democrat. He was banished for his opposition to Louis
Napoleon, and fled, first to Brussels, and then to the Channel Islands,
launching against his enemy a prose lampoon, _Napoleon le Petit_, and
then a volume of verse, _Les Chatiments_, of marvellous vigour and
brilliancy. During the ten years before this his literary work had been
for the most part suspended, at least as far as publication is
concerned. But his exile gave a fresh spur to his genius. After four
years' residence, first in Jersey, then in Guernsey, he published _Les
Contemplations_ (2 vols.), a collection of lyrical pieces, not different
in general form from the four volumes which had preceded them; and, in
1859, _La Legende des Siecles_, a marvellous series of narrative or
pictorial poems representing scenes from different epochs of the history
of the world. These three volumes together represent his poetical talent
at its highest. He, at other times before and since, equalled but never
surpassed them. In _La Legende des Siecles_ the variety of the music,
the majesty of some of the pieces and the pathos of others, the rapid
succession of brilliant dissolving views, and the complete mastery of
language and versification at which the poet arrived, combine to produce
an effect not easily paralleled elsewhere. The _Contemplations_, as
their name imports, are chiefly meditative. They are somewhat unequal,
and the tone of speculative pondering on the mysteries of life which
distinguishes them sometimes drops into what is called sermonising, but
their best pieces are admirable. During the whole of the Second Empire
Victor Hugo continued to reside in Guernsey, publishing, in 1862, a long
prose romance, _Les Miserables_, one of the most unequal of his books;
then another, the exquisite _Travailleurs de la Mer_, as well as a
volume of criticism on _William Shakespeare_, some passages in which
rank among the best pieces of ornate prose in French; and, in 1869,
_L'Homme qui Rit_, a historical romance of a somewhat extravagant
character, recalling his earliest attempts in this kind, but full of
power. A small collection of lyric verse, mostly light and pastoral in
character, had appeared under the title of _Chansons des Rues et des
Bois_. The Revolution which followed the troubles of France, in 1870,
restored Victor Hugo to his country only to inflict a bitter, though
passing, annoyance on him. He had somewhat mistaken the temper of the
National Assembly at Bordeaux t