the portrait they convey to us of the noble aspect, attitudes, and voice of Cæsar, when addressing an assembly. We are able, in considerable part, to complete the picture of his lineaments from busts, coins, and actual description; all which indicate, as far as mere outline can ever do so, the high intellect, vigour, and determination belonging to this wonderful character.

We have, we hope, shown that we are disposed to augur well of Mr. Merivale's large and bold undertaking. We shall look with interest to his next volumes, as the record of the period of Augustus-who, under the specious show of old names and forms, succeeded in giving to a disputed and divided power all the unity and integrity of an ancient monarchy. Yet further, and our author will acquire the aid of Tacitus to his labours; an authority and a guide not less admirable than is Thucydides to the historian of Greece-both possessing qualities which may well serve as instruction to those writing history in all time to come. We have before spoken of Mr. Merivale's language as tending to redundance and inflation, and especially where he is most studious to produce effect. Without exacting from him the rigorous brevity of Tacitus, which would be rendered impossible by a regard to modern taste, as well as to the larger field of critical history over which his course lies, we still think that something may be gained to him from this great model; whom it is impossible to study without acquiring vigour from his style, or without sympathizing in that high spirit of philosophy and utter disdain of all that is false and frivolous in the world, which marks everything he has written.

ART. IV.-La République dans les Carrosses du Roi-Triomphe sans Combat-Scènes de la Révolution de 1848-Curée de la Liste Civile et du Domaine Privé, par Louis Tirel, ex-Contrôleur des Equipages de S. M. pp. 226. Paris, 1850.

THE

HE Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 differ from all former revolutionary convulsions in France in one remarkable point-that of being such mere accidents and so little in accordance with either the wants or the wishes of the nation at large, that the victorious party, after the first short interval of tumult and terror, found itself not strong enough to gag the press, and that, thanks to the habits of constitutional freedom introduced and established

nominaretur; tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse, quo bellavit, appareat.'-Quintilian, lib. 10.

It is obvious that Quintilian would not thus have expressed himself, unless some at least of Cæsar's speeches had been extant in his time.

by

by the Restoration, it has been no longer possible to conceal from public indignation the fraudulent pretexts, the ignoble intrigues, and the scandalous abuses and excesses by which both these catastrophes were produced and accompanied. The revelations of Sarrans, Mazas, Bérard, and Bonnelier have reduced to their real value the 'glorious days of July; and now the flimsy vapourings of Lamartine and Louis Blanc, with the astounding commentaries of Chenu and Delahodde, and a crowd of other evidences of all classes, have exposed the fraud, the folly, the horrors, and the crapule of the February scramble, which-in the very Assembly that represents it and even by those who had giddily helped to produce it has been justly stigmatised as 'journées terribles et funestes!'

The popularity of all the works that have any tendency to discredit the Republic is an indubitable proof of how little it was and is in unison with public opinion, and the volume now before us has made a great sensation-not because the facts which it relates are of much importance, but rather, on the contrary, because they are small matters, which from their very triviality throw the greater obloquy and ridicule on the Republic and its heroes.

Among the slanders, the affronts, and the injustice which during the earlier period of this revolution were lavished on the late King, the most serious, both as affecting his character and his property, were the imputations of meanness and even dishonesty in his pecuniary concerns. He was accused of sordid avarice and gross rapacity; of having transferred large sums from his French revenues and allowances to create an enormous private fortune in England and America-and this was made an excuse for the seizure, not only of all his own patrimonial, private, and personal property, but even of that of his children, and for inviting and exaggerating, in connexion with that seizure, every possible claim, real or pretended, that could be brought up against him, his family, or even his government. Everything that he possessed in the world, which had not been already plundered from his palaces by the people'si magnanime et généreux,' was sequestrated and committed to the custody and superintendence of a Paris notary of Radical principles, whose administration of his trust was so rigid that he could not be persuaded to part with what was left unpillaged of the Queen's wearing apparel. He seemed inclined to treat us with a new edition of Les Chemises à Gorsas, and M. le Baron Fain and M. le Comte de Montalivet were forced to dance attendance in the notary's waiting-room to solicit the release of her Majesty's body-linen!* The

* In 1791 when the poor old aunts of Louis XVI. were arrested, their clothes, even to their very shifts, were seized-a brutality which one Gorsas (then a journalist, afterwards

The vexations and hardships thus imposed on Louis-Philippe in the liquidation of so large a mass of debt, real and imputed, have induced the Comte de Montalivet, late minister of the royal civil list, to publish an ample vindication of the King on every point of his financial transactions. Of that work we need on this occasion to say no more than that it confirms in detail the brief statement as to the insignificance of Louis-Philippe's foreign resources which we presented to our readers in June, 1848.

But while M. de Montalivet's defence carried conviction to the minds of all who were inclined to look seriously into those subjects, there appeared the pamphlet of M. Tirel, Ex-comptroller of the Equipages,' in which-loyally indignant at the calumnies against his exiled master, and, obviously, not less so at having lost his own place-he produces (amongst some graver topics which we shall notice hereafter) a very singular and piquant set-off against the portion of the Civil List debt attributed to his own department; and, much to the amusement of the public and to the surprise and annoyance of almost all the leading men of the Revolutionary Government, brings them in as debtors to the Civil List for the use and abuse of the royal carriages and horses, of which in the first transports of their triumph they had constituted themselves the legitimate heirs and owners. This unexpected tu quoque has burst like a bomb-shell on the patriots, and, in addition to the weightier imputations of personal indelicacy and official malversation, it exhibits some peculiar circumstances of ridicule which have made the coupé à Flocon and the britska à Louis Blanc a more stinging joke than even the chemises à Gorsas. The very title is an epigram. Under the ancient monarchy, monter dans les carrosses du Roi was a special privilege of the higher aristocracy; and it is certainly droll enough to find Albert ouvrier and Marc Caussidière aping the same honour!

