• BOOKS.

DE LIMARTINE'S RESTORATION OF MONARCHY IN FRANCE..

THE subject of this history may embrace the period from the downfall of Napoleon in 1814 to the Revolution of July 1830 ; or it may with equal propriety close at the reestablishment of Louis the Eighteenth after the battle of Waterloo. The present volume only contains the campaign of 1814 on the " sacred soil" of France, which led to the capitulation of Paris and the abdi- cation of Napoleon, together with a full narrative of the public events and private intrigues that preceded and accompanied the Bourbon restoration. This narrative is preceded by a brief allusion to previous events ; suspended midway by biographical notices of the family of the Bourbons ; and closed by a sketch of the society and coteries of Paris, as they appeared after Louis had granted the Charter, opened the Assemblies, and seemed firmly seated on the throne. So much has been written on the period in question, both in the form of original narrative and of general history, that new inform- ation is not to be looked for. The attraction of the book is in the ability and to some degree the personal character of the author : a similar work by another writer would not have the same popu- larity, perhaps not even the same interest. To the English public, however, the History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France will be useful : it even supplies a want ; for we have nothing that gives so full and particular an account of the event, exhibits so much practical political philosophy, of a kind, or combines great literary ability with a living knowledge of the actors, and the experience of a spectator if not an actor in the drama. The author speaks of persons and circumstances with a certainty that might doubtless be mere confident assumption, but which in his case bears with it the stamp of knowledge and belief. He sketches characters and actions with the decision of one who is not only a master of his art but who draws direct from the actual objects.

The most prominent feature of the work is fulness—in the case of a less known writer, or as a posthumous work, it might be called over-fulness. This fulness is not altogether produced by diffuseness, though Lamartine's style is not condensed ; nor by the introduc- tion of episodical matter ; but by engrafting a number of lesser wholes upon the greater. The plan is broad, simple, and natural ; but treated dramatically as much as historically. After the intro- ductory survey, the narrative carries on the military decline of Napoleon till the capitulation of Paris; it then traces the councils of the Allies, especially of Alexander, the intrigues or schemes of the Legitimists, the open defection of the legislative and municipal bodies of Paris, the general weariness of the people, the treachery of the courtiers, the selfish fears of the Marshals, and the scenes at Fontainbleau till the abdication was finally extorted from Napo- leon, and the curtain drops upon the departure for Elba.

The story is then suspended for a while by the figure called retrospection. The surviving members of the house of Bourbon are introduced to the reader ; their career is narrated from the outbreak of the Revolution; their characters, with those of some of their adherents, are depicted at length ; and the murder of the Duke d'Enghein is elaborately told. The rash and impolitic efforts of the Count D'Artois (Charles the Tenth) and the junior branches of the family are contrasted with the quiet intelligence and firm- ness of Louis the Eighteenth, baffling by dint of clear perception and resolute will the wishes of Alexander, the intrigues of Talley- rand, and the requirements of the Senate, till he ascends the throne the personation of hereditary right, though prepared to adapt him- self to the changes wrought by time and violence and to the neces- sities of the age. The second act closes with the apparent success of the Monarch, after an account of the various incidents which accompanied his return and reestablishment.

The fulness of which we have spoken is displayed more in the execution than in the plan. It is produced by exhibiting scenes in dramatic detail whose results a common historian would only have told, or by critical remarks or reflections, not inappropriate, but pursued into length ; or by painting characters, not, probably, in over-detail, but with a fulness which makes a secondary historical figure a portrait. It is the number and extent of these biographi- cal portraits, together with an infusion of running commentary, that separates Lamartine's manner from that of other historians.

It has been intimated that Lamartine has some personal objects in view in this history,— a defence of himself, a justification of the present Republic, and a disposition to injure Napoleon the nephew by attacking Napoleon the uncle. This may be true, but so far as the work has yet gone we see no distinct traces of any such purpose. Three leading objects may be observed in the book,—to portray at length the character of Napoleon, and its consequences upon France and his own fortunes ; to show that under the actual circum- stances his downfall was necessary, for his selfishness had made nearly every one about him as selfish as himself and regardful only of his own interest; to represent that the advent of the Bourbons was another necessity, for Napoleon's ambition had exhausted and wearied the country, which wanted peace and government ; that Napoleon's right to rule, originating in the sword, and depending on its success, vanished in the moment of defeat ; that the in- terested servility he had produced, and the abject submission he required to his decrees, had rendered the working of a consti-

