considers what the discovery meant, and what its results now mean, to
the welfare and the prosperity of France, one is tempted to regard the
24th of June as a date almost as well worth celebrating by Frenchmen as
the 14th of July.

Marshal Villars is celebrated by a very uncomely obelisk on his
battle-field of Denain near by, and General de Dampierre by a column in
the public square of Anzin itself. Why should not Anzin set up a statue
of Pierre Mathieu?

A comparatively short time sufficed to convince the adventurous
associates that they had indeed found the great veins they had sought.
Pierre Taffin went to Paris and got a considerable extension from the
Crown of their concession. Money was raised and the work went on,
bringing labourers and settlers to Anzin and founding the new industry.
Then came a new danger, which might have been foreseen. The lords of the
soil at Anzin had been quite left out of the calculation, but the lords
of the soil at Anzin in 1734 were quite as well awake to their legal
rights, and to the advantages to be derived from a judicious use of
these rights, as were the small farmers of Pennsylvania long afterwards,
when prospecting engineers began to sink shafts and to pump up oil along
the slopes of the Appalachians. The Prince de Croy-Solre and the Marquis
de Cernay brought forward their title to share in the riches found
beneath their acres. Desandrouin and his associates contested these
claims as long as they could. But the contests ended, as the lawyers had
seen from the first that it must, in a compromise. The Prince and the
Marquis on the one hand with their titles to the land, and the Vicomte
and his associates on the other with their royal concessions, came
together, and in 1757 founded the Anzin Company.

As in the case of St.-Gobain, the capital of the company was divided
into sols and deniers. There were twenty-four deniers, of which the
Prince de Croy-Solre received four for himself and two associates, the
Vicomte Desandrouin five sols and four deniers, the heirs of M. Taffin
three sols nine deniers, the Marquis de Cernay and his six associates
eight sols, and the engineer Mathieu six deniers. The phraseology of the
articles of association is somewhat quaint and ancient, but the spirit
of them is essentially fair and equitable. The recital of the objects
for which the company was formed is a model in its way, and shows that
the authors of these articles--nobles, roturiers, enginee