Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 - Various - Страница 1

M. Louis Blanc, a democratic journalist, with all, and perhaps more than the usual talents of the Parisian journalist—with all, and more than the usual faults of one—has undertaken to write the history of his country, during and since the revolution of 1830. What can we expect to be the result of such an undertaking? What can we expect from a man who sits down to a task of this description, animated with all the party virulence which gives zest to a democratic newspaper? It is not a history, but a scandal, that he will write. M. Louis Blanc has distilled the bile of journalism; he has paused over the hasty sarcasm which political animosity deals forth, not to correct, or moderate, or abate, but merely to point and envenom it. His appreciation of men, their character, their talents, their designs—all bear the hue of the atrabilious journalist. There is this difference only between his history and the daily portion of envy and malignity which a democratic newspaper pours forth, that the dye is more deeply engrained. In the mind of the author, the stain of his party has become ineffaceable. Those who are pleased—and the number is not few—with having high names and established reputations laid at their feet, soiled, trod upon, will meet here with ample gratification. To be sure they will be occasionally required, in lieu of such as they have thrown down, to set up the bust of some democratic celebrity, whose greatness, or whose genius, they were not previously aware of. But, not to say that the justice of party requires this substitution, it is a penalty which writers of this description will invariably impose upon them. It is the common trick of the envious, and the mock magnanimity with which they seek to conceal their true nature—to exalt the lowly, while they debase the exalted. Since some idol there must be, let it be one of their raising. Even while helping to raise it, they enjoy, too, the secret consciousness that it is of brittle metal.

But in the composition of a history, the spirit of party, however eager it may be, cannot always guide the pen. The mere interest of the narrative, the strangeness and peculiarity of circumstances, will claim their share of the author’s mind. The politician must sometimes be absorbed in the chronicler; and so it happens with M. Louis Blanc. His narrative often interests by its details; and if it has the partiality, it has also the vivacious colouring, of a contemporary. It possesses, also, a richness of anecdote—the fruit, probably, of his position as a   journalist; add to which, that M. Louis Blanc is not without a species of off-hand, dashing eloquence. He can say daring things in a daring manner, and give the pungency of epigram to his political paradoxes. He has a full share of that rhetoric of journalism which is so well calculated to make an impression on the careless reader, but which requires that the reader should continue careless, in order to retain the impression he has received. It results from all this, that while we constantly distrust our guide, while we perpetually refuse the appreciation he offers to us of men and events, we still read on with interest a work which is, at least, relieved from the charge of insipidity or dulness; and indeed, if we had not derived some entertainment from its perusal, we should not have thought of bringing it under the notice of our readers. To have engaged ourselves merely in combating its errors and misrepresentations, would have been a dreary and an endless task.

To enable the reader at once to judge of the tone and temper of M. Louis Blanc’s politics, we present him the following passage. It is the object of the long Introduction which precedes his history, to show that the events which have transpired in France since 1793, have had, for their great result, the establishment of the government of the middle classes through a Chamber of Deputies—a view which we think is incontestably right. That France has its House of Commons, is the great fruit of all its struggles, its calamities, and its victories. It must not be supposed, however, that this is a result in which M. Louis Blanc rejoices. Nothing he so much detests as this government of the middle classes; nor is there any portion of society he vilifies more cordially than the bourgeoisie. Hear how he speaks of them. After relating the history of the Carbonari, who troubled by their plots the reign of Louis XVIII., he says:—“This Carbonarism never descended into the depths of society; it never moved the lower strata. How, then, could it be preserved from the vices of the middle class—egoism, littleness of ideas, extreme love of a mere material happiness, gross instincts!”—(P. 115.) So that he finds Carbonarism to have lacked in virtue, because it had not descended, for its disciples, sufficiently low in the scale of society!—to have grown corrupt, by reason of its not having penetrated to the “lower strata!” And yet the duties of the Carbonari seem to have been precisely calculated for these lower strata. These were, he had already told us himself, “to have a gun and fifty cartridges, to be ready to devote one’s-self, and to obey blindly the orders of unknown leaders.”—(P. 101.)

When we describe M. Louis Blanc as a democrat, it is rather for want of a better and more accurate title, than because this exactly describes him. A democrat is generally understood to be one who has a large faith in the lowest class of the people, such as they really exist; our author has a faith only in the future of this class. He does not fail to give vent, when the occasion prompts him, to his compassion or contempt for the ignorant mass of mankind. The democracy he worships is one to be established in some distant age, by a people very different, and living under some modification of the law of property, which he has not thought fit to explain. It is a democracy which has nothing distinct but its hatreds—a shadowy monster, peculiarly disagreeable to deal with. Our historian writes with overflowing gall against kings, against aristocracies, against the middle class. You would say he is a stanch republican, and that the people are to be his depositaries of power. But no; a lamentation, which escapes him from time to time—as bitter as any which Tory or Legitimist would utter—over the blindness of the people, their passions and their ignorance, contradicts this conclusion. Where is the power, and in whom lodged, that M. Louis Blanc would willingly obey, or see obeyed? It exists nowhere. Society is corrupt, is chaotic; nor can it, by any organ it possesses, exercise a sound or rational power. A new era must arise—how, whence, when, we are not instructed.

