant of the Protestants, a life-long disci- 

 ple of John Galvin, he was never a bigot, but 

 tolerant almost to a fault ; witness, in this di- 

 rection, his hearty and laudatory eulogy before 

 the French Academy of the eloquent Domini- 

 can monk, Lacordaire ; and still later, his ear- 

 nest defense of the temporal power of the Pope. 

 He was, moreover, thoroughly conscientious 

 and honest, and, if r in his careful study of any 

 historical subject, he found facts which were 

 not in accordance with his views or theories, he 

 brought them out with as much clearness and 

 distinctness as if they were wholly in his fa- 

 vor. With these marked merits there are some 

 faults. His grasp of the great principles which 

 underlie all history is weak ; his dramatic 

 power, though not wholly wanting, is far in.- 

 ferior to that of D'Aubigne" or Bungener ; his 

 comprehension of a single act of the great his- 

 toric drama is superior to his capacity to give it 

 its fitting place and share in shaping the nation- 

 al character and destiny. Yet, with these de- 

 fects in mind, it must be acknowledged that 

 Guizot- had few superiors among the historians 

 of the nineteenth century. His first essay in 

 historical writing was the translating and 

 editing, with copious annotations, of Gibbon's 



"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." This 

 was published in 1812. In the following year 

 he published his " Lives of the French Poets 

 of the Age of Louis XIV." In 1816 appeared 

 his first political essay, "Concerning Repre- 

 sentative Government, and the Actual Condi- 

 tion of France." To the same class belonged 

 " Concerning Conspiracy and Political Justice " 

 (1821); "Of the Powers of Government and 

 of the Opposition in the Actual Condition of 

 France " (1821) ; an annotated edition of " Rol- 

 lin's History " (1821) ; " History of Represent- 

 ative Government," 2 vols., 8vo (1821-'22); 

 " Of Capital Punishment in Political Oifenses " 

 (1822) ; " An Essay on the History of France " 

 (1823); two large collections, of papers by 

 different authors, " On the English Revolu- 

 tion," with notes, in 26 vols., 8vo, and of 

 papers relative to the "History of France since 

 the Thirteenth Century," in 31 vols., published 

 in 1823-'36 ; " History of the English Revolu- 

 tion from the Coronation of Charles I. to the 

 Coronation of Charles II.," 2 vols., 8vo (1827- 

 '28). It was while he was thus out of office 

 and a professor in the Sorbonne, also, that M. 

 Guizot edited the Encyclopedia Progressive, 

 and founded the Revue Francaise. 



To this period of his life and labors be- 

 long also the most brilliant of his works, his 

 " Course of Modern History," in 6 vols. (1828- 

 '30) ; his " General History of Civilization in 

 Europe" (1830); and his " General History of 

 Civilization in France," in 4 vols., (1831-'33). 

 From 1830 to 1848, M. Guizot was almost con- 

 stantly in public life, and wrote little except 

 those masterly reports on public education 

 which deserve to be remembered to his honor, 

 and his "Life of Washington," which intro- 

 duced to the French public the correspondence 

 and the writings of Washington (1839-'41). 



During his exile in England, he wrote a 

 stinging political essay "On Democracy in 

 France." This was followed, in 1850, by three 

 severe political reviews, drawing a compar- 

 ison -between the English Revolution and the 

 French, of 1848, not at all to the credit of the 

 latter. 



Of his later works, since the ambition for 

 political life had ceased to agitate him, the fol- 

 lowing are the principal: "Meditations and 

 Rural Studies " (18.51) ; " Love in Marriage " 

 (1855) ; "William the Conqueror; Edward III. 

 and the Bourgeois of Calais" (1855); "His- 

 tory of the English Republic" (1854); "Papers 

 to preserve the History of my Own Times," 9 

 vols. (1858-'68); "The Church and Christian 

 Society in 1861 " (1861) ; " Academic Orations " 

 (1861); "The Parliamentary History of France," 

 a complete collection of speeches delivered in 

 the Chamber of Deputies, from 1819 to 1848, 

 5 vols. (1863); " Three Generations " (1861); 

 "Meditations on the Essence of the Christian 

 Religion " (1864) ; " Meditations on the Present 

 State of the Christian Religion" (1865); "Bio- 

 graphical and Literary Miscellanies" (1868); 

 "France and Prussia responsible before Eu- 



