It is a great merit in this work of Mrs Jameson's, that we are not

only referred to the most curious and to the best specimens of art,

but have likewise beautiful woodcuts, and some etchings admirably

executed by Mrs Jameson's own hand in illustration. There is a

greatness in the simplicity of Blake's angels: "The morning stars

sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Poor Blake!

Yet why say poor? he was happy in his visions--a little before his

time, and one of whom the world (of art) in his day were not worthy:

though, with a wild extravagance of fancy, his creations were his

faith, often great, and always gentle. Exquisitely beautiful are the

"angels of the planets" from Raffaelle, and copied by Mrs Jameson

from Gruner's engravings of the frescoes of the Capella Chigiana.

That great painter of mystery, Rembrandt, whom the mere lovers of

form would have mistakenly thought it a profanation to commission

with an angelic subject, is justly appreciated. A perfect master

of light, and of darkness, and of colour, it mattered not what

were the forms, so that they were unearthly, that plunged into or

broke through his luminous or opaque. Of the picture in the Louvre

it is thus remarked: "Miraculous for true and spirited expression,

and for the action of the soaring angel, who parts the clouds and

strikes through the air like a strong swimmer through the waves of

the sea." Strange--but so it is--we cannot conceive an alteration of

his pictures, all parts so agree. Attention to the more beautiful

in form would have appeared to him a mistrust in his great gift

of colour and chiaroscuro; and, stranger still, that without, and

seemingly in a marked defiance of mere beauty, he is, we would

almost say never, vulgar, never misses the intended sentiment,

nor fails where it is of tenderness, even of feminine tenderness,

for which, if he does not give beauty, he gives its equivalent in

the fulness of the feeling. We instance his Salutation--Elizabeth

and the Virgin Mary. There is something terrifically grand in the

crouching angel in the Campo Santo,--not in the form, nor in the

face, which is mostly hid, but in the conception of the attitude

of horror with which he beholds the awful scene. It is from the

Last Judgment of Orcagua in the Campo Santo. We must not speak of

Rubens as a painter of angels; and, for real angelic expression,

perhaps the earlier painters are the best. It is surprising that

Mrs Jameson, from whose refined taste, and from whose sense of the

beautiful and the graceful in their highest qualities, we should

have expected another judgment, could have ventured to name together

Raffaelle and Murillo as angel painters. It is true, in speaking of

the Visit to Abraham, she admits that the painter has set aside the

angelic and mystic character, and merely represented three young men

travellers; but she generally, throughout these volumes, speaks of

that favourite Spaniard in terms of the highest admiration,--terms,

as we think, little merited. The angels in the Sutherland Collection

are as vulgar figures as can well be, and quite antagonistic in

feeling to a heavenly mission. We confess that we dislike almost

all the pictures by this so much esteemed master: their artistic

manner is to us uncertain and unpleasing,--disagreeable in colour,

deficient in grace. We often wonder at the excess of present

admiration. We look upon his vulgarity in scriptural subjects as

quite profane. His highest power was in a peasant gentleness; he

could not embody a sacred feeling: yet thus is he praised for a

performance beyond his power:--"St Andrew is suspended on the

high cross, formed not of planks, but of the trunks of trees laid

transversely. He is bound with cords, undraped, except by a linen

cloth, his silver hair and beard loosely streaming on the air, his

aged countenance illuminated by a heavenly transport, as he looks up

to the opening skies, whence two angels, of really celestial beauty,

like almost all Murillo's angels, descend with the crown and palm."

The angels of Correggio are certainly peculiar: they are not quite

celestial, but perhaps are sympathetically more lovely from their

touch of humanity; they are ever pure. Those in the Ascension of

the the Virgin, in the Cupola at Parma, seem to be rather adopted

angels than of the "first estate;" for they are of several ages,

and, if we mistake not, many of them are feminine, and, we suspect,

are meant really to represent the loveliest of earth beatified,

adopted into the heavenly choir. Those who have seen Signor Toschi's

fine drawings of the Parma frescoes, (now in progress of engraving),

will readily give assent to this impression. We remember this

feeling crossing our mind, and as it were lightly touching the

heart with angelic wings--if we have lost a daughter of that sweet

age, let us fondly see her there. We cannot forbear quoting the

passage upon the angels of Titian:--"And Titian's angels impress

me in a similar manner: I mean those in the glorious Assumption at

Venice, with their childish forms and features, but an expression

caught from beholding the face of 'our Father which is in heaven:'

it is glorified infancy. I remember standing before this picture,

contemplating those lovely spirits one after another, until a thrill

came over me, like that which I felt when Mendelssohn played the

organ: I became music while I listened. The face of one of those

angels is to the face of a child, just what that of the Virgin, in

the same picture, is, compared with the fairest daughter of earth.

It is not here superiority of beauty, but mind, and music, and love,

kneaded together, as it were, into form and colour." This is very

eloquent, but it was not _the thought_ which supplied that ill word

"kneaded."

It is remarked by Mrs Jameson, as a singular fact, that neither

Leonardo da Vinci, nor Michael Angelo, nor Raffaelle, have given

representations of the Four Evangelists. In very early art they are

mostly symbolised, and sometimes oddly and uncouthly; and even so

by Angelico da Fiesole. In Greek art, the Tetramorph, or union of

the four attributes in one figure, is seen winged. "The Tetramorph,

in Western art, in some instances became monstrous, instead of

mystic and poetical." The animal symbols of the Evangelists, however

familiarised in the eyes of the people, and therefore sanctioned to

their feeling, required the greatest judgment to bring within the

poetic of art. We must look also to the most mysterious subjects for

the elucidation, such as Raffaelle's Vision of Ezekiel. There we

view in the symbols a great prophetic, subservient to the creating

and redeeming power, set forth and coming out of that blaze of the

clouds of heaven that surround the sublime Majesty.

The earlier painters were fond of representing everything

symbolically: hence the twelve apostles are so treated. In the

descending scale, to the naturalists, the mystic poetry was reduced

to its lowest element. The set of the apostles by Agostino Caracci,

though, as Mrs Jameson observes, famous as works of art, are

condemned as absolutely vulgar. "St John is drinking out of a cup,

an idea which might strike some people as picturesque, but it is

in vile taste. It is about the eighth century that the keys first

appear in the hand of St Peter. In the old churches at Ravenna, it

is remarked, St Peter and St Paul do not often appear." Ravenna, in

the fifth century, did not look to Rome for her saints.

After his martyrdom, St Paul was, it is said, buried in the spot

where was erected the magnificent church known as St Paolo fuorè-le

mura. "I saw the church a few months before it was consumed by

fire in 1823. I saw it again in 1847, when the restoration was far

advanced. Its cold magnificence, compared with the impressions left

by the former structure, rich with inestimable remains of ancient

art, and venerable from a thousand associations, saddened and

chilled me." We well remember visiting this noble church in 1816. A

singular coincidence of fact and prophecy has imprinted this visit

on our memory. Those who have seen it before it was burnt down, must

remember the series of portraits of popes, and that there was room

but for one more. We looked to the vacant place, as directed by our

cicerone, whilst he told us that there was a prophecy concerning it

to this effect, that when that space was filled up there would be

no more popes. The prophecy was fulfilled, at least with regard to

that church, for it was burnt down after that vacant space had been

occupied by the papal portrait.

The subject of the Last Supper is treated of in a separate chapter.

There has been a fresco lately discovered at Florence, in the

refectory of Saint Onofrio, said to have been painted by Raffaelle

in his twenty-third year. Some have thought it to be the work of

Neri de Bicci. Mrs Jameson, without hesitation, pronounces it to

be by Raffaelle, "full of sentiment and grace, but deficient,

it appears to me, in that depth and discrimination of character

displayed in his later works. It is evident that he had studied

Giotto's fresco in the neighbouring Santa Croce. The arrangement

is nearly the same." All the apostles have glories, but that round

the head of Judas is smaller than the others. Does the prejudice

against thirteen at table arise from this betrayal by Judas, or

from the legend of St Gregory, who, when a monk in the monastery

of St Andrew, was so charitable, that at length, having nothing

else to bestow, he gave to an old beggar a silver porringer which

had belonged to his mother? When pope, it was his custom to

entertain twelve poor men. On one occasion he observed thirteen,

and remonstrated with his steward, who, counting the guests, could

see no more than twelve. After removal from the table, St Gregory

called the unbidden guest, thus visible, like the ghost of Banquo,

to the master of the feast only. The old man, on being questioned,

declared himself to be the old beggar to whom the silver porringer

had been given, adding, "But my name is Wonderful, and through me

thou shalt obtain whatever thou shalt ask of God." There is a famous

fresco on this subject by Paul Veronese, in which the stranger is

represented to be our Saviour. To entertain even angels unknowingly,

and at convivial entertainments, and visible perhaps but to one, as

a messenger of good or of evil, would be little congenial with the

purport of such meetings.

Mrs Jameson objects to the introduction of dogs in such a subject

as the Last Supper, but remarks that it is supposed to show that

the supper is over, and the paschal lamb eaten. It is so common

that we should rather refer it to a more evident and more important

signification, to show that this institution was not for the Jews

only, and alluding to the passage showing that "dogs eat of the

crumbs which fell from their masters' table." The large dogs,

however, of Paul Veronese, gnawing bones, do not with propriety

represent the passage; for there is reason to believe that the word

"crumbs" describes the small pet dogs, which its was the fashion for

the rich to carry about with them. The early painters introduced

Satan in person tempting Judas. When Baroccio, with little taste,

adopted the same treatment, the pope, Clement VIII., ordered the

figure to be obliterated--"Che non gli piaceva il demonio si

dimésticasse tanto con Gesu Christo." We know not where Mrs Jameson

has found the anecdote which relates that Andrea del Castagno,

called the Infamous, after he had assassinated Dominico his friend,

who had intrusted him with Van Eyck's secret, painted his own

portrait in the character of Judas, from remorse of conscience. We

are not sure of the story at all respecting Andrea del Castagno:

there may be other grounds for doubting it, but this anecdote, if

true to the fact, would rather indicate insanity than guilt. The

farther we advance in the history and practice of art, the more we

find it suffering in sentiment from the infusion of the classical.

In the Pitti Palace is a picture by Vasari of St Jerome as a

penitent, in which he has introduced Venus and cupids, one of whom

is taking aim at the saint. It is true that, as we proceed, legends

crowd in upon us, and the painters find rather scope for fancy than

subjects for faith and resting-places for devotion. Art, ever fond

of female forms, readily seized upon the legends of Mary Magdalene.