It is the peculiar characteristic of French democracy, that there is always mixed up with it the principle, more or less distinctly avowed, of the   community of goods. Perhaps the vagueness we complain of in M. Louis Blanc, is dictated by mere prudence; perhaps there is no vagueness to the eye of a propagandist. One sentiment of French democracy he certainly expresses with sufficient hardihood. It is not often we meet with the principle of intervention between state and state, asserted in these days with so much boldness as in the following passage:—“Men have stigmatized the war in Spain, calling the principle of intervention an oppressive principle. Puerile accusation! All people are brothers, and all revolutions cosmopolite. When a government believes that it represents a just cause, let it make it triumph wherever a triumph is possible. This is its right; it is more—it is its duty.”—(Introduction, p. 120.)

How exactly analogous to this is the reasoning which leads to persecution in religion—to the Holy Inquisition, and all its philanthropic schemes of intervention! The conviction in a good cause allowed to overrule the fundamental principles of justice between man and man—to overrule them, not occasionally and by way of exception, but systematically—this is the very essence of persecution. But let no one think that, by any such representation, he would gain an advantage over the republican propagandist. He no longer fears religious persecution—it is a thing past: he braves it. He would adopt his favourite principle, and all its consequences. He would probably admit that it was the duty of the priest, according to his priestly intelligence, to ban and persecute. Not mutual toleration, but reciprocal compulsion, would be his principle. Combat thou for thy truth—let me fight for mine; such would be his formula.

In a writer bent upon startling and surprising us, there is often a sort of premeditated haste, a voluntary forgetfulness, which it is curious to remark. One who weighs his matter well before he speaks, will often end, alas! in having something very tame and moderate to propound—something which, after all his turmoil and reflection, may sound very like a good old commonplace. Now this approximation to commonplace is the great horror of shallow writers; and the way to avoid it appears to be this:—Proclaim your thought at once, in all its crude candescence, before it has had time to cool and shape itself; then, in order to save your credit with the more captions and scrutinizing, give, at some convenient interval, such an explanation or modification as will show that, after all, you were as wise as your reader. State your paradox in all the startling force of unmitigated diction, and refute it yourself afterwards, or say enough to prove that you could have done so. This, well managed, gives two occasions for brilliant display; a sober statement has been converted into a couple of bold and glancing propositions. Truth, it is well proved, like the diamond, shines the more by being cut into surfaces.

M. Louis Blanc, for instance, makes a startling remark on the incompatibility of royalty and a representative chamber. The two powers are represented to us as flatly irreconcilable. “Can society,” he asks, “have two heads? Is the sovereignty divisible? Between the government of a king and the government of an assembly, is there not a gulf which every day makes wider? And wherever this dualism exists, are not the people condemned to fluctuate miserably between a 10th of August and an 18th Brumaire?”—(Int., p. 64.) And a little further on, speaking of the times of Louis XVIII., he writes—“Meanwhile Europe began to be disquieted on the state of things in France. Foreign sovereigns had thought to establish peace in our country, by establishing the empire of the charter, and the political dualism which it consecrates. The error was great, and they ended by discovering it. M. de Richelieu, who had been present at the congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, brought back with him a very lively apprehension of the future fate of the monarchy in France. A change of the electoral law was proposed. Unhappily, it was not in the law of the 5th February that lay the danger which occupied the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. To consolidate the throne, and raise it above the storms which threatened it, not this or that electoral law, but the electoral power itself, should, if possible,   be abolished. For in whatever hands this formidable lever was placed, it was impossible that royalty could long resist its action. To shift the elective power was only to give the monarchy other enemies, not to save it. * * * The aim of the new ministry was to preserve the electoral law; which amounted to this—the monarchy chose ministers whose programme was the destruction of monarchy.”

On reading such passages, we naturally set about recalling certain old-fashioned political truisms, bearing on the character and interest of that middle class of society in which the electoral power is generally lodged. We recollect that the middle classes have been held to have an interest as well in preserving, as in checking and controlling the monarchy. Alone, they could not govern society; and they have a larger share in the government, as partners with the monarchy, than if they were absorbed in the general mass of the population. They have every thing to lose by the abolition of a royalty which they have ceased to fear, and which they have bound by laws. Such a royalty, with its sway over the imagination of the multitude, with its strong hand of military power—hand in which the sword is allowed always to rest, as pomp in time of peace, as weapon in time of war—such a royalty they feel to be their best protection. Why, then, should they, in their electoral capacity, be thrust on by a blind rage to destroy it? But all this train of reflection we might have spared ourselves. M. Louis Blanc knows it all, and, if you will wait a reasonable time, he will show you that he knows it. He will put it to you very forcibly—in another place. Accordingly, some ninety pages off, he tells us:—“At bottom, the middle class (la bourgeoisie) sees in the monarchy a permanent obstacle to democratic aspirations: it would have subjected royalty, but not destroyed it.”

