orders were given him by all the nobles of the court of Henri II.; among others, by the Duc de Montmorency, who employed him to decorate his stately chateau of Ecouin. One of the salons was paved with tiles of Palissy's porcelain; these still remain perfect, unless where the design has been destroyed by the introduction of one of those huge N's which, during the Empire, were made to disfigure all the ancient public edifices of France.

It was while he was working for the Connètable de Montmorency, that the artist had to undergo a new species of persecution. Being a strict Huguenot, his manufactory was denounced by the Commission under the command of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; and the Catholics of Saintes caused him to be arrested and sent to Bordeaux, to be burnt at the stake. But the reputation of Palissy was then so deservedly great, that, having presented a memorial to the queen-mother, Catharine de Medicis, he was rescued by her intervention from this terrible sentence. It was probably in gratitude for her interference that he invented the miniature statues, or figulines, of the king and queen-mother, to which he frequently recurs a name derived from figulus, or working in clay.

Thus driven from his native place, Palissy established himself in Paris, where he commenced the first collection of natural history ever attempted in France, and a series of experiments in chemistry and metallurgy of the highest importance. Georges Agricola, who passes among the French for the father of the latter science, was just then publishing his treatises on mineralogy. But he wrote in Latin, of which Palissy did not understand a word; and it was the laborious experimentalist who was the first to communicate to his countrymen the contents of the bowels of the earth. The first course of public lectures ever given in Paris was delivered by Palissy, who placarded the walls of that city with an intimation that, for the price of one crown, he was ready to communicate to all who were desirous of information, the whole of his discoveries in physics and natural history, and to argue with those who were prepared for refutation. Such as were not satisfied with his instructions were to receive back their crown on demand. Palissy has informed us that the crown was not in a single instance demanded; and he has also furnished us with a list of his audience, which comprised the leading nobles, prelates, and magistrates of

the time. In order to appreciate the merit of his undertaking, be it understood that at that period a royal astrologer monopolised the scientific patronage of the court, and that alchemy was cultivated not alone by the ignorant, but by the learned of the times. The city was, moreover, distracted by civil wars, and the bold lecturer, without understanding a word of the learned languages, had thus thrown down the gauntlet to all the philosophers of the age, belonged to the persecuted party. Nevertheless, he continued to assemble around him the most remarkable personages among the learned of the day; and the simple-hearted but enthusiastic old potter, after wasting his best days over his wretched furnace, had the glory of enlightening the minds of the most enlightened.

In that original course of lectures, the branch of science to which Cuvier and Agassiz have added in our time such remarkable illustrations, was first called into existence. Palissy was the first to assert that the fossil shells and plants hitherto esteemed a sport of nature, were the identical objects in a state of transformation. The modern theory of the earth was shadowed forth in his assertions concerning the nature and origin of fossil fishes, which for more than a century afterward were suffered to lie dormant. By this wondrous instinct of an uninstructed mind, the memory of Palissy became exposed to the sneers of the more learned, but far more ignorant, Voltaire, who speaks of him as "a visionary." "Palissy. and his shells" afforded a fertile theme for the pleasantries of one to whom a jest was more available than a fact.

Poor Palissy had now tasted as largely of the sweets of fame and prosperity as was compatible with the evil spirit of the hour. While still collecting around him a host of cager disciples, he was seized and flung into prison. But for the intervention of the Duc de Mayenne, immediate execution would have followed his arrest, and the venerable professor, who was now eighty-eight years old, was incarcerated in the Bastille to secure him from an ignominious death.

Some months afterwards he was visited in prison by Henri III., who was making a tour of inspection of what he termed his 'heretic-coop." "Mon bonhomme," said his Majesty, “unless you can manage to conform in matters of religion, I am under the necessity of giving you up to your enemies."

"Sire," replied the poor old man, "I am content to dedicate the

remnant of my days to the glory of God. I am sorry to hear so great a king pronounce that he is under the necessity of acting against his conscience, and in that particular am greater than my sovereign or those by whom he is constrained, for I have no fear of death, and am consequently independent."

A few days afterward, Bernard Palissy expired in the Bastille, full of years and virtues, about the year 1588.

The works he has left us are of high and varied interest, comprising treatises on medicine, agriculture, hydraulics, fortification, beside those on metallurgy and chemistry. The history of the Reformed church in his native province, for which we are indebted to his pen, is equal to the works of the foremost historians of his age. But, above all, the shrewdness of his observations, penetrating his simplicity of manners and language, has afforded an invaluable addition to the moral history of those troublous times.

Such was Bernard Palissy, who, in addition to the creation of an important mechanical art, called into existence the germs of our most valuable scientific theories and institutions--the first china-maker of France--the first public lecturer--the first originator of a collection of natural history--the first to assert the nature of fossil remains and to create a school of mines and forests. He is also noted as the first writer upon the subject of springs and fountains. But his memory is entitled to higher reverence, as that of a zealous and persevering man of genius, who overcame, by energy of mind, the united evils of persecution, poverty and ignor

ance.

