Tocqueville.
The last of the greater names calling for mention is that of Alexis de Tocqueville, who was born, of a noble Norman family, at Verneuil, in 1805. Tocqueville was educated for the bar, and called to it after the Restoration. But after the revolution of July he exchanged his appointment in the magistracy for a travelling mission to America, to examine the prisons and penitentiaries of the United States. He, however, studied something else than prisons, and, in 1835, published his famous work on 'Democracy in America.' He married an Englishwoman, and soon afterwards entered the Chamber. During the Republic he occupied positions of some importance. The Empire dismissed him from public life, but gave him the opportunity of writing his second great book on the Ancien Régime. His health was, however, weak, and he died, in 1859, of consumption. The characteristics of Tocqueville as a historian (or rather as a philosophic essayist on history) are great purity and clearness of style, unusual logical power, and an entire absence of prepossession. He is one of the few historians who have treated democracy without either enthusiastic love for it on the one hand, or fanatical dislike and fear of it on the other; and his two books are, and are likely to remain, classics.
Minor Historians.
A very rapid survey must suffice for the remainder of the names in this division. A. de Barante, among numerous other works of merit, is best known by a careful and detailed history of the Dukes of Burgundy; J. A. Buchon, Petitot, J. A. Michaud, and J. Poujoulat, produced invaluable collections of the chronicles and memoirs in which France is so rich. J. J. Ampère occupied himself chiefly with Roman history, and with the history of France and French literature in the Gallo-Roman time. A. Beugnot, besides other work, arranged a precious collection of feudal law. Emile de Bonnechose wrote a good short history of France. Louis Blanc (an important actor in the Revolution of 1848) produced an elaborate and well-written history of the Revolution from the moderate republican side, and afterwards reprinted from newspapers some curious letters from England during his exile here. In opposition chiefly to Thiers, P. Lanfrey, in a laborious history of Napoleon, entirely overthrew the Napoleonic legend, and damaged, it would seem irreparably, the character of its hero. Philippe de Ségur gave a history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon. Mortimer-Ternaux accomplished a valuable history of the Terror. M. Henri Martin was the author of the only recent history of France on a scale which challenges comparison with Michelet. It has no extraordinary literary merit, and its author was something of a partisan. But it is full, sober, and fairly accurate. In recent days M. Taine, deserting literary and philosophical criticism for history, executed a new and remarkable history of the Revolution, which, by once more putting its horrors in a clear and fair light, very much irritated the partisans of the 'ideas of 89.' The Duke d'Aumale has made something more than a mere addition to the works of 'Royal and Noble Authors,' in his History of the Princes of Condé. The Duke de Broglie, a politician, upon whom the political changes of France enforced political retirement, has produced a series of historical works on the 18th century and has edited the interesting memoirs of his father, the patron of Guizot. Of other recent memoirs by far the most remarkable, whether as literature or history, are those of Madame de Rémusat, mother of Charles de Rémusat, who died early in the Restoration period, but whose memoirs and letters, not published till after her son's death (but already referred to here), have given her a posthumous reputation hardly inferior to that of any of the literary ladies before her and not likely soon to wane.
FOOTNOTES:
[292] Mérimée's work is not absolutely despicable in bulk, for it extends to some eighteen volumes pretty closely packed. But much of these is occupied with familiar letters, and much more with merely miscellaneous writing. His finished and definitely literary publications do not amount to a third of the whole.
[293] In this notice of the acting drama of France, with which, as contrasted with the literary theatre, the present writer has comparatively little acquaintance, he is considerably indebted to Mr. Brander Matthews' useful French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. London and New York; 1882.