and fighting it out on the decks with heavy-armed infantry; and the nautical Athenians were beaten by the same manœuvre, earlier in the history, in the harbour of Syracuse. Our seamanship will no doubt continue to secure an ascendancy on the ocean and in distant countries, but our safety must henceforth depend on our quasi-military strength, and our ability to supply deficiency of number, as compared with the armies of the Continent, by the perfect equipment and superior quality of our soldiery. The Channel will still give us a great advantage, by rendering it difficult or impossible for any invader to concentrate for offence a force so great as, by means of railroad, we can gather for defence on any given point of the coast. Before the time of Louis Napoleon, we lay at the mercy of France or any other Continental power which might take the trouble to invade us. The name of England alone may have kept them at bay if any were mischievously disposed, as Achilles, without his armour, once drove the Trojans from the ships; but what if the Trojans had turned on Achilles?

Louis Napoleon and the French Empire are popularly looked upon in England, Germany, and elsewhere, as a standing menace to Europe. But the standing menace is more truly the standing army of France, and that standing barbaric element in the character of the else most civilised of nations which supports that standing army. France is the only nation of Europe, with the exception perhaps of Russia, confessedly still half barbarous, which has not exploded the notion that extensions of territory mean increase of internal prosperity and national happiness. France is the only adult nation over whose pillow juvenile dreams of conquest still continue to hover. If such notions have been communicated by her to Spain, it must be because Spain is in her dotage. Not that England is unambitious,

but her ambition is of a different kind. She finds herself happy under her own institutions, and wishes to see those institutions extended by fair means throughout the world. But without being

possessed of sufficient brute force to resist the brute force of the enemies that all friends of their kind are sure to raise against themselves, she would be always liable to be bullied out of her legitimate influence. The antique Athene, the goddess of civilisation, was never seen without her shield and spear, and it is the duty of the modern Britannia to keep up the character which she professes on her coinage.

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The Duc d'Aumale, one is not surprised to find, takes the popular view of the inconsistency of Louis Napoleon's promises and professions, and of course contrasts the facts of the Crimean and Lombard wars with the theory expressed in the dictum, "L'empire c'est la paix." Louis Napoleon is under the disadvantage of being nominally a despotic sovereign, whereas his power is limited, not by constitutional, but only unconstitutional powers in the background. doubt he would have spoken more truly, if not more judiciously, had he been able to say, "The empire was war, but I mean to make it peace if I can." Having no prestige of legitimacy, but a prestige of arms, his dynasty must keep up the military glory of France, and, if possible, extend her territory. The dead tell no tales, and therefore Count Cavour can no more confess the exact conditions on which the aid of France was promised to Sardinia against Austria; but we may be quite sure that a war for an idea could never have satisfied the aspirations of the French military. The Russian war was a war for an idea-a war for the balance of power; and Louis Napoleon saw that it had not satisfied France. But he made the Austrian war as safe and short as possible, patched up a peace at Villafranca, while Italy was not yet free from

the Alps to the Adriatic, but secured for France what she wanted -an accession of territory in Savoy and Nice. The French Government is now almost in open conflict with the ultramontane clergy, whom it before found it politic to conciliate; the Emperor will no doubt throw the Pope over as soon as he can find it safe to do so, and acknowledge the kingdom of Italy, with Rome as its capital; but in doing so, he must of course mortally offend the ultramontanists in France, who are so strong among the parochial clergy, and through them among the ignorant peasantry of the departments. To afford to lose this class of his former supporters he must do something to keep up his popularity with another, and that something would naturally assume the shape of demanding a further cession of territory from Sardinia as the price of withdraw ing his troops from Rome; perhaps the island of Sardinia, or more probably because that island would be in danger of becoming a hostage in the hands of the first maritime power-the town and territory of Genoa, the great gate of Italy; the effect of which cession would be to make the new-born kingdom a mere satellite of France; and on which subject England ought to say most emphatically that she will acknowledge no Italian unity unless Italian independence be guaranteed at the same time. We find that the Duc d'Aumale does, in a measure, see the Emperor's position, but he does not seem to us to give him sufficient credit for his personal intentions, as compared with the influences to which he is obliged to bow.

"I know that it is difficult to promise so much, and to always make such promises good; I am aware of the convenient part which is played in turn, according to the necessities of the situation; sometimes by the ancient parties, sometimes by the manifestations of different national wills, not to mention the policy of England," &c.

We are scarcely able to sympa

thise with the Duke when he comes to speak of Napoleon I. as an exception to the general worthlessness of his family. To us it seems as if Louis, Joseph, Jerome, Lucien, and Murat, were angels of light in comparison with that meanest and most selfish of all scourges of mankind commonly called the Great Napoleon.

