LF/lTKll (JN CIIAliLKS I.OYSON. 101 



a sufficient i\'i)resontu[ioii ami infliionce in public life. 

 Witlial, I should not "wish to iiK'ntify niy.sdt ahs<jlutcly 

 "Nvith the policy Avhich iny uncle followed. Jle could 

 not luive «guessed what jnisiiuderstandings and dangers 

 "would spring from the Charter of 181-1. But accepting 

 tlie political establishment of which that was the basis, 

 he endeavored to maintain in their independence and 

 in their harmony, on lln' one hand authority, the safe- 

 guard of liberty as Avell as of order, and liberty, which 

 is, its very self, an inviolable and sacred authority. For 

 this reason, without scrupling for his ycnith, Avithout 

 hesitating before the talent and renown of his powerful 

 adversaries, he attacks at the same time, and not with- 

 out success, absolutism in the person of M. de Bonald, 

 and ultra-liberalism in that of M. Benjamin Constant : 

 the steady middle course of reason and practical good 

 sense, to which it seems as if experience must bring us 

 back at last ! 



And now. Sir, shall I say what most touches me in 

 the works as in the life of mv uncle ? — what I recojznize 

 in him as far above poet or statesman, or, better still, 

 "what I find in both author and citizen, as the sap in the 

 tree, the soul in the body? You have placed at the 

 front of our dear volume the Avords which his illustrious 

 friend, Victor Cousin, uttered over his coffin: "Thine 

 has been a pure life and a Christian death. I must 

 needs remember that this is the only eulogy thy pious 

 modesty would suffer." I have before me a letter writ- 

 ten by the Abbé de Frayssinous to the young poet's 

 mother a few days after his death, which begins thus : 

 '•' It was my office, dear jMadani, to attend upon your son 

 Charles in the illness which terminated in his death. 

 I feel bound to say, for your comfort, that I was well 

 pleased with the state of his mind, and that everything 



