historical manner is exceedingly dry, as also is
his style, though it is correct and not inelegant.

[Sidenote: Michelet.]

A very different writer was Jules Michelet, the most original and
remarkable historian in point of style that France has ever produced.
Born at Paris, in 1798, he was also educated there, and became a
schoolmaster. Soon after he came of age he was transferred to the Ecole
Normale. The Revolution of 1830, owing to the influence of Cousin and
Guizot, opened great opportunities for historical students, and Michelet
was enabled to publish not a few historical treatises, some of a rather
specialist nature, others popular abstracts of French history. In 1838
he was appointed to a chair in the College de France, and, in
conjunction with his friend Quinet, he took part in the violent polemic
against the Jesuits which distinguished the time. He had already for
some years begun his strange and splendid _Histoire de France_,
1833-1867, but he accompanied its progress with a crowd of little books
of a controversial and miscellaneous character. Shortly before the
Revolution of 1848 he began, and soon after the _coup d'etat_ finished,
his _Histoire de la Revolution_. He declined to take the oaths to the
Empire, and so lost the place in the Record Office which he then held.
He died in 1874, and, notwithstanding his incessant literary activity
during his life, various unpublished works have appeared since, one of
which, describing the hunger-pinched population of the Riviera, is a
masterpiece of his volcanic style. This style is characteristic not only
of his great history, but also of his smaller books, of which _Des
Jesuites_, _Du Pretre_, _Du Peuple_, _L'Oiseau_, _L'Insecte_, _L'Amour_,
_La Sorciere_ (the last perhaps the most remarkable of all), are
especially noteworthy. It is entirely unlike the style of any previous
French writer, except that of Lamennais, who was, however, rather
Michelet's contemporary than his predecessor, and that of Victor Hugo,
in some of his more recent work. Broken and irregular in construction,
it is extraordinarily vivid in colour, and striking in the outline of
its presentment. The _History of France_ is a book to which little
justice can be done in the space here available. It is strongly
prejudiced by Michelet's republican and anti-Catholic views, and, like
all picturesque histories, it brings into undue relief incidents and
personages which have happened to strike the author'