nite of the European formation has arisen-a new world, with different passions, desires, and destinies. Last of the savage races which overflowed Europe, the Germans were never had but one idea,—it has communicated cannot avert! In vain have four hundred that to other nations, but it has received none thousand Irishmen perished in the service of from them. From age to age it has remained France. The Scotch Highlanders will ere strong but limited, indescribable but humili- long disappear from the face of the earth; the ated, the enemy of the human race, and its mountains are daily depopulating; the great eternal stain. Woful obstinacy of individual- estates have ruined the land of the Gaul as ity, which proudly rests on itself alone, and they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will repels all community with the rest of the world. ere long exist only in the romances of Walter "The genius of the Celts, and above all of Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite the Gauls, is vigorous and fruitful, strongly surprise in the streets of Edinburgh: they inclined to material enjoyments, to pleasure disappear-they emigrate; their national airs and sensuality. The pleasures of sex have will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian ever exercised a powerful influence over them. harp when the winds are hushed. They are still the most prolific of the human "Behind the Celtic world, the old red grarace. In France, the Vert Galant is the true national king. We know how marvellously the native Irish have multiplied and overflowed all the adjoining states. It was a common occurrence in Brittany, during the middle the first to introduce the spirit of independence; ages, for a seigneur to have a dozen wives. the thirst for individual freedom. That bold and They constantly praised themselves, and sent forth youthful spirit-that youth of man, who feels their sons fearless to battle. Universally, himself strong and free in a world which he among the Celtic nations, bastards succeeded, appropriates to himself in anticipation-in even among kings, as chief of the clan. Woman, forests of which he knows not the bounds-on the object of desire, the mere sport of volup- a sea which wafts him to unknown shorestuousness, never attained the dignified rank that spring of the unbroken horse which bears assigned to her among nations of the German him to the Steppes and the Pampas-all descent. worked in Alaric, when he swore that an un"No people recorded in history have resist-known force impelled him to the gates of ed so stubbornly as the Celts. The Saxons Rome; they impelled the Danish pirate when were conquered by the Normans in a single he rode on the stormy billow; they animated battle; but Cambria contended two hundred the Saxon outlaws when under Robin Hood years with the stranger. Their hopes sustain they contended for the laws of Edward the them after their independence is lost: an un- Confessor against the Norman barons. That conquerable will is the character of their race. spirit of personal freedom, of unbounded inWhile awaiting the day of its resurrection, it dividual pride, shines in all their writings-it alternately sings and weeps: its chants are is the invariable characteristic of the German mingled with tears, as those of the Jews, when theology and philosophy. From the day, when, by the waters of Babylon they sat down and according to the beautiful German fable, the wept. The few fragments of Ossian which Wargus' scattered the dust on all his relacan really be relied on as ancient, have a tions, and threw the grass over his shoulder, melancholy character. Even our Bretons, and resting on his staff, overleapt the frail pathough they have less reason to lament than ternal enclosure, and let his plume float to the the rest of the race, are sad and mournful in wind-from that moment he aspired to the emtheir ideas; their sympathy is with the Night, pire of the world. He deliberated with Attila with Sorrow, with Death. 'I never sleep,' whether he should overthrow the empire of the says a Breton proverb, but I die a bitter east or west; he aspired with England to overdeath. To him who walks over a tomb they spread the western and southern hemispheres. say, 'Withdraw from my domain.' They "It is from this mingled spirit of poetry and have little reason to be gay; all has conspired adventure, that the whole idealism of the Geragainst them: Brittany and Scotland have at-mans has taken its rise. In their robust race tached themselves to the weaker side, to causes which were lost. The power of choosing its monarchs has been taken from the Celtic race since the mysterious stone, formerly brought from Ireland into Scotland, has been transported to Westminster. "Ireland! Poor first-born of the Celtic race! So far from France, yet its sister, whom it cannot succour across the waves! The Isle of Saints-the Emerald Isle—so fruitful in men, so bright in genius!-the country of Berkeley and Toland, of Moore and O'Connell !