From 1820 to 1824 Lamartine was a good deal in Italy; after the death of an innocent Italian girl, which he has celebrated in touching verse, he married an English lady, and had one child, his beloved Julia.  He was made a member of the French Academy, and Charles X. had appointed him ambassador to Greece, when the Revolution of 1830 occurred, and he refused to serve under King Charles’s successor.

In 1832, partly for Julia’s health, he visited the Holy Land and Eastern Europe.  Poor little Julia died at Beyrout.  On the father’s return he published his “Souvenirs of his Journey.”  Books descriptive of Eastern countries were then rare, and Lamartine’s was received with enthusiasm.

In 1833 Lamartine began his political career by entering the Chamber of Deputies.  Some one said of him that he formed a party by himself,—­a party of one.  He pleaded for the abolition of capital punishment, for the amelioration of the poorer classes, for the emancipation of slaves in the colonies, and for various other social reforms; but he was never known as a republican.

In 1847 he published his “Histoire des Girondins,” which was received by the public with deep interest and applause.  It is not always accurate in small particulars, but it is one of the most fascinating books of history ever written, and has had the good fortune to be singularly well translated.  Alexandre Dumas is said to have told its author:  “You have elevated romance to the dignity of history.”

When the revolution of February, 1848, broke out, Lamartine, being unwell, did not make his way on the first day through the crowds to the Chamber of Deputies, nor did he go thither on the second, looking on the affair as an emeute likely to be followed only by a change of ministry.  But when news was brought to him which made him feel it was a very serious affair, he went at once to the Chamber.  On entering, he was seized upon by men of all parties, but especially by republicans, who drew him into a side-room and told him that the king had abdicated.  He had always advocated the regency of the Duchess of Orleans in the event of Louis Philippe’s death, in place of that of the Duc de Nemours.  The men who addressed him implored him, as the most popular man in France, to put himself at the head of a movement to make the Duchess of Orleans regent during her son’s minority, adding that France under a woman and a child would soon drift into a republic.  Lamartine sat for some minutes at a table with his face bowed on his hands.  He was praying, he says, for light.  Then he arose, and after saying that he had never been a republican, added that now he was for a republic, without any intermediate regency, either of the duchess or of Nemours.  With acclamations, the party went back into the Chamber to await events.

We know already how the duchess was received, and how a mob broke into the Chamber.  A provisional government was demanded, in the midst of indescribable tumult; and by the suffrages of a crowd of roughs quite as much as by the action of the deputies, a provisional government of five members (afterwards increased to seven) was voted in, the names being written down with a pencil by Lamartine on the spur of the moment.  The five men thus nominated and chosen to be rulers of France were Lamartine, Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin, Garnier-Pages, and Arago.