• The History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France. By Alphonse De La- martine, Author of "The History of the Girondists." Vol. I. Published by Vise- telly and Co.

tution difficult, and self-government—a democratical republic— impossible : there remained therefore nothing but the Bour- bons, for they only had an united party and a claim of right which either the Sovereigns of Europe or the opinion of man- kind would acknowledge. In impressing these views, indirect- ly and in the course of narrative or delineation, Lamartine may possibly exaggerate, as all rhetorical minds are apt to do; but we do not think that he exaggerates more than any other rhetorical author who writes upon a theory or idea. He may bear hard upon Napoleon ; he may be incorrect in denying him feelings (though his feelings never for one moment stood in the way of his interest) ; and he may seem to press against him more like a pleader than a judge : but the elaborate review of his character seems to us just upon the whole in its conclusions, as it is keen in perception and comprehensive in its grasp. The following passages are from the epilogue as it were of the first book, when the Em- peror has taken leave of his Guards, embraced the Eagle, and driven off.

"Napoleon was a man of the school of Machiavel, not of that of Plutarch. His object was neither virtue nor patriotism, but an ardent thirst after power and renown. Favoured by circumstances which never fell to the lot of any other man, not even Cresar, he sought to conquer and possess the world at any cost—not to ameliorate it, but to aggrandize himself. This, the sole aim of all the actions of his life, lowers and narrows them in the eyes of all true statesmen. "He foresaw, with a precocious sagacity of instinct, that great risks of fortune would be or were the grand movements of things or of ideas. The French Revolution broke out ; he threw himself in the midst of it. Did Jacobinism govern, he extolled it, affected Radical principles, and assumed all the exaggerated manners of the demagogues, their language, their cos- tume, their displeasure, and their popularity. The Souper de Beaucaire,' a harangue fit for a club, he wrote in a camp. The tide of the Revolution rose and fell in proportion as the public of Paris was excited or calm. Na- poleon rose and fell with it ; serving with equal zeal, at one time the Con- ventionalists of Toulon, at another, the Thermidorians of Paris ; sometimes the Convention against the demagogues, at others, Herres and the Directory against the Royalists. "He yielded all to circumstance and nothing to principle. With a fore- sight of who would be in power, he always joined the successful; rising in- differently with any or against any. As a youth, he was a true specimen of the race and times of the Italian *Republicans, who engaged on hire their bravery and their blood to any faction, any cause, provided they did but ag- grandize themselves. As a soldier, he offered his skill and his sword to the most daring or the most fortunate.

"This and nought else is observable in all his rapid career of fortune.

" The heads of the Revolution, embarrassed by his presence, sent him to Egypt, there to conquer or to die. Here we see another continent, another man, but still the some want of conscience. He announced himself as the regenerator of the East, who brought with him all the blessings of European liberty. At first he tried to persuade the people to allow themselves to be conquered. Mahometan fanaticism was an obstacle to his dominion. In- stead of combating that faith, he simulated belief in it, declared for Maho- met, and denounced the superstitions of Europe. He made religion the medium of his policy and his conquests. The negotiator who had bowed before the Pope at Milan, now bent his knee to the Prophet at Cairo. Dis- tance gives an illusory effect to exploits against an enervated race ; exploits exaggerated by fame, but which remind one of the poetry of the Crusade. All he there thought of was to imitate Alexander and to gain his renown. No sooner, however, did he receive the first check at St. Jean d'Aere, than he abandoned all thoughts of conquest, empire, and Asiatic dreams, and left his army without being recruited, and without the power of capitulating as best it could."

After running rapidly over Napoleon's career, the historian pro- ceeds.