For the enlightenment of those who may wish to write history in the most captivating manner, and at the least possible expense to themselves, we will reveal another fruitful expedient. There are two ways of writing history. You may either deduce its great events from certain wide and steadily-operating causes, as the growing wealth or intelligence of a people, or you may raise a vulgar wonder by describing them as the result of some quite trivial incident. In the one case, you appeal to a philosophic taste; in the other, to a popular love of the marvellous. A revolution may be represented as the inevitable outbreak of the discontent and misery of the people; or it may be traced, with all its disasters, to the caprice of a courtier, or perhaps the accidental delay of a messenger. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the man—and so all was owing to the want of a nail!

The two manners seem incompatible. Never mind. Use them both—both freely, independently—just as occasion prompts, and the effect requires. Flatter the philosophic taste that delights in generalities, and please the childish wonder which loves to fancy that the whole oak—trunk, branches, leaves—lay in the acorn. M. Louis Blanc has certainly no idea of forfeiting either of these attractions by laying claim to the other. Observe the ease and boldness with which he embraces them in his narrative of the fall of Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbons. He commences in the generalizing mood.

“The fall of Napoleon lay in the laws of the development of the middle classes. Can a nation be at the same time essentially commercial and essentially warlike? Napoleon must have renounced his great part of military chieftain, or he must have broken with the spirit of citizenship and commerce. It was madness to think of reigning by the sword, and continuing the Constituent Assembly. France could not have, at the same time, the destinies of Rome and Carthage. Napoleon succumbed, and must have succumbed, to the Carthaginian party of the people of France. But if the necessary development of the middle classes called for the overthrow of the empire, it demanded also the return of the Bourbons. To prove this, we have only to present, in its instructive simplicity of detail, that narrative of the restoration which so many historians have distorted.”—(Int., p. 18.)

Well, he proceeds with this simple and instructive detail; and his first object is evidently to deprive Talleyrand, to whom on all occasions he manifests a singular bitterness, of the credit generally given him of having aided materially in the recall of the Bourbons in 1814. But does he effect this by showing, as from this exordium we might expect, that his countrymen of the middle class, wearied of the costly triumphs and disasters of the empire, had begun to sigh for peace and their old kings? Not at all. He transfers the personal share in the drama from Prince Talleyrand to Baron de Vitrolles. The Duke d’Alberg had introduced the baron to Talleyrand, whose intention was to employ him merely to sound the views of the Allies. Talleyrand was to have accredited him by some lines of his own writing, but ultimately refused to commit himself. How was Baron de Vitrolles, who by no means limited himself to the subordinate part designed for him, and on whom it will be seen so much really depended, to get accredited to the Allies?

The Duke d’Alberg was intimately acquainted with the Count de Stadion, representative of Austria at the congress. Now these two friends had formerly, at Munich, had a certain tender intimacy with two young girls, whose names the Duke d’Alberg remembered; he wrote them on the leaf of a pocket-book, and they served as a letter of credence to the adventurous ambassador. “Such,” exclaims our lately generalizing historian—“such is the manner in which God disposes of the fate of nations!—Voilà de quelle sorte il plait à Dieu de disposer du sort des peuples!”

The Baron de Vitrolles, we are told, found the Emperor Alexander possessed with a strong repugnance against the Bourbons. It cost him three hours’ conversation to gain him over. But he succeeded. It was he who did gain him over. On the 31st of March, when the Emperor of Russia entered Paris, Talleyrand stepped forward to receive him.

“Well,” said Alexander, “it seems that France recalls the Bourbons.”

These words occasioned M. Talleyrand a profound surprise, which, however, he was too skilful a diplomatist to betray. From that moment, he was a convert to what he considered the successful cause. “Thus,” continues our historian, “this restoration took place contrary to the will of the people, to whom the Bourbons in 1814 were unknown; contrary to the sympathies of Alexander, who feared the dangers of a reaction; contrary, in fine, to the opinion of M. Talleyrand, who had never thought it possible, and had desired only the regency of Marie Louise!”

What particle of truth there may be in this narrative, we do not stop to enquire; we refer to it only as an example of the bold union of the two historic manners. The restoration of the Bourbons was “in the laws of the development of the middle classes!” It was all owing to the Baron de Vitrolles, and that lucky little intrigue at Munich!

It is one of the boasts and privileges of history to reverse the judgment that contemporaries have formed of the character of the actors in it. This privilege M. Louis Blanc, since he writes history, is determined at all events to seize upon; and he can boast, perhaps, of having reversed more judgments of this kind than any other historian, however voluminous. M. Talleyrand has obtained his reputation for ability—his moral reputation it would be too commonplace a matter to attack—by “speaking in monosyllables one half his life, and saying nothing the other half.” M. Guizot is a man “whose talent consists in concealing, under the solemnity of expression and the pomp of formulæ, an extreme poverty of views, and sentiments without grandeur.” M. Dupin, the elder, is “skilful in concealing, under an affectation of rudeness, the pusillanimity of his heart.” Cuvier, whose scientific reputation is untouched, probably because no motive led him to assail it, is “homme plus grand par l’intelligence que par le cœur.” Of Metternich he writes—“A lover of repose from selfishness, he sought it also from incapacity. He wished to enjoy a reputation easily usurped, the falsehood of which the least complication of events would have exposed.” And the picture he gives throughout of Casimir   Perier is that of an “illustrious charlatan,” in whom nothing was genuine but his pride, his hate, and his physical infirmities.

