DRUZ, FR&NCIS-XAVIERJOSEPII, was born at Besancon on the 31st of October 1773. Having visited Paris for a few mouths in 1792 he witnessed the massacres of September ; after which he returned to Besancon, and enlisted as a volunteer during the national enrolments. His comrades, according to the fashion of the times, elected him as their captain. But after a short service of little better than three years, he quitted the army for ever in 1796, and devoted the rest of his life to study. About the same time ho obtained by his family influence the appointment of l'rofessor de Belles Lettres to a public school in his native town; and in 1799 ho published his Easel our l'Art Oratoire.' In 1802 his school having been suppressed, he went to Paris, whore he settled definitively, and became connected with Villemain, Cabanis, and all the leading literati of tho time. By the advice of Cabanis, ho published his' Line,' a work of fiction in 1804, to attract attention to his philosophical writings. In 1806 appeared his 'Eased our l'Art d'6tre lienreux ' which•was followed by an ' Eloge do lIoutaigne; in 1811, for which a medal was awarded to him. From 1816 to 1820 he
wrote for several newspapers, inculcating his temperate views of moral philosophy, but refraining from politics. lie then joined Picard in writing his de Jacques Fauvel,' a tame imitation of Gil Elsa; the work appeared in 1923. The next year ho carried off the Identyon prize for his treatise : 'Do Is Philosophic morale, ou des diVrenti Sysames slur Is Science de la Vie.' In 1825 lie was elected a member of the French Academy.
lie had long desired to hold a professorship, and at length in 1832 ho was appointed to lecture, by authority, at the lustitute, ou Moral and Political science. In 1839 he published his beat work, ' L'Ilistoire du IlLame de Louis XVL' Ills gentle and unambitious life came to a close ou the 4th of November 1850, when he died as peaceably as he had lived. Although his works are written in a very unpretending style, they will be found well stored with suggestive Ideas, and all the principal critics of his country have mentioned them with esteem.