-the land of bright thought and the rapid sword, which preserves, amidst the old age of this world, its poetic inspiration. Let the English smile when, in passing some hovel in their towns, they hear the Irish widow chant the coronach for her husband. Weep! mournful country; and let France too weep, for degradation which she cannot prevent-calamities which she is combined the heroic spirit and the wandering instinct-they unite alone the 'Iliad' and Odyssey' of modern times-gold and women were the objects of their early expeditions; but these objects had nothing sensual or degrading in them. Woman was the companion, the support of man; his counsel in difficulty, his guardian angel in war. Her graces, her charms, consisted in her courage, her constancy. Educated by a man-by a warriorthe virgin was early accustomed to the use of arms-Gothorum gens perfida, sed -pudica; Saxones crudelitate efferi sed castitate mirandi.' Woman in primitive Germany was bent to the earth beneath the weight of agricultural labour; but she became great in the dangers of warthe companion and partner of man-she shared his fate, and lightened his sorrows. 'Sic vivendum, sic pereundum,' says Tacitus. She withdrew not from the field of battle-she faced its horrors-she turned not aside from its blood. | tages; and the true wisdom of each is found She was the Goddess of War-the charming and to consist in cultivating the fruits, or developterrible spirit which at once animated its spirit, ing the riches, which Nature has bestowed. and rewarded its dangers-which inspired the It is the same in the moral world. All nations fury of the charge, and soothed the last moments were not framed in the same mould, because all of the dying warrior. She was to be seen on the were not destined for the same ends. To some field of blood, as Edith the swan-necked sought was given, for the mysterious but beneficent the body of Harold after the defeat of Hastings, designs of Providence, excellence in arms, and or the young Englishwoman, who, to find her the ensanguined glory of ruthless, conquest; to lost husband, turned over the dead on the field others supremacy in commerce, and the misof Waterloo."-(Vol. I. pp. 150, 175.) sion of planting their colonies in distant lands; to a few, excellence in literature and the arts, and the more durable dominion over the thoughts and minds of men. What sort of a world would it be if all nations were sanguinary and barbarous like the Tartars-or meek and thirst for conquest of the Grand Army-or the rage for transplanting the institutions of the English? We boast, and in some respects with reason, of our greatness, our power, our civilization. Is there any man amongst us who would wish to see that civilization universal, with its accompaniments of nearly a seventh* of the whole population of the empire paupers; —of Chartists, Socialists, Repeaters, Anti-CornLaw Leaguers, and landed selfishness? As a specimen of Michelet's powers of description, we extract his account of the battle of Azincour: "O si sic omnia!" The mind is rendered dizzy; it turns round as on the edge of a precipice by the reflections arising out of this animated picture. In truth may it be said, that these observations demolish at one blow the whole revolutionary theories of later times-patient like the Hindoos? If they all had the they have turned the streams of French philosophy by their source. It was the cardinal point, the leading principle of the whole political speculation of the last half of the eighteenth century, that institutions were every thing, character nothing; that man was moulded entirely by the government or religion to which he was subjected; and that there was no essential difference in the disposition of the different races which had overspread the earth. The first half of the nineteenth century was spent in the practical application of this principle. The French Jacobins conceived themselves adequate to forge constitutions for the whole "The two armies presented a strange conworld, and sent forth their armies of starving trast. On the side of the French were three republicans to force them at the point of the enormous squadrons, three forests of lances, bayonet on all mankind. Less vehement in who formed in the narrow plain, and drew up as their constitutional propagandism, the English they successively emerged from the defiles in have been more persevering, and incomparably their rear. In front were the Constables, the more pernicious. Their example allured, as Princes, the Dukes of Orleans, Bar and Alenmuch as the horrors of the Revolution repelled, çon, the Counts of Nevers, D'Eu, Richemont, mankind. The ardent, the generous, the philan- and Vendome, amidst a crowd of barons, dazthropic, everywhere sighed for the establish-zling in gold and steel, with their banners floatment of a government which should give them ing in the air, their horses covered with scales at once the energy of the British character, the of armour. The French had archers also, but glories of the British empire. And what has composed of the commons only; the haughty been the result?