The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-10 00:00:00

fittraturt.

Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time.
By F. Guizot. Vol. I. London : Bentley.
WE have read with great interest this first
volume of the political autobiography of one
of the most remarkable men of our time.
Unlike the memoirs of Chateaubriand and
Lamartine, this work has few• social anecdotes,
and not much of personal portraiture. Its
tone is gravely judicial, like the style of a
retrospective reviewer. Its composition dis-
plays an austere calmness of mind, without
the cynical moroseness of too harsh a censor.
In other works that have in recent years come
from M. Guizot's incessant pen we saw the style
and objects of a pamphleteer, but such is not
the case with this work, which, apparently, is
as impartial as one of its famous writer's in-
comparable lectures. The great merits and
the characteristic mannerism of the author are
visible nearly in every page. Luminous con-
densation of causes, a logical, as opposed to a
rhetorical, treatment of his matter, the coup
(hell of a philosophic historian, and something
of the dogmatism of the Professor's chair, can
all be observed in this able retrospect of the
earlier portions of the author's public life. We
coal] have wished for more detail, more
sketching of the domestic entourage of his do-
mestic life (which he al most studiously avoids),
and more display of social sympathy. But
M. Guizot possesses one of those natures that
cannot easily unbend. Though excelling in
prompt command of his faculties, we never
could expect him to display polished raillery,
to trifle with elegance, or to gossip with the
garrulous grace of other Frenchmen. He is
superior to the peculiar sort of qualities re-
quisite for a good anecdotical biographer, and
hence there are some who will find this volume
rather heavy. We have not thought it so, but
we took it up with the anticipation that an
autobiography by Guizot would display all the
chief features of his other writings, and our
surmises proved right.
The volume opens with a description of
France before the Restoration, and then, in the
style of a masterly reviewer, lie passes rapidly
over " The Hundred Days," and the various
changes in French Government, until the
famous " address of the two hundred and
twenty-one" (1830), the author in all cases
deciding more suo in a peremptory manner
upon the results of every struggle With all
our just admiration for the high intellectuality
of Guizot. we cannot help feeling that he was
a very difficult man to satisfy, and that he
exhibits a good deal of that metaphysical
casuistry in his politics which made the name
of "ideologue" an abomination to the First
Napoleon. " Was Guizot, after all, a practical
man ?" might fairly be asked by a keen
thinker, on reading this account of his political
life. It might be urged against him that it
was scarcely possible to decipher his political
system. He was not a Napoleouist ; he was
by conviction► opposed to the sway of the
Romish clerg3 claimed by the ultra-Royalists,
and he dreaded the Tribune of the popular
party. He chose his politics, not from a pas-
sionate bias, but iu obedience to the intellectual
law of his nature. He carried this so far that
we have heard him called (with injustice) "a
man without sympathies." This volume, like all
his productions (and none of them are weak)
shows that Guizot, out of literature, can
scarcely be accepted as a great representative
nature, in whose embodiment one could dis-
cern the passions and aspirations of large
masses of men He exhibited much of that
many-sided antagonism which was visible in
the character of the late Dr. Arnold; and some
points of M. Guizot's character are not unlike
certain tendencies of Mr. Gladstone's peculiar
intellect.

The defence M. of Guizot against those who
urge the apparent inconsistency of his career
is to he found in this volume, but it is rather
skilfully implied than positively stated in any
particular passage. He maintains, truly, that
the French Revolution had not ceased to act
in 1817), and that its force was not spent ; and
we think that be pushes this view too far.
He argues that ;the Royalists of the Restora-
tion made blunders because they supposed