Amable Guillaume Prosper Barante, baron de Brugiere, a French statesman and historian, born at Riom in Auvergne, June 10, 1782, died in Auvergne in 1866. He was educated at the polytechnic school in Paris, and occupied during the empire several offices at home and missions abroad. He was prefect of Loire-In-ferieure on the fall of Napoleon, kept his post under the restoration, and after the hundred days became a member of the council of state and general secretary of the home department. In 1819 he was made a peer of France, and after that most of his time was given to literary pursuits. As early as 1809 he had published anonymously his Tableau de la litterature francaise au 18' siecle, and he was the real author of a great part of Mme. de la Rochejaque-lin's Me moires on the war in La Vendee. He published a French version of Schiller's dramas (1821), contributed to the Collection des theatres etrangers, and furnished the "Hamlet" of Guizot'8 translation of Shakespeare. His Histoire des dues de Bourgogne de la mai-son de Valois (8 vols. 8vo, 1824-'6), a skilful arrangement of the memoirs of old chroniclers, has been considered a model of purely narrative history, and secured his election to the French academy.

After the revolution of 1830 he was appointed ambassador to Turin, and in 1835 he went as minister to St. Petersburg. After the revolution of 1848 he devoted himself wholly to literary pursuits. Among his remaining works are: Melanges historiques et litteraires (3 vols., 1836); Questions constitu-tionnelles (1850); Histoire de la convention Rationale (6 vols., 1851-'3); Histoire du directoire (3 vols., 1855); Etudes historiques et biogra-phiques (2 vols., 1857); La vie politique de M. Royer-Col'lard (2 vols., 1801); and De la decentralisation en 1829 et en 1833 (1865). As a historian Barante was impartial and accurate in his statements.