31 MAY 1873, Page 14

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH AND MARSHAL MACMAHON.

(TO TER EDITOR OF TR& " SPROTATOR.1

SIR,—It has occurred to me that, at the present moment, some of your readers may like to be reminded of a passage which is curious, as having been written twelve years ago. At a time when the Second Empire seemed firmly established, and when even Mr. Grote almost despaired of a French Republic, Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his book about Ireland, said that the Irish blood "has given a hero, and it may give a ruler, to France in the person of MacMahon." One is tempted to say of this bold conjecture what Gibbon said of a medimval prophecy that the Russians would one day occupy Constantinople,—it is " a rare prediction, of which the meaning is unambiguous, and the date uhquestionable."—I am, &c.,