From The Spectator, 8 June. NINE years and a half have clapsed since the day of the coup d'Etat, and during that period Louis Napoleon has been absolute sovereign of France. Not one party has entered the lists against him with even temporary success, not one émeute has called for a force more than adequate to crush a riot. Abroad he has been able to dictate the policy of Europe; to carry three wars to a successful termination, to revive a nationality weighed down for ages, and to add to France two provinces which Louis XVI. could not retain. At home he had power to make and modify constitutions, to unchain all pens, and regulate all tongues, to exile all foes, and imprison all "suspects," to silence alike the tribune and the bar, to fetter a capital which in sixteen years has overthrown two strong dynasties, and to make the departments as obedient as the prefects who direct them. Paris has been tranquil, Lyons submissive, and Marseilles content. Even French wit seems to have turned courtier, and the master of thirty legions escapes the satire their bayonets could not avert from Louis Philippe. Yet it is strange, to himself perhaps melancholy, to note how little, amidst all his triumphs, Napoleon has been able to found. Abroad, France has not an ally, except in the nationalities, who, as they rise, shake off the hand that lifts them to their feet. At home, not one great institution owes its origin to Napoleon. With the exception of an approach to free trade, only sullenly endured, he has not been able to give currency to a single great idea. The law of inheritance, which the emperor dislikes, remains to pauperize France; the centralization he denounces has been intensified till mayors of the Basses Pyrénées spit by permission of the Ministry of the Interior. Of the poor law, so often promised, there is not a vestige, nor one of the system often threatened, to encourage small agriculturists oppressed by debts. The Church has been dandled into obesity but not fostered into strength; the new aristocracy petted, but not made an "institution." Even the Bonapartists have not been raised from a faction into an opinion. The unhesitating devotion of treasure has, it is true, improved the army and developed the fleet; but the soldiers of Magenta are not better than the men of Austerlitz. The navy has been doubled, while the commercial marine has declined. France has no better military system, improved finance, developed agriculture, or simplified administration. Napoleon has not even reconstructed the central bureaus, for the absurd scheme which makes one minister think, and another explain his thoughts, is better fitted to Japan than an executive in Europe. The emperor has indeed been strong to destroy, to repress thought and limit originality, to drive independence from the capital, and self-reliance from the departments. But he has founded nothing. Least of all has he founded his own dynasty. The nation, though acquiescent in him, looks with no favor upon his. Nobody believes that, were he to die to-morrow, his son could succeed without a struggle. France, without an enmity against the Prince Imperial, wants him no more than it wants anybody else. The family, as such, has taken no root. Not one of its members possesses a strength not derived from his own favor. Even Prince Jerome, strangely able man as impartial observers must admit him to be, has acquired no hold upon the people of France. The Republicans bear with him as an ally, but will never take him for a chief. The empress is not a Bonaparte, and if personally loved, is not politically an object of hope or speculation. The child of France, as his father proudly named him, may be a true Bonaparte - display, that is, the union of Jacobin audacity and administrative power; and if he is, his career may yet be over thrones. But, at present, France considers him only the son of his father, a child to be honored with every respect save that which springs of loyalty. The charm of the name Napoleon has not indeed passed, and may again, at intervals, make and remake the fortunes of the House, but this charm the emperor inherited and did not found. Indeed, he has not founded yet a personal throne. We have called him absolute sovereign of France, but it is by a complimentary abuse of words. He is only its absolute dictator. In these nine years of success his authority has attained no consolidation, none of that capacity for rest which is the first evidence of matured strength. An emperor of Austria, or a king of Holland, rules, even when not interfering. Louis Napoleon only reigns while his power is actively engaged, while busily pressing the balance down to the side which he approves. The empire, whatever it be, is not repose. The emperor is always checking this party, or restraining that; making a concession to one opinion, or warning another that it may become "an outrage on the laws." He has still, as it were, to contend, to watch his steps, to observe parties, not as a spectator observes them, but as a minister watches them, to be chief detective as well as ruler, soldier of politics rather than sovereign of men. To reverse M. Thiers' famous apopnthegm, the king governs but does not reign; or, to employ a simile all Englishmen will understand, the emperor is still horsebreaker, not coachman; has still to teach restive steeds, rather than to drive; still to keep his reins savagely taut, and still, unfortunately, to display the whip in a style the thoroughbred teamsters have disused. scandals are selected for prosecution. The strictest watch is kept over Orleanists, a watch supposed to extend even to the post, while the habitual espionage on the Reds becomes active persecution. The well-known precursors of severity, stories of extreme distress in Paris, of agitation in low regions, of jewels sent to England for security against troubles, begin again to circulate. Statements are made of discontents in the south, of priests watched by gardes champêtres, of secret societies scarcely mentioned for nearly a decade. The emperor, in fact, is again at the wheel, and obviously with unbroken strength, but then that is not the place where a captain who can depend upon his crew ought to be. This restlessness of authority, this eternal shaking of the reins and bracing of the nerves for strife, has been painfully evident of late. To English eyes it would seem that the power of the emperor, while still in health and life, is far beyond any necessity for