Madame de Polastron, he servilely laboured for the Church of Rome; his advisers were henceforth its dignitaries.

Lamartine sketches with minute fidelity, in all cases with affection and tenderness, and a tendency to favour them, the rest of the princes and princesses, including the Duke d'Enghien, whose murder he narrates very affectingly. But the great length of this narrative precludes our pausing to analyze it. We must hasten to the real commencement of the restoration.

The Count D'Artois had wished to enter France at once on the rumour of the certain fall of Napoleon. Louis XVIII., more cautious and more wise, was determined to wait until France recalled him. He wanted not to impose himself, but to be declared and found necessary. In this he was wise. But after a brief struggle, he yielded to the counsels of the Count his brother. He took a passage on board some British ships, in search of a throne. But he was as yet called for by no one. La Vendée slept; the South waited; opinion looked on; the centre was arming; the army fought. Paris was still in the power of the Imperialists. In January, the Count D'Artois landed in Holland; the Duke D'Augoulême entered France with the English army coming from Spain; the Duke de Berry sought to land in Normandy, where his stupid agents pretended an army of 50,000 men awaited him. The Count D'Artois found himself entering behind the Austrian army, received with coldness and suspicion. The Bourbon was astounded to find that his race was all but forgotten. His only hope was in the fact, that to the allies Bonaparte was impossible, the Republic hateful, Bernadotte too unpopular. What then? As a last resource, the Bourbons. At one moment, the Count D'Artois felt inclined to return. But, by dint of unblushing falsehood, his agents began to convince the allies of an immense royalist enthusiasm in France. It is true they could not see it but the cunning of Talleyrand, the complicity of Fouché, the indefatigable zeal of M. de Vitrolles and subordinate agents, and, at last, the want of some government when the regency of Marie Louise was rejected, gave him hope.

The Duke D'Augoulême was worse situated with Wellington. Lamartine speaks in warm terms of our great general, and the passage is worthy of quotation :

The English general remained inflexible to the solicitations of the friends of the Duke D'Augoulême, and refused, with prudent and rude frankness, to authorize any encouragement of the cause of the Bourbons, for fear of being obliged to abandon after he had compromised it. The secret correspondence of this general with his government, with the conspirators of Bordeaux, and the Duke D'Augoulême himself, since made public, attest a probity of character, and a caution in giving pro

mises, which honour his command. Wellington was on the frontier of the South, the general of the British Government. This government was the one which had least cause to be tender with the Emperor. The insurrection of the Pyrenees, of Bordeaux, of Toulouse, might powerfully serve his military plans. The white flag raised in the provinces, on the faith of England supporting this cause, might carry away whole departments and armies from the flag of Soult. Wellington would not purchase these advantages at the price of falsehood, or even of a vague enunciation of his real intentions. He would not expose the royalists to provocation of insurrection without authority, which might afterward expose them to the vengeance of Bonaparte. He did not cease writing to his government to turn it from these excitements to royalism. . . . Five months later, the Duke of Wellington was as cold, and the Duke D'Augoulême languished in the same discouragement. The English army calculated its steps toward Bordeaux on the progress which the armies of Alexander and Blucher made towards the North. The unfailing genius of Wellington was always and everywhere prudence. To advance little, never to retreat; to die on a position once taken; and to leave nothing to future but chance; was the greatness of this English Hannibal.'-Pp. 102, 103.

Lamartine, after showing clearly how innocent Wellington was of any of the royalist movements in the South, returns to Paris, where a few royalists were doing their utmost to get up a fastidious expression of public opinion in favour of the Bourbons; while M. Talleyrand was keeping it down in order to be the arbitrator between the nation and its antique kings. For a long time he backed the Senate in their endeavour to be taken for the representatives of the nation, but they were despised by the public, and their demands were futile. As yet they had not recalled the Bourbons, pretending to stand up for a constitntion and the recognition of the people's rights, but in reality battling for their own privileges.

Under these circumstances, the Senate was compelled to vote, on the 6th of April, the recall of Louis-Stanislas-Xavier de France to the throne of France, and after him the other members of the family of the Bourbons in the ancient order. But still Louis XVIII. waited. Certain now of his return, he delayed to make the enthusiasm of the people greater. But not so the Count D'Artois, the favourite of the bigoted and blind faction who wish to rush to ancient despotism, as odious as that of the fallen usurper. He advanced to Livry, and then assuming the title of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, he entered Paris, received by Royalist and Bonapartist chiefs with equal enthusiasm. The Senate waited on him; he received it coldly; the Legislative body did the same; he received it more kindly. His first act was one that commenced his unpopularity. He signed the complete capitulation of France, a disgrace which

Louis XVIII. avoided by taking his time. He gave up all, leaving places and all their ammunitions and artillery to the allies. A murmur of indignation assailed him.

Louis XVIII., temporizing with all parties, remained at Hartwell until the 18th of April, when he started on his way to Paris. He was rapturously received by the masses, by his nobility, by the marshals of the fallen empire; Berthier, Napoleon's friend and confidant, being the most eager. At Compiegne he halted, received a deputation of the Legislative body, and then the Czar of Russia, who came to make an appeal in favour of constitutional liberty. Alexander insisted that the king should consent to a constitution to be drawn up by the Senate. Louis XVIII. refused. He was determined to be king in earnest or not at all, and if he consented to a constitution, to give it of his own free will, or to select at all events its authors.

