_a outrance_
still played into the hands of the royalists and partly justified this
narrow partisanship. Events, however, were to prove here, as in so many
cases, that the party which undertook a pressing duty and discharged it
manfully, gained more in the end than those who shirked responsibility
and left the conduct of affairs to their opponents. Men admire those who
dauntlessly pluck the flower, safety, out of the nettle, danger.

Finally, the influence of one commanding personality was ultimately to
be given to the cause of the Republic. That strange instinct which in
times of crisis turns the gaze of a people towards the one necessary
man, now singled out M. Thiers. The veteran statesman was elected in
twenty-six Departments. Gambetta and General Trochu, Governor of Paris,
were each elected nine times over. It was clear that the popular voice
was for the policy of statesmanlike moderation which Thiers now summed
up in his person; and Gambetta for a time retired to Spain.

The name of Thiers had not always stood for moderation. From the time of
his youth, when his journalistic criticisms on the politics, literature,
art and drama of the Restoration period set all tongues wagging, to the
day when his many-sided gifts bore him to power under Louis Philippe, he
stood for all that is most beloved by the vivacious sons of France. His
early work, _The History of the French Revolution_, had endeared him to
the survivors of the old Jacobin and Girondin parties, and his eager
hostility to England during his term of office flattered the Chauvinist
feelings that steadily grew in volume during the otherwise dull reign of
Louis Philippe. In the main, Thiers was an upholder of the Orleans
dynasty, yet his devotion to constitutional principles, the ardour of
his Southern temperament,--he was a Marseillais by birth,--and the
vivacious egotism that never brooked contradiction, often caused sharp
friction with the King and the King's friends. He seemed born for
opposition and criticism. Thereafter, his conduct of affairs helped to
undermine the fabric of the Second Republic (1848-51). Flung into prison
by the minions of Louis Napoleon at the time of the _coup d'etat_, he
emerged buoyant as ever, and took up again the role that he loved
so well.

Nevertheless, amidst all the seeming vagaries of Thiers' conduct there
emerge two governing principles--a passionate love of France, and a
sincere attachment to reasoned liberty. The first