eign Affairs, and seems lo have entered about 
that time, upon a line of policy that was des¬ 
tined to occasion serious disputes, both with 
his colleagues and with the diplomatists of 
Europe. lie had cordially espoused the 
claim of young Queen Isabella in Spain, 
and had joined with the British Government 
in sending a military expedition to her aid. 
The general rule of non-intervention was not, 
yet recognized in those days; Lord Palmkkh- 
ton would break it upon any occasion, for 
the sake of thwarting Russia or France; M. 
fir nuts would violate it with equal alacrity 
for the extension of French influence abroad. 
Hence arose a rivalry between the French 
and the English statesmen, which more than 
once threatened to involve the nations in 
fnegraplpcttl 
with an eagle and a proclamation, which had 
no more success than his similar adventure 
of I83G in Strasbourg. But a further natu¬ 
ral effect was the excitement in France of an 
ignorant wish to avenge upon England the 
fancied wrongs suffered by that, mythical 
hero and demigod of the national idolatry 
who had been sent to pine and die a captive 
upon a rock in the ocean. And, Lord Pal¬ 
merston being still in office here, while M. 
TutEHs had become Prime Minister there, it 
was probable that the pretext for a war-cry 
would soon be at hand. This happened in 
the usurpation of Egypt and Syria by Mo¬ 
hammed Ali Pasha, whom M. Tiiikhs chose 
Lo help in his attempt to wrest those domin¬ 
ions from the Sultan. Never had any Min- 
At the Revolution of February, 1848, he 
was invited, with Odillon Bakrot, to make 
one attempt at saving the monarchy, hut it 
was too late. Ho was never a Republican, 
though he accepted the Republic, and en¬ 
deavored to give it a Conservative turn, 
vehemently resisting the fallacious notions 
and preposterous schemes of the Communists 
and the intrigues and agitations of the Red 
party. Sitting in the National Assembly, 
for the department of the Seine Inferieure, 
lie supported the advent of Prince Louis 
Napoleon as President of the Republic, and 
the French intervention at Rome, fighting a 
duel with the Italian General Bixio upon 
that occasion. lie has always upheld the 
temporal sovereignly of the Pope. In 18b0 
OUR READINGS. 
We give a portrait of this veteran French 
statesman, who has, iu the seventy-fifth 
year of his age, made the tour of Europe— 
visiting London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and 
Florence — to beg the intervention of the 
neutral Courts for the rescue of defeated 
Franco, and has sought to make terms for 
France with Count Bismarck, in the camp 
before Paris. 31. Thiers has exerted him¬ 
self boldly and diligently, and, no doubt, 
also skillfully, in the patriotic mission which 
lie voluntarily undertook imme¬ 
diately after the fall of the-Em¬ 
pire, in the first week of Septem¬ 
ber. His fame was long since 
gained by political and literary 
efforts in a direction likely to be 
popular with the French. All 
the world knows his feats of ad¬ 
dress in former days. Cleverness 
is a French quality, and M. Tiiiers 
must be esteemed the cleverest, 
though not, perhaps, the wisest, 
Frenchman of bis age; while the 
mistakes or defects of his public 
character and conduct were a 
mere exaggeration of those which 
have too often marked the his¬ 
tory of his nation. 
Lours Adolphe Tiiiers was 
born at Marseilles, April 16,17!)G. 
Having been educated at the Ly- 
cee of that town, lie studied law at 
Aix, and was called to the Bar. 
He wrote a prize essay, fora local 
institution, on a theme of literary 
biography; and next year won 
the prize again by another essay, 
sent in a feigned name from Paris. 
Iu 1821, at the age of twenty-five, 
lie went, to Paris, and began writ¬ 
ing for the ComHtutumel as critic 
of the tine arts. Two years later 
lie began his first hook, ILMoire 
de la Revolution Fmncaina. He 
passed from art-criticism to po¬ 
litical controversy; and when the 
restored Bourbon dynasty, in its 
last phase, under King Charles 
X., with Polignac for Minister, 
blundered into a fatal conflict with 
the defenders of tho C h arter, 
Tiiiers wielded Ills pen for eon- , 
stitutioiml liberty, having joined 
Arm and Carrel and Mri.vet, 
the historian, in editing the Na¬ 
tional. it, was at this time that 
Thiers invented the celebrated . . 
happy phrase, Lo Hoi mjne et ne 
{/ouverne pan, which cannot be JfiMjr 
surpassed as a neat formula of 
the creed of Liberal Loyalists 
under a constitutional monarchy 
of the English type. But Charles 
X. and his advisers did not un¬ 
derstand it, in the nineteenth con- ||i||§^ 
tiny, and the event is well known. 