-The desolation of Spain, the seigneurs would not give them a place in their ruin of Portugal, the depopulation and blasting proud array. Every place was fixed; no one of South America, Vain have been all at- would surrender his own; the plebeians would tempts to transplant to nations of Celtic or have been a stain on that noble assembly Moorish descent, the institutions which grew They had cannons also, but made no use of and flourished among those of Anglo-Saxon them: probably no one would surrender his blood. The ruin of the West India islands place to them. proves their inapplicability to those of negro “The English army was less brilliant in apextraction; the everlasting distraction of Ire-pearance. The archers, 10,000 in number, had land, to those of unmixed Celtic blood. A cen- no armour, often no shoes; they were rudely tury of bloodshed, devastation, and wretched-equipped with boiled skins, tied with osier ness will be spent ere mankind generally learn that there is an essential and indelible distinction between the character of the different races of men; and, in Montesquieu's words, "that no nation ever attained to durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit." Nor is there any foundation for the common observation, that this presents a melancholy view of human affairs; and that it is repugnant to our ideas of the beneficence of an overruling Providence to suppose that all nations are not adapted for the same elevating institutions. Are all nations blessed with the same climate, or soil, or productions? Will the vine and the olive flourish on every slope-the maize or the wheat on every plain? No. Every country has its own productions, riches, and advan wands, and strengthened by a bar of iron on their feet. Their hatchets and axes suspended from their girdles, gave them the appearance of carpenters. They all drew the bow with the left arm-those of France with the right. Many of these sturdy workmen had stripped to the shirt, to be the more at ease; first, in drawing the bow, and at last in wielding the hatchet, when they issued from their hedge of stakes to hew away at those immovable masses of horses." "It is an extraordinary but well authenticated fact, that the French army was so closely wedged together, and in great part so stuck in Scotland; and 2,000,000 in Ireland. In all, 3,522,000, out Viz.-1,446,000 in England and Wales; 76.000 in of 27,000,000.-Census of 1841. We take leave of M. Michelet, at least for the present, as his work is only half finished, with admiration for his genius, respect for his erudition, and gratitude for the service he has rendered to history; but we cannot place him in the first rank of historians. He wants the art of massing objects and the spirit of general observation. His philosophy consists rather in drawing visions of the sequence of events, or speculations on an inevitable progress in human affairs, than an enlightened and manly the mud, that they could neither charge nor re- | palisade, and hewed to pieces the confused treat; but just stood still to be cut to pieces. mass of wounded horses, dismounted men, and At the decisive moment, when the old Thomas furious steeds, which, galled by the incessant of Erpingham arranged the English army, he discharge of arrows, was now turmoiling in the threw his staff in the air, exclaiming, 'Now bloody mud in which the chivalry of France strike!' The shout of ten thousand voices was was engulfed."-(Vol. IV. pp. 307, 311.) raised at once; but to their great surprise, the French army stood still. Men and horses seemed alike enchained or dead in their armour. In truth, these weighty war-horses, oppressed with the load of their armour and riders, were unable to inove. The French were thirty-two deep-the English only four. That enormous depth rendered the great bulk of the French army wholly useless. The front ranks alone combated, and they were all killed. The remainder, unable either to advance or retreat, served only as a vast target to the unerring Eng-recognition of a supreme superintendence. He lish arrows, which never ceased to rain down on the deep array. On the other hand, every Englishman wielded either his lance, his bow, or his hatchet, with effect. So thick was the storm of arrows which issued from the English stakes, that the French horsemen bent their heads to their saddle-bows, to avoid being pierced through their visors. Twelve hundred horse, impatient of the discharge, broke from the flanks, and charged. Hardly a tenth part reached the stakes, where they were pierced through, and soon fell beneath the English axes. Then those terrible archers issued from their unites two singularly opposite sets of principles-a romantic admiration for the olden time, though with a full and just appreciation of its evils, with a devout belief in the advent of a perfect state of society, the true efflorescence of the nation, in the equality produced by the Revolution. Yet is his work a great addition to European literature; and the writers of England would do well to look to their laurels, if they wish, against the able phalanx now arising on the other side of the Channel, to maintain the ancient place of their country in historic literature. MILITARY TREASON AND CIVIC SOLDIERS.