I come to M. Guizot, formerly Minister of the Interior, now Minister of Instruction, and once Professor of History. M. Guizot, full of deep and lofty thoughts, and skilful in their combination, of a meditative rather than an active mind, is by nature less of a painter than a philosopher, but the popular taste pervades his own. He would be as an artist what he is not as a man, and gives at least its full value to the life and the colouring which constitutes the charm of his countrymen and contemporaries. "Mr. Brodie," he says (in speaking of our writer on the English Revolution), "studies and does not see-discusses, and does not paint-admires the popular party without bringing it on the stage; his work is a learned and useful dissertation: mais pas une histoire morale et vivante." So Sismondi complains of the little interest that the old histories of France, notwithstanding their learning, excited, and, in illustrating his own history by romances, shows why he supposed his predecessors to be neglected.

M. de Châteaubriand, whom I have had dif ferent occasions to quote in this chapter, and with whose opinions in criticism and in politics I very seldom agree, has nevertheless said, I think, everything which can, and which ought

to be said, of the two styles of history — the philosophic history of the past century in France, the pictorial history of the present. Eminent as an artist himself, eminent for seizing and painting the costume of each particular time, and bringing before our eyes, as no other writer has done, the feudal customs, and stately and chivalric manners of a sturdier time, he has armed the critic, as it were, against his own excellence, and insisted on the imperfectness of a history which does not mingle thought and philosophy with ardour and description.

"La pensée philosophique," says he, "employée avec sobriété, n'est-elle pas nécessaire pour donner à l'histoire sa gravité, pour lui faire prononcer les arrêts qui sont du ressort de son dernier et suprême tribunal ? Au degré de civilization où nous sommes arrivés, l'histoire de l'espèce peut-elle disparaître entièrement de l'histoire de l'individu? Les vérités, éternelles bases de la société humaine, doivent-elles se perdre dans des tableaux qui ne représentent que des mœurs privées? On the other hand," he continues, "history, as a work, is not a work of philosophy — it is a picture. We must join to our narrative the representation of the objects of which we speak, i. e. we must design and paint. We must give to our person

ages the language, the sentiments, of their time, and not regard them through the medium of our own opinions and ideas-a fault which has been the principal cause of those distortions of facts which have disfigured history. . . . Si, prenant pour règle ce que nous croyons de la liberté, de l'égalité, de la religion, de tous les principes politiques, nous appliquons cette règle à l'ancien ordre de choses, nous faussons la vérité; nous exigeons des hommes vivant dans cet ordre de choses ce dont ils n'avaient pas l'idée. Rien n'était si mal que nous le pensons: le prêtre, le noble, le bourgeois, le vassal, avaient d'autres notions du juste et de l'injuste que les nôtres; c'était un autre monde, un monde sans doute moins rapproché des principes généraux naturels que le monde présent, mais qui ne manquait ni de grandeur ni de force, témoin ses actes et sa durée." Nothing, I think, can be more true, more just, than the ideas which are here expressed, or than the principles which are here laid down."

The historian, to be perfect, should show at once the peculiarities and costume of each separate epoch, and the common feelings and the common passions of all epochs. He should paint the man of the thirteenth century, the man of the nineteenth; he should know that both were men,

under different circumstances, but possessing similar propensities; he should show what is nature, what is her costume-her costume, that ever varies; her naked figure, which is always the same. My object, however, is not to write a general criticism upon history, nor even a general criticism upon the present historians of France, for I find that I have already outstepped my limits, and that I have said nothing of M. Girardin, nothing of M. Michelet,* nothing of M. de St. Aulaire, and his interesting picture of a time so interesting in the annals of France, so replete with the grace and the energy of the French character, so remarkable for uniting the chivalry of an age gone by with the grace of an age advancing. My object has simply been to show that history in France is in a new school-that the modern French historian follows the example of the great old French novelist and comedian, and, like Le Sage and Molière, attempts rather to paint than to explain. Why is this? Authors, since authors have mixed with mankind, have been modelled more

* I ought also, in that case, to have mentioned the very interesting narrative of Charles Edward, by M. A. Pichot, an author who is the more deserving of praise from an English critic, as being the first French critic who introduced modern English literature into France.

or less by their public. The historian's public in the eighteenth century was, as I have said, a public of would-be philosophers and agreeable fine gentlemen, and the historian went trippingly along, now lecturing the one class, now chatting with the other. The historical style of the nineteenth century is different from the historical style of the eighteenth; but the historian's manner has not changed more than his readers have changed. He was formerly read by a clique-he is now read by a country.

It is not only that more men read now than they used to do this has not increased the number of those who disturb the dusty volumes in the Royal Library that treat of astrology and magic-it is not only that more men read than they used to do, but that more men read history—that more men naturally feel an interest in historical composition.

History is, in fact, not interesting far beyond the pale of those whose actions make history, and whose fortunes are affected by it. History would not be widely interesting in a country, where the great mass of the people were slaves and mendicants, without honours to gain or property to lose. History would be widely interesting in a country, where the great bulk of the people were proprietors, and where there