Thiers had done his part, with 
other men of greater standing, to 
carry on that contest against the 
illegal use of the royal preroga- 
tive which brought about the revo¬ 
lution of July. But lie endeavored 
to dissuade the people from insur- :gp§§l 
rection, thinking they had not 
force to succeed. They did suc¬ 
ceed ; and it was he who then pro- 
posed the nomination of Louis 
Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to fill 
the vacant throne. It was he who 
went to Neuilly, with the painter 
Ary Schekeek, a personal friend 
of the Duchess, to convey the offer of the 
crown, the Duke being then absent from 
home. So that M. Thiers was already a 1 
We make the following very interesting 
extracts from “Light Houses and Light 
Ships,” a handsomely illustrated work pub¬ 
lished by Charles Scribner & Co., New 
York: 
Scn-Utrds amt Eight Houmcs. 
Tho glass of the lantern (of a light house) is 
frequently broken by sea-birds, which dash 
violently against it. In a single night, at 
Cape de Brehat, nine panes were shattered 
from this cause. At the light house of Bre- 
li a t a wild duck forced its way 
through two rows of mirrors and 
fell upon tho lamp. A thousand 
of these birdswerc on one occasion 
caught by tho crew of a British 
light ship, who made them into 
a gigantic pie. It is necessary 
to defend with trellis-work the 
lights most exposed to visits of 
this kind. 
A large herring-gull flew against 
one of tho southeastern nm I lions 
of the light room of the Bell Rock 
light house with so much violence 
llmt two polished plates of glass, 
measuring about two feet square 
and a quarter of an inch thick, 
were dashed to atoms and scatter¬ 
ed over the floor. The gull was 
found to measure five feet from 
tip to tip of its expanded wings. 
A large herring was found in its 
gullet, and in its throat a piece 
«>l plate glass about an inch in 
length. 
Fortunately, all sea-birds arc 
not so dangerous. Some of them 
even render navigators service. 
At the South Stock light house, 
near Holyhead, which is situated 
in the middle of an islet, lamed 
sea-birds tire made use of ns sig¬ 
nals. The gulls perch on the light 
house walls and utter loud erics, 
which wave off approaching sea¬ 
men. 'I'liis light house possesses 
n bell and camion ; but the natural 
sigual has been esteemed so su¬ 
perior that tho cannon lias been 
removed to a distance from the 
rock, lest its discharge should 
alarm the birds. The young gulls 
roam about the island among tho 
white rabbits, living in perfect 
harmony with them and providing 
tho keepers with society. 
Kliisiidly of I.lulu Houses. 
Alone, in tho midst of ocean, 
v the light-house of tho Heaux of 
^ Brehat acquires, by its very iso- 
1 at ion, u character of 
severe 
grandeur which profoundly im- 
As Michelet 
presses the voyager 
jlssl: says, it has the sublime simplicity 
of a gigantic sea- plant. Enor¬ 
mous, immovable, silent, it seems, 
in truth, a defiance thing by tho 
genius of man in the teeth of tho 
spirit of the storm. Sometimes, 
says M. de Quai refuges, you would 
ggSf say that, sensible of the outrage, 
P ^j§S tho heavens and the sea league to- 
ggSii gather against the enemy who 
bravos them by its impassibility. 
The impetuous winds of the north- 
^ west roar around the lantern, aiul 
hurl torrents of ruin and whirl- 
winds of hail and snow against its 
solid crystal. Under the impulse 
of their irresistible brculh gigantic 
billows hurry up from the open 
sea, and sometimes reach as high as the 
first gallery; but these fluent masses glide 
over the round polished surface of tho 
granite, which does not offer them any 
holding-place; they even fling long streams 
of foam above the cupola, and dash down 
will) u groan on the rocks of Studio-Bras 
or the shin, 
war against each other. King Louis Phil¬ 
ippe did not like it, and was rather afraid 
of the vivacious pugnacity of 31. Thiers. 
The unthinking part of the nation were de¬ 
lighted with it; for the rising generation, 
which knew and eared little about t.lio mis¬ 
eries of the great war, had been seduced by 
false literary teachers Into a worship of Bo- 
napartist glory, and despised the pacific tem¬ 
per of the Orleans regime. There was a cer¬ 
tain personage at that time hovering around 
| the frontiers of France—Prince l,ours Na¬ 
poleon —who shrewdly observed all these 
symptoms of growing disaffection, and pre¬ 
pared to profit by them. 3Ieautimc the Bour¬ 
geois King still reigned, but would, unfortu- 
nately, govern too much, contrary to the 
maxim of M, TniERS. The end of the first 
decade found his popularity somewhat im¬ 
paired. 