The ministers of Charles X. meet with a much fairer appreciation than those of Louis Philippe. Towards them, one might even say that he is indulgent. This is easily accounted for: in the war of party, those with whom we come into the closest and most frequent collision, must, of course, excite the largest share of our animosity. M. de Polignac seems to have been aware that he had little to fear from the fierce democrat: he has not disdained a sort of literary participation in the work, having contributed some manuscript notes of his own, explanatory of his share in the transactions of 1830. Altogether, we may presume that the history, so far as it relates to the ministers of Charles X., is not unfairly written. Let us approach the narrative by this quarter.

It is a singular picture that M. de Polignac presents to the imagination, with his unruffled serenity, his extreme audacity, his violent measures, his negligent preparation, his strong will, his weak intelligence. The minister is always smiling, and, in the midst of disaster and ruin, is still beaming with self-confidence; he seems to have thought that self-confidence wrought like magic, or like faith, and could of itself remove mountains. If difficulties occurred, his resource was to be still more self-confident. He was well aware of the hostility his ordonnances would create; he was well aware that the army must be their veritable support: yet observe with what a sublime air of nonchalance he prepares himself for the subjection of a people. “How many men,” asked M. d’Haussez, as the ministers sat round the council-table, “can you reckon on at Paris?—have you twenty-eight or thirty thousand?” “More,” said the premier; “I have forty-two thousand;” and, rolling up a paper which he held in his hands, he threw it across the table to d’Haussez. “But,” said the latter, as he looked over the statement that had been given to him, “I see here only thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand men on paper—that amounts to about seven or eight thousand actually ready to fight your battles. And the other twenty-nine thousand to complete your number, where are they?” M. de Polignac assured him that they were spread about the neighbourhood of Paris, and in ten hours, if it were necessary, could be assembled in the capital. The ministers felt, adds our historian, that they were entering into a dreadful game blindfold.

M. de Polignac appears to have relied upon the army, much in the same way that a speculative writer, theorizing upon government, rests upon his great abstraction, the military power. He treated it as if it were a principle, an idea, that developed itself without his aid, and not a palpable fact of there being a certain number of armed men, then and there, to fight for his ordonnances.

There is no virtue so much applauded in the present day as resolution—will; and there are who regard a strong will as the essence of all virtue. But the history of M. de Polignac proves, (if this needed proof,) that the weak can have will enough. Your strong will may be purchased at the sole expense of reason. Let there be one idea in a brain that cannot hold two, and you have a strong will. M. de Polignac never wavered once; he was always seen with a smiling countenance, calm, radiant with hope and self-approval. When others around him began to despond, when the Duke of Ragusa, commander of the forces, writing to the king, said that it was not a riot, but a revolution, and advised him to retreat while he could still retreat with honour, the minister had, for all answer, but one word—“Fire!” It was still, Fire! But what if the troops, it was asked, desert to the people? “Then fire on the troops!”

On the publication of the ordonnances, the members of the Chamber who were in Paris met at each others’ houses to discuss measures of resistance. But it was not from the members of the Chamber that the movement was to emanate. Those who had any position to compromise looked on, for the most part, with anxiety and astonishment, waiting to see what current the disturbed waters would finally take. “On the evening of the 27th, a man, name unknown, appeared   on the Quai d’Ecole, and paraded the banks of the river with the tri-coloured flag, which had been folded up and hidden away for fifteen years.” The symbol was adopted by the people. The revolution had commenced.

Then followed all those strange scenes of levity and blood, buffoonery and heroism, which the history of Parisian revolutions has familiarized to the imagination, but which, nevertheless, have an inexhaustible interest. The people arm themselves wheresoever and howsoever they can. One brings into the Place de la Bourse two large hampers, full of muskets and accoutrements. They come from the Théâtre du Vaudeville, where a piece had been played, a few days before, which required that a number of actors should be armed. To command men thus equipped there were extemporary generals, whose epaulets were obtained from the wardrobe of the Opera Comique. The students of the Polytechnic were, as usual, on the alert to practise whatever they had learned of military science; the younger sort entering into the war with the same spirit that other schoolboys partake of any minor mischief that is going forward. A student of the Polytechnic is standing on the left bank of the river; he has a musket, but no ammunition. A fellow-student, a lad of fifteen, has a packet of cartridges, but no musket: “You shall share them,” said he, showing his treasure, “if you will lend me the gun to shoot my half.” A party of the royal guard were coming over the bridge. He started with the gun to have his shots. He was swept off with others by the fire of the military.

On one side comes a party led by a violin, women applauding. But the women do more than applaud. They carry great paving-stones to the top of the house, to be thence precipitated on the heads of the soldiers; they tend the wounded, they bruise charcoal for gunpowder.