Her penitence has ever been a favourite subject, and has given

opportunity for the introduction of grand landscape backgrounds

in the lonely solitudes and wildernesses of a rocky desert. The

individuality of the characters of Mary and Martha in Scripture

history was too striking not to be taken advantage of by painters.

There is a legend of an Egyptian penitent Mary, anterior to that

of Mary Magdalene, which is curious. Whether this was another

Mary or not, she is represented as a female anchoret; and we are

reminded thereby of the double story of Helen of Troy, whom a real

or fabulous history has deposited in Egypt, while the great poet of

the Iliad has introduced her as so visible and palpable an agent

in the Trojan war, and not without a touch of penitence, not quite

characteristic of that age. Accounts say that it was her double, or

eidolon, which figured at Troy.

Mrs Jameson makes a good conjecture with regard to the famous

picture by Leonardo da Vinci, known as Modesty and Vanity, and that

it is Mary Magdalene rebuked by her sister Martha for vanity and

luxury, which exactly corresponds with the legend respecting her. We

cannot forbear quoting the following eloquent passage:--

"On reviewing generally the infinite variety which has been

given to these favourite subjects, the life and penance of the

Magdalene, I must end where I began. In how few instances has

the result been satisfactory to mind, or heart, or soul, or

sense! Many have well represented the particular situation,

the appropriate sentiment, the sorrow, the hope, the devotion;

but who has given us the _character_? A noble creature, with

strong sympathies and a strong will, with powerful faculties

of every kind, working for good or evil. Such a woman Mary

Magdalene must have been, even in her humiliation; and the

feeble, girlish, commonplace, and even vulgar women, who appear

to have been usually selected as models by the artists, turned

into Magdalenes by throwing up their eyes and letting down their

hair, ill represent the enthusiastic convert, or the majestic

patroness!"

The second volume commences with the patron saints of Christendom.

These were delightful fables in the credulous age of first youth,

when feeling was a greater truth than fact; and we confess that we

read these legends now with some regret at our abated faith, which

we would not even "now have shaken in the chivalric characters of

the seven champions of Christendom."

The Romish Church (we say not the Catholic, as Mrs Jameson so

frequently improperly terms _her_) readily acted that part, to

the people at large, which nurses assume for the amusement of

their children; and in both cases, the more improbable the story

the greater the fascination; and the people, like children, are

more credulous than critical. Had we not known in our own times,

and nearly at the present day, stories as absurd as any in these

legends, gravely asserted, circulated, and credited, and maintained

by men of responsible station and education--to instance only the

garment of Treves--we should have pronounced the _aurea legenda_

to have been a creation of the fancy, arising, not without their

illumination, from the fogs and fens of the Middle Ages, adapted

solely for minds of that period. But the sanction of them by the

Church of Rome leads us to view them as _ignes fatui_ of another

character, meant to amuse and to bewilder. We must even think it

possible now for people to be brought to believe such a story as

this:--"It is related that a certain man, who was afflicted with a

cancer in his leg, went to perform his devotions in the church of

St Cosmo and St Damian at Rome, and he prayed most earnestly that

these beneficent saints would be pleased to aid him. When he had

prayed, a deep sleep fell upon him. Then he beheld St Cosmo and St

Damian, who stood beside him; and one carried a box of ointment,

the other a sharp knife. And one said, 'What shall we do to replace

this diseased leg, when we have cut it off?' And the other replied,

'There is a Moor who has been buried just now in San Pietro in

Vincolo; let us take his leg for the purpose!' Then they brought

the leg of the dead man, and with it they replaced the leg of the

sick man--anointing it with celestial ointment, so that he remained

whole. When he awoke, he almost doubted whether it could be himself;

but his neighbours, seeing that he was healed, looked into the tomb

of the Moor, and found that there had been an exchange of legs; and

thus the truth of this great miracle was proved to all beholders."

It is, however, rather a hazardous demand upon credulity to serve

up again the feast of Thyestes, cooked in a caldron of even more

miraculous efficacy than Medea's. Such is the stupendous power of

St Nicholas:--"As he was travelling through his diocese, to visit

and comfort his people, he lodged in the house of a certain host,

who was a son of Satan. This man, in the scarcity of provisions, was

accustomed to steal little children, whom he murdered, and served up

their limbs as meat to his guests. On the arrival of the Bishop and

his retinue, he had the audacity to serve up the dismembered limbs

of these unhappy children before the man of God, who had no sooner

cast his eyes on them than he was aware of the fraud. He reproached

the host with his abominable crime; and, going to the tub where

their remains were salted down, he made over them the sign of the

cross, and they rose up whole and well. The people who witnessed

this great wonder were struck with astonishment; and the three

children, who were the sons of a poor widow, were restored to their

weeping mother."

But what shall we say to an entire new saint of a modern day, who

has already found his way to Venice, Bologna, and Lombardy,--even

to Tuscany and Paris, not only in pictures and statues, but even

in chapels dedicated to her? The reader may be curious to know

something of a saint of this century. In the year 1802 the skeleton

of a young female was discovered in some excavations in the catacomb

of Priscilla at Rome; the remains of an inscription were, "Lumena

Pax Te Cum Tri." A priest in the train of a Neapolitan prelate, who

was sent to congratulate Pius VII. on his return from France, begged

some relics. The newly-discovered treasure was given to him, and the

inscription thus translated--"Filomena, rest in peace." "Another

priest, whose name is suppressed _because of his great humility_,

was favoured by a vision in the broad noonday, in which he beheld

the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to reveal to him that

she had suffered death for preferring the Christian faith, and her

vow of chastity, to the addresses of the emperor, who wished to make

her his wife. This vision leaving much of her history obscure, a

certain young artist, whose name is also suppressed--perhaps because

of his great humility--was informed in a vision that the emperor

alluded to was Diocletian; and at the same time the torments and

persecutions suffered by the Christian virgin Filomena, as well as

her wonderful constancy, were also revealed to him. There were some

difficulties in the way of the Emperor Diocletian, which inclines

the writer of the _historical_ account to adopt the opinion that

the young artist in his vision _may_ have made a mistake, and that

the emperor may have been his colleague, Maximian. The facts,

however, now admitted of no doubt; and the relics were carried by

the priest Francesco da Lucia to Naples; they were inclosed in a

case of wood, resembling in form the human body. This figure was

habited in a petticoat of white satin, and over it a crimson tunic,

after the Greek fashion; the face was painted to represent nature;

a garland of flowers was placed on the head, and in the hands a

lily and a javelin--with the point reversed, to express her purity

and her martyrdom; then she was laid in a half sitting posture in a

sarcophagus, of which the sides were glass; and after lying for some

time in state, in the chapel of the Torres family in the Church of

Saint Angiolo, she was carried in procession to Magnano, a little

town about twenty miles from Naples, amid the acclamations of the

people, working many and surprising miracles by the way. Such is

the legend of St Filomena, and such the authority on which she has

become, within the last twenty years, one of the most fashionable

saints in Italy. Jewels to the value of many thousand crowns have

been offered at her shrine, and solemnly placed round the neck of

her image, or suspended to her girdle."

We dare not in candour charge the Romanists with being the only

fabricators or receivers of such goods, remembering our own Saint

Joanna, and Huntingdon's Autobiography. There are _aurea legenda_ in

a certain class of our sectarian literature, presenting a large list

of claimants of very high pretensions to saintship, only waiting for

power and an established authority to be canonised.

It is not surprising, as the world is--working often in the dark

places of ignorance--if a few glossy threads of a coarser material,

and deteriorating quality, be taken up by no wilful mistake, and

be interwoven into the true golden tissue. Nevertheless the mantle

may be still beautiful, and fit a Christian to wear and walk in not

unbecomingly. There are worse things than religious superstition,

whose badness is of degrees. In the minds of all nations and people

there is a vacuum for the craving appetite of credulity to fill.

The great interests of life lie in politics and religion. There

are bigots in both: but we look upon a little superstition on the

one point as far safer than upon the other, especially in modern

times; whereas political bigotry, however often duped, is credulous

still, and becomes hating and ferocious. We fear even the legends

are losing their authority in the Roman States, whose history may

yet have to be filled with far worse tales. A generous, though we

deem it a mistaken feeling, has induced Mrs Jameson to make what

we would almost venture to call the only mistake in her volumes:

the following passage is certainly not in good taste, quite out of

the intention of her book, and very unfortunately timed--"But Peter

is certainly the democratical apostle _par excellence_, and his

representative in our time seems to have awakened to a consciousness

of this truth, and to have thrown himself--as St Peter would most

certainly have done, were he living--on the side of the people and

of freedom." A democratical successor to St Peter! He is, then, the

first of that character. With him the "side of freedom" seems to

have been the inside of his prison, and his "side of the people"

a precipitate flight from contact with them in their liberty--and

for his tiara the disguise of a valet. We more than pardon Mrs

Jameson--we love the virtue that gives rise to her error; for it is

peculiarly the nature of woman to be credulous, and to be deceived.

We admire, and more than admire, women equally well, whether they

are right or wrong in politics: these are the business of men,

for they have to do with the sword, and are out of the tenderer

impulses of woman. But we are amused when we find grave strong men

in the same predicament of ill conjectures. We smile as we remember

a certain dedication "To Pio Nono," which by its simple grandeur

and magnificent beauty will live _splendide mendax_ to excuse its

prophetic inaccuracy. It is not wise to foretell events to happen

whilst we live. Take a "long range," or a studied ambiguity that

will fit either way. The example of Dr Primrose may be followed

with advantage, who in every case of domestic doubt and difficulty

concluded the matter thus--"I wish it may turn out well this day six

months;" by which, in his simple family, he attained the character

of a true prophet.