An opportunity for its restoration was 
now given to 31. TnrERS, if it had not been 
for Ids proclivity to squabbles with foreign 
Powers. On the fall of Count Mole’s Min¬ 
istry, in 1810, he was authorized to form a 
new Government, with a very large majority 
of supporters in the Clmmher. He thought 
fit to flatter tho national vanity or to concil¬ 
iate the Bonapautist faction by at once 
arranging to fetch the body of Napoleon l. 
from St. Helena to Paris. The immediate 
consequence was Louis Napoleon’s land¬ 
ing at Boulogne, iu August of that year, 
J with the Conservative majority of the Assem¬ 
bly, he helped to carry tho restriction of 
universal suffrage, in order to prevent the re- 
election of the President. Louis Napoleon 
was by this time obnoxious to that party, 
who suspected him of a design to usurp 
absolute power; while he suspected them, 
on the other hand, of un intention to restore 
the Orleans monarchy. 31. Thiers had be¬ 
come his chief antagonist; and when the 
coup-d'oiat of December, 1851, struck down 
the legislative body of the Republic, 31. 
Thiers was arrested, taken out of his bed at 
five o’clock in the morning, and confined 
some days in the prison of Mazas. 
He was released, but expelled from France, 
and passed some months in Belgium, Eng¬ 
land, Italy and Switzerland, Returning to 
Paris in August, 1852, ha finished his Napo¬ 
leonic history. It was not until 1868, after 
the adoption of a more liberal Constitution 
lor the Empire, that he entered tin: Corps 
Legislatif. 
Ite lias denounced the financial extrava¬ 
gance of the Imperial Government, its wars 
in Italy and Mexico, aud not less its absti¬ 
nence from a warlike behavior towards Prus¬ 
sia four years ago. He has incessantly pro¬ 
tested against the movement of the Italians 
and Germans towards the completion of their 
national unity, and be has taunted the Em¬ 
peror for not daring to stop them. It can¬ 
not, therefore, be denied that 31. Timers is, 
aa much as any Frenchman, reanonsihlo for 
bench of thu Billon. But 
without a quiver the light house supports 
these terrible attacks. Yet it bonds towards 
them as if to render homage to the power of 
its adversaries. The keepers have assured 
mo that during a violent tempest, the oil 
vessels, placed in one of the highest cham¬ 
bers, show a variation iu level of upwards of 
an inch, which supposes that the summit of 
the tower describes an are of more than a 
yard in extent. For the rest, this very pli¬ 
ancy may bo regarded as a pledge of dur¬ 
ability. At least we find it, in numerous 
monuments which have braved for centuries 
the inclemencies of the season. The spire 
ol Strasburg Cathedral, for instance, curves, 
nnder the breath of the winds, its long 
ogives, and its graceful little columns, and 
balances its four-armed cross, elevated 440 
feet, above the soil 
The keepers of flic light house of tho 
Heaux did not deceive 31, de Quatrefnges. 
Observations made in other light houses, 
erected in tin* open sea, confirm tho state¬ 
ment they made to him. If these monu¬ 
ments of human skill and industry are 130 
feet in bight and upwards, their agitation 
becomes sufficiently perceptible to spill any 
liquids in uncovered vessels, to shako the 
movable weights of the mechanism, rattle 
against the sides of the descending tubes, 
and, in a word, to suggest to visitors a vivid 
idea of the roll of a ship. 
lion of Paris, as though he expectad an at¬ 
tack from Austria, Prussia, and Russia com¬ 
bined with one from Great Britain. There 
was no such danger, nor could the French 
statesman have sincerely believed it. All 
that took place was the co-operation of the 
British and allied squadrons with the Turk¬ 
ish forces in reducing Beyrout and St. Jean 
d’Acre for tho Sultan. King Louis 
PniLiFPE, who had cherished the entente 
cordiale , knew better than to declare war 
against England on account of this affair. 
He, therefore, allowed 31. Timers to resign, 
as an unsafe and discredited Minister; and 
3L Thiers boa never held office iu any 
Government since that time. It, is, indeed, a 
singular circumstance that M. Thiers was 
thought of in those days, as a possible 31inis- 
ter of Prince Louis Napoleon, (not that 
31. Timers himself was aware it,) for some 
papers found on the Prince at Boulogne con¬ 
tained the name of 31. Timers us one whoso 
services it would ho well to engage, if possi¬ 
ble, after the success of the Bonapartist 
party. ; 
