Springfield Weekly Republican

A Paris letter gives this sketch of Victor Hugo and Thiers: "Hugo clings to his island home at Guernsey, and refuses to be comforted. Long ago amnestied for the events of '50, he still pouts, and declares he will never return to France so long as the present dynasty reigns. Is it parade or sincerity? Probably a little of both. He is comfortably installed on the island; he has a large house on the sea-shore, with a magnificent view of the other islands, and even of the shores of France; he is a Grand Seigneur where he lives, and people make pilgrimages to look at the house he lives in. Would you believe it? he has even the royal habit of allowing the public to visit certain portions of his house at certain hours of the day, and finally, as the supreme of happiness, to peep through a window at his back while at work in his library! To have seen Victor Hugo at work at Les Miserables, or the Toilers of the Sea, is therefore to count hereafter as an event in the common mortal's life.

"Victor Hugo is about 65 years of age, and is yet capable of much work. He is not nervous like Lamartine, and will not wear out so soon.

"M. Thiers, since he has been elected to the legislature, has almost abandoned his fauteuil at the academy. On grand occasions, however, the restless, irrepressible little bourgeois is there ready to take part in any melee that may offer. Born in 1797, he is now at the age to be garrulous, diplomatic, and afraid of nothing. His name is covered with reputation and honor, and if in politics he has been compared to the squirrel in a cage, or to a weathercock, he has left a monument in the "History of the Consulate and the Empire" which will perpetuate his name very far into the future. Excitable and uncontrollable in the forum, M. Thiers grows calm and even-tempered and steady the minute he takes his pen in hand. He lives in princely style at the Place St Georges, where he receives all who call upon him. His house is a museum of art and literature. Wealthier than either Lamartine or Guizot, and more expansive in his friendships, his house is a rendezvous for the elite of all parties."