6

stances as a spontaneous tribute to virtue, and we reprobate the cynical observation of St. Lambert (the lover of Mesdames du Châtelet and D'Houdetot), who had survived the reign of terror, the last example of the roué of Louis XV. Like all profligates he despised the sex, and when the 'dévouement' of women during these melancholy scenes was commended in his presence, he replied, Yes, dévouement is the fashion.' We must however observe, while conceding to Miss Kavanagh that women exhibited throughout incomparably more generosity, disinterestedness, and courage than the men, yet still this period is less chequered with redeeming virtues, more replete with horror, and more degrading to human nature than any recorded in the annals of crime. We must also take the liberty of remarking that the whole of the retrospective glance over French society to which she invites us, leaves an impression but little favourable to the women who, according to her theory, directed its tone. She betrays the cause of her sex in advancing such claims. In the earlier part of the century their influence failed to improve the morality or even the decency of society; and in the latter part it succeeded still less in softening and humanising it-if indeed it could be proved that in both cases such influence was not exerted to increase the prevalent mischief. She adduces numerous traits of humanity among females of every class during the dark period of the revolution-no one supposes that they were altogether unsexed -but that they were sometimes successful in wheedling a life from a lover would not prove their general influence; had that influence really existed and been properly exerted, the whole course of patriotic murders should have been checked on their remonstrances. Nor yet can we think that Miss Kavanagh advances the cause of her sex by her account of their behaviour under persecution. If she does not greatly exaggerate (which we would willingly hope), the conduct of the victims in the prisons presents a picture rather of levity than of firmness. Neither did the survivors exhibit more taste and discretion: the gaieties and gallantries of the prisoners are less offensive than the festivities that followed their release :

"The dead of the reign of terror are scarcely cold in their unanointed graves when their friends give balls at which none but near relations of victims can dance. These bals des victimes have great success.'vol. ii. p. 321.

The admitted 'frivolity' of 'society' in the earlier part of the century is not contrasted, we think, quite so unfavourably as Miss Kavanagh means it to be, with the political tone affected towards its close. Society (we mean the assemblage of persons of both sexes in large cities for the purposes of amusement) need not be

regarded

regarded with contempt merely because it seems frivolous; it has, and it should have, no aim beyond the innocent gratifications of cultivated people according to their different times of life;whenever society professes any graver object it betrays the essential frivolity of those who give its tone. It is the idler who brings into company a desire for grave discussion:-the busy man desires recreation-the lawyer, the merchant, the statesman, seek conversation with the hope of unbending their minds and banishing their cares. Moreover, the influence of 'salons' on public matters must always be dangerous, since it is necessarily exerted by those who are irresponsible for its direction, and who in most cases have other objects in view than the public interest. Whatever may be the defects of English society, we rejoice in thinking that no such influence has ever been admitted, and no attempt has been made to vindicate it from the charge of frivolity by rendering it political. It is one of the misfortunes of France that the influence of her salons was not at once swept away when the constitutional government was adopted, and the legislative chambers gave a free vent to opinion, and offered a fair field for manly controversy. The influence of ladies, whether real or supposed, over the minds of statesmen could only have the effect of degrading both-of rendering themselves obnoxious and their admirers ridiculous.

Heaven forbid we should enter into the perplexed and complicated question of modern French politics! a subject which every day becomes more strange and incomprehensible; we would only pause to inquire what has been the result of the political education so amply conceded to our pleasant neighbours. In this age of intellectual penury and dearth of genius there is everywhere an inclination to boast of the general development of talent and the rapid progress towards perfection. The French assert more boldly than others their claims to superiority: not only have they themselves arrived at seeing clearly, but by their assistance the scales have been made to fall from the eyes of surrounding nations. In the moral as well as in the physical world, life may spring from corruption and decay; and if institutions perish, there is a power of truth in the heart of man which cannot die.' So our instructress sagely observes. (p. 154.) Well, then, what has been the upshot? Can France, boasted focus of illumination, point to any great accession of manly spirit, of political wisdom, or generous disinterestedness—in the conduct of her masses or even of her public men? How will posterity judge this question? The tendency of despotism, we every day read and hear, is to confound distinctions of character, and to level all independence and self-respect in a general submission.

But has not

not this undesirable result been still more completely obtained under the reign of democracy? How much less frivolous will the luxurious nobles' of the eighteenth century appear than their cold and mean-spirited descendants! When the great

revolution broke over France, not a few of these frivolous nobles still lingered on their native soil, to watch over the safety of the royal family. Thousands died on the scaffold; many joined the loyal standard in La Vendée, and perished in the field or were butchered afterwards in cold blood. Those less active abandoned their own country, and refused to countenance by their presence the crimes which they had no means of preventing. When military despotism had crushed the revolution beneath its iron heel, many exiles still refused to benefit by the offered patronage of the dictator, and preferred banishment and poverty to sanctioning the exclusion of their legitimate monarch. After the fall of that stern tyranny, when the infatuated folly of the Elder Bourbons again closed in exile, some few true-hearted servants still gathered round the feeble prince-a few faithful troops shed their blood in his defence and protected his retreat from insult. Another monarchy -ʻla meilleure des républiques,' as it was then called-was erected with a very general cheer of approbation, but still without that disgraceful show of unanimity that has since been affected. Some few at least of the creatures of royal bounty refused to serve the elected successor-some peers and some prelates declined taking the oaths of allegiance; and the expedition of the Duchess de Berry, disgracefully as it termi

