B. 1803. PROSPER MÉRIMÉE. D. 1870. PROSPER MÉRIMÉE, in 1853 a Senator of France, remarked to a friend, "I felt uneasy when I had to make my first speech in the Senate; but I soon took courage, remembering that I was only addressing one hundred and fifty fools." B. 1805. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. D. 1855. In the Preface to the "Ancien Régime," the author rather modestly writes: "I may say, I think without undue self-laudation, that this book is the fruit of great labor. I could point to more than one short chapter that has cost me over a year's work. I could have loaded my pages with foot-notes; but I have preferred inserting a few only, and placing them at the end of the volume, with a reference to the pages to which they apply." B. 1808. LOUIS NAPOLEON. D. 1873. Louis, sometimes called Napoleon III., or Napoleon the Little, thought he had in him the quality of a great general as well as of a great statesman, and was with difficulty dissuaded from taking the command of the French army in the Crimean war. At Plombières he said to Count Cavour, "Do you know that there are but three men in all Europe? One is myself, the second is you, and the third is one whose. name I will not mention." Doubtless Bismarck was intended as the third; and Louis was not far wrong, except in the overestimate of himself, where, as usual, through rank usurpation he took a place to which he had no claim. B. 1820. CHAMBORD. THE Comte de Chambord might have been Henry V. King of France, in 1873, only that he insisted upon his own terms, his divine right to reign,-proving his Bourbon legitimacy of learning nothing and forgetting nothing. Said he, "I am the pilot who alone is able to guide the vessel into the port." His vanity gave the Republic time to take root, and the Count will never wear any other title; but, oh the difference to him! FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. B. 1787. D. 1874. GUIZOT, of old Huguenot stock and educated at Geneva, was both a statesman and an author. Like Gladstone, he seems to have put his conscience into all of his work. He was a Protestant, and would not promise to say a word in favor of Louis XVIII., even to gain admission to his Cabinet. He did not believe in absolutism. Politically Thiers was his rival, and said of him, "He is a great orator, but a mere fool in statesmanship." He was sent as Ambassador to England, where he thought his mission a success, and writes as follows: "From 1832 to 1835, I take it, I did more than any one else to keep order at home. In 1840 and 1841 I shall have done the same for peace abroad. Were I at once to retire from public life, I should, I think, take with me the respect of Europe. I shall try not to lose it." In his old age, without vanity, he did not belittle his life, and his words are thus recorded: "I don't complain, as many do, that public life has deceived me; that I am disgusted with men and with the world; that I've no more ambition. It is not true; public life has not cheated my expectations. I take the same interest in politics that I did at twenty, neither more nor less." Great men are often prone to undervalue each other. Thiers had a low opinion of Guizot, which was probably reciprocated; and certainly Guizot bestowed upon Bismarck, in 1864, no flattery when he said: "He is the only man in Europe who has a settled plan and is bent on following it out. He is neither sensible nor honest, but this makes him somebody." B. 1265. DANTE ALIGHIERI. D. 1321. DANTE speaks of Alexander Gill, his old schoolmaster, as one who "taught him how man eternizes himself." The Government of Florence banished Dante in 1302, but in 1316 put forth a new decree permitting exiles to return on conditions of fine and penance; but Dante rejected the offer with great scorn. "Is this," wrote he, "then, the glorious return of Dante Alighieri to his country after nearly three lustres of suffering exile? Did an innocence, patent to all, merit this? This the perpetual sweat and toil of study? Far from a man, the housemate of philosophy, be so rash and earthen-hearted a humility as to allow himself to be offered up, bound like a schoolboy or a criminal! Far from a man, the preacher of justice, to pay those who have done him wrong, as a favor! This is not the way of returning to my country; but if another can be found that shall not derogate from the fame of Dante, that I will enter on with no lagging steps. For if by none such Florence may be entered, by me then never! Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars,-speculate on sweetest truths under any sky,- - without first giving myself up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and city of Florence? Nor shall I want bread." The last lines of an inscription he dictated on his death-bed, for his monument, show that he never returned to Florence: "Here am I, Dante, shut, exiled from the ancestral shore, And yet in 1396, and again in 1429, Florence begged in vain for the ashes of the poet she threatened to destroy when alive. Dante unceremoniously classifies himself with the great poets. That rank the world has most cheerfully accorded. If Charles Sumner was not displeased, when walking through the streets of cities, to have those who passed him turn and say, "There goes Charles Sumner," Dante, also, was not displeased to be noticed even by the women seated in the doorways as he passed them in the streets of Verona, where one of them said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the poet, "There goes the man who can go down to hell and come back again whenever he chooses, bringing with him accounts of the people who are there." One of her companions replied, in all simplicity, "What you say is quite true. Do you not see that the heat and the smoke have frizzled his beard and blackened his hair?" Dante, knowing the simple manner in which this was said, was rather amused to hear what people thought of him, and went on his way with a smile. Of course the world would never have known this, had not Dante told of it himself. 1 "Vidi quattro grand' ombre a ma venire." |