There was, no doubt, some severe fighting during the Three Days; but, generally speaking, the military seem to have entered into the contest with reluctance. Some instances are here given of singular forbearance on their part. At a time when, in certain quarters of Paris, each house was converted into a sort of fortress whence the military was assailed, three men had placed themselves behind a stack of chimneys, and had, from this shelter, directed a destructive fire on the troops. They were at length discovered, and a cannon was levelled against the chimney. But, before firing, the gunner made signal to the men to escape, contenting himself with demolishing their breastwork. As another company of soldiers, led by its officer, was marching through the streets, one of the mob rushed forward, and, with a mad audacity, struck the officer on the head with a bar of iron. He staggered, and his face overflowed with blood; but he still had strength enough to raise his sword to put aside the muskets of his men, who were in the act of firing on the assailant.

We have here a vivid description of the taking of the Tuileries by the populace. Some amused themselves by mutilating the statues of kings, or by firing at the portraits of such of the marshals as they considered to have been guilty of treason to Napoleon. A number of artisans installed themselves in the chamber of the throne; they sat, each in his turn, upon the royal seat, afterwards they placed a corpse in it. Some of them drew, over shirts stained with blood, the court-dresses which had circled the waist of royal princesses, and strutted about in this masquerade. Riot and destruction as much as you please, but no theft—such was the order of the day. A young man was bearing off a hat, decorated with plumes of a costly description. “Where are you going,” cried his companions, “with that hat?” “It is only a souvenir,” said he of the hat. “Ha! good; but in that case the value is nothing.” So saying, they took the hat and trampled it under their feet, and then returned it to him—doubly valuable as a souvenir. Many striking traits of honesty were exhibited. One man brought a vase of silver to the prefect of police, and did not even leave his name. Another found a bag of three thousand francs in the Louvre, and hastened with the money to the Commune. The next day he was probably   amongst the number who were wandering about Paris without bread and without work, driven out of employment by the commercial panic of their own glorious revolution.

A scene of a like grotesque description took place, at a later period, on the return of the mob from Rambouillet, where they had gone in search of the unhappy Charles X. The king had left Rambouillet before the mob reached it, so that they had nothing to do but to return, unless any work of demolition should invite them to stay. M. Degoussée, at that moment the man in authority, in order to save the royal carriages from destruction, bethought him of the expedient of offering a ride home in them to the most violent and redoubtable of the mob. In a moment these gilded vehicles, blazoned with the royal arms, were filled with the lowest of the rabble, who projected their pipes and their bayonets from the windows. These state carriages, drawn by eight horses, and driven by silken postilions, were heaped up, inside and out, with this riotous crew, who entered Paris in triumph, amidst the responsive jests and shouts of the populace. Driven up to the Palais Royal, they there descended from their splendid vehicles, and delivered them over to their new owner. “Tenez—voilà vos voitures!” they shouted, as they alighted under the windows of the Duke of Orleans.

It is curious to remark the contrast between the thoughtless, reckless bravery of the combatants of July, and the watchful timidity of the politicians who were ultimately to profit by their courage and infatuation. The soldiers had, at many points, fraternized with the people—all was success for the popular party—and the drawing-room of M. Lafitte was full of distinguished men of that party.

“The court of the hotel,” continues M. Blanc, “was now full of soldiers. Five of the royal officers entered the saloon. M. Lafitte, who had been wounded in the leg, received them sitting in an arm-chair. He received them with great blandness and dignity. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘keep your arms, but swear never to turn them against the people.’ The officers extended their hands, as if to take an oath. ‘No oath, gentlemen,’ said M. Lafitte with much emotion; ‘kings have dishonoured oaths. The word of the brave is sufficient.’ This was received with universal applause, and every one present resigned himself to the excitement of the hour; when suddenly a discharge of musketry was heard. How describe the tumult that in a moment filled the apartment! The royal guard was certainly victorious—the enemy would be down on them—every one fled. They rushed into the hall, they pushed, they struggled for egress. Some jumped through the windows of the ground-floor into the garden. Two deputies were found hiding in the stables. In an instant, M. Lafitte was abandoned by all those who had besieged his arm-chair. His nephew was the only person who remained with him. And what had happened? The soldiers of the 6th had followed the example of their comrades of the 55th, and, gained over to the cause of the people, they had fired their muskets in the air!”

Already, at the first outbreak of the revolution, some one had remarked—“here were a good game for the Duke of Orleans, if he has the courage to play it.” Courage he had, but equal caution it seems, equal prudence. A deputation had proceeded from the house of Lafitte to Neuilly, the residence of the Duke, to invite him to the throne; but it was the Duchess who received them. The Duke himself had taken refuge at Raincy. To Raincy messengers were sent. The Duke of Orleans ordered his carriage. Those who were waiting his arrival at Neuilly heard the wheels approach—heard them suddenly recede. The carriage had turned, and was regaining Raincy with all the speed possible. The resolution was not quite taken, or the pear was not quite ripe.

His entry into Paris, according to M. Blanc, was made on foot in the evening, and he clambered like a common citizen over the barricades. Arrived at the Palais Royal, he sent to notify his presence to Lafitte and Lafayette—representatives, the one of the Chamber, and the other of the Hotel de Ville—and also to the Duke de Mortemart, minister of Charles X. The interview with this last took place the same evening, and had for its apparent   object to proclaim, in the presence of the minister, his attachment and unalterable fidelity to the elder branch of the Bourbons. When De Mortemart arrived, he was ushered into a little cabinet on the right, which looks upon the court, not ordinarily used as an apartment of the family.

