ectual security. We feel
his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in
this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the
same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If
he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical
anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of
conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a
father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a
rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of
Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions
to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter
becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like
no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no
rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards
his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest
in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the
family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command
of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now
and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust
or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as
it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I
right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will
one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?"

Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his
correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have
been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we
make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in
a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were
employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though
a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty
of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a
common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as
they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the
expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She
it was especially that Proudhon resembled