Although he was born and continually lived and wrote in Switzerland, M. Alexandre Vinet was of French extraction; he belongs to France as much as to Switzerland, for he knew, and understood, and loved France as much as he did Switzerland. He served, too, the cause of religious liberty, and the Christian reaction, in France not less than in Switzerland. A delicate child, son of a poor and an austere school-master, who destined him to the obscure life of a village clergyman, he manifested from the commencement of his laborious career an ardent taste for literature and for study, which promised him a rich reward in the intellectual enjoyment of the chef-d'oeuvres of ancient and modern literature. He was found upon one occasion in his little chamber in a fit of enthusiasm and affected to tears by a perusal of the "Cid." At the age of twenty he became Professor of French Literature at Bâle; and there he devoted himself to the service of every candidate upon the Rhine or upon the Swiss Alps who required to be taught to comprehend and admire the great writers of France of whatever age, and in whatever department of literature. {171} Philosophers and orators, prose-writers and poets, Christians or Freethinkers, Catholics or Protestants, Conservatives or Reformers, Classicists or Romanticists--all the men who have constituted the intellectual and literary glory of France, obtained in this fervent Methodist of the Valdenses an admirer as warm as he was intelligent and impartial. The prevailing characteristic of M. Vinet's literary essays and criticisms is their geniality; and wherever he encounters any spark or trace of the true or the beautiful, under whatever banner they appear, and however they may be mingled with opinions otherwise shocking to his feelings, he is at once attracted and moved, and he admires and praises with enthusiasm. His was a mind of comprehensive sympathies, open to every impression, keen to appreciate, always ready to enjoy everything that deserved to give pleasure, even although it might be only momentarily and in passing. {172}