choose a home for himself, it had always its garden, or a sight of one. At an early age he went to tutoring; in 1821 he was appointed lecturer on history in the Collège Rollin, then in its old place on the University hill; soon after 1830 he succeeded to Guizot's chair in the Sorbonne, and in 1838 the Collège de France made him its professor of History and Moral Science. In that institution, he and his colleague Quinet caused immense commotion by their assaults on the Church intrenched in the State, and from their halls the hootings of the clericals, and the plaudits of the liberals, re-echoed throughout France. The priesthood complained that "the lecturer on history and morals gave no history and no morals," and it began to be believed—rightly or wrongly—that he was using his professor's platform as a band-stand, and was beating a big drum for the gratification of the groundlings. He was speedily dismissed, he was reinstated soon after 1848, and was finally thrown aside by the Second Empire.

At this period only, he disappears from the Scholars' Quarter for a while. His earliest residence there was, soon after his marriage in 1827, at 23 Rue de l'Arbalète, a street named from the "Chevaliers de l'Arbalète," who had made it their archery grounds in mediæval days. The site of Michelet's residence is fittingly covered by a large school, on the corner of that street and of the street named for Claude Bernard. After a short stay in Rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor—that street nearly all gone now—he returned to this neighborhood, and settled in Rue des Postes, which, in 1867, received the name of the grammarian Lhomond. Otherwise, no change has come to this quiet street, lined with fifteenth and sixteenth century buildings, among which is the Hôtel Flavacourt, set in the midst of gardens. On its first floor Michelet lived from 1838 to 1850. At No. 10 is the arched gateway through which he went, in its keystone the carved head of a strong man with thick beard and curling locks. Above the long yellow-drab wall shows the new chapel of the priests, who, with unknowing irony, have taken his favorite dwelling for their schools.

Absent from this quarter during the early years of the Second Empire, and absent from Paris during part of that time, it was in 1856 that Michelet settled in his last abode. It was at 44 Rue de l'Ouest, and his garden here was the great Luxembourg Garden. In 1867, the street was renamed Rue d'Assas, and his house renumbered 76. After his death in the south of France in 1874, his widow lived there until her own death in 1899, and kept that modest home just as he had left it. She was his second wife, and had been of great help to him in his work, and had done her own work, aided by his hand, which sprinkled gold-dust over her manuscript, as she prettily said. That hand had not been idle for over fifty years. He gave forty years of labor, broken only by his other books, to his "History of France," which at his death was not yet done, as he had meant that it should be done. It is a series of pictures, glowing and colored by his sympathetic imagination, which let him see and touch the men of every period, and made him, for the moment, the contemporary of every epoch. And Taine assures us, contrary to the general belief, that we may trust its accuracy. His style has a magic all its own. He had said: "Augustin Thierry calls history a narration, Guizot calls it an analysis; I consider that history should be a resurrection." This idea is translated into durable marble on his striking tombstone in Père-Lachaise, done in high relief by the chisel of Mercié.

The life of Maximilien-Paul-Émile Littré, a few years longer than that of Michelet and equally full of strenuous labor, was passed on this same slope and ended in this same Street of Assas. Born on February 1, 1801, in the plain house of three stories and attic at No. 21 Rue des Grands-Augustins, he got his schooling at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where we have seen other famous scholars. He appears for a day and a night on the barricades of 1830, and then settles quietly at No. 11 Rue du Colombier, now Rue Jacob. On his marriage, in 1835, he removed to No. 21 Rue des Maçons, now Rue Champollion, once Racine's street, in the heart of the University. In 1838 he made his home in Rue de l'Ouest, and in that home he remained until his death on June 2, 1881. His apartment took up the entire second floor of present 44 Rue d'Assas—the new name of Rue de l'Ouest—at the corner of Rue de Fleurus, and its windows on the curve opened on ample light and air.

Like Sainte-Beuve, Littré gave up medicine, to which he had been trained, for journalistic work; some of which, in his early days, was done for the Gazette Médicale, and much of it all through life for the political press. He was an ardent Liberal, and after the fall of the Empire, was elected a Deputy, and later a Senator, of the Third Republic. Nothing in the domain of literature seemed alien to this catholic mind, equally at ease in science and philosophy, philology and history. The enduring achievement of his life is his Dictionary of the French Language. It was begun in 1844 and completed in 1872, and a supplement was added in 1877. In his fortieth year, he was attracted by the teachings of Comte, and became a leader of the Positivists and a copious contributor to their review. His career is that of an earnest and a self-denying student; a teacher of unfettered thinking in science, religion, politics; a modest and disinterested fellow-worker in letters.

His master in the cult that won him solely by its scientific fascinations, Auguste Comte, had lived for the last fifteen years of his life at No. 10 Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, and there he died in 1857. We can but glance at the tablet in passing, and we cannot even glance at the altered residences, in this quarter, of the gifted Amédée Thierry and of his more gifted brother, Augustin, the historian "with the patience of a monk and the pen of a poet." He died, in 1856, in Rue du Mont-Parnasse, in the house that had been Quinet's, it is said. We look up, as we go, at the sunny windows, facing full south over the Luxembourg Gardens, of the home of Jules Janin, in his day "the prince of critics." They are on the first floor at the corner of Rues Rotrou and de Vaugirard, alongside the Odéon, the theatre in which he had his habitual seat. He died at Passy in 1874.

This faubourg has had no more striking figure than that of Prosper Mérimée, tight-buttoned in frock-coat, and of irreproachable starchedness; with a curiously round, cold eye behind glasses, a large nose with a square end, a forehead seamed with fine wrinkles. It was his pride to pass as an Englishman in his walk. In his work, in romance equally with archæology, the gentleman prevails over the author, so that he seems to stand aloof, reserved, sceptical, correct; never showing emotion, never giving way to his really infinite wit and frisky mockery. He began his working-life in 1825, as a painter with his father, alongside the École des Beaux-Arts, at No. 16 Rue des Petits-Augustins, now 12 Rue Bonaparte. In 1840 he moved around the corner to No. 10 Rue des Beaux-Arts, half way between the school and his other place of work in the Institute, as Inspector of the Historical and Artistic Monuments of France. From 1848 to 1851 he was to be found at 18 Rue Jacob, and close at hand he found "l'Inconnue," at 35 of the same street. In 1852 he removed to his last residence at 52 Rue de Lille, on the corner of Rue du Bac. The Commune burned that house along with others adjacent, and until rebuilding began, long after, there stood in the ruins a marble bust on its pedestal, unharmed except for the stain of the flames. It was all that was left of Mérimée's great art-collection, with