We fear we are losing sight of the "Poetry of Sacred and Legendary

Art," and gladly turn from the thought of what is to be, to

those beautiful personified ideas of the past, whether fabulous

or historical, in which we are ready to take Mrs Jameson as our

willing and sure guide. The four virgin patronesses and the female

martyrs are favourite subjects, which she enters into with more

than her usual spirit and feeling. These two have chiefly engaged

and fascinated the genius of the painters of the best period, and

will ever interest the world of taste by their sentiment, as well

as by their grace of form and beauty, and why not say improved them

too? The really beautiful is always true. It is not amiss that we

should be continually reminded, or, as Mrs Jameson better expresses

it--"It is not a thing to be set aside or forgotten, that generous

men and meek women, strong in the strength, and elevated by the

sacrifice of a Redeemer, did suffer, did endure, did triumph for

the truth's sake; did leave us an example which ought to make our

hearts glow within us." The memory of Christian heroism should

never be lost sight of in a Christian country, and we earnestly

recommend this part of Mrs Jameson's volumes to the attention of our

painters: they will find not unfrequent instances of fine subjects

yet untouched, which may sanctify art, and dignify the profession by

making it the teacher of a purer taste--not that true genius will

ever lack materials, for materials are but suggestive to an innate

inventive power. It is curious that the authoress should not yet

have satisfied our expectation with regard to the legends of the

Virgin. Whatever the motive of her forbearance, we hope this subject

will take the lead in the promised third volume, which is to treat

of the legends of the monastic orders, considered, as she cautiously

observes, "merely in their connexion with the development of the

fine arts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."

The numerous pictures in Italy which represent parts of the legends

of the Virgin render this work incomplete without a full development

of the subject. If her forbearance arises from a fear that at this

particular time, when mariolatry is dreaded by a large portion of

the religious world, we would remind her that the Virgin Mother is

still "the blessed" of our own church.

It is a question if the list of sainted martyrs in repute has not

been left to the arbitrament of the painters; for we find many

deposed, and the adopted favourites of art not found in the early

list, as represented in their processions. We find a Saint Reparata,

after having been the patroness saint of Florence for six hundred

years, deposed, and the city placed under the tutelage of the Virgin

and St John the Baptist.

Yet these were early times for the influence of art; but, at a

period when pictures were thought to have a kind of miraculous

power, it is not improbable that some potent work of art

representing the Virgin and St John may have caused the new

devotional dedication--as was the case in modern times, when the

imaged Madonna de los Dolores was appointed general-in-chief of the

Carlist army. Painters were what the poets had been--_Vates sacri_.

Events and the memory of saints may have perished, _Carent quia vate

sacro_. We wish our own painters were more fully sensible of the

power of art to perpetuate, and that it is its province to teach.

With us it has been too long disconnected with our religion. It will

be a glorious day for art, and for the people that shall witness the

reunion.

In taking leave of these two fascinating volumes, we do so with

the less regret, knowing that they will be often in our hands, as

most valuable for instant reference. No one who wishes to know the

subjects and feel the sentiment of the finest works in the world,

will think of going abroad without Mrs Jameson's book. We must again

thank her for the beautiful woodcuts and etchings; the latter, in

particular, are lightly and gracefully executed, we presume mostly

(to speak technically) in dry point. Mrs Jameson writes as an

enthusiast, her feeling flows from her pen. Her style is fascinating

to a degree, forcible and graceful; but there is no mistaking its

character--feminine. We know no other hand that could so happily

have set forth the _Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art_.

AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.

BOSTON, _December 1848_.

THE YEAR OF CONSTITUTIONS is drawing to its end, to be succeeded,

I doubt not, by the Year of Substitutions. I am sorry, my Basil,

that you do not quite agree with me as to the issue of all this

in France; but I am sure you will not dispute my opinion that

this year's work is good for nothing, so far as it has attempted

construction, instead of fulfilling its mission by overthrow. Its

great folly has been the constitution-fever, which has amounted

to a pestilence. When mushrooms grow to be oaks, then shall such

constitutions as this year has bred, stand a chance of outliving

their authors. Will men learn nothing from the past? How can they

act over such rotten farces,--make themselves such fools!

You admit the difference, which I endeavoured to show you, between

the American constitution and that of any conceivable constitution

which may be cooked up for an old European state. I am glad if I

have directed your attention, accordingly, to the great mistake of

France. She supposes that a feeble, and debauched old gentleman

can boil himself in the revolutionary kettle, and emerge in all

the tender and enviable freshness of the babe just severed from

the maternal mould. Politicians have committed a blunder in not

allowing the natural, and hence legitimate, origin of the American

constitution in that of its British parent. They have thus favoured

the theory that a tolerably permanent constitution can be drafted _a

priori_, and imposed upon a state. This is the absurdity that makes

revolutions. If the silly French, instead of reading De Tocqueville,

would study each for himself the history of our constitution, and

see how gradually it grew to be our constitution, before pen was

put to paper to draft it, they might perhaps stop their abortive

nonsense in time, to save what they can of their national character

from the eternal contempt of mankind.

But you cannot think the French will find so fair a destiny as a

Restoration! Tell me, in what French party, at present existing,

there is any inherent strength, save in that of the legitimists?

Other parties are mere factions; but the legitimists have got a

seminal principle among them, which dies very hard, and of which

the nature is to sprout and make roots, and then show itself. I am

no admirer of the Bourbons: their intrigues with Jesuitism have

been their curse, and are the worst obstacle to their regaining

a hold on the sympathies of freemen. The reactionary party have

in vain endeavoured to overcome it for fifty years. Yet there is

such tenacity of life in legitimacy, that it seems to me destined

to outlive all opposition, and to succeed by necessity. The rapid

developments of this memorable year strengthen the probability of

my prediction. Revolutionism is spasmodic, but not so long in dying

as it used to be. I cannot but think this year has done more for a

permanent restoration of the Bourbons than any year since Louis XVI.

ascended the scaffold. In this respect the Barricades of 1848 may

tell more impressively on history than the Allies of 1814, or even

the carnage of Waterloo.

Why should I be ashamed of my theory, when everything, so far, has

gone as I supposed it would, only a hundred times more rapidly than

any body could have thought possible? What must be the residue of

a series which thus far has tended but one way?--what say you of

the Bartholomew-butchery in June?--what of Lamartine's fall?--what

of the dictatorship of Cavaignac? If things have gone as seems

probable, Louis Napoleon is president of the republic. If so, what

is the instinct which has thus called him into power? The hereditary

principle is abolished on paper, and instantly recognised by the

first popular act done under the new constitution! But, for all

we can tell in America, things may have taken another turn. Is

Cavaignac elected? Then a military master is put over the republic,

who can _Cromwellise_ the Assembly, and _Monk_ the state, as

soon as he chooses. The republic has given itself the form of a

dictatorship, and demonstrated that it does not exist, except on

paper. Has there been an insurrection? Then the republic is dead

already. But I shall assume that Louis has succeeded: then it is

virtually an hereditary empire. To be sure, instinct has for once

failed to know "the true prince,"--has accorded, to the mere shadow

of a usurper, what, in a more substantial form, is due to the heir

of France; but long-suspended animation must make a mistake or

two in coming to life again. The events of the year have been all

favourable to a restoration, because they have crushed a thousand

other plans and plottings for the sovereignty, and because they must

have forced upon at least as many theorists the grand practical

conclusion, that there is to be no rational liberty in France until

she returns to first principles, and finds the repose which old

nations can only know under their legitimate kings.

I am ashamed of you for more than hinting that legitimacy must be

given up, as far as kings are concerned. Alas! Diogenes must light

his lantern, and hunt through England for a Tory! You are bewhigged,

indeed, if you give it up that George III. was a legitimate king,

and that his grand-daughter is to you what no other person alive

can possibly be,--your true and hereditary sovereign lady! Must I,

a republican, say this to an English monarchist, who votes himself

a conservative, and who is the son of a sturdy old English Tory?

Is there no virtue extant, that even you allow yourself to be

flippant about "the divinity that hedges kings," and to trifle with

suggestions which your immortal ancestor, who fell at Prestonpans,

would have drummed out of doors with poker and tongs? Why, even

I, who have a right to be whatever I choose, by way of amateur

allegiance, and who have always found myself a Jacobite whenever

the talk has been against the White Rose--even I, in sober earnest,

yield the point, that George I. was a legitimate sovereign, and that

Charlie was a bit of a rebel. Those stupid Dutchmen! it makes me

mad to say as much for them; but I love Old England too well to own

that she bore with such sovereigns on any lower grounds than that of

their right to reign.

I am sorry you give in to the silly cant of revolutionists, and

confess yourself posed with their challenge. What if they do insist

upon a definition? Are you bound to keep your heart from beating

till you can tell why it throbs over a page of Shakspeare's Richard

II., and bounces, in precisely an opposite manner, over Carlyle's

Cromwell? Am I going to let a Whig choke me with a dictionary,

because it contains no explanation of my good old-fashioned word?

Let him, with his "Useful Knowledge Society" information, give me

an explanation of the magnetic needle, or tell me why it turns to

the pole, and not to the antipodes? The fellow will recollect some

twopenny picture of the compass, and retail me half a column of the

Penny Magazine about the mysteries of nature. And what if I talk

as sensibly from nature in my own heart, and tell the stereotype

philosopher that I am conscious of an ennobling affection, which

honest men never lack, and which God Almighty has made a faculty of

the human soul to dignify subordination; and that loyalty has no

lode-star but legitimacy? At least, my dear Whigo-Tory, you must

allow, I should succeed in answering a fool according to his folly.

But I claim more: I have defined legitimacy when I say it is the

home of loyalty.

I have amused myself during the summer with some study of the

history of reaction in France, and flatter myself that I have

discovered the secret of its failure, and the great distinction

between its spirit and that of English Conservatism. But this by

the way; for I was going to say that I have found, in the writings

of one of the chief of the reactionary party, some very sensible

hints upon the subject I am discussing with you. Though in many

respects a dangerous teacher, and, I fear, a little jesuitical in

practice as well as in theory, I have been surprised to find the

Count de Maistre willing "to be as _his master_" on this point, and

to rest legitimacy very nearly on the sober principles of Burke.

He is far from the extravagances of Sir Robert Filmer, though

he often expresses, in a startling form, the temperate views of

English Anti-Jacobins. Thus he says, with evident relish of its

smart severity, _the people will always accept their masters, and

will never choose them_. Strongly and unpalatably put, but most

coincident with history, and not to be disputed by any admirer

of the glorious Revolution of 1688! I suspect the Frenchman made

his aphorism without stopping to ask whether it suited any other

case. But Burke has virtually said the same thing in his reply

to the Old Jewry doctrine of 1789, in which he so forcibly urges

the fact, that the settlement of the crown upon William and the

Georges "was not properly _a choice_, ... but an act of necessity,

in the strictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken."

