republics; one, misnamed a commonweal, the rule of the red flag, of barbarism and blindness, communism and proscription and revenge; the other a commonwealth indeed, in which all rights should be respected and no duties evaded or ignored; a government of justice and mercy, of practicable principles and equitable freedom, of no iniquitous traditions and no utopian aims. To establish this kind of commonwealth and prevent the resurrection of the other, Hugo, at the age of forty-six, professed himself ready to devote his life. The work of thirty-seven years is now before all men's eyes for proof how well this promise has been kept. On dangerous questions of perverse or perverted socialism (June 20, 1848), on the freedom of the press, on the state of siege, its temporary necessity and its imminent abuse, on the encouragement of letters and the freedom of the stage, he spoke, in the course of a few months, with what seems to my poor understanding the most admirable good sense and temperance, the most perfect moderation and loyalty. I venture to dwell upon this division of Hugo's life and labors with as little wish of converting as I could have hope to convert that large majority whose verdict has established as a law of nature the fact or the doctrine that "every poet is a fool" when he meddles with practical politics; but not without a confidence grounded on no superficial study that the maintainers of this opinion, if they wish to cite in support of it the evidence supplied by Victor Hugo's political career, will do well to persevere in the course which I will do them the justice to admit that--as far as I know--they have always hitherto adopted; in other words, to assume the universal assent of all persons worth mentioning to the accuracy of this previous assumption, and dismiss with a quiet smile or an open sneer the impossible notion that any one but some single imbecile or eccentric can pretend to take seriously what seems to them ridiculous, or to think that ridiculous which to their wiser minds commends itself as serious. This beaten road of assumption, this well-worn highway of assertion, is a safe as well as a simple line of travel: and the practical person who keeps to it can well afford to dispense with argument as palpably superfluous, and with evidence as obviously impertinent. Should he so far forget that great principle of precaution as to diverge from it into the modest and simple course of investigation and comparison of theory with fact and probability with proof, his task maybe somewhat harder, and its result somewhat less satisfactory. I would not advise any but an honest and candid believer in the theory which identifies genius with idiocy--which at all events would practically define one special form of genius as a note of general idiocy--to study the speeches (they are nine in number, including two brief and final replies to the personal attacks of one Montalembert, whose name used to be rather popular among a certain class