'It is a very rare thing for a foreigner to
preside at a public dinner in England, and distinguish -himself by his after-dinner speeches. 'We do not call to mind any similar case of the kind. The feat has now been accomplished by the Duke of Aumale, who acted on Wed- nesday as the chairman of the annual feast in aid of the Royal Lite- rary Fund. The Count of Paris, the Duke of Chartres, and the Count of Eu were present, and a host of English notables. The speeches of the chairman were all neat and to the point, and not so hackneyed in their matter as is usual on these occasions. Of the Queen he said, in proposing her health : "I have no right to speak the language which is used on these occasions by loyal Englishmen, but I may venture to say that no one professes more respect than myself for her Majesty, or more sincere devotion to her royal person. (Cheers.) I see in your Queen the personification of your noble and free insti- tutions—the Sovereign of a country which is, and I hope will remain, the ally and friend of my own native land—(cheers)—of a country which gives shelter to all exiles, without asking them to submit to any humiliating conditions, but only to respect those laws under whose protection they live. (Cheers.) I also admire in her Majesty the most accomplished of ladies, for I have had more than one personal occasion to observe—nay, to feel—that extreme delicacy and tenderness of heart, which is not common among persons born to so high a station, and of which she has given so touching aproof on a recent and most melancholy occasion."
In a similar strain he gave the other loyal toasts, but good taste was shown in allotting to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe the task of proposing the " Army, Navy, and Volunteers!' Then the chairman gave " Prosperity to the Royal Literary Fund," and the health of Lord Lansdowne. After speaking of his own small claims to fill the post he occupied, he went on : " I cannot even pretend to be thoroughly acquainted with your literature, but if I know something of it, I owe it to two circumstances. The first is, that I was educated by a father who had been an exile, as I am now, and who had found on your shores the same hospitable shelter—(cheers)—and who knew your country, your language, the great works of your literature as well, I suppose, as any foreigner ever did or may do. And I remember that in the earliest days of my life, when lie was himself free of all political responsibility, in the happy and quiet evening at Neuilly, he used, after having shown to his children the engraved portraits of celebrated men, and told their deeds, or referred to the plates which commemorated the military acliievments of our countrymen; he, I say, used often to take off from the shelves of the library some huge folio volumes of 'Boyden's slilustrated Shakspere,' a copy of which lie had himself bought at the auction room at Cheltenham. (Cheers.) He then gave us an outline of the finest scenes in the works of your great dramatist, reciting occasionally some of the beautiful tirades which had remained engraved on his wonderful memory. This was my first impression of English literature, and one which Will never go out of my mind, for it is connected with some of my earliest recollections of the best and most beloved of fathers. (Cheers.) Then 1 did grow up with the present French generation, who, breaking with an old tradition, began to study foreign literature. I mean that literature which does not belong to the great Latin family of languages. Well, when I was a young man, the great authors of this country were understood and admired in France, and numerous translations of their works were put in circulation for the benefit of those who could not read them in your idiom. Shakspere was read, commented on, and quoted ; people went . even as far as to imitate him. (Laughter.) The walls of our exhibition were covered with works of art, signed by the first names, the subjects of which were bor- rowed from your stage, your poets, or your annals. Your novels were in all hands, and, if I may be allowed oue more personal recollectiou, I may say that I re- member more than one of theWaverley Novels was concealed at may under my desk, and that when I was supposed to be bent upon one of the celebrated gram- , matical books due to the pen of our great royal scholars of the past, I was atten- tively reading ' Ivanhoe' and Old Mortality.' (Cheers.) Such is our natural tastes for what we call lejsmit de, endu—(cheers)—that I could not answer now to my going correctly through all the changes of a Greek verb—(laughter)—but , I might follow the ' Fortunes of Nigel' in the streets of London, and could show also the spot where once stood the house of Jeannie Deans. (Cheers.) Since the death of Sir Walter Scott novels of this country have not ceased to command unusual attention abroad, Vanity Fair,' David Copperfield,' Coningsby..," My Novel,' are as much read on the Continent as the works of George Sand or Dames, and at this very day the readers of one of the most important French newspapers, after a rapid glance at the telegrams, hurry to look at the featilleton, where they find the continuation of the' Woman in White, translated into their own language." (Laughter.)