Mary and the Hanoverians, then, were acknowledged by the nation,

in spite of itself, as legitimate sovereigns; and even William was

smuggled into the acknowledgment as _quasi_-legitimate. It is the

clear, reasonable, and truly English doctrine of Burke, that _the

constitution of a country makes its legitimate kings_; and that the

princes of the House of Brunswick, coming to the crown according to

constitutional law, at the date of their respective accessions, were

as legitimate as King James before he broke his coronation oaths,

and abdicated, _ipso facto_, his crown and hereditary rights. But

De Maistre talks more like the schoolmen, though he comes to the

same practical results. Constitutions, the native growth of their

respective countries, he would argue, are the ordinance of GOD; and

kings, though not the subjects of their people, are bound to do

homage to them, as, in a sense, divine. Legitimacy, therefore, is

the resultant of hereditary majesty and constitutional designation;

it being always understood that constitutional laws are never

written till after they become such by national necessities, which

are divine providences. Apply this to 1688. The Bill of Rights was

an unwritten part of the constitution even when James was crowned;

and so was the principle, that the king must not be a Papist, at

least in the government of his realms. Such, if I may so speak,

was the Salic law of England, by which his public and political

Popery stripped him of his right to the throne. It was the same

principle that invested the House of Brunswick with a legitimacy

which the heart of the nation did not hesitate to recognise, in

spite of unfeigned disgust with the prince in whom the succession

was established. To throw the proposition into the abstract--there

can be no legitimacy without hereditary majesty, but that member

of a royal line is the legitimate king in whom concur all the

elements of _constitutional designation_. If the phrase be new,

the idea is as old as empire. I mean that constitutional power

which, without reference to national choice or personal popularity,

selects the true heir of the throne, among the descendants of its

ancient possessors, on fixed principles of national law. Thus,

in Portugal, the constitution sets aside an idiot heir-apparent

for a cadet of the same family, or, if need be, for a collateral

relative; while, in France, it proclaims the line of a king extinct

in his female heir, and ascends, perhaps, to a remote ancestor for

a trace of his rightful successor. It is a principle essentially

the same which, in England, pronounces a Popish prince as devoid

of hereditary right to the crown, as a bastard, or the child of a

private marriage; and by which the hereditary blood, shut off from

its natural course, immediately opens some auxiliary channel, and

widens it into the main artery of succession, with all the precision

of similar resources in physical nature. With such an argument, if

I understand him, the Count de Maistre would put you to the blush

for sneering _sub rosâ_ at the legitimacy of your Sovereign. I wish

his principles were always as capable of being put to the proof,

without any absurdity in the reduction. Hereditary majesty is the

only material of which constitutions make sovereigns; and that, too,

deserves a word in the light which this sage Piedmontese Mentor of

France has endeavoured to throw on the subject. It is interesting

in the present dilemma of France, which stands like the ass between

two haystacks--rejecting one dynasty, but not yet choosing another.

I am a republican, you know, holding that my loyalty is due to the

constitution of my own country; and yet I subscribe to the doctrine

that this idea of _majesty_ is a reality, and that, confess it

or not, even republicans feel its reality. _The king's name is a

tower of strength_; and inspiration has said to sovereign princes,

with a pregnant and monitory meaning--_ye are gods_. This is not

the fawning of courts, but the admonition of Him who invests them

with His sword of avenging justice, and gives them, age after age,

the natural homage of their fellow-men. Not that I would flatter

monarchs: I see that they _die like men_, and, what is worse, live,

very often, like fools, if not like beasts. Yet I am sure that they

have something about them which is personally theirs, and cannot

be given to others, and which is as real a thing as any other

possession. GOD has endowed them with history, and they are the

living links which connect nations with their origin, and the men of

the passing age with bygone generations. Reason about it as we may,

it is impossible not to look with natural reverence on the breathing

monuments of venerable antiquity. For a Guelph, indeed, I cannot

get up any false or romantic enthusiasm; and yet I find it quite

as impossible not to feel that the house of Guelph entitles its

royal members to a degree of consideration which is the ordinance

of Heaven. For how many ages has that house been a great reality,

casting its shadow over Europe, and stretching it over the world,

and as absolutely affecting the destinies of men as the geographical

barriers and highways of nations! The Alps and the Oceans are

morally, as well as naturally, majestic; and a moral majesty like

theirs attaches to a line of princes which has stood the storms of

centuries like them, and like them has been always a bulwark or a

bond between races and generations. Like the solemnity of mountains

is the hereditary majesty of a family, of which the origin is

veiled in the twilight of history, but which is always seen above

the surface of cotemporary events, a crowned and sceptred thing

that never dies, but perpetuates, from generation to generation, a

still increasing emotion of sublimity and awe, which all men feel,

and none can fully understand. There are many women in England who,

for personal qualities and graces, would as well become the throne

as she whom you so loyally entitle "Our Sovereign Lady." Why is

it that no election, nor any imaginable possession of her place,

could commend the proudest or the best of them to the homage of the

nation's heart? Such a one might wear the robes, and glitter like

a star, outshining the regalia, and might walk like Juno; but not

a voice would cry _God save her!_--while there is a glory, not to

be mistaken, which invests the daughter of ancient sovereigns, even

when she is recognised, against her will, in the costume of travel,

or when she shows herself among her people, and treads the heather

in a trim little bonnet and a Highland plaid. Why is it that ten

thousand feel a thrill when her figure is seen descending from the

wooden walls of her empire, and alighting upon some long unvisited

portion of its soil? It is not the same emotion which would be

inspired by the landing of Wellington. Then the roaring of cannon

and the waving of ensigns would appear to be a tribute rendered to

the hero by a grateful country; but when her Majesty touches the

shore, she seems herself to wake the thunders and to bow the banners

which announce her coming. The pomp is all her own, and differs from

the tributary pageant, as the nod of Jove is different from the

acclamation of Stentor. Even I, who "owe her no subscription," can

well conceive what a true Briton cannot help but feel, when, with

an ennobling loyalty, he beholds in her the concentrated blood of

famous kings, and the propagated soul of mighty monarchs; and when

he calls to mind, at the same moment, the thousand strange events

and glorious histories which have their august and venerable issue

in Victoria, his queen.

But you will bring me back to my main business, by asking--who,

then, was the legitimate king of France at the beginning of this

year? The King of the Barricades was not lacking in hereditary

majesty, and you will make out a case of _constitutional

designation_, by a parallel between England in 1688, and France

in 1830. If you do so, you will greatly wrong your country. The

loyalty of England settled in the house of Brunswick, and would have

been even less tried if there had been a continuance of the house

of Orange; but no French loyalist could ever be reconciled to the

dynasty of Orleans. And why? It was not the natural constitution of

France, but the mere blunder of a mob, that selected Louis Philippe

as the king of the French. It was an election, as the accession of

William and Mary was not: it was a choice, and not a necessity--the

mere caprice of the hour, and in no sense the rational designation

of law. Did ever his Barricade Majesty himself, in all his dreams of

a dynasty, pretend that any unalterable principle, or fundamental

law of France, had turned the tide of succession from the

heir-presumptive of Charles X., and forced heralds upon the backward

trail of genealogy, till they could again descend, and so find the

hereditary king of the French in the son of Egalité? Louis Philippe

was not legitimate, in any reasonable sense of the word; and,

could he have made such men as Chateaubriand regard him as other

than a usurper, he would not be at Claremont now. That splendid

Frenchman uttered the voice of a smothered, but not extinguished,

constitution, when he closed his political life in 1830, by saying

to the Duchess de Berry--"_Madame, votre fils est mon roi._" He

lived to see the secret heart of thousands of his countrymen

repeating his memorable words, and died not till Providence itself

had overturned the rival throne, and directed every eye in hope, or

in alarm, to the only prince in Europe who could claim to be their

king.

I care very little what may be the personal qualifications of Henry

of Bordeaux; it seems to me that he is destined to reign upon the

throne of his ancestors--and God grant he may do it in such wise as

shall make amends for all that France has suffered, by reason of

his ancestors, since France had a Henry for her king before! The

prestige of sovereignty is his; and while he lives, no republic can

be lasting; no government, save his, can insure the peace which

the state of Europe so imperatively demands. If "experience has

taught England that in no other course or method than that of an

hereditary crown her liberties can be regularly perpetuated and

preserved sacred,"[12]--why should not an experience, a thousandfold

severer, teach France the same lesson? It has already been taught

them by a genius which France cannot despise, and to whose oracular

voice she is now forced to listen, because it issues from his fresh

grave! "Legitimacy is the very life of France. Invent, calculate,

combine all sorts of illegitimate governments, you will find nothing

else possible as the result, nothing which gives any promise of

duration, of tolerable existence during a course of years, or even

through several months. Legitimacy is, in Europe, the sanctuary in

which alone reposes that sovereignty by which states subsist." So

I endeavour to render the eloquent sentence of Chateaubriand;[13]

and though, since he wrote it, a score of years have passed, it is

stronger now than ever--for what was then his prophecy is already

the deplorable history of his country. Had ever a country such a

history, without learning more in a year than France has gained from

a miserable half-century?

[12] BURKE.

[13] _Memoires sur le Duc de Berry._

Just so long as France has been busy with experiments, in the insane

effort to separate her future from her past, just so long have

all her labours to lay a new foundation been miserable failures,

covering her, in the eyes of the world, with shame and infamy. What

has been wanting all the time? I grant that the first want has

been a national conscience--a sense of religion and of duty. But I

mean, what has been wanting to the successive administrations and

governments? Certainly not splendour and personal dignity, for the

Imperial government had both; and the King of the Barricades made

himself to be acknowledged and feared as one who bore not the sword

in vain. But the prestige of legitimacy was wanting; and that want

has been the downfall of everything that has been tried. You will

ask, what was the downfall of Charles X? The answer is, that it was

not a downfall further than concerned himself; for everybody feels

that the Bourbon claim survives, while every other has been forced

to yield to destiny and retribution. How is it that legitimacy

makes itself felt after years of exile and obscurity? Is it not

that instinct of loyalty which cannot be duped or diverted, and

which detects and detests all shams? Is it not the instinct which

constitution-makers have endeavoured to appease by pageants and by

names, but which has continually revolted against the emptiness of

both? The existence of that instinct has been perpetually exposed

by miserable attempts to satisfy its demands with outside show and

splendid impositions. The French cannot even go to work, under their

present republic, as we do in America. The common-sense of our

people teaches them that a republican government is a mere matter

of business, which must make no pretences to splendour; and hence,

the constitution once settled, the president is elected and sworn-in

with no nonsense or parade; and Mr Cincinnatus Polk sits down in the

White House, and sends every man about his business. A young country

has as yet but the instincts of infancy; there is as yet nothing to

satisfy but the craving for nourishment, and the demand for large

room. But it is not so where nations are full-grown. _Can a maid

forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?_ Can France forget

that she had once a court and a throne that dazzled the world? No!

says every craftsman of the revolution; and therefore our republic,

too, must be splendid and imperial! So, instead of going to work as

if their new constitution were a reality, there must be a fète of

inauguration. In the same conviction, Napoleon is nominated for the

presidency, because he has a name; and he immediately withdraws from

vulgar eyes, to keep his "presence like a robe pontifical," against

the investiture. Oh, for some Yankee farmer to look on and laugh! It

would not take him long to _calculate_ the end of such a republic.