"He at length capitulated, or rather France capitulated without him; and he travelled alone across his conquered country and his ravaged pro- vinces, the route to his first exile, his only cortege the resentments and the murmurs of his country. What remains behind him of his long reign ? for this is the criterion by which God and men judge the political genius of founders. All truth is fruitful, all falsehood barren. In policy, whatever does not create has no existence. Life is judged by what survives it. He left freedom chained, equality compromised by posthumous institutions, feu- dalism parodied, without power to exist, human conscience resold, philosophy proscribed, prejudices encouraged, the human mind diminished, instruction materialized and concentrated in the pure sciences alone, schools converted into barracks, literature degraded by censorship or humbled by baseness, na- tional representation perverted, election abolished, the arts enslaved, com- merce destroyed, credit annihilated, navigation suppressed, international ha- tred revived, the people oppressed, or enrolled in the army, paying in blood or taxes the ambition of an unequalled soldier, but covering with the great name of France the contradictions of the age, the miseries and degradation of the country. This is the founder ! This is the man !—a man instead of a revolution !—a man instead of an epoch !—a man instead of a country !—a man instead of a nation! Nothing after him ! nothing around him but his shadow, making sterile the eighteenth century, absorbed and concentrated in himself alone. Personal glory will be always spoken of as characterizing the age of Napoleon ; but it will never merit the praise bestowed upon that of Augustus, of Charlemagne, and of Louis %PT. There is no age ; there is only a name ; and this name signifies nothing to humanity but himself. " False in institutions, for he retrograded ; false in policy, for he debased ; false in morals, for he corrupted ; false in civilization, for he oppressed ; false in diplomacy, for he isolated,—he was only true in war ; for he shed torrents of human blood. But what can we then allow him ? His individual genius was great ; but it was the genius of materialism. His intelligence was vast and clear, but it was the intelligence of calculation. He counted, he weighed, he measured : but he felt not; he loved not; he sympathized with none ; he was a statue rather than a man. Therein lay, his inferiority to Alexander and to Cesar : he resembled more the Hannibal of the Aristocracy. Few men have thus been moulded, and moulded cold. All was solid, nothing gushed forth ; in that mind nothing was moved. His metallic nature was felt even in his style. He was, perhaps, the greatest writer of human events since Machiavel. Much superior to Cesar in the account of his campaigns, his style is not the written expression alone ; it is the action. Every sentence in his pages is, so to speak, the counterpart and counter-impression of the fact. There is neither a letter, a sound, nor a colour wasted between the fact and the word, and the word is himself. His pphrases, concise, but struck off without ornament, recall those times when Bajazet and Charlemagne, not knowing how to write their names at the bottom of their imperial acts, dip- ped their hands in ink or blood, and applied them with all their articulations impressed upon the parchment. It was not the signature, it was the hand

itself of the hero thus fixed eternally before the eyes ; and such were the pages of his campaigns dictated by Napoleon—the very soul of movement, of action, and of combat. "This fame, which constituted his morality, his conscience, and his prin- ciple, he merited, by his nature and his talents, from war and from glory and he has covered with it the name of France. France, obliged to accept the odium of his tyranny and his crimes, should also accept his glory with a serious gratitude. She cannot separate her name from his, without lessening it ; for it is equally incrusted with his greatness as with his faults. She wished for renown, and he has given it to her ; but what she principally owes to him is the celebrity she has gained in the world. "This celebrity, which will descend to posterity, and which is improperly called glory, constituted his means and his end. Let him therefore enjoy it. 1 The noise he has made will resound through distant ages ; but let it not per- vert posterity, or falsify the judgment of mankind. This man, one of the greatest creations of God, applied himself with greater power than any other man ever possessed, to accumulate, therefrom, on his route, revolutions and ameliorations of the human mind, as if to check the march of ideas, and make all received truths retrace their steps. But time has overleaped him, and truths and ideas have resumed their ordinary current. He is admired as a soldier ; he is measured as a sovereign ; he is judged as a founder of na- tions : great in action, little in idea, nothing in virtue, such is the man !"

Flushed with the triumphs of popular oratory, it is probable that Lamartine somewhat depreciates the abilities of Talleyrand