Passing from literature, he came to topics that required greater firmness and 'delicacy of handling—parliamentary oratory and the
pfe,ss.
,
wish only to saga few words of those branches of your literature, which I know, pe raps, a little better than others, or which attract a more general afters-
• tion abroad ; and amongst these, perhaps, the most prominent are parliamentary eloquence and the public press. I know that certain persons would not allow the oratorical art tole included in the great literary classification. We have in France an illustrious self-elected body, whose duty is to maintain as high as pos- sible the standard of literature. I mean the French Academy. Well, I have often heard that far-famed company abused for having included in her election too large a share of the veterans of our parliamentary fights. (Laughter.) I don't know if the reproach is always disinterested; but, at any rate, I don't find it well founded. I don't look at the philippics of Demosthenes, or the invectives of Cicero, against Oatiline or Verres, as indifferent ornaments of Greek or Roman , literatures, and I don't suppose that Englishmen would allow the speeches of Bolingbroke, of Fox, of Burke, of Canning, or of Peel not. to be included among the great'intellectual works which this country has produced. I will not quote here the names of your public men of this day; but I dare say that nobody will contradict me when I assert that they have not degenerated from their fore- , fathers, and I could show at this very table living proofs of the truth of my assertion. (Cheers) I know that 'England does not enjoy the exclusive pri- vilege of breeding clever speakers, and I might at least name one country which is the first in my affection, and which boasts of possessing a set of public orators —unfortunately now on the half-pay list—(laughter)—but as numerous as was ever seen in the assemblies of any country or of any age. (Cheers.) I am .certain also that great oratorical power will be, or is already, displayed in all those snore or less new Parliaments which are now happily sitting in many Euro- pean capitals. (Cheers.) But it has been your good lack, or the effects of your
i
wisdom, that you have constantly, without interruption for a lung course of years, enjoyed sincere representative institutions, and that blessing has given to the tone of public speakers in this country a peculiar character—humorous without frivolity, practical and not trivial, eluquent, but never degenerating into mere rhetorical amplifications ; in a word, this country appears to me to present the real pattern of modern parliamentary eloquence. (cheers.) Then something may be said of the daily or periodical press. I know I some to a subject rather delicate to be touched upon in this place, and above all by mo ; but I hope I keep within the limits over which I ought not to trespass when I soy the press cannot reach its real aim, nor exert fully its beneficial action without freedom. I do not contend that this freedom may have the sameextent, or be submitted to the same rules, in all countries ; but it rests upon certain general principles which are known by any man in his good sense, and ought to be respected by any legislator of good faith. Nor would I deny that the freest press may make some mistakes, or create some wrongs and mislead public opinion upon certain persons or certain questions ; but remember that it is the law of God that nothing can be perfect in this world. One day I was talking on this matter with an illustrious statesman of my own country, a moderate but stanch Liberal—I don't know why I should omit his name, for I don't know any name more ensiled to universal esteem and respect—le Due de Broglie; and after having carefully examined the inconveniences and advantages of the liberty of the press, he expressed his opinion as fellows: I am prepared to see honest and good men occasionally calumniated provided that one day or another the mask is torn off from the face of the dis- honest and the wicked.' Well, I say that a really free press nearly always expresses the opinions and feelings of the great majority of the community making them preponderate, and that nine times out of ten the majority inclines towards the best and wisest course. (Cheers.) The press exerts upon the executive power an action at the same time stimulant and restrictive. It prevents many rash decisions, and it points out many good things which are to be done, and which a single man might not always perceive without the help of the hundred voices of the press. Its action is felt at the lowest degrees of administrative hierarchy. I have been myself a public servant of my country, and I know by my own, unfortunately not very long, experience, that nothing impresses a public