foucauld, d' Aiguillon, Noailles, as the flower of the French nobility hastening to assist a cause in which they had no other interest than that of the general welfare of their fellow-men. For such ideas as these he was heartily denounced as wanting in his old republican faith, and that by writers who were devoting their pens to the praises of Napoleon III. He found himself once more isolated, and just at this time Scheffer and Manin, two of his warmest friends, died, the latter making him his executor, and this again brought him in close contact with the best Italians, who joined French liberals in erecting the noble monument to Manin, in Turin. In the midst of the depression caused by these sad events and by the failure of the efforts made by his friends to secure him a hearing through a newspaper, he wrote and published his most successful book, The Letters of Everard, in which, under the thin disguise of a novel, he bitterly satirized the men who were making France the sport of events. Pierre Leroux and Proudhon, Cousin and Sainte Beuve, authors, artists, philosophers and politicans, all figred in his sharp and telling sketches, and while the clever women of the Paris salons welcomed him as the Werther of liberty, Charpentier, the publisher, at the suggestion of Laboulaye, invited him to take charge of the Revue Nationale. For three years, from 1860 to 1864, Lanfrey supplied the chronique, that important element in French journals, and maintained alike his independence of the Imperial regime and of the ultra-Democracy, the two most dangerous enemies of sound liberty, in his opinion. He was positive and almost brutal in his denunciation of the leaders of the extreme radicals, and equally energetic in standing up for the liberties of the religious orders. He pointed to Bismarck as the most irreconcilable and most dangerous ene:ny of France, and he was steadfast in his opposition to the foreign policy of the Empire. When he collected and published, under the title of Etudes et Portraits, his principal sketches from the journal which was obliged to discharge him in order to avoid being suppressed by the Government, he printed in permanent form his judgments of men and measures, of books and opinions, many of which he afterwards. modified; but all alike were characterized by his sturdy.devotion, his almost boyish energy of speech, and his unrestrained vigor and vehemence, on behalf of his idol, liberty. Thanks partly to the influence of two women who shone in the literary and liberal soci

ety of Paris, Lanfrey was led to write to them freely and in a tone that better fitted the subjects and his correspondents. These letters have been reprinted in a volume of "Souvenirs Inédits," published in 1879, and give a much gentler side to his character than most of his published works. Laying aside by compulsion his other occupations, Lanfrey resolved to devote himself to his History of Napoleon the First. He published the first two volumes in 1867; the third and fourth in 1868 and 1870, and the extraordinary merit of his work has been almost universally recognized. It was a curious acknowledgment of this fact, when M. Schneider, President of the Corps Legislatif, quoted from one of Lanfrey's later volumes of this History, the phrase: "The author of a war is not he who declares it, but he who makes it necessary," and the Emperor Napoleon, in repeating it, attributed it to Montesquieu. When the war burst upon France, Lanfrey showed himself ready to do his duty, both as a soldier and a citizen. He took an active part in the newspaper discussions of his native province, and the other provincial papers reprinted his articles, full of earnest advocacy of a true republic, and of indignant protest against changing one form of tyranny for another. Gambetta offered him an important post in the Government, but Lanfrey refused it, and looked on it as only intended to put him out of the way of expressing his opinions. Almost equally characteristic was his refusal of promotion in the regiment in which he served as private. When the operations of the army were definitely concluded, Lanfrey was defeated for the Legislature in his native town, and was elected in Marseilles. At Bordeaux he at once joined the party of Thiers, and gave him and his measures a support all the more effective as it was purely disinterested, absolutely unselfish, and that of an early literary and historical opponent. It was at the suggestion of Jules Simon, that Thiers appointed Lanfrey Ambassador to Switzerland, and he spent two years in Berne, at a time when the relations of the two Republics, the old and the new, required and found in Lanfrey an able representative. With the fall of Thiers, he returned to the Legislature, and was equally removed from Gambetta-ism and from the union of the two branches of the Bourbons. He surrendered his diplomatic honors to the Duc de Broglie, and the two were and remained strong personal friends and equally strong political opponents. Returned to political life, with

