Paris to study law at the university. When barely twenty (1807) he became tutor to the children of M. Stapfer, then minister from Switzerland to Paris; and it was in the course of his tuition of these young men that in the year 1809 he composed and published his first work, "Le Dictionnaire des synonymes," in reality a very clever treatise on the capacities of language in general, and likely to be particularly useful to such men of letters as are desirous of translating the masterpieces of one tongue into another, and of finding equivalent expressions under various forms. From 1807 till 1812 M. Guizot lived much in the house of M. Suard, in whose salon, as is recorded in the preceding article, M. Guizot met Mlle. de Meulan, and determined to make his wife of a woman of forty, whilst he himself was only just twenty-five. In this same year, 1812, began also the academical career of M. Guizot. He had made the acquaintance of M. de Fontanes, and the result had been his nomination as sub-lecturer on history at the faculté des lettres. His success being great in this position, M. de Fontanes soon after nominated him titular professor of modern history at the university, dividing for this purpose the office which had till then been held by Professor Lacretelle only. From this moment dates M. Guizot's long-standing connection with M. Royer Collard, one of the circumstances that shed most lustre on his life.
At this distinction M. Guizot's best friends have always wished his career had stood still. He was one of the foremost of historical critics; he was not himself formed to act a historical part. He was first-rate as a professor—he was not so as a politician. As a teacher he conferred an honour on the university; as a minister, the office was an honour to him. But the times were different at a distance of twenty years. Under the empire M. Guizot, to his credit be it said, was in too great disfavour to have aspired to anything beyond the post he occupied; and under the Restoration, so long as Louis XVIII. lived and upheld constitutional principles, such men as the duc de Richelieu and others of that stamp were the natural guides and counsellors of the sovereign, and power was in the hands of men who sacrificed themselves to its duties, instead of sacrificing everything to obtain its mere possession. In 1814, during the Hundred Days, M. Guizot was at Nismes, whither he had gone to visit his mother, after a long separation. When he returned to Paris he found that Royer Collard had recommended him to the abbé de Montesquiou as a proper person to fill the office of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior. Here began his political career.
When M. Guizot was thus called upon to become what is somewhat analogous to our notion of an under-secretary of state (only that he had no parliamentary work to do), his nomination must not be regarded in the light of a reward, or even a favour. It had quite a different signification. Upon the definitive restoration of the Bourbons to the throne, it was felt that impartiality in the choice of public servants was one of the first things required. M. de Montesquiou, an ecclesiastic, a man of the ancien régime, being at the head of the home office, it became extremely important that his tendencies should be counterbalanced by a man of the middle class, an avowed liberal and a protestant. M. Guizot's influence over the court and over the king at this period was decidedly a good one, and to his frequent communications with Louis XVIII. may be ascribed many of the enlightened measures that were at once resorted to with respect to the ultras of the royalist party. But M. Guizot's position was a temporary one. The under secretaryship for the home office was exchanged for that of secretary-general to the minister of justice, and M. Guizot had henceforth to occupy himself much more with special administrative details than with any political action. Ultra-royalism, however, soon grew factious, and the majority that was surnamed "Plus royaliste que le roi," invaded the chamber. M. de Barbé Marbois was outvoted. M. Guizot retired in his train, and all the narrow-minded tendencies that only conquered resistance after the death of Louis XVIII., began to make themselves evident day after day. M. Guizot's "Essay on Public Instruction," and on "Representative Government in France," both remarkable works, date from this moment. The king had him raised to the position of maitre des requêtes in the council of state, and he became one of the leaders of the small group of men known under the name of the parti doctrinaire. Amongst these were MM. Pasquier, Royer Collard, De Serre, and some others of less note. In 1818 the king, whose sincerely constitutional tendencies had never been a matter for doubt, called to office his own particular favourite the "liberal" M. Decazes; and under his ministry M. Guizot was made a full councillor of state. This did not last long; for the assassination of the duc de Berri gave rise to violent ultra-royalist reaction; the Decazes' ministry was overthrown in the chambers, and the consequence was the destitution of several noted liberals, such as Royer Collard, De Barante, and Jordan. M. Guizot proffered his resignation, and retired from the conseil d'etat.
The next two years were devoted by him to the discharge of his professorial duties, and to the publication of several of his most famous works, amongst others his treatise upon "Government and Opposition in France at the present day;" and his "Dissertation on the Penalty of Death for Political Crimes." This was the moment when the reactionary cabinet of the extreme faction (the ultras, as they were called) attacked M. Guizot in his academical capacity, and ended by closing to the public his lecture-room at the Sorbonne.
Till the year 1827 M. Guizot's sphere of activity was chiefly a literary one; and most of his really famous productions spring from this period: the essays on "Civilization," on "French History," on "Calvin," on "Shakspeare," and the "Studies on the English Revolution," bear all of them this date. On the death of Louis XVIII. in 1825, the tendencies of government had entirely changed in France, and instead of resisting reaction as the former sovereign had done to the utmost of his power, Charles X. resisted every attempt at progress or freedom. In 1828, however, matters assumed somewhat a different aspect, and under M. de Martignac's ministry, permission was given to the three great professors, Villemain, Cousin, and Guizot, to resume their course of teaching. In the meantime Madame Guizot died, and M. Guizot, in accordance with his late wife's particular desire, espoused her own niece. Mademoiselle Elisa Dillon. In 1829 his position in the council of state was restored to him, and in January, 1830, he was for the first time elected a deputy. He represented the arrondissement of Lisieux, where he possesses the estate of Val-Richer, then recently purchased by him. The Polignac cabinet had been formed a few months before, and a struggle was now inevitable. It broke out, and ended in the revolution of July, the exile of the Bourbons of the elder branch, and the advent to the throne of Louis Philippe d'Orleans. M. Guizot had now attained the age of forty-three, and that career of governing activity was about to open before him, towards which he was attracted by his intellectual, or perhaps even rather æsthetical, faculties alone.
The municipal committee of the Hotel de Ville called M. Guizot, in the month of August, 1830, to the post of minister of public instruction, and had he never filled any other his fame might have been the gainer. What lost M. Guizot and the "Throne of July" was M. Guizot's eloquence, which gave him parliamentary importance, and enabled him to rise to the highest position in the state. France, being deprived of her aristocracy, and having no great counterbalancing forces to be represented, has never since the Revolution of 1789 had a representative government; but all her liberal attempts have been purely parliamentary ones. Now, the influence of talkers on politics, who merely represent themselves, may often be most detrimental to a government, and can never be certainly and inevitably beneficial. M. Guizot was one of these "talkers," who talked so much better than any one else, that it was quite forgotten that he represented nothing beyond his own personal literary and academical distinction. M. Guizot, between the years 1830 and 1839, was more than once minister, but fluctuated from the home office to public instruction. In 1839, being then in bitter opposition to M. Thiers (the latter having succeeded in conquering the place of foreign minister), M. Guizot accepted from the man he declared to be his irreconcilable opponent the title of French ambassador in London. This had the double advantage of silencing M. Guizot, and removing him to a distance; but his friends never reawarded him their esteem. M. Royer Collard characterized him by a world-famous phrase that is too severe to be chronicled here, and the really upright of the conservative party never trusted M. Guizot again. The Thiers ministry fell, and in October, 1840, M. Guizot became prime minister. Incorruptibly honest as to pecuniary corruption himself, he showed a tolerance of corruption in all around him; nor did he even in theory try to raise the moral standard of France,
