A GLIMPSE AT REPUBLICAN PARIS LAST MONTH.

I HAD a fancy for seeing Republican France; and was enabled to indulge myself in it during the past month. I had seen the country under its latter monarchy, and I confess, to a kind of childish incredulity at times, that all that could have been changed.

I desired at any rate to realise to my own senses the great revolution which the newspapers had been telling us about ever since February last. The old revolution of 1792 was historical-living in the personal recollection only of our oldest old gentlemen. The revolution of '30 drove out -one king, and brought in another. But here was an actual revolution in the year 1848, which upset the kingly office, and proclaimed not a Republic merely but-Democracy!

A man might possibly have reasoned himself, last year, into the opinion that all this might, could, would, or should happen before twelve months were over. But when it did come it was not the less astonishing to an Englishman, living in the midst of his monarchical and aristocratic institutions, and accustomed to regard the whole European system as monarchical and aristocratic.

"But I will go and have a look at this republic," I said to myself, and a few hours took me from my own door to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer. I had, somehow or other, the absurd idea, though not formally recognised in my mind, that in Republican France I should find every body, as well as every thing, changed. I never look at a Yankee, without a a sort of inquisitiveness, as though I should detect something personally remarkable in him as a republican; and perhaps the habit may not always be without justification in his case; but very unreasonably, no doubt, I had somewhat of the same notion as respects our neighbours on the other side of the channel, in virtue of their republicanism of February last.

The first view of the landing-place at Boulogne looked pretty much as usual: the same respectable English idlers, male and female, contemplating the packet-boat letting out its passengers and letting off its steam; and so finding an event for that day-the same mammas and their wellbathed daughters looking for the same papas from England, and waving their handkerchiefs at the worthy old gentlemen with their carpet bagsthe same bevy of touters and luggage porters ready to pounce on passengers-and the same identical corps de douane in the green coats served -out to them under the régime of Louis Philippe.

One is subjected to just the same trouble as ever on landing at Boulogne, which is to say somewhat less than one is subjected to at Folkstone or other true British ports.

But there, before our eyes, was indeed an evidence of the change that had taken place-behold in the searching warehouse the words " Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité !" Who could help thinking forthwith of Robespierre, and Madame Roland, and Louis XVI., and the patriotic fishwomen of the Halles?

Boulogne on this, as on other occasions, may be dismissed in half-adozen lines. There are the same number of English as ever; and the same number of hotels, good, bad, and indifferent. The fishermen and their wives are unaffected by the republic, to any outward appearance,

and dry their nets quite as usual. But the public buildings are all jealously placarded with Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, lest they should be forgotten.

As far as one might judge from looking out of the window of a railway carriage, matters seemed pretty much as usual in the country. Men and women were working in their ordinary leisurely manner in the fields. There was the same morcellement cultivation going on, and the villages are not yet, any of them, replaced by Phalanstères. But one saw every here and there a "tree of liberty"-a young poplar lopped of its branches, but reserving a bunch of foliage at the top, decorated with tri-colors, and sometimes with garlands. That was the only sign of revolution in the rural part of my ride. But one could fancy the village politicians at work in the auberges, discussing the new era, and striving to make Jacques think more of his "rights" than the price of his corn.

But now we rush into Paris, the railway station being all right, and not in possession of any insurgents; as we fancy to ourselves it might have been. And there at the station are omnibuses, as usual, and that infinite variety of hackney vehicles for which Paris is famous-the cochers retaining their distinctive dress, and looking as sluggish, and as well assured of their pour-boires, as in the most monarchical times. By the way, I suppose the physiologists have noted ere now the specific differences between the cocher and the English cab-man?

But we get fairly into Paris, and then we find a change: then we find that one of those great events has happened, and is happening, which will hereafter be booked as "history" and be regarded with the same interest and wonder wherewith we of the present now contemplate the great events of the past-always looking the grander that their larger features are then alone seen; whereas, to contemporaries, how the mightiest passing occurrences are made to seem less significant than they really are, by the familiarising vulgarity of the petty circumstances attending them.

All around looks as though mischief were brewing. Paris, as we all know, was in a state of siege. In other words, it was kept in order by military law, and an overwhelming army incessantly under arms. Here was war-duly proclaimed ; but by Frenchmen against Frenchmen, and on French soil. On the one side were the army, the national guard, the mobiles, the military police; on the other, the ouvriers, and those whose capital is in the bad passions and ignorant credulity of the ouvriers. Each side was watching the other, ready at the least opportunity for another death grapple.

