XIV. FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC.

BERRYER.

CAN you suppose that I did not ask myself in February, 1848, why a great nation like France, able to boast of so many able men, should not govern itself? I asked myself the question, but I did not for a moment hesitate for an answer, as I knew only too well what it was for an old society to be subjected to a Republic necessarily at variance with its hopes, its traditions, and its habits, and which could only excite rancor and discontent.

Yes, I say that the Republic is incompatible with the old society of Europe-is utterly unsuited to the genius, wants, manners, and feelings of a nation of thirty millions of inhabitants, closely packed together in the same territory, and whose ancestors have been, for centuries, governed by kings. A great authority has been named to us to-day-Napoleon. Napoleon, it has been said, when at St. Helena, spoke in favor of the Republic, and predicted it for Europe. No, no, do not believe that such was his intention. What! that master mind who had done so much to gather together the scattered fragments around him, and to reconstitute society in France, he to praise the Republic! Not so; but when the great genius beheld his work destroyed by the force of coalesced Europe-if, then, he evoked the Republic-if he uttered the words, "France will be Republican or Cossack!"-it was not as a prediction that he so spoke, but as a malediction. Yes, it was a malediction from the lips of a great man fallen, and nothing else. And that other great man, Mirabeau—the mighty orator to move the listening senate and the masses—he who had so shaken, from the tribune, the government to its centre-when he had exhausted his remaining strength in endeavoring to reconstruct the ruin which he had made, what was his cry of despair, when he felt the wings of death flinging their darkest shadow around him? "I carry with me," cried he, "the monarchy; the factions will dispute, amongst themselves, its shreds and remnants." History has appreciated, as they deserved, the testamentary exclamations of the two great men I have mentioned. Both of them, wh disposed of a whole century and a whole people by the mere force of their genius, felt the task at least too ponderous for their strength, and in the agony of their disappointment they

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exclaimed :-" Authority is gone, anarchy is entered on possession. God only can again collect together the scattered ruins."

XV.-ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

LAMARTINE.

WHAT Occupies all minds is the fear that the fanaticism of certain men may mistake a duty, and, attaching themselves to the heirs-I do not say of other persons' glory, for glory is a matter to which relationship gives no right, but to that fame which carries away so easily a nation like ours-may create what you and what I myself look on as a danger. Is such a danger real? I cannot say. It is not given to me more than to you to lift up the veil of the future; but permit me to say, that I am convinced that the heirs of whom I speak, do not think of any attempt at usurpation; they have declared it themselves in this tribune, and I believe their word, as honest men. No, they have no thought of that kind; but around them there are groups of men, such as are always ready to flutter about supposed ambitions, and who would be disposed to turn to the profit of bad passions the greatest of our glories. But I say that these men would find themselves mistaken. To effect an 18th Brumaire, two things are necessary-long years of terror behind, and in prospect the victories of Marengo and the Pyramids. But at present, there is neither the one nor the other. The real danger of the Republic of February, is its passage through the perilous reflux which follows all revolutions. I will not affirm that France is not republican; I am perfectly convinced that if France is not yet republican by her habits, if she is still monarchical by her vices, she is republican by her ideas. Think of the monarchy falling to pieces before a tribune not far distant from that in which I now speak; think of the enthusiasm of the people saluting the magnificence of the inauguration of the Republic, which cost neither a regret nor a drop of blood, and which brought with it so many hopes to be realized, not all at once, but with the slowness and maturity which effect great things in life. That inauguration captivated all hearts, and if I brought to this tribune the confidential declarations of the heads of the great monar

chical parties, you would be convinced, as I am, that at that great period at which men elevate themselves above all personal considerations, there was in all minds but a single sentiment—a sincere, loyal, and complete acceptance of the Republic.

XVI-THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE.

CHATEAUBRIAND.

THERE is nothing beautiful, sweet, or grand in life, but in its mysteries. The sentiments which agitate us most strongly are enveloped in obscurity; modesty, virtuous love, sincere friendship, have all their secrets, with which the world must not be made acquainted. Hearts which love, understand each other by a word; half of each is at all times open to the other. Innocence itself is but a holy ignorance, and the most ineffable of mysteries. Infancy is only happy, because it as yet knows nothing; age miserable, because it has nothing more to learn. Happily for it, when the mysteries of life are ending, those of immortality commence.

If we turn to the understanding, we shall find that the pleasures of thought also have a certain connection with the mysterious. To what sciences do we unceasingly return? To those which always leave something still to be discovered, and fix our regards on a perspective which is never to terminate. If we wander in the desert, a sort of instinct leads us to shun the plains where the eye embraces at once the whole circumference of nature, to plunge into forests, those forests the cradle of religion, whose shades and solitudes are filled with the recollections of prodigies, where the ravens and the doves nourished the prophets and fathers of the Church. If we visit a modern monument, whose origin or destination is unknown, it excites no attention; but if we meet on a desert isle, in the midst of the ocean, with a mutilated statue pointing to the west, with its pedestal covered with hieroglyphics, and worn by the winds, what a subject of meditation is presented to the traveller! Everything is concealed, everything is hidden in the universe. Man himself is the greatest mystery of the whole. Whence comes the spark which we call existence, and what obscurity is it to be extinguished? The Eternal

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has placed our birth, and our death, under the form of two veiled phantoms, at the two extremities of our career; the one produces the inconceivable gift of life, which the other is ever ready to devour.

XVII.-IN RELATION TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF

HASTINGS.

SHERIDAN.

I TRUST, sir, that the season of impunity has passed away. I cannot help indulging the hope that this House will vindicate the insulted character of justice; that it will exhibit its true quality, essence, and purposes; that it will demonstrate it to be, in the case before us, active, inquisitive, and avenging.

I have heard, sir, of factions and parties in this House, and know that they exist. There is scarcely a subject upon which we are not broken and divided into sects. The prerog

atives of the crown find their advocates among the representatives of the people. The privileges of the people find opponents in the House of Commons itself. The measures of every minister are supported by one body of men, and thwarted by another. Habits, connections, parties, all lead to a diversity of opinion. But, sir, when inhumanity presents itself to our observation, it finds no division among us. We attack it as our common enemy, and conceiving that the character of the country is involved in our zeal for its ruin, we quit it not till it is completely overthrown. It is not given to this House, to behold the objects of its compassion and benevolence in the present extensive inquiry, as it was to the officers who relieved them, and who so feelingly described the extatic emotions of gratitude in the instant of deliverance. We cannot behold the workings of their hearts, the quivering lips, the trickling tears, the loud, yet tremulous joys of the millions, whom our vote will forever save from the cruelty of corrupted power. But, though we cannot directly see the effect, is not the true enjoyment of our benevolence increased, by its being conferred unseen? Will not the omnipotence of Britain be demonstrated, to the wonder of nations, by stretching its mighty arm across the deep,

and saving by its fiat distant millions from destruction? And will the benedictions of the people thus saved dissipate in empty air? No. They will not. If I may dare to use the figure, they will constitute heaven itself their proxy, to receive for them the blessings of their pious thanksgiving, and the prayers their gratitude will dictate.

XVIII-GENIUS.

E. L. BULWER.

MAN's genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be appeased. They who command but the ideal, enjoy ever most the real. See the true artist, when abroad in men's thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the complicated truths of existence-descending to what pedants would call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social coil he can disentangle a grace. And for him each wiry gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight. Know you not, that around the animalcule that sports in the water, there shines a halo, as around the star that revolves in bright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song. Who ever told you that Raffaêle did not enjoy the life without, carrying everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty, which attracted and embedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave, so Genius searches through wood and waste untiringly and eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes no footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art the inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within.