The Duke of Orleans was stretched upon the floor, lying on a mattrass, in his shirt. His forehead was bathed in sweat;2 the glare of his eyes, and every thing about him, betrayed a great fatigue, and a singular state of excitement. On seeing the Duke de Mortemart enter, he began to speak with great rapidity. He expressed himself with much volubility and ardour, proclaiming his attachment to the elder branch, and protesting that he came to Paris only to save the town from anarchy. At this moment a great noise was heard in the court, and the cry was raised of Vive le Duc d’Orleans! “You hear that cry,” said the minister; “it is you the people call for.” “No, no!” answered the Duke with increasing energy. “They shall kill me before I accept the crown.”

The next morning the deputation from the Chamber presented itself at the Palais Royal; and so far was resolved, that the Duke of Orleans was proclaimed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

M. Louis Blanc gives several anecdotes respecting the King of the French, and his successive ministers, which we should be disposed to extract, but that his political antipathies lying exactly in this quarter, we have not felt sufficient confidence in their authority. For this reason we will pass on abruptly to a portion of the work where the political bias of the writer is harmless, or where it may have induced him to inform himself more accurately on his subject than the generality of persons.

This last is evidently the case in his account of the doctrines and practices of the St Simonians. One who felt no sympathy with any portion of their creed, would not have taken the trouble to obtain accurate information, or an intimate knowledge on this subject. Not that M. Blanc is a St Simonian; to do him justice, he has argued with ability and clearness against their leading tenets or maxims; but being a man devoted to a new order of things of some kind or other, he has given naturally a more than usual attention to this sect, and we think our readers will hold themselves obliged to us, if we abridge some portion of his account of St Simon and his disciples.

“The founder of the St Simonian school had been deceased five years when the revolution of July broke out. He belonged to one of the noblest houses of France, bearing the name and arms of that famous Duke de St Simon, the historian of the reign of Louis XIV., and the last of our veritable grands seigneurs. Yet it was the privilege of birth that he attacked, and the impiety of war that he proclaimed. He was a man of singular independence of mind, and of extreme moral courage. Convinced that, before dictating a code for the regulation of human life, it was necessary to have attentively analysed that life as it actually exists, he spent the first half of his days in studying society under all its aspects; recoiling from no experience, practising, in the character of an observer, even vice as well as virtue; drawing a lesson from his own frailties, and making a study of his own follies. He dissipated his fortune in premeditated prodigality, and terminated a studious opulence in excessive poverty; living on the miserable salary of a copyist, when in idea he was governing the world. In the estimation of some, a sage—of others, a madman; at one time sanguine to enthusiasm, at another discouraged to the point of attempting suicide; reduced at last to the condition of a mendicant, after having so often united round his table, in order to observe and judge them, the most celebrated men in art and literature. Such was St Simon in life and character: it remains to see what were the intellectual results he arrived at.”—(Vol. III. p. 96.)

His first project of a code for human life was sufficiently ridiculous. In a work entitled Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries, he addressed himself to the learned portion of the world, inviting them to undertake the government of the human race. The programme was as follows. A subscription was to be opened before the tomb of Newton. Every one was called upon to subscribe according to his means, rich and poor, man and woman; and each subscriber was to have a voice in the selection of—three mathematicians, three natural philosophers, three chemists, three physiologists, three men of letters, three painters, and three musicians. These several threes, amounting to twenty-one, besides having the produce of the subscription, were to form a council, called the Council of Newton, and undertake the spiritual government of the world, directing the efforts of the several nations of the globe towards one common end.

The learned portion of the world made no response to this invitation; he therefore next addressed himself to the operatives, declaring that the time was come to tear the crown from the brow of idleness, and establish the reign of labour. The king was now to be the chief of artisans, his ministers enlightened workmen; and the electoral right was to be so placed as to transfer all power from the proprietor of the soil to the cultivator, from the capitalist to the journeyman. One would say that, piqued with the indifference of the most literate portion of mankind, he was determined to offer the government of the world to the most illiterate. Since the Royal Society would not accept the ball and sceptre which he had placed at its disposal, he gave them over to the Trades’ Union.

But neither would this satisfy him. He who appeals to the lowest order of minds must confine himself to what is intelligible to, and influential on the lowest; and this would hardly accord with one who, at all events, had led an intellectual life, of however wild an order. He again reverted to the thinking classes, and to some modification of his first idea; and his New Christianity—his last and most complete effort—has for its object to erect an intellectual and spiritual government of the world. Taking his analogy from the spiritual dominion of the church of Rome, but finding that that power was too restricted in its exercise, inasmuch as the material interests and scientific labours of mankind were not embraced by it, he called for the foundation of “a religious power, which, embracing humanity in all its interests, should conduct it towards a Christian purpose—the amelioration of the lot of the great multitude of mankind; by their sentiments employing artists, by their reason employing the learned, and by their activity employing the operative.”