assertion. There are parties, it is true, in France as there are parties in England, but however envenomed, they seem in this country to lack the physical force which can alone make parties dangerous to a state. The We are not writing of these phenomena parti prêtre is noisy, but there are railways as an intellectual amusement. The imperial in La Vendée, and the cry of the clericals is restlessness is real, and is matter of no slight the last to which fighting France responds. moment for Europe. The notion that an We hear much of Legitimates, but what emperor ruling by a great army must find force could the Faubourg St. Germain mus- that army occupation is not, perhaps, absoter even for the streets. The Orleanists ex-lutely sound. An army of conscripts ruled cite terror, but the Orleanists are as yet the by officers already great in the state is not Peelites of French politics, a party of leaders without a following, officers without army, representatives without a party, chiefs who, if obeyed at all, are so by men invisible to strangers. The Reds are always strong, but it is difficult to Englishmen even to imagine that the Reds can move against the mighty armies which lie coiled up in and around the centres of their power, and which, as against them, appear absolutely reliable. Yet this is evidently not the view the emperor, always the best authority on France, takes of his own position. No one in England sees the signs of restiveness but his feet are once more pressed upon the splashboard, the reins once more tightened with a determined hand. There is the careful give and take of the driver who does not want the struggle for which he is yet prepared. The priests are sternly bidden to preach Christ instead of a crusade. A foreign priest found agitating is driven out. Others are summoned to explain talk about Pilate. All are warned that the penal code recognizes agitation from the pulpit as a crime. And then as the "fama" against the orders become strong, the laity are ordered moderation, printers who print remarks on clerical so zealous for hardship as some military men believe. But it is undoubtedly true that in France victory abroad calms down all agitation at home. With France in the field, even republicans will not descend into the streets. Red leaders guaranteed Paris to the enemy of Austria. The throne which has not founded itself on institutions may found itself more easily on conquest. There is every temptation to a Napoleon to try the second alternative, to see whether the object of the treaties of 1815 may not be nullified as well as their provisions. It is not for England that we fear. England has no provinces to add to France, and the great fleet now building may be required to avert her interference, rather than to facilitate an attack. But there are territories temptingly near, for which the emperor has already commenced to intrigue. With Paris restless and the South discontent, trade declining in the large cities, and a bad harvest to work through, with all the powers of Government strained to the utmost, and the old parties re-appearing, if not in reality then in imperial imagination, the powers which tempt France do well to vote budgets intended for military reform. THE Ocean of Brest states that, through the | intervention of Count de Chasseloup-Laubat, a special commission has just been formed in Paris to examine the question of forming ports of refuge along the whole extent of the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. MESSRS. BLACKWOOD & SON will this day publish "The Royal Atlas of Modern Geogra phy," by Alexander Keith Johnson, another of the “Physical Atlas," in a series of entirely original authentic maps, with a special index to each. SEVERED. WEARY is the life I lead, Beating air with vain endeavor; Those dear eyes are closed forever; Not again shall I behold thee, Nothing now is left for mirth; All my dreams were false and hollow, May it soon be mine to follow! -Blackwood's Magazine. LOOK UPON THE BRIGHT SIDE. BUT not to times, to seasons, or to places Will we be bound; or unto nature's order In this the singing of our Cottage Carols. Indeed why should we? Is not January Sometimes as warm as Spring; and is not Spring Not seldom cold as Christmas? So no binding, As one is bound who hath his speech preparedPrepared by some one else and must speak that, Or else sit down, look foolish, and be dumb: No-we will on, turn back, go up or down Through time as well as space; and therefore now, Departing from the summer morning hills, The Sunny Side the Way. Told in mournful song! Poor? those cottage little ones? With their shining treasures on Coldly oft, the winds blow -Cottage Carols, and other Poems, by John Swain. PONTIFF AND PRINCE. THE Pope can never go astray In morals or in faith, they say; His word as Gospel men may take; 'Tis always right, and no mistake. By grace divine from error, sure Far clearer than the lynx, he sees But though he is so wondrous wise Grant that he could pronounce a Saint And can as certainly decide POETRY.-Year after Year, 130. Night Showeth Knowledge, 130. The Despot's Heir, 130. SHORT ARTICLES. Treatment of Poisoning, 143. Plague Cross, 147. Man of Feeling, 151. Archbishop Talbot, 151. Gen. Marion's Last Words, 151. Political Audacity, 155. Titular Wisdom, 178. Dr. Motley, 181. American Compromises, 181. Screaming Fishes, 186. A Curious Collection, 192. Hieroglyphical Picture of Charles the Martyr, 192. Improvements in Paris, 192. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. But if we steadfast look In it, as in some holy book, How man may heavenly knowledge learn. It tells the conqueror, That far-stretched power, Which his proud dangers traffic for, That, from the farthest north, Yet undiscovered issue forth, Some nation, yet shut in May be let out to scourge his sin, And then they likewise shall For as yourselves your empires fall, Though seeming mute, For they have watched since first THE DESPOT'S HEIR. THROUGH years of solitude and chill disdain, Gnawed by suppressed ambition's hungry woe, He taught his crafty eye and fathomless brain All springs that move this human puppet-show: Watched from below each turn in Fortune's wheel, And learned, unknown, with kings and Then tiger-like he felt his stealthy way, Couched in the shadow of a mightier name. And sacred names of "righteous," "gener ous," """grand," He shed like pigments from the painter's hand. Unreverencing, unfeeling, unbelieving- well. -Macmillan's Magazine. |