ed for her and fatally to the cause of her family, proved at least that the cause and the family still had devoted adherents. A steady opposition to the Government was kept upthough we cannot always approve of the taste in which the highborn and well-bred manifested their repugnance to the quasilegitimacy of Louis-Philippe. Miss Kavanagh no doubt would trace it to female influence. Many of the most illustrious names refused to grace the court lists of the usurper; the Faubourg St. Germain closed its doors against his favourites and ministers; fine gentlemen showed their spirit by being impertinent to the Duke of Orleans, and fine ladies refused to dance with his aidesde-camp!

The life of Louis-Philippe was long deemed the guarantee of external peace and internal tranquillity, and the danger to which it was exposed was a subject of general and unremitting anxiety. The faults of his reign were imputable less to himself than his subjects-but chiefly to a vicious, impracticable constitution, which had the radical defect that, being moulded under revolutionary influences, it deprived authority of its proper weight.

2D 2

Yet

Yet a moment of popular caprice was sufficient at once to destroy the government thus originated and for many years apparently so valued; not a blow was struck in its defence; not a protest was registered in favour of a dynasty that had been called to the throne by the voice of the people; and such was the tame submission before a few arrogant and indigent demagogues, that even material well-being and social civilization found not a single vindicator. Such inconstancy is a practical protest against revolutions and revolutionary elections. Unfortunately in such changes, with political integrity individual consistency and individual selfrespect are too frequently destroyed. It was years before public morality recovered its tone even after the English revolution of 1688-which was so just in its motive and so very moderate in its conduct; and no wonder that the deeply-instructed Burke foresaw and predicted the far broader display of the same inevitable result in France even before her first revolution had proceeded to its most extravagant excesses. After adverting to the old civil wars of France, in themselves so dreadful, he asks why she recovered so quickly from their effects:

'Why? Because among all their massacres they had not slain the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. The organs also of the state, however shattered, existed. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinctions remained. But the present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honour is disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their masters.'

Buonaparte too (perhaps even a weightier testimony) traced and explained in his turn the demoralising effect of revolutions and the instability of all systems founded upon them. His melancholy reflections have reached us from his exile at St. Helena. My dynasty,' he said, 'was too modern-the people were not yet accustomed to it. Had I been only my own grandson, I should have retrieved my ruined fortunes even at the foot of the Pyrenees.' Nor is his evidence less valuable in tracing the profound immorality of the public men of France to the same cause. A long list of the great names of the movement followed this observation - each dismissed with some brief commentary of just contempt. To mere familiarity with revolution he attributed the indifference of the country to his own fall, and the alacrity with which it had so soon deserted the

restored

restored dynasty to welcome his return from Elba. 'Never can the country prosper,' he said, 'which has more vanity than pridewhere revolutionary turbulence supplies the place of fixed principles-and where a love of office is stronger than the respect for national institutions.'

It was the boast of the orators and managers of the commotion of 1848 that the science of revolution-making was in rapid progress. The affair of 1830 had been accomplished in three days -three hours had sufficed for their own, and any future change must be achieved in less than three minutes. We know not if this proud prophecy will be accomplished-but of this we are certain, no country ever evinced such a contempt for national honour and social order, or ever boasted so insolently of the power of the mob to trample on law. At Constantinople, indeed, an insurrection of the Janissaries, the assassination of a visier, a massacre, perhaps, in the seraglio, and the revolution is complete; but what part of Christendom ever before exhibited such a rivalry of oriental degradation?

ART. III.-A History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale, B.D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 2 vols. 8vo. 1850.

TRANGE though the fact may seem, at a time when inge

STRA

nious men are seeking subjects throughout every domain of human knowledge, it is certain that we have no English work, deserving the name of a history of the Roman Empire, prior to the point at which Gibbon takes up his vast and splendid theme. Nay, this deficiency, it can hardly be denied, extends over the whole antecedent period. It might fairly be deemed a vacant field to which Dr. Arnold came, when he undertook the work which was abruptly and unhappily terminated by his death. His learning and candour fitted him well for the task; and though there are some defects of method in its earlier part, no writer need disdain the task of completing what he has thus begun. Such completion is indisputably required to sustain the fair fame of our literature; so faulty on this subject, that even now it is difficult to place before the student any English book which creditably relates the great events intervening between the close of the second Carthaginian war and the death of Sylla. The work of Middleton comes in at this time; but owes its reputation much less to its own merits or originality than to our deep interest in the actors it records, and to a comparison with the bald and feeble essays