Whatever may be the importance of this conception, it answered one purpose—it satisfied the builder’s mind. St Simon died full of faith and hope. When he bade his eternal adieus to the few disciples who surrounded his dying bed, he regarded his work as completed, his mission as fulfilled. “The fruit is ripe,” said he; “you will gather it.”

The disciples of St Simon still further elaborated and disseminated his doctrines; and a school was formed which recognised MM. Enfantin and Buzard for its chiefs. It need hardly be said, that the new order of society was to be founded on universal benevolence—no war, and no rivalry—and the industry of mankind organized in such sort, that to each man would be assigned according to his capacity, and to each capacity according to its works.

We quote with pleasure the remarks (tinctured though they are by his own peculiar opinions) which M. Blanc makes on this famous formula:—“In preaching a universal association of men, founded on benevolence—in demanding that industry should be regularly organized, and that she should establish her empire on the ruins of a system of violence and war, the St Simonians showed a thorough intelligence of the laws which will one day govern humanity. But they overthrow with one hand the edifice they erect with the other, when they announce this famous formula—To each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its works—a formula wise and equitable in   appearance, but in reality subversive and unjust.

“If we say that a man, in virtue of his intellectual superiority, is to adjudge to himself a larger share than others of the goods of this world, what right have we to censure the sturdy barbarian, who, in virtue of his physical superiority, was wont to take the lion’s share to himself? We have changed the basis on which the tyranny rested—the tyranny remains. The St Simonians, it is true, justify their formula on the grounds of public utility; it is well, say they, to stimulate talent by recompense. But is it necessary that the recompense of talent be of this gross and material kind? that it be counted down in so much wealth? Thank Heaven! man has other and more energetic motives. With a piece of riband to be attached to the buttonhole, Napoleon could make an army of a million of men rush forward upon danger and death. The word glory, well or ill understood, has always decided the destinies of the world. What is amply sufficient when the work of destruction is in hand, by what disastrous fatality does it become incompetent when the task is to produce and to create? Is it not true that great men have always sought and found their principal recompense in the very exercise of their high faculties? If society had wished to recompense Newton, it would have been utterly powerless to do so; there was for Newton, in all the world, no other or sufficient recompense, but the joy he must have felt when his genius discovered the laws which govern the planets. * * * The greater the intelligence, the greater the sphere of action; but not necessarily the greater the material recompense. The inequality of capacities can legitimately conduct to the inequality only of duties.”

The revolution of 1830 gave a wonderful stimulant to the little society of St Simon. It extended rapidly, and adjourned its sittings from a private house to an ample theatre, where three tiers of boxes held the admiring or ironical auditory. Fêtes, and the presence of charming women, increased the number of proselytes; artists, physicians, advocates, poets, flocked to share in the generous hopes of the new era. The capital and the provinces were portioned out into new departments, to accord with the new administration of affairs, and St Simonism had also its map of France. The two chiefs, or fathers, took upon themselves the ambitious title of popes. They already cast their eyes upon the Tuileries. Louis-Philippe was summoned by letter to yield his place to MM. Enfantin and Buzard. St Simonism was already a government destined to replace the authority of the Catholic church.

But there were schisms in this new church—Pope Enfantin thinking one thing and Pope Buzard another; and that, too, on the important topic of matrimony. The principal adepts of the sect met together, and held strange fanatical discussions for the discovery of the truth on these controverted points. It is worthy of remark, that St Simonism, as well as Irvingism or Mesmerism, could boast of its convulsions and its prophecies.

“At this time there passed in the Rue Monsigny, in the midst of this sceptical and mocking France, scenes so extraordinary, that, to find their parallel, we must revert to the history of the Anabaptists. Those who had hitherto resisted the extreme doctrines of Father Enfantin, felt as if impelled against their will to the borders of some immense abyss. With the rest, it was an accession of fervour altogether indescribable, an exaltation which ended in delirium. There, in a room, the doors of which were carefully closed, and whose thick walls betrayed no sound, discussions were continued whole days and whole nights without interruption, without relief, without repose. It sometimes happened that a young man, incapable of sustaining these consuming vigils, reeled and fainted; they removed the apparently lifeless body without suspending the discussion. M. Caseaux was in an ecstasy for an hour, and began to prophesy. Another day, M. Olinde Rodrigues was struck as if by apoplexy; because, asking each of the members in turn whether it was not true that the Holy Spirit was in him, (M. Olinde Rodrigues,) one of the persons interrogated had the temerity to answer by certain expressions of incredulity.   The fit was extremely violent, and Dr Fuster, in order to save the patient, had recourse to a formal retractation from the inconsiderate respondent, who, on his part, was full of affliction for the mischief he had occasioned. Such, even on men of serious thought and elevated understanding, may be the effect produced by a belief carried to a certain point of excitement.”

Such, too, may be the danger of contradicting a prophet; and we intend to take the hint, and never be guilty of so great an imprudence. These dissensions, accompanied with certain financial difficulties, led to a rupture, and the family of the Rue Monsigny were compelled to dissolve.

