Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

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[247] livery of the Catholic Church, who stood near the altar muttering the matin service, with but one other person in the house, and that the official who had charge of the building.

From the church I passed to the College Royal de France, where I heard Burnouf¹ on Éloquence Latine. He is a gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, short and thick, without any particular marks of intelligence. I counted in his lecture room thirteen students. These all sat round a long table at the head of which was the professor, while he read and expounded in a sufficiently humdrum manner some passages of Sallust's Jugurthine War. He had Sallust before him; first read a few sentences, and then presented a translation, commenting as he went along. Nearly all the students took notes; they seemed to range from seventeen to twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. From this amphitheatre I passed to the École de Droit, where I first heard Berriat Saint-Prix,² a name well known in French jurisprudence. He had the red costume of the law professors, and kept his red hat on his head during his lecture. A reason for this may be found in the intolerable coldness of the apartment. He is an old man,—I should say sixty-five or seventy,—with hair white with age, and of an interesting appearance. His manner was interesting, and he sprinkled his legal commentary upon the Code of Procedure with some plaisanteries, the exact bearing of which it was difficult for me to comprehend. I sat at some distance from him; and he spoke so low that I could hear but little of what he said. After him I heard in the École de Droit Royer-Collard,³ a younger man,—say thirty-eight or forty,—full in body and face, and looking as if well-fed and content with the world. His subject was the Droit des gens; and he was considering this morning the quality of Consuls. He commenced by reviewing the history of antiquity to see if there were any persons recognized, anterior to modern times, as consuls. His manner was clear; his arrangement seemed to be natural, consecutive, and just; and his voice was so full and his enunciation so distinct, that I lost scarcely a sentence. After this, returned to my breakfast and gave the rest of my day to French.

Feb. 4. Visited the other side of the river, and studied French.

Feb. 5. At the College de France, at eight o'clock this morning, heard De Portets on the Droit des gens. He was a man apparently about fifty, stoutly and substantially built, with iron-gray hair. His lecture had no elegance of manner, but was distinct. There were only four or five persons present. His object appeared to be to show that all the races of men have a common origin, that of course they must be substantially alike at