Jonathan can understand a queen, and would stare at a coronation

in sober earnest, convinced that it had a meaning--at least, in

England! But a republic of kettle-drums and trumpets will never do

with him; and if he were favoured with an interview with the pompous

aspirant to the French presidency, it would probably end in his

telling Louis Napoleon the homely truth--that he has nothing to be

proud of, and had better eat and drink like other folk, and "define

his position" as a candidate, if he don't want to find himself

_used-up_, and sent on a long voyage up Salt River; which, you may

not know, my Basil, is a Stygian stream, and the ancients called

it Lethe. So much, then, for the _ultima ratio_ of illegitimate

governments--the attempt to satisfy the demand for national dignity

by pageants and by names, and to drown the outcries of natural

discontent by the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbals.

In vain did the sage Piedmontese foretell it all, like a Cassandra.

"Man is prohibited," said that admirable Mentor, "from giving

great names to things of which he is the author, and which he

thinks great; but if he has proceeded legitimately, the vulgar

names of things will be rendered illustrious, and become grand."

How specially does England answer to the latter half of this

maxim! and who can read the former without seeing France, in her

fool's-cap, before his mental eye? De Maistre himself has instanced

the revolutionary follies of Paris, and lashed them with unsparing

severity. Whatever is national in England seems to have grown up,

like her oaks, from deep and strong roots, and to stand, like them,

immovable, They make their own associations, and dignify their own

names. Everything is home-born, natural, and real. The Garter, the

Wool-sack, Hyde Park, Epsom and Ascot--these things in France would

be the _Legion of Honour_, the _Curule-chair_, the _Elysian fields_,

the _Olympic games_! The veritable attempt was made to reinstitute,

in the Champ-de-Mars, the sports of antiquity; and they received

the pompous name of _Les jeux Olympiques_. De Maistre ridicules

their nothingness, and adds that, when he saw a building erected

and called the _Odéon_, he was sure that music was in its decline,

and that the place would shortly be to let. In like manner, he says

of the motto of Rousseau, with intense _naïvete_, "Does any man

dare to write under his own portrait, _vitam impendere vero_? You

may wager, without further information, fearlessly, that it is the

likeness of a liar." How quick the human heart perceives what is

thus put into words by a philosopher! It is in vain for France to

think of covering her nakedness with a showy veil. The Empire was a

glittering gauze, but how transparent! They saw one called Emperor

and a second Charlemagne; and the Pope himself was there to give

him a crown. But it was a meagre cheat. Poor Josephine never looked

ridiculous before, but then she acted nonsense. The imperial robes

were gorgeous, but they meant nothing on the Citizen Buonaparte.

Everybody saw behind the scenes. They detected Talma in the strut of

Napoleon; they pointed at the wires that moved the hands and eyes of

the Pope. All stage-effect, machinery, and pasteboard. The imperial

court was all what children call _make-believe_: it vanished like

the sport of children.

The great feast of fraternity, last spring, was, on de Maistre's

principles, the natural harbinger of that fraternal massacre in

June; and the ineffectual attempt to be festive over the late

inauguration of the constitution, has but one redeeming feature

to prevent a corresponding augury of disaster. Its miserable

failure makes it possible that the constitution will survive its

anniversary. Then there will be a demonstration, at any rate, and

then the thing will be superannuated. Since 1790, there has been

no end to such glorifications; each chased and huzza'd, in turn,

by a nation of full-grown children, and all hollow and transient

as bubbles. Perpetual beginnings, every one warranted to be _no

failure this time_, and each going out in a stench. What continual

_Champs-de-Mars_ and _Champs-de-Mai_! what wavings of new flags, and

scattering of fresh flowers! and all ending in confessed failure,

and beginning the same thing over again! "Nothing great has great

beginnings"--says Mentor again. "History shows no exception to this

rule. _Crescit occulto velut arbor ævo_,--this is the immortal

device of every great institution."

Legitimacy never makes such mistakes, except when permitted by GOD,

to accomplish its own temporary abasement. It needs not to support

itself by tricks and shams. It has a creative power which dignifies

everything it touches; which often turns its own occasions into

festivals, but makes no festivals on purpose to dignify itself. When

Henry V. is crowned at Rheims, or at Notre-Dame, he will not send

over the Alps for _Pio Nono_, nor consult _Savans_ to learn how

Cæsar should be attired that day. That youth may safely dispense

with all superfluous pageantry, for he is not _new Charlemagne_,

but _old Charlemagne_. The blood of the Carlovingians has come down

to him from Isabella of Hainault, through St Louis and Henry IV.

Chateaubriand should not have forgotten this, when (speaking of this

prince's unfortunate father, the Duke de Berry) he enthusiastically

sketched a thousand years of Capetian glory, and cried--"_He bien!

la revolution a livré tout cela au couteau de Louvel_." Another

revolution has thus far relegated the same substantial dignity to

exile and obscurity, as if France could afford to lose its past, and

begin again, as an infant of days. But besides the evident tendency

of things to reaction, there is something about the legitimate

king of France which looks like destiny. He was announced to the

kingdom by the dying lips of his murdered sire, while yet unborn, as

if the fate of empire depended on his birth. "_Ménagez-vous, pour

l'enfant que vous portez dans votre sein_," said the unhappy man to

his duchess, and the group of bystanders was startled! It was the

first that France heard of Henry the Fifth, and it seemed to inspire

Chateaubriand with the spirit of prophecy, and he eloquently remarks

upon it as a _dernière espérance_. "The dying prince," he says,

"seemed to bear with him a whole monarchy, and at the same moment to

announce another. Oh GOD! and is our salvation to spring out of our

ruin? Has the cruel death of a son of France been ordained in anger,

or in mercy? is it _a final restoration of the legitimate throne,

or the downfall of the empire of Clovis_?" This grand question now

hangs in suspense: but, as I said, Chateaubriand must have taken

courage before he died, and inwardly answered it favourably. That

great writer seems to have felt beforehand, for his countrymen,

the loyalty to which they will probably return. To the prince he

stood as a sort of sponsor for the future. When the royal babe was

baptised, he presented water from the Jordan, in which the last hope

of legitimacy received the name of _Dieu-donné_: when Charles the

Tenth was dethroned, he stood up for the young king, and consented

to fall with his exclusion; and the last years of France's greatest

genius were a consistent confessorship for that legitimacy with

which he believed the prosperity of his country indissolubly bound.

Now, I should like to ask a French republican--if I could find

a sane one,--what would you wish to do with Henry of Bordeaux?

Would you wish this heir of your old histories to renounce his

birth-right, declare legitimacy an imposition, and undertake to

settle down in Paris as one of the people? Why not, if you are all

republicans, and see no more in a prince than in a _gamin_? Why

should not this Henry Capet throw up his cap for the constitution,

and stick up a tradesman's sign in the Place de la Revolution, as

"Henry Capet, _parfumeur_?" Why not let him hire a shop in the lower

stories of the Palais Royal and teach the Parisians better manners

than to cut off his head, by devoting himself to shaving their

beards? Everybody knows the reason why not; and that reason shows

the reality of legitimacy. Night and day such a shop would be mobbed

by friends and foes alike. Go where he might, the _parfumeur_ would

be pointed at by fingers, and aimed at by _lorgnettes_, and bored to

death by a rabble of starers, who would insist upon it that he was

the hereditary lord of France. Mankind cannot free themselves from

such impressions, and, what is more conclusive, princes cannot free

themselves from the impressions of mankind, or undertake to live

like other men, as if history and genealogy were not facts. For weal

or for woe, they are as unchangeable as the leopard with his spots.

Let Henry Capet come to America, and try to be a republican with us.

Our very wild-cats would assert their inalienable right to "look at

a king," and he would certainly be torn to pieces by good-natured

curiosity.

It is curious to see the natural instinct amusing itself, for

the present, with such a mere _nominis umbra_ as Louis Napoleon.

In some way or other the hereditary _prestige_ must be created;

nothing less is satisfactory, and the "imperial fetishism" will

answer very well till something more substantial is found necessary.

Richard Cromwell was necessary to Charles II., and so is Louis

Napoleon to Henry V. Napoleon still seems capable of giving France

a dynasty; this possibility will be soon extinguished by the

incapability of his representative. Louis will reign long enough

to exhibit that recompense to Josephine, in the person of her

grandson, which heaven delights to allot to a repudiated wife; and

then, for his own sake, he will be called _coquin_ and _poltron_.

Napoleon will take his historical position as an individual, having

no remaining hold on France; and the imperial fetishism will be

ignominiously extinguished. Richard Cromwell made a very decent old

English gentleman, and Louis Napoleon may perhaps end his days as

respectably, in some out-of-the-way corner of Corsica. Let me again

quote the French Mentor. He says, "There never has existed a royal

family to whom a plebeian origin could be assigned. Men may say, if

Richard Cromwell had possessed the genius of his father, he would

have fixed the protectorate in his family; which is precisely the

same thing as to say--if this family had not ceased to reign, it

would reign still." Here is the formula that will suit the case of

Louis Napoleon; but future historians will moralise upon the manner

in which Napoleon himself worked out his own destruction. For the

sake of a dynasty, he puts away poor Josephine. The King of Rome is

born to him, but his throne is taken. The royal youth perishes in

early manhood, and men find Napoleon's only representative in the

issue of the repudiated wife. Her grandson comes to power, and holds

it long enough to make men say--how much better it might have been

with Napoleon had he kept his faith to Josephine, and contentedly

taken as his heir the child in whom Providence has revealed at last

his only chance of continuing his family on a throne! It makes one

thing of Scripture, "Yet ye say wherefore? because the Lord hath

been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom

thou hast dealt treacherously; ... therefore take heed to your

spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his

youth, for the Lord, the GOD of Israel, saith that he hateth putting

away."