“In this crisis, the profound calm of Enfantin never deserted him. He possessed, at Ménilmontant, a house and garden; here he resolved to seek a place of retreat, of study, and of labour, for himself and his more faithful disciples. Forty of these followed him to this retreat, and there commenced the life in common, combined always with a just sentiment of the true hierarchy of society. Poets, artists, officers, musicians, all devoted themselves in turn to the rudest and coarsest labours. They repaired the house, they swept the courts, they cleaned the chambers and polished the floors; they dug up the uncultivated soil, they covered the walks with gravel, extracted from a pit which they themselves had excavated. To prove that their ideas on the nature of marriage, and the emancipation of women, were pure from any selfish or sensual calculations, they imposed upon themselves the law of celibacy. Morning and evening they nourished their mind with the words of the father, or, in the lives of the Christian saints read aloud, they found example, encouragement, and precept. Hymns, the music of which one of their members had composed, served to elevate their minds and charm their labours. At five o’clock, dinner was announced by the sound of a horn. Then these philosophic workpeople piled up their tools, arranged their wheel-barrows symmetrically, and took their place, after having first sung ‘the prayer before repast.’”

In this retreat they adopted a distinctive dress, of which one portion, the waistcoat, was symbolical; it was so made that it could not be put on without the help of a brother—and thus was calculated perpetually to call to mind the necessity of mutual aid. On the day of the institution of this habit, Enfantin declared that he and his followers had renounced all rights to property according to the existing law, and had duly qualified themselves to receive “the honourable wages” of labour.

But this fantastical experiment was cut short by the interference of the law. A public prosecution was instituted against the St Simonians; and Père Enfantin, and other chiefs of the sect, were brought before the tribunal at Paris. It will be easily understood that the court that day was crowded with spectators, eager to see the St Simonians, especially Enfantin, who appeared in a violet-coloured robe, with the words Le Pére written in large letters on his breast. When asked by the president, whether he did not style himself the Father of Humanity—whether he did not profess to be the Living Law—he answered, “Yes!” with perfect calmness and assurance. The discourse he delivered in his own defence was chiefly remarkable for the long pauses he made from time to time, occupying himself with looking steadfastly at the president, or the advocate-general. He said he wished to make them feel “the power of the flesh.” But this species of animal magnetism appears to have had no other effect than that of irritating the court. He and some others were condemned to pay a fine, and suffer a year’s imprisonment. The family was dispersed. For the present there was an end to St Simonism.

A history is hardly complete without a plague, or pestilence, or famine, or some such wide-spreading calamity, on which the historian can spend the dark colours of his descriptive eloquence. Considering that M. Louis Blanc had but the space of ten years under him, he must have regarded himself as very fortunate in meeting with the cholera, which figures here as a very respectable pestilence. The carrying forth the dead, naked and uncoffined, in open carts, is an image often presented   to us in descriptions of this nature; but it is perhaps surpassed in terrible effects by the one here offered to us, of the bodies of those who had died of the cholera piled up in carts and tumbrils, in coffins so hastily and slightly constructed, that, as they rattled over the stones, there was constant danger of their horrible contents being poured upon the pavement. But the strange reports that were afloat amongst this credulous and passionate populace, form the most striking feature in the picture. It was reported in Paris, as our readers will probably remember, that there was, in reality, no cholera, but that poison had been poured into the fountains of the metropolis, and had been mingled with the wine and the flour; and thus it was that the people were dying. It was dangerous to be found with a phial in the hand, or to be seen sitting, without any ostensible cause, near one of the public fountains. A young man was looking into a well; he was massacred. Another met the same fate, who was leaning over the door of a dealer in wine and spirits, in order to see what o’clock it was. A Jew in the market-place was thought to have a sinister laugh; they searched him, found a packet of white powder—it was camphor—they killed him, and set on the dogs to tear the body.

And then that insurrection against the mud-carts—what an insight does it give into the wide-spreading and tangled interests of a modern capital! It was impossible to touch the mud of Paris without periling the subsistence of eighteen hundred persons. What more fit, what more innocuous to all parties, it would seem, than to clear away the mud from the streets—to clear it away as soon as possible, that it should not lie there, exhaling pestilence during the heat of the day? But stop—there are in Paris some eighteen hundred persons who gain their bread out of this mud, groping in it, and extracting from it every article of the least commercial value. With a basket slung upon their back, and a crook in their hand to facilitate their search, these chiffoniers are to be seen in every quarter of the city, congregating wherever there is dirt. And now, if all that is thrown out of the houses of Paris is taken away before these industrious persons have had time to search it, what is to become of the whole profession of chiffonerie? These new mud-carts, with their ruthless sweepers, traversing the city at dawn of day, must be broken up and thrown into the Seine; and it was done so accordingly.

There is a peculiar charm, we think, in having related to us, for the first time, in the shape of history, what we remember to have read and talked over as the news and gossip of the day. We seem to be present at the making of history. We see facts, as the death of princes, which made so much stir and confusion, sink into the commonplace of the historical record; while anecdotes, which were repeated and forgotten, may stand forward as instructive proofs of the temper of the times, and the spirit of the past age. More than one such anecdote we think we could select from the pages before us; but it is possible we might draw them from a purer source than the work of M. Louis Blanc, to which our readers will perhaps think that we have already given more than sufficient space.