Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/282

268 pine, maple or cherry-wood being used for the sides and the back. The modern guitar, as already stated, has six strings, while the original ZZ Aud of the Arabs had only four, subsequently increased to five. They are tuned to the notes FE, A, D, G, B natural, and E. In the more remote keys transposition by means of a capo tasto, or nut, is effected. In this manner a basis of flat instead of natural keys may be substituted without any change cf fingering. In the East, especially in Arabia, India, China, anl Japan, many varieties of the guitar and its congeners are in use, the number of strings varying from two to five. For the technique of the guitar Madame Sidney Pratten’s treatise, Learning the Guitar simplified, may be consulted.  GUIZOT, (1787–1874), historian, orator, and statesman, was born at Nimes ox the 4th October 1787, of an honourable Protestant family belonging to the Vourgeoiste of that city. It is character- istic of the cruel disabilities which still weighed upon the Protestants of France before the Revolution, that his parents, at the time of their union, could not be publicly or legally muirried by their own pastors, and that the ceremony was clandestine. The liberal opinions of his family did not, however, save it from the sanguinary intolerance of the Reign of Terror, and on the 8th April 1794 his father perishe] at Nimes upon the scaffold. Thenceforth the education of the future minister devolved entirely upon his mother, a woman of slight appearance and of homely manners, but endowed with great strength of character and clearness of Judgment. Madame Guizot was a living type of the French Huguenots of the, stern in her principles and her faith, immovable in her convictions and her sense of duty. She formed the character of her illustri- ous son and shared every vicissitude of his life. In the days of his power her simple figure, always clad in deep mourning for her martyred husband, was not absent from the splendid circle of his political friends. In the days of his exile in 1848 she followed him to London, and there at avery advanced age closed her life and was buried at Kensal Green. Driven from Nimes by the Revolution, Madame Guizot and her son repaired to Geneva, where he received his education. In spite of her decided Calvinistic opinions, the theories of Rousseau, then much in fashion, were not without their influence on Madame Guizot. She was a strong liberal, and she even adopted the notion inculcated in the Emile that every man ought to learn a manual trade or craft. Young Guizot was taught to be a carpenter, and he so far succeeded in his work that he made a table with his own hands, which is still preserved at Val Richer by his children. Of the progress of his graver studies little is known, for in the work which he entitled AZemoirs of my own Times CGuizot omitted all personal details of his earlier life. But his literary attain- ments must have been precocious and considerable, for when he arrived in Paris in 1805 to pursue his studies in the faculty of laws, he entered at eighteen as tutor into the family of M. Stapfer, formerly Swiss minister in France, and he soon began to write in a journal edited by M. Suard, the Publiciste. This connexion introduced him to the literary society of Paris. In October 1809, being then twenty-two, he wrote a review of M. de Chateaubriand’s Martyrs, which procured for him the approbation and cordial thanks of that emiuent person, and he continued to contribute largely to the periodical press. At Suard’s he had made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de Meulan, an accomplished lady of good family, some fourteen years older than himself, who also was engaged to contribute a series of articles to Suard’s journal. These contributions were interrupted by her illness, but immediately resumed and continue] by an unknown hind. It was discovered that Frangois 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 was the mother of his eldest sun, a young man of great promise, who died of consumption in 1837. Madame Guizot, his first wife, died in 1827; she was the authoress of many esteemed works on female education. During this period of his life 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 netes in 1812. These works recommended lim to the notice of M. de Fontanes, then grand-master of the university of France, and there was some question of attaching him in a subordi- nate office to the council of state. But on political subjects a radical antagonism existed between the young constitu- tional publicist and the spirit of the empire. This did not prevent M. de Fontanes from selecting CGuizot for the chair of modern history in Paris in 1812. lis first lecture (which is reprinted in his Afemoivs) was delivered on the 11th 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. He had now acquired a considerable position in the society of Paris, and the friend- ship of Royer-Collard and the leading members of the liberal party, including the yourg Duc de Breglie. 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 XVITI. 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 tlic 25th March 1815 (the statement that he retained oflice under General Carnot is incorrect), and returned to his literary pursuits. The liberal professions of the emperor during the Hundred Days, though backed by Benjamin Constant, did not for a moment impose en Guizot. He was convinced that Napoleon would never govern on liberal principles, and that his power could not last. He was equally convinced that a second restoration of the Bourbons was the only mode by which constitutional monarchy could be established in France. He therefore applied himself to promote that object, and repaired to Ghent, where he saw Louis XVIIL., 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 nade 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 fre- quently 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 resumed office as secretary-general of the ministry of justice under M. de Marbois, but this minister resigned in 1816, and the young statesman was promoted to the council of state and to the general directorship of the departmental and communal administration of the kingdom. But the reactionary spirit