† "I AM surprised," said Condorcet to Lafayette, upon seeing him enter the room in the uniform of a private of the National Guards of Paris, of which he had so recently been the commander, "I am surprised at seeing you, General, in that dress."-"Not at all," replied Lafayette, "I was tired of obeying, and wished to command, and therefore I laid down my general's commission, and took a musket on my shoulder."-"Gnarus," says Tacitus, "bellis civilibus, plus militibus quam ducibus licere." It is curious to observe how, in the most remote ages, popular license produces effects so precisely similar. Of the numerous delusions which have overspread the world in such profusion during the last nine months, there is none so extraordinary and so dangerous as the opinion incessantly inculcated by the revolutionary press, that the noblest virtue in regular soldiers is to prove themselves traitors to their caths, and that a national guard is the only safe and constitutional force to whom arms can be intrusted. The troops of the line, whose revolt decided the *This formation was the same on both sides, when Napoleon's Imperial Guard attacked the British Guards at Waterloo.-See the indelible difference of race. three days in July in favour of the revolutionary, party, have been the subject of the most extravagant eulogium from the liberal press throughout Europe; and even in this country, the government journals have not hesitated to condemn, in no. measured terms, the Royal Guard, merely because they adhered, amidst a nation's treason, to their honour and their oaths. Hitherto it has been held the first duty of soldiers to adhere with implicit devotion to that fidelity which is the foundation of military duties. Treason to his colours has been considered as foul a blot on the soldier's scutcheon as cowardice in the field. Even in the most republican states, this principle of military subordination has been felt to be the vital principle of national strength. It was during the rigorous days of Roman discipline, that their legions conquered the world; and the decline of the empire began at the time that the Prætorian Guards veered with the mutable populace, and sold the empire for a gratuity to themselves. Albeit placed in power by the insurrection of the people, no men knew better than the French republican leaders that their Salvation depended on crushing the military insubordination to which they had owed their elevation. When the Parisian levies began to evince a mutinous spirit in the camp at St. Menehould, in Champagne, which they had "I can discover no other reason for the imbibed during the license of the capital, Du- uniform progress of the republic," says Cicero, mourier drew them up in the centre of his in-"but the constant sense of religion which has trenchments, and showing them a powerful actuated its members. In numbers the Spaline of cavalry in front, with their sabres niards excel us-in military ardour, the Gauls drawn, ready to charge, and a stern array of —in hardihood and obstinacy, the Germans; artillery and cannoneers in rear, with their but in veneration to the gods, and fidelity to matches in their hands, soon convinced the their oaths, the Roman people exceed any most licentious that the boasted independence nation that ever existed." We shall see of the soldier must yield to the dangers of whether the present times are destined to form actual warfare.* 66 "The armed force," said an exception from these principles; whether Carnot, "is essentially obedient; it acts but treason and infidelity are to rear the fabric in should never deliberate," and in all his com- modern, which fidelity and religion constructmands, that great man incessantly inculcated ed in ancient times. upon his soldiers the absolute necessity of implicit submission to the power which employed them. When the recreant Constable de Bourbon, at the head of a victorious squadron of Spanish cavalry, approached the spot where the rear-guard, under the Chevalier Bayard, was covering the retreat of the French army in the Valley of Aosta, he found him seated, mortally wounded, under a tree, with his eyes fixed on the cross which formed the hilt of his sword. Bourbon began to express pity for his fate. "Pity not me," said the high-minded Chevalier; "pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath." These generous feelings, common alike to republican antiquity and modern chivalry, have disappeared during the fumes of the French Revolution. The soldier who is now honoured, is not he who keeps, but he who violates his oath; the rewards of valour