"In the midst of his manifold literary labors there happened to Lamartine such a chance as befalls few poets. He had it in his power, once in his life, to do something greater than the greatest lyric, more noble than any verse. At the crisis of the Revolution of 1848, chance (to use the word without irreverence) thrust him, and no other, into the place of master, and held him for one supreme moment alone between France and anarchy,--between, we might almost say, the world and another terrible revolution. And then the sentimentalist proved himself a man. He confronted raving Paris, and subdued it. The old noble French blood in his veins rose to the greatness of the crisis. With a pardonable thrill of pride in a position so strange to a writer and a man of thought, into which, without any action of his own, he found himself forced, he describes how he faced the tumultuous mob of Paris for seventy hours almost without repose, without sleep, without food, when there was no other man in France bold enough or wise enough to take that supreme part, and guide that most aimless of revolutions to a peaceful conclusion,--for the moment, at least. It was not Lamartine's fault that the Empire came after him. Long before the Empire came, he had fallen from his momentary elevation, and lost all influence with his country. But his downfall cannot efface the fact that he did actually reign, and reign beneficently, subduing and controlling the excited nation, saving men's lives and the balance of society." The seventy hours at the Hôtel-de-Ville to which Mrs. Oliphant alludes were passed by Lamartine in making orations, in sending off proclamations to the departments, in endeavoring to calm the excited multitude and to secure the triumph of the Republic without the effusion of blood. The revolution _he_ conducted was, if I may say so, the only _respectable_ revolution France has ever known. Nobody expected it, nobody was prepared for it, nobody worked for it; but the whole country acquiesced in it, and men of all parties, seeing that it was an accomplished fact, gave in their adhesion to the Second Republic. There were five great questions that came up before the Provisional Government for immediate solution,-- The relation of France to foreign powers. The enlargement of the army. The subsistence of working-men out of employment. The property and safety of the exiled royal family. And, above all, how to meet these expenses and the payment of interest on national bonds, due the middle of March, with assets in the treasury of about twenty-five cents in the dollar. These questions were all met by the wonderful energy of Lamartine and his colleagues, seconded by genuine patriotic efforts throughout France.