man with a keener sense of his dirty, nothing enforces upon him the obligation of medidating carefully before he takes any resolution, or of attending constantly to every part of his duties, than.the knowledge that all his acts or his omissions will be reported before his countrymen and eommented upon—not always in a very friendly tone. Even in another point of view, the press when it is gagged cannot give the same weight to its literary judgments nor exert upon literature the same healthy influence. I know that the liberty of the press has existed, or exists more or less in many other countries in Europe ; but it has been submitted by various circumstances, or by occasional changes of legislation, to an inter- mediate state of collapse or over-excitement which has often thrown it wrong ways, or at least prevents it from having the full power of doing good. Nobody can deny that the continental press writers have to fight with difficulties, and that they have to display a degree of skilfulness and often of courage which does them great credit. But nothing can replace the free air which people breathe in this happy land, and which I hope some good wind will one day or Weer diffuse over the whole of Europe. For no event, no family misfortunes, no success of others will altos the opinions I entertain on this subject, and which, I may say, I have sucked with the milk of my nurse ; and I will persevere in repeating with the great Roman historian, ' Potior periculosa libertas quiet() servit.e.' I prefer liberty with its dangers to a quiet servitude." (Cheers.)
He wound up with a handsome eulogy on the society over 'which be presided. To Mr. Disraeli fell the task of proposiug, the health of the chair- man, and he did so in his happiest style. Speaking of preceding chairmen, he said he doubted whether the chair had ever been filled under circumstances more interesting than on that day.
"It is filled by the son of an ancient house that has been connected for centuries with the development of the most brilliant and most refined of modern nations, himself the lineal descendant of a great monarch, whose name is indis- solubly connected with the most resplendent period of modern literature. (Cheers.) The claims of our chairman to-day to our sympathy and confidence do not depend on the past or on the deeds of those who have preceded him.
Those claims are present, and they are personal. (Cheers.) If it be true that the most classic order of literary composition is that where the writer, in whom the qualities of action and contemplation blend, is enabled to give to us the results of his own experience, to describe the scenes he has himself witnessed, and to record the events which he has, perhaps, in some degree himself occa- sioned, then I say that our chairman can urge no undistinguished claim to emi- nence in that department. We are indebted to his pen for that picture, and with which no doubt you are familiar, of the origin and character of that new arm in modern warfare which seems to combine the discipline of Europe with the fire of the desert. When we read this picturesque and precise portraiture we cannot forget that the writer observed them in the tented field, which he shared, and that he also led them to war and to victory. My lords and gentlemen, the same pen has analysed in ancient Gaul one of the most remarkable campaigns of Caesar; and I think I may say, in language which literary critics would not impugn, that he has treated a subject of great interest and difficulty in a spirit and in a style not altogether unworthy of that matchless character whose exploits and whose narrative of them be has analysed with admiring but severe scrutiny. I have always believed that the time would come when we should be indebted to him for the production of some work which would live in the language of that country which he quitted with sorrow, but left with honour. (Cheers.) We live in an age of strange vicissitudes. The course of revolution is as rapid as it is startling, and empires dissolve and die, and dynasties are scattered. Happy the prince who, from no fault of his own, is banished from the court and camp, can find consolation in the library, and generous occupation in the rich galleries of learning and art. Happy is the prince who in a foreign land, mixing with his fellowmen on equal terms, is still marked out by the pre- eminence of his nature—happy the prince, who, under such circumstances, penetrating the realms of literature, may yet perhaps establish a throne which may defy the fate of dynasties." (Cheers.)
Among the other speakers were Sir Edward Cast, Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Monckton Milnes, Sir Roderick Murchison, and M. de Chaffin.
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