showered, not upon those who defend, but those who overturn the government; the incense of popular applause offered, not at the altar of fidelity, but at that of treason. Honours, rewards, promotion, and adulation, have been lavished on the troops of the line, who overthrew the government of Charles X. in July last, while the Royal Guard, who adhered to the fortune of the falling monarch with exemplary fidelity, have been reduced to beg their bread from the bounty of strangers in a foreign land. A subscription has recently been opened in London for the most destitute of those defenders of royalty; but the government journals have stigmatized, as "highly dangerous," any indication of sympathy with their fidelity or their misfortunes. + If these ancient ideas of honour, however, are to be exploded, they have at least gone out of fashion in good company. The National Guard, who took up arms to overthrow the throne, have not been long in destroying the altar. During the revolt of February, 1831, the Cross, the emblem of salvation, 'was taken down from all the steeples in Paris by the citizen soldiers, and the image of our Saviour effaced, by their orders, from every church within its bounds! The two principles stand and fall together. The Chevalier, without fear and without reproach, died in obedience to his oath, with his eyes fixed on the Cross; the National Guard lived in triumph, while their comrades bore down the venerated emblem from the towers of Notre Dame. The extreme peril of such principles renders the inquiry interesting.-What have been the effects of military treachery in times past? Has it aided the cause of virtue, strengthened the principles of freedom, contributed to the prosperity of mankind? Or has it unhinged the fabric of society, blasted the cause of liberty, blighted the happiness of the people? The first great instance of military treachery in recent times, occurred in the revolt of the French Guards, in June, 1789. That unparalleled event immediately brought on the Revolution. The fatal example rapidly spread to the other troops brought up to overawe the capital, and the king, deprived of the support of his own troops, was soon compelled to submit to the insurgents. It was these soldiers, not the mob of Paris, who stormed the Bastile; all the efforts of the populace were unavailing till those regular troops occupied the adjoining houses, and supported tumultuary enthusiasm by military skill. Extravagant were the eulogiums, boundless the gratitude, great the rewards, which were showered down on the Gardes Françaises for this shameful act of treachery. Never were men the subjects of such extraordinary adulation. Wine and women, gambling and intoxication, flattery and bribes, were furnished in abundance. And what was the consequence? The ancient honour of the Guards of France, of those guards who saved the Body Guards at Fontenoy, and inherited a line of centuries of splendour, perished without redemption on that fatal occasion. Tarnished in reputation, disunited in opinion, humbled in character, the regiment fell to pieces from a sense of its own shame; the early leader of the Revolution, its exploits never were heard of through all the career of glory which followed; and the first act of revolt against their sovereign was the last act of their long and renowned existence. Nor were the consequences of this unexampled defection less dangerous to France than to the soldiers who were guilty of it. The insubordination, license, and extravagance of revolt were fatal to military discipline, and brought France to the brink of ruin. The disaffected soldiers, as has been observed in all ages, were intrepid only against their own sovereign. When they were brought to meet the armies of Prussia and Austria, they all took to flight; and on one occasion, by the admission of Dumourier himself, ten thousand regular soldiers fled from one thousand five hundred Prussian hussars. A little more energy ment. and ability in the allied commanders would has crowned their endeavours. What has have then destroyed the revolutionary govern- been the consequence? Anarchy, confusion, and military confiscation-the rule of bayonets instead of that of mitres-suffering, dilapidation, and ruin, which have caused even the leaden yoke of the Castilian monarch to be regretted. Notwithstanding all the enthusiasm of the people, the weakness of insubordination continued to paralyze all the efforts of the republican armies. France was again invaded, and brought to the brink of ruin in 1793, and the tide was then, for the first time, turned, when the iron rule of the mob began, and the terrific grasp of Carnot and Robespierre extinguished all those principles of military license which had so much been the subject of eulogium at the commencement of the Revolution. At length the glorious days of July, 1830, arrived, and the declaration of the whole regular troops of the line in Paris against the government, at once decided the contest in