Instability of the French People.

23

Louis Napoleon, with his military despotism based upon universal suffrage, is the extreme consequence and expression of that subversive force which is known in France under the name of the Revolution. The Empire is not the end, but only another form of the Revolution; and it is as opposed to those liberal and constitutional institutions, from which the world can alone hope for peace and progress, because they alone substitute principle to passion, and, by the free interchange of opinion between enlightened men, insure the ultimate triumph of justice and moderation over violence and fraud-the Empire, we say, is as opposed to these institutions as is the most anarchical misrule.

The time has come when it is necessary the British public should see clearly, in the contemporary history of the Continent, that what has passed there for the last thirty years, and has received its full and natural development within the last ten, is of importance to them, and may be more so shortly. We have now no right to say: "what happens in foreign countries is of no matter to us;" and we have no right to overlook the testimony of a man like M. Guizot to the evil beginnings of a state of things, the more perfect wrong whereof is now producing the barbarous slaughter of thousands of human beings.

"The thoughts of this people are not the thoughts of a civilised race," exclaimed Casimir Périer in 1832: "their imaginations are those of a savage tribe !"1

It is difficult, after reading any great French writer of the present time-be his name Villemain, Cousin, Duvergier de Hauraune, Broglie, Montalembert, or Guizot-it is difficult to adhere to a favourable opinion of the French nation, as its acts since the last forty years make it known; it is more difficult still not to be impressed with the conviction, that the more any man has been called upon to act upon the political field in France, the less he has been able to retain of sympathy or respect for the fellow-countrymen who have been either his adversaries or his allies on that field. This feeling of mournful regret pervades, in spite of himself, every page of M. Guizot's second volume. You see, by his joy when he has to do with any really elevated character, how deep was the disappointment produced in him by the generality of those he came in contact with; and just admiration is an evident relief to him when he can turn to a Casimir Périer, or a Royer Collard, from such an intriguer as Benjamin Constant, or such shilly-shallyers with power as General Lafayette: "as fearful of responsibility," says our author, "as he was enamoured of popularity."

Of whatever M. Guizot's enemies may accuse him, this latter defect of popularity-seeking was not his. His faults, mistakes, 1 Guizot's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 314.

and shortcomings were numerous; and we are not prepared to gainsay those who affirm he was one of the prime causes-if not the prime one-of the downfall of the Orleans family; but he was possessed of genuine ambition (a rare characteristic, as times go), and he was so far from courting opinion, as did so many others, that his whole career and demeanour seemed to attest that he thought it a virtue to be unpopular. But with him and his last ministry-from 1840 to 1848-we have nothing to do at this present moment. Our business is with his book-than which, perhaps, nothing more important has been published in France since the Revolution of February. This book, by its impartial and bold revelations of what the July movement was in its origin, and of what were the errors which mainly condemned the Orleans monarchy to a radically unconstitutional government, points out clearly what might be the future hopes of France, and what fresh mistakes may condemn her to perpetual social disorganisation.

We have attempted to show in what degree the British public are directly interested in a truer knowledge of what passes in France. We will now add a very few words in elucidation of what the governmental problems are in that country, from the French point of view.

The

It is not injurious to the present Emperor to speculate upon a course of events which may bring him again into exile, or at all events exclude his descendants from the throne of France. fact of his filling that throne at this moment authorises every speculation the political philosopher can make. If we suppose, then, at any future period, any disaster which shall deprive France of the existent form of despotic empire which has been imposed upon her, and which can only be maintained by internal compression, combined with external enterprise, what are we to turn to, as affording the largest possible amount of hope both for order and freedom? If M. Guizot's book is to guide or teach us, we can only answer, that a sincere reconciliation between the several members of the House of Bourbon appears the first requisite. The errors of the past are there, staring us in the face; has any one profited by them? Has any party made any progress towards seeing or admitting the truth? Have those who have suffered for flying in the face of reason, learned to admit that without order no government is possible? or have they, who were punished for denying all progress, agreed to make any concessions to the spirit of the age? Have either come to the knowledge that to be free you must be strong; but that, when you are strong, it is your duty, because it is your right, to be free? We think it would be no bad employment for Frenchmen of our day to meditate upon the following words of a young, but

Present Governmental Problems.

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already much esteemed, contemporary political writer:"-" Whoever is born with one atom of impartiality in his character will never be a good Revolutionist. Impartiality is incompatible with the qualities as with the defects that make real Revolutionists, or, let us rather say, that make the champions of any absolute doctrine-be it that of divine right, pure despotism, or pure democracy. Such doctrines only exist by the readiness of those who possess them to excommunicate whatever opposes or limits them. The Convention or Coblentz can only be respectively well served by such as are perfectly certain that every Liberal is a rebel, or that every Royalist is a traitor. Any more indulgent appreciation is a connivance with the foe, and any tolerance exposes you inevitably to be ranked with those Moderates whom both parties equally detest." These are grave words after all the catastrophes of so many years; and what increases their gravity, is their

undiminished truth.

