interrupted by her illness, but immediately resumed and continued by an unknown hand. It was discovered that François Guizot had quietly supplied the deficiency on her behalf. The acquaintance thus begun ripened into friendship and love, and in 1812 Mademoiselle de Meulan consented to marry her youthful ally. She died in 1827; she was the author of many esteemed works on female education. An only son, born in 1819, died in 1837 of consumption. In 1828 Guizot married Elisa Dillon, niece of his first wife, and also an author. She died in 1833, leaving a son, Maurice Guillaume (1833–1892), who attained some reputation as a scholar and writer.
During the empire, Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonyms (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Gibbon with additional notes in 1812. These works recommended him to the notice of M. de Fontanes, then grand-master of the university of France, who selected Guizot for the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne in 1812. His first lecture (which is reprinted in his Memoirs) was delivered on the 11th of December of that year. The customary compliment to the all-powerful emperor he declined to insert in it, in spite of the hints given him by his patron, but the course which followed marks the beginning of the great revival of historical research in France in the 19th century. He had now acquired a considerable position in the society of Paris, and the friendship of Royer-Collard and the leading members of the liberal party, including the young duc de Broglie. Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he was at once selected, on the recommendation of Royer-Collard, to serve the government of Louis XVIII. in the capacity of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior, under the abbé de Montesquiou. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba he immediately resigned, on the 25th of March 1815 (the statement that he retained office under General Carnot is incorrect), and returned to his literary pursuits. After the Hundred Days, he repaired to Ghent, where he saw Louis XVIII., and in the name of the liberal party pointed out to his majesty that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy—advice which was ill-received by M. de Blacas and the king’s confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent, at the time when France was a prey to a second invasion, was made a subject of bitter reproach to Guizot in after life by his political opponents, as an unpatriotic action. “The Man of Ghent” was one of the terms of insult frequently hurled against him in the days of his power. But the reproach appears to be wholly unfounded. The true interests of France were not in the defence of the falling empire, but in establishing a liberal policy on a monarchical basis and in combating the reactionary tendencies of the ultra-royalists. It is at any rate a remarkable circumstance that a young professor of twenty-seven, with none of the advantages of birth or political experience, should have been selected to convey so important a message to the ears of the king of France, and a proof, if any were wanting, that the Revolution had, as Guizot said, “done its work.”
On the second restoration, Guizot was appointed secretary-general of the ministry of justice under M. de Barbé-Marbois, but resigned with his chief in 1816. Again in 1819 he was appointed general director of communes and departments in the ministry of the interior, but lost his office with the fall of Decazes in February 1820. During these years Guizot was one of the leaders of the Doctrinaires, a small party strongly attached to the charter and the crown, and advocating a policy which has become associated (especially by Faguet) with the name of Guizot, that of the juste milieu, a via media between absolutism and popular government. Their opinions had more of the rigour of a sect than the elasticity of a political party. Adhering to the great principles of liberty and toleration, they were sternly opposed to the anarchical traditions of the Revolution. They knew that the elements of anarchy were still fermenting in the country; these they hoped to subdue, not by reactionary measures, but by the firm application of the power of a limited constitution, based on the suffrages of the middle class and defended by the highest literary talent of the times. Their motives were honourable. Their views were philosophical. But they were opposed alike to the democratical spirit of the age, to the military traditions of the empire, and to the bigotry and absolutism of the court. The fate of such a party might be foreseen. They lived by a policy of resistance; they perished by another revolution (1830). They are remembered more for their constant opposition to popular demands than by the services they undoubtedly rendered to the cause of temperate freedom.
In 1820, when the reaction was at its height after the murder of the duc de Berri, and the fall of the ministry of the duc Decazes, Guizot was deprived of his offices, and in 1822 even his course of lectures were interdicted. During the succeeding years he played an important part among the leaders of the liberal opposition to the government of Charles X., although he had not yet entered parliament, and this was also the time of his greatest literary activity. In 1822 he had published his lectures on representative government (Histoire des origines du gouvernement représentatif, 1821–1822, 2 vols.; Eng. trans. 1852); also a work on capital punishment for political offences and several important political pamphlets. From 1822 to 1830 he published two important collections of historical sources, the memoirs of the history of England in 26 volumes, and the memoirs of the history of France in 31 volumes, and a revised translation of Shakespeare, and a volume of essays on the history of France. The most remarkable work from his own pen was the first part of his Histoire de la révolution d’Angleterre depuis Charles I er à Charles II. (2 vols., 1826–1827; Eng. trans., 2 vols., Oxford, 1838), a book of great merit and impartiality, which he resumed and completed during his exile in England after 1848. The Martignac administration restored Guizot in 1828 to his professor’s chair and to the council of state. Then it was that he delivered the celebrated courses of lectures which raised his reputation as an historian to the highest point of fame, and placed him amongst the best writers of France and of Europe. These lectures formed the basis of his general Histoire de la civilisation en Europe (1828; Eng. trans, by W. Hazlitt, 3 vols., 1846), and of his Histoire de la civilisation en France (4 vols., 1830), works which must ever be regarded as classics of modern historical research.
Hitherto Guizot’s fame rested on his merits as a writer on public affairs and as a lecturer on modern history. He had attained the age of forty-three before he entered upon the full display of his oratorical strength. In January 1830 he was elected for the first time by the town of Lisieux to the chamber of deputies, and he retained that seat during the whole of his political life. Guizot immediately assumed an important position in the representative assembly, and the first speech he delivered was in defence of the celebrated address of the 221, in answer to the menacing speech from the throne, which was followed by the dissolution of the chamber, and was the precursor of another revolution. On his returning to Paris from Nîmes on the 27th of July, the fall of Charles X. was already imminent. Guizot was called upon by his friends Casimir-Périer, Laffitte, Villemain and Dupin to draw up the protest of the liberal deputies against the royal ordinances of July, whilst he applied himself with them to control the revolutionary character of the late contest. Personally, Guizot was always of opinion that it was a great misfortune for the cause of parliamentary government in France that the infatuation and ineptitude of Charles X. and Prince Polignac rendered a change in the hereditary line of succession inevitable. But, though convinced that it was inevitable, he became one of the most ardent supporters of Louis-Philippe. In August 1830 Guizot was made minister of the interior, but resigned in November. He had now passed into the ranks of the conservatives, and for the next eighteen years was the most determined foe of democracy, the unyielding champion of “a monarchy limited by a limited number of bourgeois.”
In 1831 Casimir-Périer formed a more vigorous and compact administration, which was terminated in May 1832 by his death;
