that the dynasty of Napoleon, restored at last to its natural place in the affections of the French people, ought to be cordially recognized and supported by the active sympathies of this country. The insular position of Great Britain is a sufficient protection to her from any ordinary attack, and she will hardly dare to invite any formidable coalition against herself. But France has once been punished for attempting to govern herself. She has passed through a series of convulsions such as no other country has ever recovered from. Her very victories were forced upon her. For twenty years, she was allowed no breathing space. Compelled to battle against the whole civilized world, she fell, at last, exhausted by her own prodigious efforts, but with prouder trophies and more glorious memories than she had won in whole centuries of her former history.

No Englishman has ever dared to write the history of Napoleon; for even Hazlitt was so misanthropic, at the time he was composing his work, that the jaundice appears on every page. Even the great name and fair fame of Sir Walter Scott have been injured by his acquiescence in the depraved spirit of the class for whom he wrote. Strange as it may seem at first, Alison comes nearest to doing justice to the character of Napoleon; for it being his intention to show only that it was the apostolic mission of England to put down all expressions of popular will, both at home and abroad, it was no object with him to prove Napoleon to be a monster, but simply that he was the embodiment of the great idea of popular rights, and for that reason, and no other, deserved the punishment which he received at her hands.

In forming an opinion of the early history of the Napoleon dynasty and its claims to be regarded as the form of government which the people have in their recent votes only reaffirmed, we need take no other ground than that which was assumed by Mr. Fox, and the liberal party of Great Britain, then repre sented, however, by only fifty or sixty members in a House of Commons which Lord Brougham has since called the most infamous that ever assembled. The powerful party, which has since overturned ministries and carried measures of vital importance, was then but germinating. The great body of the nation was unrepresented; the press, with few exceptions, was

under the control of the dominant party, and abetted the unscrupulous schemes of the patrician interest. Indeed, more than one Englishman in our own day has ventured to assert, that England persecuted France from the time of the rude dismissal of M. Chauvelin, till the final withdrawal of her troops from French territory, three years after she had restored the curse of "divine right" and Bourbon imbecility; that her armies and machinations ultimately succeeded in overthrowing the only government that a European nation had ever chosen for itself, in strengthening the hands of absolute despotism, and in retarding, for half a century, the cause of that very liberty, the blessings of which she had been proclaiming for two hundred years. The peace-party, distinguished as it was for respectability and intelligence, could avail nothing against the machinery which the government of George III. and the Prince Regent employed to carry out their ends.

We had intended to say something of the abdication at Fontainebleau; of the intrigues on the part of England to have Napoleon removed from Elba to St. Helena or to St. Lucie, which caused the return to France, and the enthusiasm but ultimate catastrophe of the Hundred Days; of the unfortunate confidence in the good faith of the "most generous of his enemies;" of the barbarities that hastened the death of the illustrious exile; and of the violation of the sanctity of death by those who tore from the coffin the inscription which his followers had placed there, and whose only fault was that it gave him a title which had been recognized by every sovereign upon the continent. But our limits will permit us only to say, that Mr. Pitt did not live to witness the triumph of his principles. He died soon after the news arrived of the defeat of the last of his combinations, when the "sun of Austerlitz' had set upon its bloody field. The spoiled child of the oligarchy, the uncompromising enemy of the people, fell at last under the burden of his misdirected labors. His last glance beheld the sun of that empire he had sought to quench blazing in its noontide glory, and, turning mournfully to the gloomy picture of his country's future that his distempered fancy had conjured up, his own weakness was disclosed to him. His genius had exhausted itself in coalitions, and his coalitions had all been failures.

Louis XVIII. could not have been any thing, even had he wished to be, but the tool of the despots who had placed him upon the throne of France at the expense of the independence of its people. The country that had come down to him from Pharamond and Clovis; the country of Charlemagne, of Francis, of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., and of Napoleon, the last and proudest of its memories, was plunged into the abyss of shame. It suffered the sublime and the ridiculous in humiliation. From the imperious demands of Austria for the dismemberment of her territory, to the stolid impertinence of the British cockneys who thronged the streets of Paris; from the rage of the chivalrous old swordsman, Blucher, who was for hanging Napoleon and blowing up the Bridge of Jena, to the cloud of ragged and thieving Spaniards that appeared on the summit of the Pyrenees, -all conspired to abase the once haughty arbiter of Europe. It was these indignities that humbled her more than the frightful pillaging to which the Allies subjected her lands.