A traveller from the south of France says that he saw everywhere

the portrait of Henry V. Besides the mysterious hold which

legitimacy keeps upon the vulgar and the polite alike, there are

associations with it which operate on all classes of men. Tradesmen

and manufacturers are for legitimacy, because they love peace, and

want to make money. The _roturiers_ sooner or later learn the misery

of mobs, and the love of change makes them willing to welcome home

the king, especially as they mistake their own hearts, and flatter

themselves that their sudden loyalty is proof of remaining virtue.

Then the profligate and abandoned, they want a monarchy, in hopes of

another riot in the palace. It may be doubted whether the _blouses_

can be permanently contented without a king to curse. The national

anthem cannot be sung with any spirit, unless there be a monarch

who can be imagined to hear all its imprecations against tyrants:

in fact, the king must come back, if only to make sense of the

Marseilles Hymn.

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,

De traîtres, de rois conjurés?

Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,

Ces fers, dès long-tems préparés?

What imaginable sense is there in singing these red-hot verses

at a feast of fraternity, and in honour of the full possession

of absolute liberty? Then, where is the sport of clubs, and the

excitement of conspiracies, if there's no king to execrate within

locked doors? Is Paris to have no more of those nice little

_émeutes_? What's to be done with the genius that delights in

infernal machines? Who's to be fired at in a glass coach? Everybody

knows that Cavaignacs and Lamartines are small game for such sport.

Your true assassin must have, at least, a duke of the blood. These

are considerations which must have their weight in deciding upon

probabilities; though, for one, I am not sure but France is doomed,

by retributive justice, to be thus the Tantalus of nations, steeped

to the neck in liberty, but forbidden to drink, with kings hanging

over them to provoke the eye, and yet escaping the hand.

In 1796 de Maistre published his _Considérations sur la France_.

They deserve to be reproduced for the present age. Nothing can

surpass the cool contempt of the philosophical _réactionnaire_,

or the confidence with which, from his knowledge of the past, he

pronounces oracles for the future. Do you ask how Henry V. is to

recover his rights? In ten thousand imaginable ways. See what

Cavaignac might have done last July, had the time been ripe for

another Monk! There's but one way to keep legitimacy out; it comes

in as water enters a leaky ship, oozing through seams, and gushing

through cracks, where nobody dreamed of such a thing. As long as

even a tolerable pretender survives, a popular government must be

kept in perpetual alarm. But you shall hear the Count, my Basil! Let

me give you a free translation.

"In speculating about counter-revolutions, we often fall into the

mistake of taking it for granted that such reactions can only be the

result of popular deliberation. _The people won't allow it_, it is

said; _they will never consent; it is against the popular feeling_.

Ah! is it possible? The people just go for nothing in such affairs;

at most they are a passive instrument. Four or five persons may give

France a king. It shall be announced to the provinces that the king

is restored: up go their hats, and _vive le roi_! Even in Paris,

the inhabitants, save a score or so, shall know nothing of it till

they wake up some morning and learn that they have a king. '_Est-il

possible?_' will be the cry: '_how very singular! What street will

he pass through? Let's engage a window in good time, there'll be

such a horrid crowd!_' I tell you the people will have nothing more

to do with re-establishing the monarchy, than they have had in

establishing the revolutionary government!... At the first blush

one would say, undoubtedly, that the previous consent of the French

is necessary to the restoration; but nothing is more absurd. Come,

we'll crop theory, and imagine certain facts.

"A courier passes through Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyons, and so _en

route_, telling everybody that the king is proclaimed at Paris; that

a certain party has seized the reins, and has declared that it holds

the government only in the king's name, having despatched an express

for his majesty, who is expected every minute, and that every one

mounts the white cockade. Rumour catches up the story, and adds

a thousand imposing details. What next? To give the republic the

fairest chance, let us suppose it to have the favour of a majority,

and to be defended by republican troops. At first these troops shall

bluster very loudly; but dinner-time will come; the fellows must

eat, and away goes their fidelity to a cause that no longer promises

rations, to say nothing of pay. Then your discontented captains

and lieutenants, knowing that they have nothing to lose, begin to

consider how easily they can make something of themselves, by being

the first to set up _Vive-le-roi_! Each one begins to draw his own

portrait, most bewitchingly coloured; looking down in scorn on the

republican officers who so lately knocked him about with contempt;

his breast blazing with decorations, and his name displayed as that

of an officer of His Most Christian Majesty! Ideas so single and

natural will work in the brains of such a class of persons: they

all think them over; every one knows what his neighbour thinks, and

they all eye one another suspiciously. Fear and distrust follow

first, and then jealousy and coolness. The common soldier, no

longer inspired by his commander, is still more discouraged; and,

as if by witchcraft, the bonds of discipline all at once receive

an incomprehensible blow, and are instantly dissolved. One begins

to hope for the speedy arrival of his majesty's paymaster; another

takes the favourable opportunity to desert and see his wife. There's

no head, no tail, and no more any such thing as trying to hold

together.

"The affair takes another turn with the populace. They push about

hither and thither, knocking one another out of breath, and asking

all sorts of questions; no one knows what he wants; hours are

wasted in hesitation, and every minute does the business. Daring

is everywhere confronted by caution; the old man lacks decision,

the lad spoils all by indiscretion; and the case stands thus,--one

may get into trouble by resisting, but he that keeps quiet may be

rewarded, and will certainly get off without damage. As for making

a demonstration--where is the means? Who are the leaders? Whom can

ye trust? There's no danger in keeping still; the least motion may

get one into trouble. Next day comes news--_such a town has opened

its gates_. Another inducement to hold back! Soon this news turns

out to be a lie; but it has been believed long enough to determine

two other towns, who, supposing that they only follow such example,

present themselves at the gates of the first town to offer their

submission. This town had never dreamed of such a thing; but, seeing

such an example, resolves to fall in with it. Soon it flies about

that Monsieur the mayor has presented to his majesty the keys of

his good city of _Quelquechose_, and was the first officer who had

the honour to receive him within a garrison of his kingdom. His

Majesty--of course--made him a marshal of France on the spot. Oh!

enviable brevet! an immortal name, and a scutcheon everlastingly

blooming with _fleurs-de-lis_! The royalist tide fills up every

moment, and soon carries all before it. _Vive-le-roi!_ shouts out

long-smothered loyalty, overwhelmed with transports: _Vive-le-roi!_

chokes out hypocritical democracy, frantic with terror. No matter!

there's but one cry; and his Majesty is crowned, and _has all the

royal makings of a king_. This is the way counter-revolutions

come about. God having reserved to himself the formation of

sovereignties, lets us learn the fact, from observing that He never

commits to the multitude the choice of its masters. He only employs

them, in those grand movements which decide the fate of empires,

as passive instruments. Never do they get what they want: they

always take; they never choose. There is, if one may so speak, an

_artifice_ of Providence, by which the means which a people take to

gain a certain object, are precisely those which Providence employs

to put it from them. Thus, thinking to abase the aristocracy by

hurrahing for Cæsar, the Romans got themselves masters. It is just

so with all popular insurrections. In the French revolution the

people have been perpetually handcuffed, outraged, betrayed, and

torn to pieces by factions; and factions themselves, at the mercy of

each other, have only risen to take their turn in being dashed to

atoms. To know in what the revolution will probably end, find first

in what points all the revolutionary factions are agreed. Do they

unite in hating Christianity and monarchy? Very well! The end will

be, that both will be the more firmly established in the earth."

Cool, certainly; is it not, my Basil? The legitimists are the only

Frenchmen who can keep cool, and bide their time. Chateaubriand

has observed, in the same spirit, that there is a hidden power

which often makes war with powers that are visible, and that a

secret government was always following close upon the heels of the

public governments that succeeded each other between the murder of

Louis XVI. and the restoration of the Bourbons. This hidden power

he calls the eternal reason of things; the justice of GOD, which

interferes in human affairs just in proportion as men endeavour to

banish and drive it from them. It is evident that the whole force

of de Maistre's prophecy was owing to his religious confidence

in this divine interference. He wrote in 1796. That year the

career of Napoleon began at Montenotte; and, for eighteen years

succeeding, every day seemed to make it less and less probable

that his predictions could be verified. The Bourbon star was lost

in the sun of Austerlitz. The Republic itself was forgotten; the

Pope inaugurated the Empire; Austria gave him a princess, to be the

mould of a dynasty, and the source of a new legitimacy. France was

peopled with a generation that never knew the Bourbons, and which

was dazzled with the genius of Napoleon, and the splendour of his

imperial government. But the time came for this _puissance occulte,

cette justice du ciel_! When the Allies entered Paris in 1814, it

was suggested to Napoleon that the Bourbons would be restored; and,

with all his sagacity, he made the very mistake which de Maistre had

foreshown, and said, in almost his very words--"Never! nine-tenths

of the people are irreconcilably against it!" One can almost hear

what might have been the Count's reply--"_Quelle pitié! le peuple

n'est pour rien dans les revolutions. Quatre ou cinq personnes,

peut-être, donneront un roi à la France._" What could Talleyrand

tell about that? The facts were, that in four days the Bourbons

were all the rage! The Place Vendôme could hardly hold the mob that

raved about Napoleon's statue; and, with ropes and pulleys, they

were straining every sinew to drag it to the ground, when it was

taken under the protection of Alexander![14] What next? In terror

for his very life, this Napoleon flies to Frejus, now sneaking out

of a back-window, and now riding post, as a common courier, actually

saving himself by wearing the white cockade over his raging breast,

and all the time cursing his dear French to Tartarus! A British

vessel gives him his only asylum, and the salute he receives from

a generous enemy is all that reminds him what he once had been

in France. Meantime these detested Bourbons are welcomed home

again, with De Maistre's own varieties of _Vive-le-roi_! The Duke

d'Angouleme, advancing to the capital, sees the silver lilies

dancing above the spires of Bordeaux: the Count d'Artois hails the

same tokens at Nancy: not captains and lieutenants, but generals

and marshals, rush to receive His Most Christian Majesty; and the

successor of the butchered Louis XVI. comes to his palace, after an

exile of twenty years, with the title of Louis the Desired! Nor are

subsequent events anything more than the swinging of a pendulum,

which must eventually subside into a plummet. If the first disaster

of Napoleon, in the fulness of his strength, could make France

welcome her legitimacy in 1814, why should not the imbecility of

the mere shadow of his name produce a stronger revulsion before

this century gains its meridian? There is a residuary fulfilment

of de Maistre's augury, which remains to the Bourbons, when all of

Napoleon that survives has found its ignominious extinction. Then

will the ripe fruit fall into the lap of one who, if he is wise,

will make the French forget his kindred with the fourteenth and

fifteenth Louises, and remember only that Henry of Bordeaux has

before him the example of Henry of Navarre.

