Leon Gambetta was easily the most brilliant man of the Third Republic. He is the one man of genius we discover in recent French political life. As an orator he has had few equals. He possessed a magnificent voice, a commanding presence, a remarkable command of rich language, a rapid, fiery utterance, and his eloquence at times was overwhelming. He is spoken of as an editor, but his work in this character was probably small. His paper, _La République Française_, was perhaps chiefly edited by other hands, but became a very influential journal. He was a man of great courage, and that audacity which men admire. He loved his country, and rendered her services for which she should be ever grateful. He has been accused of aiming at a dictatorship for himself. There seems little ground for the charge, and for doubting that he was, his life through, true to Republican principles. He was a good hater, and never ceased to long for an opportunity for France to revenge herself upon Germany. His private life it is best to pass over with few words. It is not one, like that of our own great statesman whose death and his own were so strangely alike, to admire and to copy. He was destitute of moral and religious principle. We are left to believe that he passed out of life without faith in God or a future state, and another illustration he furnishes that, “With the talents of an angel man may be a fool.”
The first note of preparation for the Assembly of 1883 has been sounded. Some of the proprietors of the Gibson House, at Cincinnati, Ohio, being at Chautauqua during the last Assembly, invited the trustees to hold this year’s annual session in their ample and elegantly furnished parlors. The invitation was gratefully accepted, and on January 10, the Chautauqua Board of Trustees met for deliberation. President Lewis Miller was in the chair, and presided with his usual ease and dignity. Nearly all the members were present, full of confidence, and ready to do and to dare. One of its members, Rev. E. J. L. Baker, answered not to roll-call, as he had only a few days previous responded to the summons of death. Appropriate action was taken by the Board in the case, recognizing the high character of the deceased, and the important part he had taken in the affairs of Chautauqua.