by indirectly depreciating the line in which they were exercised ; but the following is ajust observation on the difficulty of mana- ging an assembly with liberty of speech, except by ministers who have been trained to it. The historian is describing the feelings of the Royalists on the first debates. "The King, attentive and not quite satisfied as to the privileges he had pretended to concede to the two Chambers, surveyed from his cabinet these first debates with anxious solicitude. The courtiers frightened him with the first stammerings of the Opposition ' • while the Royalists, full of recollections and of terrors, had never been able to comprehend this division of sovereignty, the oscillation of which between a king and a people constitutes the mixed and representative government of England. Every independent expression seemed to them an insult ; every national right a revolt, and every speech an indication of laze-majesty. The King, more practised and more firm, reas- sured them, and exerted himself to moderate the boldness on the one side, and the fears on the other, of this new mode of government. But none of his Ministers was capable, by his sagacity or his eloquence, to habituate the tri- bune and the Council to the working of the representative system. M. d'Ambray and M. Ferrand were mere superannuated rhetoricians ; M. de Talleyrand, a man of the cabinet, the lobby, and the saloon, had not in his nature either the manly courage which struggles under the influence of strong convictions against the tumult, of a popular assembly, or that overwhelming brilliancy of intellect which subdues it, or that tone of voice which is the dominating power of the political orator. A silent friend of Mirabeau's, he had always kept himself in the shadow of this great debater in the Constituent Assembly. He had never become great in public opinion until the tribune had been demolished by despotism, and political fame was acquired, not in the open day, but by the artifice and mystery of court intrigue. He affected to despise this noisy vanity, of public discussion' and to hold the clues to the conscience and ambition of some members of both Chambers. He forgot, and he made the King forget, that in one day, by the promulgation of the Charter, France had passed from the government of silence to the govern- ment of opinion."

The following passage will furnish an example of the historian's narrative, and of the manner in which he intermingles it with re- flection: it also contains a just remark on the want of political firmness in soldiers. The passage is from the account of the events at Fontainbleau when Napoleon had formed the desperate , resolution of marching on Paris.

"This resolution transpired in the evening through the rumours of the palace. It made the army tremble with vengeance and with joy ; but it made the chiefs also tremble for Paris, for France, and for their own future prospects. They had none of them the same motives as Napoleon to risk the fruits of their lives, and the responsibility of their names, in a struggle of despair. If the Empire fell, their fame would still remain, as well as their rank, their riches, their nobility, and the certainty, of being sought for, honoured, and consecrated by any other government, which would settle ac- counts with glory, and the services rendered to the country. None of them wished to tarnish their names with treason; but neither did any of them wish to second what they considered as insanity. It was therefore necessary, whatever the cost, to prevent the Emperor from putting their fidelity to the test, and from risking a last battle, in which to follow him would be mad- ness, and to desert him cowardice.

"No sooner had the chiefs of the army been made acquainted with the re- solution of the Emperor, than the same sentiment raised the same murmur in their minds, inciting them, by the instinct of a common thought, to in- terrogate each other on their impressions, and to concert a plan of resistance, of objections, and of deliberations, which should make the mind of the Em- peror hesitate and waver. It was in the palace itself that the Marshals and the chiefs of corps met and assembled, at the first word, in the same spirit of opposition to the desperate plan of Napoleon. This opposition, so long cogi- tating, .under the semblance of devotion and the promptitude of obedience, broke out at length in their gestures, in their looks, and in their acclama- tions. A specious and honourable pretext justified the harshness and impro- priety of it in their own eyes. This was the interest of the army of which they considered themselves the natural representatives, and for which they began to negotiate, without a warrant, by trustworthy persons, with the Provisional Government. None of these martial personages dissembled for a moment that Napoleon was politically extinct, and that a new reign was about to commence. Military discipline, in depriving the man of camps and battles of the exercise of his own will, deprives him, more than it does any other profession, of that energy of character so necessary in the vicissitudes of po- litical events. It inspires him with personal intrepidity, but divests him of civic constancy. Nothing yields so much and so quickly in the storm of re- volutions as generals : they follow the noble profession of arms, but they follow it under every master ; they pass from one court to another from an empire to a monarchy, from a monarchy to a republic, not like courtiers, but like servants—the sword of every hand which lends or gives itself to the last person that wears a crown. It is in the ranks of the army that we must look for the heroism of courage; but we rarely find there the heroism of independ- ence."

The same opinion is again expressed in describing the King's triumphant progress from Calais to Paris.

"The Marshals of Napoleon, and those most intimate with him, had hastened to meet the King before his arrival at Compiegne, to secure to them- selves his earliest regards and be the first to gain the confidence of the fu- ture reign. There was Marshal Berthier, who for twelve years had not quitted the tent or the cabinet of the Emperor; and Marshal Ney, his most

intrepid lieutenant on the field of battle, of whom the Emperor had said,

have three hundred millions in gold in the vaults of my palace, and I would give them all to ransom the life of such a man.' These showed them- selves the most eager in the presence of his successor. Marshal Ney, on horseback with his colleagues round the royal coach, flourished his sword over his head, and cried aloud, as he showed the King to the people, Viva le Roi ! There ho is, my friends,—the legitimate King ! the real King of France .

