[Agénor Étienne]. French author and publicist, born at Orange, France, on the 10th of July 1810. His father, Comte Adrien É. P., was, in 1836, Secretary of the Interior, and Agénor at that time was employed under his father. In 1842 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Although a member of the nobility of France, Comte Gasparin favored many liberal measures, being moved thereto by his Protestant principles. During the revolution of 1848 he was in the East. He did not favor the empire established by Napoleon III. For this reason he removed to Switzerland, and lectured at Geneva on social, religious and historical subjects. An enemy to slavery, he expressed the warmest friendship for the cause of the American Union during the Civil War, and published two works on the subject: Les États Unis en 1861: Un Grand Peuple qui se Relève (1861) and L’Amérique devant l’Europe (1862) translated and published under the titles Uprising of a Great People and America before Europe. Count Gasparin also published several works on French Protestantism, spiritualism, the family, moral liberty, and the Life of Innocent III. (1874). His philanthropic labors in behalf of French refugees who flocked to Geneva hastened his death, which occurred on the 14th of May 1871.