Should any one of those accidents occur with which French history teems, and should military despotism cease to be the necessary form of government in France, to whom shall the French nation look with security for the grant of really constitutional institutions? Those given in July were incomplete— obviously so. Would those given by the successors of Louis Philippe be completer? The DIRECT and exclusive succession of the representative of the elder Bourbon branch is so impossible a contingency, that we have merely to speculate upon the greater or less degree of support afforded to the younger branch by its union with the head of the family. In a country where, as they themselves say, "anything may happen," it is wisest to see what HAS happened already, and, by a recognition of past mistakes, avoid future failures. When the fatal faults committed in the early days of the July monarchy are seriously reflected on, it is hard not to acknowledge that the first duty would be to avoid a repetition of them. This is the affair of the Comte de Chambord and the Comte de Paris, over whose destinies we seem to hear sounding, as a knell, M. Guizot's phrase "Il est des sagasses difficiles."

For our own parts, we shall be grieved if British readers do not take a warning from this book. France may never return to liberal institutions; social disorganisation may be her permanent state, and military despotism, whilst seeming to arrest it, be only one of its various transformations; but the race that in our age bases its highest claim to renown only upon its superiority in war, is not progressing in civilisation; and it behoves us to watch narrowly the fluctuating passions of that race, and the plans that it may force its ruler, from self-interest, to adopt.

1 Prince de Broglie.-Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st May 1859.

ART. II.-1. Calendar of State Papers relative to Sir Peter Paul Rubens. Edited by J. SAINSBURY. London: Bradbury and Evans. 1859.

2. Works of Art and Artists in England. By G. F. WAAGEN, Director of the Royal Gallery at Berlin. London: 1838. THE vanity of the king becomes the glory of the people. If art be a civiliser, if the cultivation of the beautiful be as necessary to the religion, order, unity, and therefore prosperity, of a community, as the pursuit of the useful is presumed to be, there is scarcely a nation under the sun that does not owe as much of its civilisation to its monarchs and nobles, as to the enterprising spirit of its population. The patron of art must have both wealth, and taste, and time to cultivate the latter and rightly distribute the former, and art cannot thrive without such patrons. The king must give it to the people, the wealthy to the masses; and it is only when their civilisation is complete, that the people can patronise it for themselves. It is only in the present day that we are told of a London hatter possessing a good collection of old masters, and a fashionable milliner bequeathing a celebrated painting to the National Gallery.

What the countries of the East owed to their lavish sovereigns, what Italy owed to the Medicis, to Leo X. and Urban VIII., France to Francis I., and Louis Quatorze, and Germany to the Elector Augustus, England derived from the taste, if we may not say the vanity, of that good gentleman and bad monarchCharles the First. We do not, of course, mean, that the galleries he collected form the nucleus of our present National collection; but rather, that he set the example of patronising Art and forming collections in this country, that he invited over and liberally remunerated more celebrated painters than have ever been here before and since, and that, whether in the hope of forming a national school, and national taste, or for other motives, he certainly encouraged, to his utmost, the few English painters who showed any promise of excellence.

Foremost among the nations of Europe in literature, this country was last in Art. There was no English school of painting until Hogarth, in the beginning of last century, not only redeemed our national honour, but proved, for the first time in the history of Art, that the palette has a moral field as well as the pen. With the exception of Dobson, whom Charles First used to call the English Tintoret, no name of an English painter before the eighteenth century had attained sufficient celebrity to be known beyond the channel; and very few before that time are sufficiently valued in the present day to make their works an object to collectors.

Foreign Artists in England.

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With English artists, therefore, we have but little to do; but it is to the honour of Charles that he took the greatest pains, and expended the largest sums, in inducing foreign masters of celebrity to visit and even settle in this country; and as a patron no less than as a collector, his name stands out pre-eminently among our sovereigns. He was not only the first, but also the last of them who valued Art for its own sake, and he appears to have been the only English king who could thoroughly appreciate it. It is from this cause, that the names which adorn his reign are more in number and greater in renown than those of his predecessors and successors alike. Henry the Eighth had employed Mabuse, and induced Holbein to settle in London; Elizabeth sat in fantastic dresses to Federigo Zucchero; James patronised Cornelius Jansen, an imitator, if not a rival, of Vandyck, and the portrait-painter Van Somer. On the other hand, the languid mannerism and luxurious draperies of Sir Peter Lely, found favour with Charles Second, who paid a salary to William Vandervelde, and bought the perfect sea-pieces of his yet more celebrated son; Kneller was the chief ornament of William's reign, and Jan Wyk fought the battle of the Boyne on canvas for him. When we add, that under the first of the Brunswicks Watteau struggled for one year in London, Vander Myn lived sumptuously and died in poverty, while Denner brought hither one of the productions of his marvellous industry, we are ready to compare the celebrity of these names with that of the artists who were associated with Charles First.

The historical and portrait painters whom he gathered around him were Rubens, Vandyck, Gerard Honthorst, Gentileschi, Hanneman, and our own Dobson. For portraits alone there were Beck, Mytens (Daniel not the better known Martin), Artemisia Gentileschi, John Hoskins, and Nicholas Laniere. Poelemburg and Wouters painted landscape for him; the younger Steenwyck architecture; Gerbier miniature; and the dissolute Torrentius drinking cups and still life. Nor were the kindred arts unrepresented. The best architect England has produced since the Reformation, built for his palace one of the greatest ornaments of the metropolis to this day, little thinking that the scaffolding he then used would, in after years, be replaced by one prepared for his master's death-block. The statue of Charles at CharingCross, of which an old ballad of the Restoration tells us, that "The Parliament did vote it down, And thought it very fitting,

Lest it should fall and kill them all

In the house where they were sitting,"

is, we think, very fair evidence of the talent he patronised in that branch of imitative art. Hubert le Soeur, who designed and