"These military men, so brave under fire, too frequently show themselves weakhearted before the changes incidental to events. The people were as- tonished at so much versatility in so much heroism; and they began to sus- pect (what they have since had so many occasions to acknowledge) that the habit of obeying all governments does not create constancy in the hearts of military men, and that the revolutions which have to fight against them one day have not the most obsequious servants on the next.

The King pretended to esteem this inconstant class ; who did not, how- ever, deceive his sagacity."

The following picture of Louis the Eighteenth may be taken as a specimen of Lamartine's portrait-painting. " He exhibited to observation, in his external appearance, this struggle of two nations and two tendencies in his mind. His costume was that of the old regime, absurdly modified by the alterations which time had introduced in the habits of men. He wore velvet boots, reaching up above the knees, that the rubbing of the leather should not hurt his legs, (frequently suffer- ing from gout,) and to preserve at the same time the military costume of kings on horseback. His sword never left his side, even when sittiug in his easy chair; a sign of the nobility and superiority of arms, which he wished always to present to the notice of the gentlemen of his kingdom. His orders of chivalry covered his breast, and were suspended with broad blue ribands over his white waistcoat. His coat of blue cloth participated by its cut in the two epochs, whose costumes were united in him, half court, half city. Two little gold epaulettes shone upon his shoulders, to recall the general by birth in the king. His hair, artistically turned up, and curled by the im- plement of the hair-dresser on his temples, was tied behind with a black silk riband, floating on his collar. It was powdered in the old fashion, and thus concealed the whiteness of age under the artificial snow of the toilet. A three-cornered hat, decorated with a cockade and a white plume, reposed on his knees or in his hand. He seemed desirous of preserving upon all his per- son the impression and public notice of his origin and of his time, that in seeing him the present age might look up, with material glance as well as with the eye of thought, to the foot of the throne, and that ceremonial should command respect through astonishment. He generally continued in a sit- ting posture, and only walked occasionally, supported on the arm of a cour- tier or a servant.

" But if his antique costume and the infirmities of the lower part of his body recalled the decay of the past century and the debilitating advance of age, it was not the same with respect to his general aspect. The serenity of his countenance was astonishing ; the beauty, the nobility, and the grace of his features, attracted the regard of all. It might be said that time, exile, fatigue, infirmity, and his natural corpulence, had only attached themselves to his feet and his trunk, the better to display the perpetual and vigorous youth of his countenance. The observer, in studying, never got tired of ad- miring it. His high forehead was a little too much inclined to the rear, like a subsiding wall; but the light of intelligence played upon its broad convexity. His eyes were large and of azure blue, prominent in their oval orbits, luminous, sparkling, humid, and expressive of frankness. His nose, like that of all the Bourbons, was aquiline, his mouth partly open, smiling, and finely formed. The outline of his cheeks was full, but not so much as to efface the delicacy of form and the suppleness of muscle. The healthy tint and the lively freshness of youth were spread over his countenance. He had the features of Louis XV. in all their beauty, lit up with an intelligence more expanded and a reflection more concentrated, wherein majesty itself was not wanting. His looks alternately spoke, interrogated, replied, and reigned, pointing inwards as it were, and displaying the thoughts and sentiments of his soul. The impression of these looks was, like a thousand others, engraved in the memory, and there was no occasion for speech to make them easily recognized. At any expression displayed upon his coun- tenance, at once pensive and serene, abstracted and present, commanding and gentle, severe and attractive, no one could say, This is a sage, a philoso- pher, a politician, a pontiff, a legislator, or a conqueror' ; for the repose of nature and the majesty of quietude removed all resemblance to these profes- sions, which wrinkle and make pallid the features ; but one would say, "Tia a king !' but 'tis a king who has not yet experienced the cares and lassitude of the throne ; 'tis a king who is preparing to reign, and who anticipates nothing but pleasure from the throne, the future, and mankind in generaL

" Such was the King at Hartwell, the eve of the day on which Providence. sought him in his exile to restore him to royalty."