"When I think on the prodigious efforts which the genius of the Emperor made to save France in 1814, admiration and patriotism quench every other sentiment in my bosom; and when I contemplate the great misfortune of the captive of St Helena, there is no place in my heart but for grief and sympathy."

These are, of course, words written for French readers, and it would have been better for the writer's character for sincerity had they been spared; for in what follows, his real conviction comes to light, although mildly expressed, that "he it was whose passions and faults inflicted on France a humiliation without parallel in our history." It may not be a pleasant consideration for Frenchmen, but it is nevertheless true, that that salvation of France in 1814 which Napoleon I. failed to accomplish, having, on the contrary, brought France to the lowest stage of misery and ruin, was in reality accomplished, under Providence, by a certain English general called Arthur, Duke of Wellington, who prevented the indignant Allies, by his personal influence alone, from taking condign vengeance on the country when it lay at their feet, and guarded, from domestic and external enemies, the development of the constitutional regime of Louis XVIII. Tested by even the false criterion of extension of territory, as the Duke observes, Louis XIV. was greater than Napoleon, for in the midst of all his disasters he left France enriched by several provinces, whereas Napoleon I. left nothing to France but a legacy of disgrace-the feelings of a disappointed burglar when taken in the act of burglary. That the Duc

d'Aumale should think it necessary to allude to the myriads of French lives that this enormous wretch sacrificed to his wanton ambition, only shows how necessary it is to repeat any commonplace reasonable statement, in order to diminish the insane veneration that France feels for his memory. As for St Helena, the question naturally suggests it self to minds of the present day, how our fathers could have been so short-sighted as willingly to take upon themselves the invidious office of Napoleon's jailers, an office which, however mildly administered, was sure to be unpopular in France. If Napoleon surrendered at discretion, it would have been discreet in us to have handed over the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien to the tender mercies of a Prussian court-martial. One remark of the Duc d'Aumale we are glad to reproduce, as it is indicative of the entire absence of chivalry in the character of Napoleon I., as well as an answer by a Frenchman to the absurd notion, that at Waterloo the English were fairly beaten though they did not know it.

"You have always 1815 on your lips; but you cause us to remember that, on the return from Waterloo, the Emperor had only an insult to throw as a last adieu to that army which had just enacted such prodigies of valour: Une bataille terminée, une journée finie, de fausses mesures réparées, de plus grands succès assurés pour le lendemain, tout fut perdu par un moment de terreur panique.' Well, when your uncle wrote those lines, he was perfectly well aware that the victory had not been for a single instantI do not say certain-but probable; he knew well that there was no panic, and that our soldiers fought still, when, so far from there being any chance of conquering, there was not even a chance of resist ance." After all, we may well ask, On what is the prestige of the name of Napoleon I. founded? No doubt he was a skilful general; but what other general was ever possessed

of his means? Given a nation of indomitable courage and peculiar restlessness of character, showing itself in a monomania for military glory, and a willingness to offer up any number of human lives to achieve it, and nothing is wanting but an utterly unscrupulous leader to enable that nation to terrorise all its neighbours for a while, before it was itself crushed; for this is the sum and substance of all the glories of the great conqueror whom France delights to honour, and even Europe apologetically admires. Louis Napoleon, it must always be remembered, had no other ladder to mount to his present elevation but the infatuated attachment of France to this disastrous memory; and, considering with how great prudence he has played the difficult game which he found in his hands, we cannot help thinking that he deserves the cognomen of Great more justly than his uncle. Bound as his hands are, he is doing all he can to promote the material prosperity of France; and he has encouraged, in spite of occasional bickerings, much more pleasant international relations with England than the boasted "entente cordiale" of the reign of Louis Philippe. If he could only live to modify the nature of the enormous standing army of France, so as to give it more the character of a localised militia, and deprive it of its aggressive character-a character which dates from the days of Louis XIV.

he would probably be the greatest benefactor of France, Europe, and mankind, that the nineteenth century has produced.

We see that the general liberalism of the Duke's letter is modified by a filial regard for the temporal power of the Pope, and an unqualified admiration for poor Lamoricière. These sentiments, as in the case of Montalembert, make us suspicious of the perfect sincerity of his praises of liberty and constitutionalism. Any power, however despotic, which is free from spiritual thraldom, may encourage human

progress and civilisation; no power, however constitutional in form, which is subject to it, can be anything but reactionary. The unfortunate Pope has the peculiar quality of bringing all his best friends to grief. He has ruined the King of Naples as he ruined Charles X. and the elder branch of the Bourbons. It is a question now, whether the empire of Austria will save itself by throwing overboard the Concordat. The princes of the House of Orleans, if they expect any sympathy from the good sense of Europe, must make their connection as slight as may be with that Papacy whose weakness is only equalled by its wickedness, and which sends its begging-boxes through Catholic Europe, to enable it to keep brigands in pay, that its dying teeth may meet in the flesh of resuscitated Italy.