He advanced to the barriers of Paris, to the castle of St. Ouen, and there he received a deputation from the Senate, written with no other object than that of pleasing the king, and, at the same time, public opinion. They hailed the return of Louis with rapture, as the commencement of an era of happiness, but they insinuated the necessity of a constitutional charter to consolidate the Restoration. The monarch gave a vague reply, and published his celebrated declaration of St. Ouen, by which he promised representative government, and the conservation of the principal conquests of the revolution. By this declaration he pleased the people, all men of sense and reason. But the Royalists were furious. They had kept faithful to their sophisms, their superstitions in favour of unlimited monarchy, and they called this act of homage to the spirit of the age a cowardice. Then, as now, they had learned nothing from misfortune, but the desire for vengeance. The entrance of Louis XVIII. into his capital, under the influence of the proclamation, was a splendid sight. The people came by hundreds of thousands.

The king received the keys of Paris from the hands of M. de Chabrol, gave them back, went to the cathedral with the clergy, and then took up his residence in the Tuileries, surprised at its new master, still covered everywhere by the effigies and portraits of the Imperial family. He treated all his courtiers with attention, the late servants of Napoleon with marked favour, and then when night left him alone with Talleyrand, formed his ministry. It was composed of unknown names, which were intended to be a mystery to the public, leaving their master's intentions undecided and mysterious. They were rather of the higher middle classes than of the aristocracy.

a

But the king appointed minister of the king's household, in those days of intrigue the most important of all, M. de Blacas, thorough and obstinate Royalist, who was the intermediary between all others and Louis XVIII. M. Fouché, without having any post, sent in that very night a memoir to the king, in which he pointed out the danger of attacking the revolution too openly, of making enemies of the army, of preparing a vast and powerful opposition whose secret head must be Bonaparte, as all affected to call Napoleon. But the Royalists had no doubt or fear. They wanted, at any price, a return to the ancient order of things. Even Louis XVIII. himself saw no throne without nobility, nor restoration of the monarchy without a corps of privileged gentlemen around him, and he formed his maison militaire in a way which ensured jealousy from the army, and discontent among the people.

The king re-created his military house as it had existed since Louis XIV., and before the reform which the paternal economy of Louis XVI. had made in this expensive luxury of the court. Gardes du corps, chevau-legers, musqueteer, halbert-bearer, Cent-Suisses, guards of the gate, guard of Monsieur, Count D'Artois. The rank of officer attributed to each soldier in these bodies, privileges of garrison, court, and palace, led horses, rich uniforms, exclusive residence in the capital or in the towns near it, pay for a simple soldier equal to a cavalry lieutenant, daily familiarity with the king and princes, hunts, journeys, military ceremonies, the hope of seeing this body the future cradle of all the officers and all the chiefs of the new monarchical army . . . caused thousands to enrol.'-P. 149.

The

But the army murmured; indignation was raised in the breast of the nation. The disbanded officers of Napoleon carried everywhere love of his name, and hatred for the priests and nobles who had come back with the Bourbons. The marshals and other high dignitaries of the empire were, however, satisfied, for they shared with the old nobility the command of the royal guards. But there was another cause of discontent. invading army cost France eight millions per diem, and the allies declined to move until a constitution was proclaimed. The king, driven into a corner, was compelled to appoint a commission, who drew up the new charter. It was prepared and signed. It promised much, yet it was narrow and unpopular. Despite its declaration, that all Frenchmen were equal, that they had a right to publish their opinions, and many other privileges, it placed the suffrage in the hands of an aristocratic few; it foreshadowed the censorship; it gave the king almost unlimited power; it made the Chamber all but registrar to the royal will. And yet for the Bourbons, it was a mighty act of concession to the victories of the people during twenty-five years. It satisfied

the people; it filled the pure Royalist with despair. But the treaty of Paris, with its concessions, its palpable yielding to England, though necessary and unavoidable, raised a general cry of indignation. The king, however, opened the Chambers amidst tremendous applause. His speech was able and conciliatory, he wrote it himself; that of his ministers was unwise and stupid. It was clear that there was no unanimity. The Royalists were what they always had been-incapable of understanding any rights save their own, any liberty except for themselves, proud, haughty, and impatient of the existence of education, talent, and genius, which had shown itself in the public, enfranchised after long years of despotism. The ministers spoke the sentiments of the future Charles X., of the emigration, of the ignorant and bigoted monarchists who were destined to overthrow the throne in their mad attempt to carry a nation back to the days of ignorance and barbarism, under pretence of serving the cause of religion. The Legislative body began its labour timidly; discussion had been so long repressed that no men were used to it. The ministers were too incapable to lead the way. They began sounding public opinion by means of their police; they began the work of censorship by the hands of a young man since elevated, M. Guizot, who signalized his rise and his fall by devotion to arbitrary despotism. The law presented to the Chamber on this subject was tyrannical and vexatious to the last degree, the first lie given to the promises of the Charter. Both the Chamber and the country restrained their indignation with difficulty. The house had to be guarded by an imposing military force during the discussion. The law was voted after a four-days' struggle in the House of Peers, during which eighty members stood firmly up for the cause of justice and truth.

The Chambers then turned to the financial question of the day. Napoleon left the nation forty millions sterling of floating debt. But the Abbé Louis, minister of finance, was personally equal to the situation, and prepared to meet the difficulties of his post by strict integrity in his dealings. Many writers have been rather hard upon him, but with Lamartine, we are disposed to give him credit for great ability, and a firm determination to sustain public credit. He proposed to the king to sell three hundred thousand hectares of forests, the remains of the lands of a Church which three times in thirteen centuries had usurped the whole soil of France. Personally, the king was willing enough, but he feared to offend the clergy, and refused. The Chamber voted thirty-three millions of francs per annum as the royal civil list, and paid thirty millions of debts contracted by him abroad. This munificence made the king think of the poor emigrants, who, like hungry wolves, came barking round him. Many wanted to take back