In the face of the cliff below the church, Hawker built a rude shelter out of boards from the wreckage of ships. There he would sit smoking his pipe, looking out over the stormy Atlantic, and composing his songs and ballads. As years passed by, life became harder for him and the sea wrought and was tempestuous. His wife, for whom he had singular attachment, died and left him in utter loneliness. "Sangreal" was composed in the days after the death of his wife, and here and there Hawker and his sorrows speak,-"Mid all things fierce, and wild, and strange--Alone!" And here, "Ah! native Cornwall! throned upon the hills, The birds that sang to me in youth are dead." The lonely Vicar chose for a second wife, a young Polish woman, who bore him several daughters, and added both to his joys and his cares. When he was dying during a visit to Plymouth, in 1875, his wife called in the Roman Catholic Canon, Mansfield, and the last rites of the Roman Church were administered to him. He was buried in Plymouth. Thus Morwenstow is not the keeper of the dust of him who made her famous. When he was leaving on that final trip to Plymouth, Hawker, standing by the grave of his wife, said to his sexton, "I am very old, and am going away from home, and I do not know what may befall But promise me most solemnly that, should I die anywhere away from Morwenstow, you will fetch my body and lay me here beside my first wife." In striking contradiction to this wish, there has been carved on his grave in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Plymouth the prayer of Augustine's mother, Monica: "Lay this body anywhere; be not concerned about that. The only thing I ask of you is that you make remembrance of me before the altar of the Lord wheresoever you are." About the base of the cross that stands on his grave are the words from "Sangreal," "I would not be forgotten in this land." That wish, at least, has been granted him. On the memorial bell in the tower, there are inscribed the words from his ballad, "The Silent Tower of Bottreaux": "Come to thy God in time, Summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, the bells of Morwenstow sound out over hill and glen and cliffs, speaking like the voice of God through the mighty noise of the sea, calling men to worship and to pray, to come to God in time, to come to God at last. The very ground with speech is fraught, In vain would doubt or mockery hide The buried echoes of the past; A voice of strength, a voice of pride, Here dwells within the storm and blast. The solemn arches breathe in stone; The mighty faith of days unknown. The changeless God's eternal fane. CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY. Philadelphia, Pa. LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS The history of France during the nineteenth century presents a shifting phantasmagoria of revolutions, coups d'état, and shortlived governments. Four kings were made and unmade during this brief period, and on three distinct occasions the country was proclaimed a Republic. The most striking phenomenon of the age, however, was not this rapid governmental see-sawing, but rather the appearance of a group of men, who, for want of a better name, may be characterized as "literary statesmen." As a rule, men of letters confine their attempts towards the amelioration of social and political wrongs to the pages of their books. Governmental posts are, if not abhorrent to them, at least foreign to their desires. Dickens, who probably did more towards aiding his suffering fellow-countrymen of the lower classes than did even Peel or Gladstone, never aspired to civic honors. With the notable exception of Goethe and others of the Weimar circle, the same can be said of German writers, while similar conditions prevailed in France, too, until the nineteenth century. With the beginning of this epoch, however, French littérateurs began to cast envious glances towards the domain of politics. The government and the petty office-holder became the frequently employed theme of Balzac, Maupassant, and the other brilliant raconteurs of the age. The great intellects perceived and answered the demand which the French nation was making for leaders of just that stamp. Victor Hugo, whose long life and numerous activities were practically coeval with the century, is to-day recognized both as the keenest mind in the French Romantic movement and as one of the foremost statesmen of his day. Lamartine, whose opportunities after the Revolution of 1848 which dethroned Louis-Philippe, were only eclipsed in greatness by his failure; Guizot, whose star had its ascendant as well as descendant during the reign of Louis-Philippe; and later, though not lesser, lights such as Jules Simon, Gambetta, and de Rémusat; all are characteristic of the metamorphosis that had occurred in the ranks of French men of letters. But far and away the brightest star in the realms of literary statesmanship was that shrewd diplomat and "illustrious historian" whose life and work form the subject of this article, Louis Adolphe Thiers. Louis Adolphe Thiers was born in Marseilles, on the sixteenth of April, 1797. His father, an ex-Jacobin, had been a poor but respectable cloth-merchant, trading to the Levant, who had been forced by the counter-revolution of 1793 to flee from France in order to save his life. When the country had been restored to a state of tranquillity, he returned and took up the locksmith trade. Already a widower, he was attracted by a certain Mlle. Arnic, of Marseilles, and despite the strenuous objections of the young lady's parents, the two were married. This event caused a break in the relations of the young bride and her mother, and not until the former had given birth to Louis Adolphe, a healthy, strapping baby, were the two reconciled. The child passed part of his youth in the city of his birth, and part in a Provençal country villa, where he ran wild with the peasant boys of the vicinity. Thus he spent his earliest years developing a strong physical constitution, though displaying no signs of any marked mental precocity. When it was time for the lad to begin his schooling, he received an appointment, through his cousin, Marie Joseph Chénier, to one of the lycées that had been established by Napoleon at Marseilles. Though he made good progress in his studies, his naturally free spirits vexed his teachers to such an extent that he came perilously near being expelled from the institution. He was saved by the arrival at the lycée of a new master, and his surplus energies were diverted to more praiseworthy channels. As he grew older, he acquired a fondness for writing out descriptions of Napoleon's most renowned battles, from the peerless general's own bulletins; in this way, he was sowing the seed of the rich historical harvest he was to reap in later years. Though his schooling was acquired only by dint of much physical hardship, due to pecuniary disabilities, Thiers stuck nobly to his task. In the company of congenial friends, most particularly of his fellow law-student Mignet, he did not permit the horizon of his future to be clouded over by depressing doubts. Through the aid of Mignet, too, he won his first literary success-a prize offered by a Paris commission for the best monograph on a celebrated Frenchman of the eighteenth century, and awarded to Thiers' essay on the moralist and miscellaneous writer, the Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-1747). In the year 1829, at the age of twenty-three, he completed his law course at the college of Aix, and, after considerable difficulty, succeeded in being admitted to the Paris bar. But he felt powerfully drawn towards a career of letters, and he determined to abandon the legal profession at the earliest possible opportunity. Thiers received his first real start in life by obtaining, through the recommendation of the far-famed Talleyrand, the position of private secretary to the Duc de Liancourt. This, however, was only a stepping-stone towards the realization of his cherished ambition of entering the field of journalism. By means of a rather surprising criticism of an art exhibit at the Salon, he attracted the attention of the editor of the Constitutionnel, then one of the leading Parisian journals, and was admitted to its staff. He had an inborn genius for newspaper work, and he soon earned popular notice by his clever articles in opposition to the priest party under Charles X. His friendship with Talleyrand gained him, in 1822, the principal direction of the Constitutionnel, which he maintained for a period of seven years. He saved money industriously, so that he might be enabled to carry out his desire of becoming an independent editor. With his former schoolmate Mignet and others, he founded the National, a paper antagonistic to the rule of Charles X. His activity against the reigning monarch and in the Revolution of July, 1830, which was terminated by the abdication of Charles X and the succession of Louis-Philippe, introduced Thiers into the domain of politics, for which he abandoned that of journalism. An event which founded Thiers' literary fame and also gained him political prominence was the completion, at about this time, of his first great work, the History of the French Revolution. No previous French writer had dared to speak |