WM. DE BEAUVOIR FRYER.

PIERRE LANFREY, THE BIOGRAPHER OF NAPOLEON.

TH

HE publication of Lanfrey's life of Napoleon was a marked event in its day, and the leading reviews gave account of the contents of its successive volumes down to the fifth, which brought the story. almost to the opening of the Russian campaign. Soon afterwards the author died, and only lately in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Count Haussonville has given a sketch of his life. A special interest is due to the fact that while Lanfrey was a Republican and a Liberal of the most uncompromising kind, his biographer is a strong Conservative, and a statesman of the Louis Phillipe type, while Lan

frey's nearest friend, Count Costa de Beauregard, was of the strictest. order of Legitimists. It is plain then that Lanfrey was a man of a high order of intellect, and of great personal virtue, thus to commend himself to men of such opposite political and religious faiths and such different social orders. The story of his life is one of the redeeming incidents of French politics and literature, showing a man earnest in pursuit of high ideals of excellence, singularly free from the faults that are (often erroneously) supposed to be typical of Frenchmen, and unselfish in his love of country and in his sense of duty as a citizen and as a representative. To us, and perhaps to his own countrymen, his life of Napoleon will always remain his greatest book, and all the more important as a sharp contrast to the well-rounded praises and swelling peans of Thiers' History; yet curiously enough, Thiers was Lanfrey's strong political leader and friend, and they were closely united in the views they took of what was necessary for the regeneration of France, and its future. good government. Assuming that our readers know Lanfrey's Napoleon, and need no reference to its striking qualities, it is fair to presume that every one who has read that book will be glad to know something of the author, his birth, training and public life. Born in Chambery, in 1828, Lanfrey was the son of the representative of an old family of Savoy, one of Napoleon's officers, and at devoted admirer of the great captain. The mother was of humble origin, but strong in her religious convictions, firm in her maternal devotion, and powerful in her will to do her duty to her only son; she survived through a long and trying widowhood, and in her eighty-sixth year died happy in the fact that he had accomplished all she had hoped for him: was a successful author, a deputy, a senator, and an ambassador. From his earliest letter to his latest, in writing to his mother, he showed himself thoroughly imbued with her qualities, and with the affection and respect which naturally tended to make her influence very lasting and powerful. His early troubles with Jesuit instructors only helped to shorten his path to Paris, that nursing mother of his intellectual and political ideas; but it was the tender tie of affection to his mother in her little country home, making sacrifices to enable him to study in Paris, that kept him free from impure or injurious associations, and made his whole struggle for recognition of his merits and abilities, in which his mother's sympathy and encouragement were of

infinite and acknowledged service. From the stormy scenes of 1848, as he saw them both in Paris and in the Provinces, he determined to devote himself to the task of historian, sure that by dint of diligent labor, he, too, could make such a record of the men and events of earlier times, as would serve to secure a recognition of his abilities, and a means of guiding his readers on the true path. of wise liberty, which alone could be good for mankind.

He spent two years in diligent study in Paris, but in the midst. of his successful work, he looked forward to solid and durable history as the occupation of his life. He completed his legal course at Grenoble, and then, after much doubt of his future, hesitation between leaving his mother and sacrificing the advantages of political and literary associations in Paris, varied by profitable journies in Italy, he settled in Paris in 1852, and in the midst of the danger and discouragement due to the coup d'état, started out on the career which led him slowly but surely to honor and distinc tion. His letters to his mother are full of bitterness and anger at the harsh rule under which all literary men were forced to submit their productions during the dark days of the Second Empire. Publishers, editors, authors, all lived under a ban, and Lanfrey, each in turn, complained of the obstacles in his path to the public. His first book on the Church and the Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, received much praise from competent judges, but they dared not praise or blame it in print, and he was content to be rewarded with the appreciation and friendship of such sympathetic readers as Ary Scheffer, Henri Martin, Renan, and other leaders in the newest movement toward liberal opinions. Beranger advised him to abandon serious literature and especially to avoid the newspapers; Villemain warned him against the dangers of too sudden popularity. He wrote a drama, threw it into the fire, and, again returning to history, wrote an essay on the French Revolution, which excited the greatest interest from his bold judgments and novel opinions. He declared roundly that the absolute Democracy preached by Rousseau, was an unlimited despotism; he denounced Robespierre and praised Mirabeau; he extolled Lafayette as a brilliant hero representing, in the American War of Independence, chivalry in the midst of a revolution, and carrying the virtues of past ages, honor, loyalty, unselfish devotion, love of the glory, into the new world. He praised Montmorency, Roche