On simple constitutional grounds, we should naturally sympathise with the House of Orleans, deplore their ejection from power, and wish for their speedy return. Constitutional monarchy shows at the present time, more decidedly than ever, to greatest advantage as a form of government. Democracy has been often discredited as inherently liable to culminate in military despotism; it is now discredited by its apparent tendency, when in a federal form, to dissolution: for it seems al

most a solecism for the American union to call that a rebellion, which is a rising against itself in a State which has no head (since kingly prestige is denied to the president), and assumes rather the form of a dissolution of a commercial partnership without the leave of all the members of the firm; and to be able to give the name of rebellion to any rising against authority with truth and justice, is always a tower of strength to the executive government. So that a monarchy, where one man or woman represents the divine power of law, has the advantage, not possessed by a republic, of being able to stigmatise as rebels its disobedient subjects; and is, therefore, less liable to fall to pieces.

Granting, however, all that may be said in favour of constitutional monarchy in the abstract, the question arises whether a despotism may not possibly be a better form of government for a state that either has not come to years of discretion, or whose wise teeth, though it be old, have not, from some peculiarity of constitution, ever been cut at all. And then arises the peculiar application of this question to France. France had constitutional governors in the House of Orleans ; she gave one wanton kick-up, and they lost their seat without a struggle.

IT has always been held amongst the learned, who write histories and other kinds of hard reading, that the world was very much improved, on the whole, by the irruption of the barbarians upon the Roman Empire. It is true that, inasmuch as these learned writers themselves claim to be the legitimate descendants of the so-called barbarians, we are bound to take their evidence with some reserve; and it is very possible that, if our old classical friends had survived the storm, and beaten back Ostrogoth and Visigoth to their native wildernesses, and had been able to write their own history of the world from that time forth, they would have proved quite as clearly how much the cause of improvement, moral and social, was indebted to their successful resistance of the invaders. It is so much the fashion with modern political writers to compare our own civilisation with the Roman-to speculate upon the probable decadence of all nations in their turn, after reaching their culminating point of prosperity, asserting that states, like individuals, first "ripe, and ripe, and ripe," and then, from generation to generation, rot, and rot, and rot"-that really one has got to look upon the probable fate of England as merely a question of time, and to fancy one hears the tramp of the advancing hordes-from Central Africa, or elsewhere-already thundering in the distance.

And this raises a question in the minds of modest people like myself, who are unwilling to claim quite so large a share of perfection for ourselves, or the age we live in, as some do, as to the possible verdict of the future historian in our case, supposing this second barbarian conquest completed. Would he, too, speak of us as a degenerated stock, and describe all our modern arts and appliances as effete civilisation"? Would the

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noble savages who came to lay London waste be hailed, in their turn, by the philosophical historian, as the regenerators of Europe?

I confess, putting myself into the very impossible case of a commentator on the last days of the English Empire, when it had been succeeded by the new blood of a ruder race-I can fancy quite as uncharitable remarks made upon us as we are fond of lavishing upon the Romans under Augustulus. I could find it in my heart to admit of such a barbarian inundation, what Mr Froude handsomely admits of the Reformation, that it might not be quite an unmixed evil; that it might possibly clear away some social rubbish, and give us a fillip into more healthy and vigorous life.

Not that I am prepared to deny that modern civilisation has been productive of some advantages to mankind. I am not going to argue in defence of savagedom as a whole. The days are long gone by in which, like other philosophers of eight years old, I longed to be a little savage, and "held the grey barbarian" happier "than the Christian child." The terrible discipline of washings and scrubbings, and forcible hair-brushings, and putting on of clean collars and pinafores, and other penalties of small civilised life, are no longer so objectionable in my eyes as they then appeared. To wish one was a pig, because he could eat without being restricted by nursery etiquette as to the manual exercise of knife, fork, and spoon-could even put his foot into his plate if he found it convenient, much more his fingers, and was never subjected to the miseries of the small-tooth comb-to envy the sheep, because they carried all their clothes fast to their backs, were never undressed but once a-year, and were troubled with neither buttons nor boot-laces-to long for the life of the cows, who stood up