of October in that year, the Abbe
Frayssinous, who a few months before had been appointed by M. de Villele
Head Master of the University, commanded me to suspend them. I made no
complaint at the time, and I am not now astonished at the measure. My
opposition to the Ministry was unconcealed, and although not in the
slightest degree mixed up with my course of public instruction, many
persons were unable to separate as distinctly as I did, in their
impressions, my lectures on the history of past ages from my writings
against the policy of the day. I am equally convinced that the
Government, by sanctioning this proceeding, deceived itself to its own
detriment. In the struggle which it maintained with the spirit of
revolution, the ideas I propagated in my teaching were more salutary
than the opposition I carried on through the press was injurious; they
added more strength to the monarchy, than my criticisms on incidental
questions and situations could abstract from the Cabinet. But my free
language disturbed the blind partisans of absolute power in the Church
and State, and the Abbe Frayssinous, short-witted and weak though
honest, obeyed with inquietude rather than reluctance the influences
whose extreme violence he dreaded without condemning their exercise.

In the division of the monarchical parties, that which I had opposed
plunged more and more into exclusive and extreme measures. My lectures
being interdicted, all immediate political influence became impossible
to me. To struggle, beyond the circle of the Chambers, against the
existing system, it was necessary either to conspire, or to descend to a
blind, perverse, and futile opposition. Neither of these courses were
agreeable; I therefore completely renounced all party contentions, even
philosophical and abstracted, to seek elsewhere the means of still
mentally serving my cause with reference to the future.

There is nothing more difficult and at the same time more important in
public life, than to know how at certain moments to resign ourselves to
inaction without renouncing final success, and to wait patiently without
yielding to despair.

It was at this epoch that I applied myself seriously to the study of
England, her institutions, and the long contests on which they were
founded. Enthusiastically devoted to the political future of my own
country, I wished to learn accurately through what realities and
mistakes, by what persevering efforts and prudent acts, a g