e the abstract in concrete details; he would see, and he would
depict. There was much philosophy in abstaining from philosophy
overmuch. The _Lettres sur l'Histoire de France_ were followed in
1825 by the _Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre_, in which the
art of historiography attained a perfection previously unknown.
Through charter and chronicle, Thierry had reached the spirit of the
past. He had prophesied upon the dry bones and to the wind, and the
dry bones lived. As a liberal, he had been interested in contemporary
politics. His political ardour had given him that historical
perspicacity which enabled him to discover the soul behind an ancient
text.

In 1826 Thierry, the martyr of his passionate studies, suffered the
calamity of blindness. With the aid of his distinguished brother,
of friends, and secretaries--above all, with the aid of the devoted
woman who became his wife, he pursued his work. The _Recits des Temps
Merovingiens_ and the _Essai sur l'Histoire de la Formation du Tiers
Etat_ were the labours of a sightless scholar. His passion for
perfection was greater than ever; twenty, fifteen lines a day
contented him, if his idea was rendered clear and enduring in
faultless form. Paralysis made its steady advance; still he kept his
intellect above his infirmities, and followed truth and beauty. On
May 22, 1856, he woke his attendant at four in the morning, and
dictated with laboured speech the alteration of a phrase for the
revised _Conquete_. On the same day, "insatiable of perfection,"
Thierry died. He is not, either in substance, thought, or style, the
greatest of modern French historians; but, more than any other, he
was an initiator.

The life of FRANCOIS GUIZOT--great and venerable name--is a portion
of the history of his country. Born at Nimes in 1787, of an honourable
Protestant family, he died, with a verse of his favourite Corneille
or a text of Scripture on his lips, in 1874. Austere without severity,
simple in habit without rudeness, indomitable in courage, imperious
in will, gravely eloquent, he had at once the liberality and the
narrowness of the middle classes, which he represented when in power.
A threefold task, as he conceived, lies before the historian: he must
ascertain facts; he must co-ordinate these facts under laws, studying
the anatomy and the physiology of society; finally, he must present
the external physiognomy of the facts. Guizot was not endowed with
the artist's imaginat