I tramped off to the Tuileries. There was the old palace, looking so like its pictures-identified in our recollection as the scene of so many a revolutionary drama-of military pomp and popular insurgence-guards reviewed and massacred, escaping royalty, smashed thrones, and a bedlamite mob. Never, in the most peaceable times of the French capital, when I have contemplated that long but to my eyes not unpicturesque range, its lofty pavilions running up into the sunny sky, and all wearing an air of lazy repose, but I have unconsciously run on dreaming of Louis XVI. and the tumults of his day, and (though in a minor degree) of Charles X. and his dethronement. Revolution seems the genius of the

place.

Now it looks gloomy enough. The garden front has the windows

mostly closed. The building looked for the greater part uninhabited. When I last saw it, it was on the last of the July fetes; the last commemoration of that July revolution which gave Louis Philippe the bother and glory of governing 33,000,000 of Frenchmen. Paris then threw out its hundreds of thousands, less to think of the great days of July, than to see the sights provided for the occasion. Among these poor old Louis Philippe and family had to furnish one tableau. Out he came,

on the balcony of the clock pavilion, leading his stately old queen, and followed by all the princes and princesses-the Prince de Joinville excepted, who was then with the fleet. And truly they were a fine-looking family-party. The old gentleman himself looked hard and tough, ten years at least younger than he really is; his queen a very model of an old lady; the princesses all either pretty or ladylike, if not both. D'Aumale looked like a good African soldier, as he is-Nemours just gentlemanlike, but with no countenance of any kind-Montpensier, a handsome youth. Their majesties seated themselves, the rest standing. The old gentleman placed before him the young Compte de Paris, a boy with a good head and countenance, and nice manner. There was the royal family of France, under the settlement of 1830. There was the aged man who for seventeen years had governed the French people, such as we know them, without running into foreign war, and affording security to person and property not, on the whole, to be surpassed in any other country, England alone perhaps excepted-under whose rule every material interest had prospered, and who in his own person had with unprecedented liberality patronised the arts and manufactures of France. There he was, with his numerous progeny, leaving no room to expect the dissolution of the Orleans monarchy through failure of direct heirs. There were three generations of his house, come forth to exchange congratulations with the people he had been called upon to govern.

If ever there was occasion to call forth feelings of loyal affection from the people to the Orleans family, it would have been the present one. But amongst the many hundreds of well-dressed persons who occupied the reserved seats under the balcony, and the many thousands of all classes spreading beyond over the garden of the Tuileries, I do not believe that twenty voices joined in cries of Vive le Roi. Even this trifling manifestation was acknowledged with many gracious bows, and the dynastic journals reported next day that his majesty had been very favourably received. But royalty may be strong and enduring, though not always popular; and there at any rate was King Louis Philippe, in the immediate possession of immense power, a large army yielding him obedience, and all the vast machinery of the civil administration of France worked and directed by attached partisans. In seven months thereafter we have him in England, a fugitive old gentleman; and the royal Palace of the Tuileries is a hospital for wounded insurgents. At this moment, as I have said, it appears untenanted. The galleries, however, facing the Rue Rivoli, and north of the Carrousel, seemed all occupied as barracks; and one could see the gilded apartments in what in England we call the first story, occupied by the soldiery.

I proceeded to the Carrousel. It was the parade, at guard-mounting. There were, as usual, only in far greater numbers, both national guards and troops of the line; but behold in addition the garde mobile!

I had been very curious to see this new body. There were now about

six companies before me, all mere youths; and smart-looking lads they were. În dress they are like the old nationals, except that they have green in place of red epaulettes, and red cloth caps instead of black beaver. But being on permanent service, living in barracks, and subjected to constant drill and military discipline, they have all the appearance and uniformity of regular troops. They seemed to march not quite so steadily as the line, but with a certain aplomb in their movements— with more indeed of the agility of youth. Some of them appeared really not to exceed fourteen years of age, and the average to be about eighteen or nineteen. From being the most dangerous revolutionary body in Paris, the mobiles are perhaps for the moment the surest defenders of public order. It was no doubt a good idea to take the hot youth of Paris, and thus give a legitimate direction to their energies and enterprising spirit.

On the parade the line and national guards had each their own bands; and the mobiles had theirs also-all youngsters again; and their drummajor was a slight elegant fellow of three or four and twenty. Their chef-de-bataillon was, perhaps, of the same age. They looked lads of various degrees of life. Many had the coarseness of the working classes, but a large proportion looked well-bred and nurtured.

