M. Felix Faure, the President of the French Republic, is
making a kind of progress through Normandy, and pouring out little speeches everywhere. Their tone is markedly different from that of all previous Presidents. M. Faure is evidently anxious to show that he is not a great person, but only a bon bourgeois visiting his friends, and chatting to them in the least conventional, not to say trivial, way. He says something pleasant to everybody, as any good-natured trades- man would, telling the officers of the Australia,' for instance —the vessel sent by the British Government to pay him honour at Havre—that he had a daily report sent him as to Queen Victoria's health at Cannes. His attitude, in fact, is precisely that of the citizen-King, Louis-Philippe. He is said to be exceedingly popular, and he subscribes to every- thing ; but whether France is prepared to be won in that way is perhaps doubtful. At least her history would suggest that she preferred chiefs less undistinguishable from the middle-class crowd.
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