no great pressure of duties, he took up again his History of Napoleon, and published the fifth volume in 1875, receiving great praise for it, even from Gambetta; but now, indifferent to public opinion as to his literary merits, he devoted himself to politics. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, he printed a moderate article on Ultramontane Politics, and he prepared an address in the name of the party of the right centre, the conservative Republicans, which secured the hearty approval of Thiers and the best men allied with him. Lanfrey was one of the intimate circle of Thiers' house in the Place St. George, although there were frequent quarrels, one of the bitterest on account of his correction of some error made by Thiers in the geography of his Napoleonic history; but these were soon cured, and when Lanfrey was ordered to the South for his health, Thiers, not anticipating his own early death, was very earnest in his advice to his younger friend, to take care to get well and go to work again. Lanfrey's last illness was a brief one. He died at Pau. With characteristic inaccuracy, M. Haussonville does not give the date of his death. It was on the 16th November, 1877, in his 49th year. But his memory was honored with the strong praise of men of most diverse political opinions. The Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier said that his works and his politics were inspired by pure love of his country and its liberty. M. Costa de Beauregard, author of the "Homme d'Autrefois," the farthest removed from Lanfrey in his religious and political faith, received his last letter, in which the dying man regretted that they were separated by at least four hundred years in their opinions. Lanfrey is one of the most interesting characters of French literary and political life of our own time. Liberal in politics, and firmly conservative in his Republicanism, he was opposed to the pressure put upon the religious orders, and he had no faith in Gambetta and the ultras who had gained power in France. His honesty was such that he was looked on as a Puritan in principles and in practice; he would not receive his salary as ambassador when he was not occupying the office, nor that of deputy when he was at his post at Berne. His affection for a young cousin led him to have her educated in a convent, that she might be well cared for, while he declined all religious services in his last illness, and forbade them at his grave. His rise in social importance never made him forgetful of his mother, to whom he constantly and affectionately

acknowledged his infinite indebtedness, nor of the numerous relationships with very plain and humble people in the mountains of his native Savoy, to all of whom he gave time and services in a way that was far beyond any money value. His style is singularly free from the besetting sins of his contemporaries; it is clear, strong, nervous, emphatic and energetic. Indeed, his study of the Wellington correspondence, which he praised for its good sense, straightforward honesty, and all the virtues that are wanting in that of his great adversary, seems to have affected his own composition with the happiest influence, for his History of Napoleon nas all the fire and vigor of a book inspired by an earnest desire to g at the truth, and to tell it in plain, unvarnished fashion. Ine world is richer for having such a book, as it is the poorer for the early loss of such a man, and for being thus deprived of the later volumes in which he would have brought the story of Napoleon down to the close of his wonderful career.

A GREAT BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR.*

'F you ask me,” says Dr. Hedge," what missionary agent, since

"IF

the age of the Apostles, has done the greatest work, has been most effective in its action on the souls of men, I should say it is no itinerant going about in the flesh; not Austin nor Anselm; none of those whose names are so celebrated in the history of the Church, but it is a little volume which appeared toward the close

*Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur le véritable Auteur du Livre de l'Imitation de Jesus Christ; Examen des Droits de Thomas à Kempis, et de Gersen et de Gerson, avec une Reponse aux dernieres Adversaires de Thomas à Kempis. MM. Na pione, Cancellieri, de Gregory, Weigl, Gence, Daunon, Onésime Leroy, Thomassey. Vert, Veratti, etc., etc. Suivi de Documents inédits. Par Mr. J. B. Malou, Evêque de Bruges. IIIme Edition, revue et augmentée. Paris and Tournay, 1858.