And this is in reality the case. The officers were, to a man (and I may extend the remark to all the mobile officers I saw in Paris), goodlooking and gentlemanlike; extremely careful in their dress, which they wear with a perfect military air ;-and I was told that in the election of officers, the choice fell, remarkably enough, yet quite naturally, upon some of the best bred lads who had joined this force. Upon subsequent occasions I saw large bodies of mobiles passing through the town, and it was strange to see how many youths in civil dress intermingled in the ranks, to laugh and jest with their now military friends. The uniform and appointments of the young soldiers were plainly the subject of much

comment.

It seems quite impossible that this force can remain as a permanent one. As such, it must become part of the standing army in France; and the veteran officers of the line would feel justly mortified at seeing these youthful commandants and captains with permanent military rank, and the men of the line unavoidably malcontent at being paid less by a half than their mobile fellow-soldiers. On the other hand, to reduce the pay or to appoint other officers, would be impracticable. Then the disbanding of the force would be attended with great risk. Would they consent to be disbanded; or, if disbanded, would they not be a mischievous body let loose upon society? Clever contrivance, then, as the formation of the Mobile was, to meet the evils of the moment, it has in it the germs of much future mischief. It is understood to be a subject of much uneasiness to the authority at present acting as a government; and perhaps some method will be devised of ultimately absorbing the mobile into the regular army of France.

General Changarnier inspected the troops on parade. He was a smartlooking, well-dressed man, far younger than we are apt to see English generals. He was present as commander-in-chief of the national guard, and wore the handsome uniform of that office. His manner is said to be brusque, and to stand in the way of his performing a more distinguished part in French politics. Not having heard this at the time, I can only say that I remarked to myself what extraordinary politeness he appeared

to display, as, passing along the line, he addressed himself to the different commanding officers, and even several of the inferior officers, whom he appeared to recognise as old acquaintances. I had never seen any thing like it at inspections of English troops, of which I have chanced to see many. But then your ordinary inspections in an English garrison town are dull affairs of routine-here the general had not merely to note how well drilled and dressed were his men, he had to make himself acceptable to an army of excited politicians as well as soldiers; and there was no telling the moment when he might be called upon to lead them into danger.

Among other indications of the recent troubles which I witnessed upon this occasion, were the training of national guards in the court of the Tuileries as artillerymen. Before the parade took place some half-dozen field-pieces were brought out, and about thirty men, some in uniform, others in frock-coats and blouses, were practising the art of managing these conservators of Paris peace. On parade, again, in the different companies of the national guards, were to be seen a considerable proportion of men without uniform, merely bearing muskets. They were perhaps too poor to purchase their military equipment, or their attachment to the national guard was considered as transient.

I proceeded to the Champs Elysées. Here I found a regular military encampment; I should judge not less than 2000 men under canvass. It seemed an object of interest to flâneurs of all classes, as an unusual sight in that quarter.

One respectable mamma, with her daughter, was listening with an air of impressed gravity to a corporal, who by his gestures was plainly affording madame a lesson in modern castrametation.

In the evening it was amusing to see close to this military camp all the usual attractions of the locality in full play. There was Franconi's cirque, the Chalet, the singing booths attached to the sylvan cafés, Punches, sagacious dogs, roundabouts, &c., &c., all as attractive as usual to young and old of all classes. The only thing in these amusements that bore special reference to the times, was a patriotic song, sung by a tall vocalist, one of the artistes of the Café des Ambassadeurs, who sported the large republican waistcoat, with its facings turned over the coat, and flourished, at appropriate passages, a grand tricolor. These exhibitions are a gratuitous accompaniment to the ices and lemonade; and I should be disposed to question whether, as a stroke of business, it were not a mistake thus, and at such a time, to attempt to fan the flames of republican patriotism. People seemed more disposed to slake their thirst than to have their sterner feelings roused; and the singer, despite the republican "energy" which he threw into his style, and the noisy orchestral accompaniment, awoke but little responsive enthusiasm. These spurious excitements are well enough in the dull times of prosperity and contentment. At present they must be a bore.

Proceeding over the river we find fresh encampments stretching along the south bank, towards the Ecole Militaire. But on the esplanade of the Invalides, an extensive range of temporary buildings is being fast run up, for the accommodation, during winter, of many of the troops now under canvass. They are, in fact, buildings which may last for many a year; and the erection of them shows pretty clearly the opinion