favour of the populace. Never was more extravagant praise bestowed on any body of men, than on the soldiers who had been guilty of this act of treason. It is worth while, therefore, to examine what have been its effects, and whether the cause of freedom has really been benefitted in France by the aid of treachery. Did this abandonment of military duty serve the cause of freedom, or increase the prosperity of France? Did it establish liberty on a secure basis, or call down the blessings of posterity? It led immediately to all the an- The French nation has got quit of the priestguish and suffering of the Revolution-the ridden, imbecile race of monarchs; men whose murder of the king-the anarchy of the king-principles were arbitrary, habits indolent, indom-the reign of terror-thé despotism of tellects weak; who possessed the inclination, Napoleon. They forgot their loyalty amidst but wanted the capacity to restrain the liberty the glitter of prostitution and the fumes of in- of their people. toxication; their successors were brought back to it by the iron rule of the Committee of Public Safety: they revolted against the beneficent sway of a reforming monarch: they brought on their country a tyranny, which the pencil of Tacitus would hardly be able to portray. They have terminated a pacific era, during which the country made unexampled progress in wealth, industry, and prosperity; during which many of the wounds of the Revolution were closed, and new channels of opulence opened; during which the principles of real freedom struck deeply their roots, and the industrious habits were extensively spread, which can alone afford security for their continuance. They have begun, instead, the career of anarchy and popular tyranny. Industry has been paralyzed, credit suspended, prosperity blighted. Commercial undertakings have ceased, distrust succeeded to confidence-despair to hope-the victims of the Revolution have disappeared, and the poor who gained it are destitute of bread. The revolt of the Spanish troops at the Isle of Leon, in 1819, was the next great example of military defection. What have been its consequences? Has Spain improved in freedom-risen in character-augmented in wealth, since that glorious insurrection? It raised up, for a few years, the phantom of a constitutional throne, ephemeral as the dynasties of the east, pestilent as the breath of contagion. Spain was rapidly subjugated when it rested on such defenders-treason blasted their efforts, and the nation, which had gloriously re- They have begun again the career of Resisted for six years the formidable, legions of publican ambition and foreign aggression; Napoleon, sunk under the first attack of an they aim openly at revolutionizing other couninexperienced army of invaders led by a Bour- tries, and they are unable to maintain the gobon prince. Since that time, to what a deplor-vernment they have established in their own. able condition has Spain been reduced! Depressed by domestic tyranny, destitute of foreign influence the ridicule and scorn of Europe this once great power has almost been blotted from the book of nations. Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont, all had military revolutions about the same time. Have they improved the character, bettered the condition, extended the freedom, of these countries? They have, on the contrary, established constitutions, the failure and absurdity of which have brought the cause of freedom itself into disrepute. The valiant revolters against the Neapolitan throne fled at the first sight of the Austrian battalions; and the free institutions of Piedmont and Portugal, without foreign aggression, have all fallen from their own inherent weakness. All these premature attempts to introduce freedom by military revolt, have failed; and sterner despotism succeeded, from the moral reaction consequent on their disappearance. Great part of the armies in South America revolted from the Spanish throne, and success The Conscription is again rending asunder the affections of private life; the fountains of domestic happiness are closed; and war, with its excitements and its dangers, is again threatening to rouse the energies of its population. In the shock of contending factions, liberty is fast expiring. The imbecility of Polignac has been succeeded by the energy of Soult-the arbitrary principles of feeble priests is about to yield to the unbending despotism of energetic republicans. By the confession of the journals who support the Revolution, its advantages are all to come; bitter and unpalatable have been its fruits to this hour. The three per cents. have fallen from 80 to 50; twelve thousand workmen, without bread, in Paris alone, are maintained on the public works; great part of the banks and mercantile houses are bankrupt; Lafitte himself is barely solvent; the opulent classes are rapidly leaving the capital; no one expends his fortune; universal distrust and apprehension have dried up the sources of industry. |