Prolegomena zu einer neuer Ausgabe der Imitatio Christi nach dem Autograph des Thomas von Kempen. Zugleich eine Einführung in sämmtliche Schriften des Thomas, so wie ein Versuch zu endgültige Feststellung der Thatsache, dass Thomas und kein Anderer der Verfasser der Imitatio ist. Von Karl Hirsche. Erster (einzig) Band. Berlin, 1873.

Thoma Kempensis de Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor. Thomæ nunc primum accuratissime reddidit, destinxit, novo tulorem Argumenta, locos parallelos adjecit Carolus Hirsche.

Textum ex Autographo modo disposuit; CapiBerlin, 1874.

Denkschrift über den wahren Verfasser des Buches von der Nachfolge Christi von Herrn G. von Gregory. Revidirt und Herausgegeben durch den Herrn Grafen

of the fifteenth century, under the title of Imitation of Christ-a small volume in the Latin language, unheralded by any Literary Intelligencer, for there were no newspapers then to advertise books or forestall public opinion about them. Unheralded, this little book was cast upon the world, I think, in the year 1486, a book of unknown, or at least disputed, authorship. During the fourteen remaining years of that century there were twenty editions of that book in Germany alone, and there has been no book ever written, with the sole exception of the Bible, of which there has been so many editions. Early in this century, some one undertook to make a collection of all the editions of this book, and got together five hundred editions, but knew the collection to be very incomplete. It was translated, not merely into all modern languages, but into Greek, and even into Hebrew. There were sixty translations into the French language alone. It spread far and wide. It found its

Lajuinais (Paris, 1827). Ins Deutsche übersetzt und mit den nothwendigen Erläuterungen und Zusätzen versehen von Johann Baptist Weigl. Sulzbach, 1832.

Dissertation sur soixante Traductions Françaises de L'Imitation de Jesus Christ, suivi de Considérations sur l'Auteur. Par A. A. Barbier. Paris, 1802.

Nouvelle Considérations historiques et critiques sur l'Auteur et le Livre De l'Imitation de J.-C., ou Précis et Résumé des Faits et Motifs qui ont déterminé la Restitution de ce Livre a Jean Gerson, Chancellier de l'Eglise de Paris. Par J.-B.-M. GenceParis, 1832.

Gersen, Gerson und Kempis; oder: Ist Einer von diesen Dreyen, und welcher ist der Verfasser der Vier Bücher von der Nachfolge Christi. Mit einem kritischen Rückblick auf die Behauptungen der neueren Französischen Kritiker A. A. Barbier und J. B. M. Gence. Von J. P. Siebert. Wien, 1828.

Les derniers Travaux sur Thomas à Kempis, par Charles Ruelens. Bruxelles, 1859.

Les recentes Recherches sur l'Auteur de L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ. (1858–1876.) Etude critique et bibliographique par A. Delvigne. Bruxelles, 1877.

Scutum Kempense sive Vindicia Quatuor Librorum De Imitatione Christi quibus Thomas à Kempis contra Joannem Gersen, in sua à tribus seculis non interrupta possessione stabilitur. Ubi simul utriusque Partis Argumenta pro et contra expendun

tur.

Authore Eusebio Amort. [In Ven. Patri. Thoma Malleoli à Kempis (Canonici Regularis Ordinis S. Augustini) Opera Omnia: ad Autographa ejusdem emendata, aucta, et in tres Tomos distributa. Operâ ac Studio R. P. Henrici Sommalii e Soc. Jesu. Editio novissima, a pluribus mendis expurgata. Cologne, 1759.]

Le Livre de l'Internelle Consolation. Première Version Française de L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ. Nouvelle Edition avec une Introduction et des Notes par MM. L. Moland et Ch. d'Hericault. [Bibliotheque Elzevirienne.] Paris, 1856.

Quæritur e quibus Nederlandicis Fontibus transcripserit Scriptor Libri cui Titulus est De Imitatione Christi (1384-1464). Auctore G. Bonet Maury. Paris, 1878.