BOOKS.

DE BONNECHOSE'S HISTORY OF FRANCE.*

"THE history of France," said Napoleon I., "must be written in two volumes, or in a hundred." M. Emile de Bonnechose, mind- ful of the brevity of life, wisely declines the greater task, but performs the less, and we must add performs it well. His work, since it first appeared more than thirty years ago, has gone through thirteen editions in France, and has long been a text- book in French colleges. It has enjoyed the distinction of being thrice translated into English. The first version appeared among Carey's National Histories in 1838; the second, executed by W. Robson, was published in 1853; and now, in the two volumes before us, we have a third rendering, taken from the last edition of the original, in which the author, besides making numerous additions and alterations in the course of the work, has added nine new chapters which bring the history down from 1830, where his narrative had previously terminated, to the events of the year 1848. The three English translations, judging by a cursory comparison we have made of them, appear to be quite independent of each other,—so much so that we doubt whether the later translators ever beard of any predecessor in the field.

A history of France, written by a Frenchman is very apt to exhibit defects and excellencies which would both be wanting in the work of a foreigner. Except to the highest order of intellect, it is given to few men to release themselves wholly from the pre- possessions of the patriot or the partizan ; and a Frenchman, brought up, as most of his countrymen are, in the belief that the French are la grande nation, and France the centre of the universe, is particularly liable, when writing the history of his native country, to the errors natural to such prepossessions. If a German, an Italian, or an Englishman is secure against this special source of error,—if, looking on French history from the outside, he has greater advantages for grasping the features and proportions of the picture as a whole, and assigning to it its appropriate place in the panorama of the world's history, it must, on the other hand, be allowed that, as a foreigner, he is seldom able to acquire that thorough insight into Gallic character and Gallic life which forms so indispensable a qualification for the work, and which the native historian possesses or acquires almost as a matter of necessity. In regard to the author of the two volumes before us, the spirit in • Hiatory of France to The Revolution of 1848. By Emile de Bonnechose. Authorized Translation. Edited by S. O. Boston. 2 vols. London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler. 1868. which he writes is perhaps sufficiently characterized when we observe that his political faith and political philosophy are evidently of the school of De 'Tocqueville. Free from the failings commonly regarded as characteristic of French- men, he writes the history of his native country as one who loves her well, who knows her frailties as well as her strength, who does not sacrifice truth to glory, who does not find it necessary to be unjust to foreigners in or Jet to be just to France, and who, while telling the story of her long and chequered career in graphic and occasionally even brilliant lan- guage, does not forget to seek the causes of her good and evil fortune in the past, for the benefit of the present and the future.

The French national character is in some respects so remarkable that without an adequate study of it, much of the past as well as of the contemporary history of France must remain an enigma. "The temperament of our countrymen," writes Alexis de Tocqueville, "is so peculiar, that the general study of mankind fails to com- prehend it. France is for ever taking by surprise even those who have made her the special object of their researches,—a nation more apt than any other to comprehend a great design and to embrace it ; capable of all that can be achieved by a single effort, of whatever magnitude, but unable to abide long at this high level, because she is ever swayed by sensations, and not by principles, and because her instincts are better than her morality,—a people distinguished among all civilized nations for her civilization, yet in some respects still more akin to the savage state than any other ; for the characteristic of savages is to decide on the sudden impulse of the moment, unmindful of the past and careless of the future.' It was this wild lawless vein in the composition of his countrymen that the same author principally had in view when he traced a resemblance or sympathy of character between the French and the natives of North America. Remarking upon the very different effects produced on the Anglo-Saxons and the French respectively by being brought into contact with the Red Men, he observes that "the French settlers were not slow in connecting themselves with the daughters of the natives ; but there was an unfortunate affinity between the Indian character and their own. Instead of giving the tastes and habits of civilized life to the savages, the French too often grew passionately fond of the state of wild freedom they found them in. They became the most dan- gerous of the inhabitants of the desert, and won the friendship of the Indian by daggerating his vices and his virtues." There is in French history no want of materials to justify this analogy. In deeds of blood, for instance, abundant as they are, indeed, in other histories besides that of France, we distinguish in her case a savage frenzy about some of them that gives them a character of their own. When the orthodox army in the crusade against the Albigenses captured Beziers, choked with fugitives from the surrounding country, amongst other horrors perpetrated upon the unhappy captives, notwithstanding that the greater part of them were Catholics, we find that all the men, orthodox and heterodox alike, were indiscriminately burnt. There is something bizarre as well as revolting in the ghastly episode accompanying the death of Marshal C0116iIii, the favourite of Marie de Medici. Such was the vindictive frenzy of the populace on this occasion that, when the Marshal was assassinated at the entrance of the Louvre, "they tore his remains into fragments, put the gory morsels up to auction, and devoured them." (Vol. IL, page 10.) The day of St. Bartholomew (in connection with which we may, en passant, remark that M. de Bonnechose has yet to avail himself of the results of recent researches), and the prolonged agony of the time when the Convention decreed filet "Terror and all the Vir- tues are the order of the day," are only illustrations on a large scale of the outbreaks of this savage element latent in the French character. But the explosion of this volcanic element takes place under other forms and directs itself against other things as well as life. It has destroyed thrones, laws, religions, property, constitu- tions. Nor is it simply destructive in its operations, for all these things, it has, sometimes in strange forms, as readily and heedlessly set up again. What Jouffroy distinguishes in individual character as the passionate stage of development, the stage, we may remark, at which the ethical growth of most women appears to be arrested, this, as it seems to us, is the stage which the pre- dominant national character of the French,—multitudinous and brilliant as are the exceptions in the case of individuals,—has not yet passed out of. Hence it is that French civilization advances, not by a continuous progress, in which a step forward is never retraced, but by an oscillatory movement in which sudden and violent rushes forward alternate with relapses into lengthened periods of inactivity. Moments of intense enthusiasm and feverish life are succeeded by long and dreary years of exhaustion,