[14] ALISON.

There is, indeed, another conceivable end. _C'est l'arrêt que le

ciel prononce enfin contre les peuples sans jugement, et rebelles

à l'expérience._[15] If France does not soon come back to reason,

we shall be forced to think her given up of GOD, to become such

a country as Germany, or perhaps as miserable as Spain. But we

must not be too hasty in coming to conclusions so deplorable. Let

the republic have its day. It will work its own cure; for the

chastisement of France must be the curse of ancient Judah. "The

people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and everyone by

his neighbour; the child shall behave himself proudly against the

ancient, and the base against the honourable." For the mob of Paris,

who got drunk with riot, and must grow sober with headache; for the

blousemen and the boys who have pulled a house upon their head,

and now maul each other in painful efforts to get from under the

ruins; and for the miserable _philosophes_ who see, in the charming

state of their country, the fruit of their own atheistic theories;

for all these it is but retribution. They needed government; they

resolved on license: GOD has sent them despotism in its worst form.

One pities Paris, but feels that it is just. My emotions are very

different when I think of what were once "the pleasant villages

of France." Miserable _campagnards_! There are thousands of them,

besides the poor souls starving in provincial towns, who curse

the republic in their hearts; and, from Normandy to Provence and

Languedoc, there are millions of such Frenchmen, who care nothing

for dynasties, or fraternities, or democracy, but only pray the

good Lord to give peace in their time, that they may sit under

their own vine, and earn and eat their daily bread. For them--may

GOD pity them!--what a life Dame Paris leads them! If, with the

simplicity of rustics, they were for a moment disposed to be merry

last February--when they heard that thereafter loaves and fishes

were to fling themselves upon every table, for the mere pleasure of

being devoured--how bitterly the simpletons are undeceived! Their

present notions of fraternity and equality they get from hunger

and from rags. It is not now in France as in the days of Henry

IV., when every peasant had a pullet in the pot for his Sunday

dinner. That was despotism. It is liberty now--liberty to starve.

There is no more oppression, for the very looms refuse to work, and

water-wheels stand still; and the vines go gadding and unpruned,

and the grape disdains to be trampled in the wine-vat. Yes--and the

old _paysan_ and his sprightly dame, who used to drive dull care

away in the sunshine--she, with her shaking foot and head, and he

with his fiddle and his bow, they have liberty to the full; for

their seven sons, who were earning food for them in the sweat of

their brow, have come home to the old cabin, ragged and unpaid; and

they lounge about in hungry idleness, longing for war, but only

because war would provide them with a biscuit or a bullet. What

care they for glory, or for constitutions? They ask for bread, and

their teeth are ground with gravel-stones. Let England look and

learn. If she has troubles, let her see how easily troubles may be

invested at compound interest, with the certainty of dividends for

years to come. Is hard thrift in a kingdom so bad as starvation

in a democracy? And whether is it better to wear out honestly, in

this work-day world, as good and quiet subjects; or to be thrust

out of it, kicking and cursing, behind a barricade of cabs and

paving-stones, in the name of equality? These are the common-sense

questions, that every English labourer should be made to feel and

answer.

[15] CHATEAUBRIAND.

It provokes me, Basil, that my letter may be superannuated while

it is travelling in the steamer! The changes of democracy are more

frequent than the revolutions of a paddle-wheel. Adieu. Yours,

ERNEST.

DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO.

_Dalmatia and Montenegro._ By Sir J. GARDNER WILKINSON. London:

Murray.

It is really astonishing that our want of information respecting

Dalmatia, and its neighbourhood, has not long ago been supplied. It

is by no means easy, now-a-days, to hit upon a line of country that

may afford subject-matter for acceptable illustration. Travellers

are so numerous, and authorship is so generally affected, that the

best part of Europe has been described over and over again. You may

get from Mr Murray a handbook for almost any place you will. Manners

and customs, roads, inns, things to be suffered, and notabilities

to be visited--in short, all the probable contingencies of travel

between this and the Vistula, are already noted and set down. We

take it upon ourselves to say, that it is one of the most difficult

things in life to realise the sense of desolation and unwontedness

that are poetic characteristics of the traveller. How can a man feel

himself strange to any place where he is so thoroughly up to usages

that no _locandière_ can cheat him to the amount of a _zwanziger_?

And, thanks to the books written, it is a man's own fault if he

wend almost anywhither except thus μύστης γενόμενος.

In truth, European travelling is pretty nearly reduced to the work

of verification. Events are according to prescription; and there

remains very little room for the play of an exploring spirit. The

grand thing to be explored is a matter pysychological rather than

material; it is to prove experimentally what are the emotions that

a generous mind experiences, when vividly acted upon by association

with the world of past existences. Beyond doubt, this is the highest

range of intellectual enjoyment; and to its province may be referred

much that at first sight would appear to be heterogeneous, as, for

instance, delights purely scientific. But at any rate, we must all

agree that the main privilege of a traveller is, that he is enabled

to test the force of this power of association. It is an enjoyment

to be known only by experiment. No power of description can give a

man to understand what is the sensation of gazing on the Acropolis,

or of standing within Ἁγία Σοφία. It is as another sense, called into

existence by the occasion of exercise.

To any but the uncommonly well read, there has hitherto been meagre

entertainment in travelling among the Slavonian borderers on the

Adriatic. It has been impossible to realise on their subject these

high pleasures of association, because so little has been known of

the facts of their history; rather should we perhaps say, that,

of what has been known, so little has been generally accessible.

But we are happy to find that the right sort o' "chiel has been

amang them, takin' notes." The way is now open; and henceforth it

will be easy to follow with profit. The book which Sir Gardner

Wilkinson has given us seems to be exactly the thing which was

wanted; and certainly the use of it will enable a man to travel

in Dalmatia as a rational creature should. No mere dotter down of

events could have passed through the course of this country without

producing a document of considerable value. The widespread family

of which its inhabitants are a branch have been intimately mixed up

with the history of the Empire and of Christendom; and now again

we behold them playing a conspicuous part in European politics.

Modern Panslavism deepens the interest to be felt in this family,

and quickens the anxiety to know what they are doing and thinking

now, as well as what they have done in days of old. In the present

volumes we have, besides the memoranda of things existing, a

compendium of Slavonian history and antiquities, and an exhibition

of the degree in which the race have been mixed up with European

history. Besides this, an account is given of their more domestic

traditions, of which monuments survive; and it must be a man's own

fault if, having this book with him, he miss extracting the utmost

of profit from a visit to the country.

In one way, we can surely prophesy that this book will prove the

means of bringing to us increase of lore from out of that land of

which it treats. It will naturally be taken on board every yacht

that, when next summer shall open skies and seas, may find its

way into the Mediterranean. Among these birds of passage, it can

scarcely be but that some one will shape its course for this land of

adventure, thus, as it were, newly laid open. It is a little, a very

little out of the direct track, in which these summer craft are apt

to be found, plentiful as butterflies. They may rest assured that in

no place, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pharos of Alexandria,

can they hope to find such provision of entertainment. The stories

they may thence bring will really be worth something--a value much

higher than we can vote ascribable to much that we hear of the

well-frequented shores of the French lake.

We prophesy, also, that an inspiriting effect will be produced

on men better qualified even than the yachtsmen for the work of

travel--we mean on the gallant officers who garrison the island of

Corfu. They occupy a station so exactly calculated to facilitate

excursions in the desirable direction, that it will be too bad if

some of them do not start this very next spring. We do not recommend

the Adriatic in winter time, and so give them a few months' grace,

just to keep clear of the Bora. Let them, as soon as possible after

the equinox, avail themselves of one of those gaps which will be

occurring in the best-regulated garrison life. Times will come round

when duty makes no exaction, and when the indigenous resources of

the island afford no amusement. Should such occasion have place out

of the shooting months--or when, haply, some row with the Albanians

has placed Butrinto under interdict--woful are the straits to which

our ardent young fellow-countrymen are reduced. A ride to the

Garoona pass, or a lounge into Carabots; or, to come to the worst,

an hour or two's _flané_ round old Schulenberg's statue, are well in

their way, but cannot please for ever. All these things considered,

it is, we say, but likely that we shall reap some substantial

benefit from the leisure of our military friends, so soon as their

literary researches shall have carried them into the enjoyment of

this book. Dalmatia is almost before their very eyes. If hitherto

they have not drifted thither, under the combined influences of a

long leave and an uncertain purpose, it is because they have not

been in a condition to prosecute researches. We must not blame them

for their past neglect, any more than we blame the idleness of him

who lacks the implements of work. Give a man tools, and then, if he

work not, _monstrare digito_. Henceforth they must be regarded as

thoroughly equipped, and without excuse. Let us hope that some two

or three may be roused to action on the very next opportunity--that

is to say, on the very next occasion of leave. Let us hope that,

instead of sloping away to Paxo, or Santa Maura, they may shape

their course through the North Channel, and begin, if they please,

by exploring the Bocca di Cattaro.

Sir Gardner speaks of difficulties and vexatious delays interposed

between the traveller and his purpose by the Austrian authorities.

These scrutineers of passports seem to grow worse; and with them

bad has long been the best. We used to think that the palm of

pettifogging was fairly due to the officials of his Hellenic

majesty. It was bad enough, we always thought, to be kept waiting

and watching for a license to move from the Piræus to Lutraki, by

steam; but we confess that Sir Gardner makes out a case, or rather

several cases, that beat our experience hollow. We should like

to commit the passport system to the verdict to be pronounced by

common-sense after perusal of the two or three pages he has written

on this subject. But common-sense must be far from us, or the mob

would not be raving for liberty while still tolerant of passports.

There is another point in respect of which a change for the worse

appears to have taken place, and that is in the important point

of _bienveillance_ towards English travellers. We learn that, at

present, Austrian officers are shy of English companionship; and

that it is even enjoined on them authoritatively that they avoid

intimacy with stragglers from Corfu. The reason assignable is found

in the late sad and absurd conspiracy hatched in that island--a

conspiracy which would have been utterly ridiculous, had it not in

the event proved so melancholy. It will freely be admitted that

the English would deserve to be sent, as they are, to Coventry,

were it fact that the insane project of the young Bandieras had

found English partisans, and that such partisanship had been winked

at by the authorities. But the real state of the case is exactly

contrary to this supposition. Humanity must needs have mourned over

the cutting off of the young men, and the sorrow of their father,

the gallant old admiral. But common-sense must have condemned the

undertaking as utterly absurd and mischievous. It is a pity that any

misunderstanding should be permitted to qualify the good feeling

towards us, for which the Austrians have been remarkable. This good

feeling has been observable eminently among their naval officers,

who have got up a strong fellowship with us, ever since they were

associated with our fleet in the operations on the coast of Syria.