It seems that immediately on the expulsion of the royal family the Provisional Government named one of its satellites to the duties of Master of the Horse, and this grateful and active functionaryBelin by name, and by trade a bandagiste or truss-maker-lost no time in supplying the whole nova progenies of statesmen with equipages from the ex-royal stables suitable to their new-fledged dignities. Forty-one carriages and ninety-one horses, with a

wards a Conventionalist, and the first of that body guillotined) justified by asserting that the shifts must have been bought with public money, and so belonged to him or any of the people rather than to the princesses. This was ridiculed in a song called Les Chemises à Gorsas—a plaisanterie which had such success at the time as to have

become historical.

proportionate

proportionate number of coachmen, footmen, and grooms, were appropriated to the daily service of the various members of the Provisional Government and their families (p. 197). The accounts of the royal stables had always been kept, it seems, with great precision and exactness.* The carriages were distinguished-as ships are-by names such as Apollo, Diamond, Duchess, and so forth, and the horses, by the same kind of trivial or fanciful nomenclature that we are accustomed to in our own stables; and a register was kept of the daily employment of each horse and carriage. When the Ecuyer-Bandagiste of the Provisional Government had given his general orders to M. Tirel for the supply of the vehicles to the several functionaries, the selection of the individual equipages rested with the latter, and it is the exercise of this choice that has given to the graver matters of charge a comic and even farcical air.

M. Tirel prefaces his details by observing that many of the personages who were thus accommodated with the equipages under his charge had had very little experience of anything of the kind beyond a cab or an omnibus. One of those great ladies,' who was, he hints, more used to wash fine linen than to wear it, ordered her new carriage to be at the door on the first morning after her accession, at ten o'clock, but so impatient was she for the expected ride, that as early as half past nine she came in person to the royal mews, accompanied by a maid with a basket, and insisted on having the carriage directly. A very handsome chariot was presently got ready, which the lady triumphantly entered, followed, to the astonishment of the attendants, by the maid and the basket. When the chariot came back, some unmistakeable stains on its rich silk lining testified that the lady had been at market, and had carried home her provisions in the ci-devant royal vehicle, while certain fragments-débrisfound on the foot-carpet indicated that she and her servant had made a kind of repast by the way (p. 197). M. Tirel seems to produce this anecdote as a mere spirt of upstart vulgarity; but the patriots may possibly consider the lady's proceedings as a public rebuke to the idle luxury of the Court, and the émeutiers of the Pays Latin would applaud a tribute to republican simplicity after the purest classical model,

' et sibi Consul

Ne placeat, curru servus portatur eodem.'

*The following statistics of the royal stables seem worth preserving. The total average expense during Louis Philippe's reign had been about 40,000l. a year: in the last two years it had risen to 45,0007, and 50,000l. The number of carriages was 275: the number of horses 360-of which there were,-202 bred in Normandy-18 from other parts of France-76 English-35 Germans-15 Spaniards-14 Arabs. The whole estimated at the average value of 501. each.

It

It is, we suspect, of this same great personage that M. Tirel tells us another pleasant story. It seems that the ladies of the Provisional Government accommodated themselves with the royal boxes at the opera and theatres as freely as they did with the equipages; and in answer to some objection hinted to one of them, she vindicated the right of herself and her colleagues as she called them, by the decisive argument,- Why, it's us that is the Princesses now!' (p. 193).

The usual hire of a job carriage and pair of horses for a day in Paris is stated by M. Tirel at twenty-five francs, and that of a saddle-horse at fifteen; and at these moderate rates he is content to estimate the very superior articles supplied from the royal mews, and to debit the respective parties who used them. It seems that M. Tirel was not only a strict accountant, but moreover somewhat of a wag, and indeed, it would at first sight seem, a good deal of a prophet; and he tells us that, in selecting the carriages and horses for the use of the several functionaries, he was guided by the names which seemed to him most congenial to their respective characters. The satirical aptitude of the greater part of those selections seems at first sight too piquant to be absolutely genuine; but M. Tirel protests that they are literally true. We shall first present our readers with a few of the excomptroller's most striking statements, and shall then produce his vindication of his accuracy.

For the seventy-five days of his reign, Citizen LEDRU ROLLIN had at his orders four carriages, eighteen draught and saddle'horses, and ten servants. 'None of the King's sons,' says M. Tirel, 'had ever had any such establishment.' For these, at the rates before stated, the comptroller brings in Citizen Ledru Rollin debtor to the civil list in a sum of 27,750 francs; but what is worse, he hints that the character of the celebrated demagogue was expressed in the names of the horses appropriated to his use, as Montagnard, Orageux, Trompeur, Hypocrite, Vandale, Diable, Poltron, and the like. The latter epithet must surely have been furnished by a kind of second sight of the hero's somewhat ignoble escape through the vasistas of the Conservatoire, in June, 1849.

Citizen MARRAST, formerly a schoolmaster and editor of the National, whose aristocratic airs and affectations obtained him the sobriquet of Marquis, was, however, satisfied with one chariot and pair, the charge for which was only 2975 francs; but the name of his carriage was the Ci-devant, and his horses were Pimpant and Faquin-Dandy and Rogue.

ARAGO, the astronomer, is likewise charged 2975 francs for the chariot Star, drawn by Thunder and Lightning.

MARIE, a second-rate lawyer, who got into first-rate offices, is

charged