But why revive, at this day, the story of wrongs that have become historical? Because that very history has been grossly perverted; because France has been systematically misrepresented; because a large proportion of historical readers have been taught to consider her as an outlaw from political society, and a disturber of the tranquillity of Europe; because they who have wronged her most now hate her most; because, in fine, there has been another revolution, another period of anarchy, another 18th of Brumaire, and another Emperor; and because there is the same disposition to injure and to libel from the same quarter; and because there is now a new nation, hitherto untrammelled, and, we trust, forever to continue untrammelled by European alliances, but whose sympathies, at least, would be active in another general European war. The same political organ that urged the death of Napoleon, as an atonement to that British nation "whose children he had for twenty years slaughtered, and whose country he had sought to ruin," has been, during the past year, profusely dealing in the same species of "history" and the same sort of libel. Happily, however, the time has come when Englishmen are among the loudest in decrying the inhuman policy

that sets nations against each other, and when Englishmen themselves are not afraid to speak of the iniquitous policy commenced by Mr. Pitt, and carried out by the Regent, Lord Castlereagh, and other leaders of the Tory party.

Under the reign of Louis Philippe, France was undoubtedly prosperous, and was not altogether without that beatific vision of Frenchmen, la gloire. The siege of Antwerp, the siege of Constantine, the bombardment of Vera Cruz, the capture of the Smalah of Abd-el-Kader, all illustrated by the pencil of Vernet, and thus contributing to those three leagues of canvas at Versailles which depict French history from the time when Pharamond was raised by the Franks on the shield in the year 420, to the battle of Isly in 1844, attest satisfactorily that the spirit of Bayard, Duguesclin, Turenne, and Condé, has not degenerated. But Louis Philippe ascended the throne as the vassal of England, and was merely tolerated by the sovereigns upon the continent. Nicholas was actually marching his army upon Paris, and Austria not only refused a matrimonial alliance to the Duc d'Orleans, but showed an insulting partiality for the Duc de Reichstadt. So abject was Louis Philippe's submission to England, that the latter presumed to manifest grave offence at the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with the Spanish Infanta. France, however, had sufficient reason for breaking off all connection with England on the Eastern question, in which M. Thiers figured so conspicuously. Lord Palmerston had coolly announced to his House of Commons, that "it was not intended to consult France upon the Eastern question." The people of France were furious; the army was raised to the war establishment, and was impatient for the conflict. The generals pledged themselves to put Louis Philippe in possession of London in ten days after the departure from Paris. There was no war, however, and all that France gained was the discipline and the materiel of an army consisting of half a million of men, the best appointed in the world.

The causes which converted the riot of February 22, 1848, into a successful revolution, are well known; but there was an element in it which has been generally underrated. The three great parties opposed to Louis Philippe were the Bona

partists, or rather the Imperialists, the Legitimists or Henriquinquists, and the Republicans. The latter party was the most insignificant in numbers and influence, and therefore the noisiest and most violent. It consisted of a few poets and theorists, four or five journalists, and one or two thousand ruffians; this was the party that controlled for a while thirtyfive millions of French people. Undoubtedly the best history of the Revolution of 1848 is the somewhat inflated account that Lamartine has given of his adventures and his pensées during the four months that saw him at the head of the Provisional Government, comprising the space between the anarchy of February, and the military dictatorship of June. Hydra, Argus, and Briareus, with their complicated system of heads, eyes, and arms, appear to have been united in the poetstatesman, who contrived, saw, and achieved all that was glorious during those memorable days. The account which he gives of the declaration of the republic has in it less of the poetry which he intended, than of the ridiculous. It is now as clear as noonday, that the whole affair was the result of sheer intimidation by the armed and drunken rabble, who were pillaging and shooting at random, while the heads of the revolution were planning. Lamartine says he was met at the Chamber of Deputies by half a dozen journalists and others, who besought him to make a government. He demanded five minutes (!) for reflection, retired to a chamber, rested his head upon his hands, and at the expiration of the time agreed upon, announced that government which was the laughing-stock of France and of the world for four months. The best farce ever represented upon the boards of the Théâtre des Folies Dramatiques could not compare with this. It was hardly to be expected, however, that the brave men who permitted the Duchess d'Orleans to be beaten down and half suffocated, the young Count of Paris to be nearly strangled by a gamin, and the little Duc de Chartres to be trampled under foot, would risk much for France. Lamartine showed not the least sign of personal fear; no Frenchman ever does in a revolution. But there was, to say the least, a deficiency of moral courage in the transaction, which makes the history of it a painful one. What a contrast between the shameful