a cellar. For company he had occasionally his grandfather
who came to see them, and always, without interruption, an industrious
spider, that worked at the compositor's side, and even more assiduously
than he. There were severe privations to undergo, but there was also
much compensation.

"I had the kindness of my parents, and their faith in my future
prospects, a faith which is truly inexplicable, when I reflect how
backward I was. Save the binding duties of my work, I enjoyed extreme
independence, which I never abused. I was apprenticed, but without being
in contact with coarse-minded people, whose brutality, perhaps, would
have crushed the precious blossom of liberty within me. In the morning,
before work, I went to my old grammarian, who gave me a task of five or
six lines. I have retained thus much; that the quantity of work has much
less to do with it than is supposed; children can imbibe but a very
little every day; like a vase with a narrow neck, pour little or pour
much, you will never get a great deal in at a time."

We have said that in his struggles the aspiring boy knew nothing of
envy. It is to-day his solemn belief that man would never know envy of
himself, he must be taught it. The year 1813 arrived, and the home of
the historian, as well as France herself--it was the time of
Moscow--looked very cheerless. The penury of the family was extreme. It
was proposed to get the compositor a situation in the Imperial
printing-office. The parents, more fond than reasonable, refused the
offer, and strong in the belief that the child would yet save the
household, obtained an entrance for him in the college of Charlemagne.
The tale is told. From that hour he rose. His studies ended soon and
well. In the year 1821 he procured, by competition, a professorship in a
college. In 1827, two works, which appeared at the same time--_Vico_ and
_Precis d'Histoire Moderne_--gained him a professorship in the _Ecole
Normale_.

"I grew up like grass between two paving-stones; but this grass has
retained its sap as much as that of the Alps. My very solitude in Paris,
my free study, and my free teaching, (ever free and every where the
same,) have raised without altering me. They who rise almost always lose
by it; because they become changed, they become mongrels, bastards; they
lose the originality of their own class without gaining that of another.
The difficulty is not to rise, but in rising to remain one's self."

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