Such as his position is, he has made it himself. He has worked his way upward from obscure poverty. He owes nothing to birth, but every thing to labor. His father was a poor locksmith of Marseilles, where Adolphe was born in the year 1797. Through the interest of some of his mother's relations, the boy obtained admission to the free school of Marseilles, where he distinguished himself by his industry, and achieved considerable success. From thence, at eighteen, he went to study law at the town of Aix. Here it was that he formed his friendship with Mignet, afterward the distinguished historian. These two young men, in the intervals of their dry labors in the study of law, directed their attention to literary, historical, and political subjects. Thiers even led a political party of the students of Aix, and harangued them against the government of the restoration. He was practicing his eloquence for the tribune, though he then knew it not. He thus got into disgrace with the professors and the police, but the students were ardently devoted to him. He competed for a prize essay, and though his paper was the best, the professors refused to adjudge the prize to "the little Jacobin." The competition was adjourned till next year. Thiers sent in his paper again "next year," but meanwhile, a production arrived from Paris, which eclipsed all the others. To this the prize was speedily adjudged by the professors. But great was their dismay, when, on opening the sealed letter containing the name of the competitor, it was found to be no other than that of M. Thiers himself! The young lawyer commenced practice in the town of Aix, but finding it up-hill work, and not at all productive, he determined to remove, in company with his friend Mignet, to seek his fortune in Paris. Full of talents, but light in pocket, the two friends entered the capital, and took lodgings in one of its obscurest and dirtiest quarters--a room on the fourth floor of a house in the dark Passage Montesquieu, of which a deal chest of drawers, a walnut-wood bedstead, two chairs, and a small black table somewhat rickety, constituted the furniture. There the two students lodged, working for the future. They did not wait with their hands folded. Thiers was only twenty-four, but he could already write with brilliancy and power, as his prize essay had proved. He obtained an introduction to Manuel, then a man of great influence in Paris, who introduced Thiers to Lafitte, the banker, and Lafitte got him admitted among the editors of the _Constitutionelle_, then the leading journal. It was the organ of _Les Epiciers_, or "grocers," in other words, of the rising middle classes of France. At the same time, Mignet obtained a similar engagement on the _Courrier_.