That particular service has done much towards the exalting of them

in their own estimation; and, of course, the increase of friendship

for us has been in the direct proportion of the lift given to

them. The Austrian _militaires_, also, used to be a very good set

of fellows, and only too happy to be civil to an Englishman. At

their dull stations an arrival is an event, and any considerable

accession of visitors occasions quite a jubilee. These gentlemen,

however, cannot have among them much of the spirit of enterprise,

or they would take more trouble than they do to learn something of

the condition of their neighbours. They will complain freely of

the dulness of the place of their location, but at the same time

will evince little interest in the condition of the world beyond

their immediate ken. Many of them who live almost within hail of

the Montenegrini, have never been at the trouble of ascending the

mountains. Nothing seems to astonish them more than the erratic

disposition which leads men in quest of adventure; they cannot

conceive such an idea as that of volunteering for a cruise. Yachts

puzzle them: the owners must be sailors. Of any military officers

who may chance to visit them in yachts, they cannot conceive

otherwise than that they belong to the marine. Nevertheless they

are, or used to be, kind and hospitable; and would treat you well,

although they could not quite make you out.

That this country is a neglected portion of the Austrian empire

is very evident. The officials sigh under the very endearments of

office. The _sanità_ man, who comes off to greet your arrival, will

tell you how insufferably dull it is living in the Bocca,--and how

he longs to be removed anywhither. Place, people, climate, all

will be condemned. Yet, to a stranger, many of the localities seem

exquisitely beautiful. The same cause seems to mar enjoyment here

that spoils the beauty of our own Norfolk Island. The Austrian

residents regard themselves as being in a state of banishment,

and take up their abode only by constraint: the constraint, that

is to say, of mammon. By the government, its possessions in this

quarter have been neglected in a manner most impolitic. The value

of this strip of coast to an empire almost entirely inland, yet

wishing to foster trade, and to possess a navy, is obvious. Yet

even the plainest use of it they seem, till lately, to have missed.

Promiscuous conscriptions were the order of the day, and men born

sailors were enrolled in the levies for the army. Of course they

were miserable and discontented, and the public service suffered by

the use of these unfit instruments. Recently it seems that a change

has been made in this respect, and we doubt not that the navy has

consequently been greatly improved. But many glaring instances of

neglect in the administration of the affairs of the country continue

to astonish beholders, and to prove that the paternal government is

not awake to its own interests.

But of all objections to be made to the wisdom of the government,

the strongest may be grounded on the condition of the agricultural

population in various parts of Dalmatia. Nothing is done to improve

their knowledge of the primary art of civilisation. Their implements

of husbandry are described as being on a par with those used by

the unenlightened inhabitants of Asia Minor. The waggons to be

encountered in the neighbourhood of Knin are referable to the same

date in the progress of invention, as are the conveniences in vogue

in the plains about Mount Ida. The mode of tillage is like that

followed in the remote provinces of Turkey; the ploughs of the

rustic population are often inferior to those to be seen in the

neighbouring Turkish provinces. Lastly--most incredible of all!--we

learn that there is not to be found in the whole district of the

Narenta such a thing as a mill, wherein to grind their corn. Will

it be believed that the rustics have to send all the corn they grow

into the neighbouring province of Herzegovina to be ground? The

inconvenience of such an arrangement may easily be conceived. Their

best of the bargain--_i. e._ the being obliged to seek from across

the frontier all the flour they want--is bad enough, and must be

sufficiently expensive; but their predicament is apt to be much

worse than this. In that part of the world, people are subject to

stoppages of intercommunication. The plague may break out in the

Turkish province, and thus a strict quarantine be established, to

the interdiction even of provisions that generally pass unsuspected;

or the country may be flooded, and the ways impassable. What are

the poor people to do then for flour? Why, the only thing they can

do is, to send their corn to their nearest neighbours possessed of

mills--that is to say, to Salona, or to Imoschi. As these places

are distant, the one about thirty-five miles, and the other about

seventy miles, we may fancy how serious must be the pressure of this

necessity. The ordinary expense of grinding their corn is stated

to be about 13 per cent. What it must be when the seventy miles'

carriage of their produce is an item in the calculation, we are left

to conjecture. Now these poor folks are not to be blamed--they have

no funds to enable them to build mills; but that they are left to

themselves in this inability is a reproach to the government under

which they live. This inconvenience so intimately affects their

social wellbeing, that we cannot put faith in the benevolence of the

rulers who allow them to remain so destitute.

Despite, however, of the disadvantages under which the people of

Dalmatia labour, it will be seen that pictures chiefly pleasurable

are to be met by him who shall travel amongst them. Their honest

nature seems to comprise within itself some compensating principle,

which makes amends for the damage of circumstances. The Morlacci,

especially, seem to be a simple, hardy set, of whom one cannot

read without pleasure. These are the rustic inhabitants of the

agricultural districts, who eschew the great towns. They made their

entry into the roll of the peasantry of Dalmatia at a comparatively

late date. The first notice of them, we are told, is about the

middle of the fourteenth century. After that time they began to

retire with their families from Bosnia, as the Turks made advances

into the country. They are of the same Slavonic family as the

Croatians; though their hardy manner of life, and the purity of the

air in which they have dwelt, on the mountains, have co-operated to

confer on them superiority of personal appearance, and of physical

condition. On a general estimate of the people of the land, and of

their mode of receiving strangers, we are disposed to rank highly

their claims to the title of hospitable and honest.

Sir Gardner Wilkinson certainly travelled amongst them most

effectually. North, south, east, and west, he intersected the

country. One part of his travels possesses especial interest,

because, so far as we know, no denizen of civilised Christendom has

ever before been so completely over the ground. We refer to his

expedition into, and through the territory of the Montenegrini.

Others--some few only, but still some others--have been far enough

to get a peep at these wild children of the mountains; and more than

once of late years, Maga has given notices concerning them:[16]

but only scanty knowledge of their domestic condition has been

attainable. Sir Gardner went right through their country to the

Turkish border, and tarried amongst them long enough to form pretty

accurate notions of their state.

[16] See _Blackwood's Magazine_, for January 1845, and for October

1846.

In the account of our author's first journey, no serious stop is

made till we come alongside of the island of Veglia: apropos to

the passage by which, we have given to us, at some length, an

interesting extract from the report of a Venetian commissioner sent

to the island, in 1481, to inquire into its state. Of this document

we will say no more than that it is exceedingly curious, and will

well reward the pains of reading. A passing notice is given to

Segna, situated on the mainland, near Veglia, for the memory's sake

of those desperate villains the Uscocs, to whom it belonged of old.

A good deal of their history is given in the last chapter of the

second volume, which serves as a documentary appendix to the work.

Everything necessary to beget interest in the islands scattered

hereaway is told; but we pass them by, and are brought to Zara. What

of antiquities is here discoverable is rooted out for our benefit,

but not much remains. The most interesting relic in the place, to

our mind, is the inscription recording the victory of Lepanto. As

Zara is the capital of Dalmatia, occasion is taken, while speaking

of the city, to give some account of the government of the province,

and of the general condition of the people.

An incident mentioned by Sir Gardner displays, in a painful

light, the kind of feeling entertained by the Austrian government

towards these its subjects, and permitted by its officials to

find expression before the natives. We cannot take it as a case

of isolated insolence: because men in responsible situations,

especially where the social system comprises an indefinite supply

of spies, do not ostentatiously commit themselves, unless they

have a foregone conviction, that what they say is according to

the authorised tone. Men under inspection of the higher powers

do not put themselves out of their way to make a display of

bitterness, unless they think thereby to conciliate the good-will

of their superiors. This is the incident in question: On a certain

occasion, the conversation happened to turn on the subject of a

then recent disturbance in a Dalmatian town. The soldiery and the

people had quarrelled, and in the _émeute_ two of the soldiers

had been killed. On these data forth spake a Jack in office. He

knew not, nor did he care to know, how many of the peasants had

fallen, nor does he appear to have entered at all curiously into

the question of the _casus belli_. He simply recommended, as the

disturbance had taken place, and as the actual perpetrators of

the violence were not forthcoming, that the whole population of

the town should be "decimated and shot." "The butchery of any

number of Dalmatians," says our author, "was thought a fit way of

remedying the incapacity of the police." One would hardly imagine

that this counsel could have been met by the applauses of persons

holding official situations; but so, we are assured, it was in fact

received. This manifestation of feeling is a sort of thing which,

when emanating from a group of merely private individuals, may be

disregarded. Idle people will talk, and their hard words will break

no bones. But the hard words of the ministers of government do

break bones; and such words must be accepted as serious indications

of subsistent evil. Such receipts for keeping people in peace and

quietness are consistent enough with the genius of their neighbours

the Turks. Retrenchment of heads, and of causes of complaint, are to

their apprehension one and the same thing--πολλων ὀνομάτων, μορφὴ

μία. We know this, and expect it. It is not so very long ago since

the Capitan Pasha gave the word to heave the officer of the watch

overboard, because his ship missed stays in going about in the

Black Sea. But the Austrians are civilised and Christian; we expect

better things of them, and can but mourn over their misapprehension

of the true principles of polity. The Englishman who stood by

rebuked the promoters of these atrocious sentiments, and for this

act of championship he was subsequently thanked by the Dalmatians

who were present. They could not have ventured to undertake their

own defence, but must have listened in silence to this outrageous

language. Our author doubts not that this exhibition of simple

humanity on his part, had the effect of causing him to be forthwith

placed under the surveillance of the police; and that such a

consequence should be so very likely to follow the honest expression

of a common-sense opinion in society is a fact that shows clearly

enough how _unsound_ that state of things must be. Assuredly one

of the best effects of intercourse with civilised nations is,

that we thereby become enabled to institute a comparison between

their social condition and our own. Even those unhappy Chartists,

who lately have acquired the habit of addressing one another as

"brother slaves," would learn to value British freedom, if they knew

something of the social condition of their European brethren: they

would see some difference between the security of their own hours of

relaxation, and the degree in which a man's freedom in Austria is

invaded by the espionage of the police.