MONTALEMBERT, CHARLES FORBES, Comte de, was b. in April 1810 of an ancient family of Poitou. His father was created a peer of France under the Restoration, and for a considerable time was minister of the French court in Sweden. His mother was of the Scottish family of Forbes, to which circumstance may be ascribed Montalembert's remarkable familiarity with the English language, and his intimate knowledge and strong admiration of the social and political institutions of England. Although his more advanced studies were carried on in the university of Paris, a considerable part of his youth was spent in Sweden; and the first work by which he was brought into notice, was a pamphlet on Sweden, which be published in his nineteenth year. On the death of his father, Montalembert succeeded to his honors, and to his seat in the Chamber of Peers. But his earliest public appearance was in what may be truly considered as the great labor of his life, a joint effort in which he associated himself with the Abbe Lacordaire (q.v.) and other friends, for the purpose of taking advantage of the recent charter, by establishing a free school for Catholic education, independent, as well of the university, as of all other state influence. An attempt on the part of the police to inter fere arbitrarily with this project, became the subject of a trial before the Chamber of Peers, which Montalembert rendered memorable by his first speech, one of the most brilliant upon record, and a clear foreshadowing, not alone of the eloquence, but of the bold and uncompromising earnestness in the cause of his church and of the common interests of religious liberty, which have constantly characterized his later career. Of the struggle of the Catholic party in France against what they regarded as the arbitrary monopoly of education which was claimed for the university, Montalembert was for many years the leader and champion; and in the various works in the preparation of which he employed all his leisure from public duties, his Life rf St. Elizabethof Hungary,
his Life and Times of St. .Anselm, and, above all, in an appeal On the Duty of Cailm1i..1 on the Question of Heedom• of Education, which he wrote during a visit to the island of _Madeira for the recovery of his ' calth in 1843, he never ceased to advocate the same principles. After the revolution of 1848. Montalembert, true to his former professions, was one of the first of his party to accept of the new state of things, and to use actual means at his disposal for the furtherance of the views which he had consistently advocated. He was elected member of the national, and afterwards of the legislative assembly; and for a time contrived, while he continued the same line of policy as regards church interests. to give a general support to the government of Louis Napoleon as presi dent of the republic. his first break with that government was on the question of the proposed confiscation of the Orleans property; and after the coup d' etat of December, the breach became irreconcilable. From that time, Montalembert continued to be the implacable assailant of the arbitrary repression of public opinion which characterized some measures of Napoleon III.; and the brilliant and enthusiastically admiring pictures, which in his Political Future of England, he has drawn of its social and political institu tions, derive much of their vigor from the covert but palpable contrast with the condition of France which points them all. Besides numerous articles contributed by him to the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Encyclopedic Catholique, and the Correspondent, he also wrote: L'Arenirpolitique de l' An oleterre (1855); Les Moines d'Oceident depuis St. Benoit jusqu' St. Bernard (1860-67)• English translation, 5 vols. 1861-67); Une Sation in deuit, Pologne en 1861; L'Eglise lthre dans l'Etat litre (1863); Le Pape et la Pologne (1864), etc. He died Mar. 13, 1870. See Memoir by Mrs. Oliphant, 2 vols. (1872).