apathy, and torpor. If one morning society awakes, as it were, to extravagant delight in freedom, it rises next day under the cold shadow of a coarse theatrical despotism. It goes to sleep amid heroes and angels; it gets up among demons and slaves. Paradise yesterday, it is the guillotine to-day. Thus in French history we find

contrasts so glaring, transitions from the sublime to the prosaic, petty and repulsive, so unexpected as almost to verge on the burlesque.

If in the above remarks we appear to have dwelt somewhat out of the beaten tracks of history, it is because we hold that, without a deeper study of the genius of peoples than has hitherto been common, a great part of the lessons of history as well as of the efforts of statesmen must be lost. Montesquieu said that "behind great events there are always great moral causes," which is only a part of the truth that behind a people's history there is a national character of which it is the utterance or expression. The highest aspect in which history can be regarded is as revealing a series of psychological facts,—as the natural history of a national mind. National psychology, the study of the character of the corporate individualities we call nations, has, so far as we are aware, hitherto received systematic treatment nowhere but in Germany, where a

few followers of Wilhelm von Humboldt have recently made some first attempts to lay the foundation of a philosophy or science of Ethno-psychology (Volker-psychologie). If, then, history be

viewed as the expression of national character, if it be to nations what biography is to individuals, then in the present day, no less than in the past, the life and literature, the institutions, the social and political condition of a people free, as the French have long been, from foreign domination, are traceable to their roots in the character of the people itself ; and thus we arrive at the important truth that it is no mere accident of political organization, no causes of a purely material or mechanical nature, that render a Napoleon III. an impossibility in America, but an absolute sovereign in France. What De Tocqueville more than twenty years before had conditionally predicted, "We shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited authority of a single despot," became fact, because the statesmen of the last constitutional period, — brilliant, talented, honourable as many of them were,—were themselves too much of Frenchmen to be able to comply with the conditions indis- pensable for avoiding that catastrophe. M. de Bonnechose, who, in the chapters on the reign of Louis Philippe, now for the first time added to the work, clearly and succinctly traces the principal events and causes that paved the way for that catastrophe, agrees with many of the highest authorities iu ascribing it principally to "excessive centralization," to "centralization without limits."

"'In pronouncing at this period,' he says, 'with almost the whole of my countrymen, against centralization without lhisits, I nevertheless acknowledge all the advantages it has lent, during many centuries, to the unity of public power. But when, overleaping every barrier, this same central power, in place of widening the sources of a people's life, hinders and limits them, as was the case in France during the second half of the reign of Louis XIV., when it contracts or destroys the liberties necessary to the equilibrium of the social forces ; when, instead of stimulating the activity, the vigilance, and the energy of every member of the State, it benumbs and paralyzes them; when it tends, by substituting itself for the combined actions of all, to deprive every individual member of the State of the desire to act, this central power becomes, instead of a means of progress, an obstacle and a danger.'"

And again, in respect to the operation and effects of this system, he says :—

"On the one hand, we see face to face with the omnipotence of the State, the complete separation from power of every non-official man, and his absolute impotence; whence most frequently result the for- getfulness of the public weal, the entire absorption of the individual in material and private interests, general apathy, and abasement of char- acter. On the other hand, we see the inherent instability of institutions, of laws, of interests, and of affairs, when the governmental or adminis- trative machine works in such a way that it needs but the touch of a bold and firm hand upon the principal wheel, upon the chief motor, to render all resistance impossible, to establish by coercion a victory over order."

Centralization is not always assailed with the discrimination that our author shows in stating his objections to it. It is sometimes spoken of as though to it alone the loss of liberty in France were due, whereas this is only true within certain limits. For are not Frenchmen themselves responsible for the rise and growth of centralization ? In other words, is not the loss of liberty in the last resort, so far as centralization is loss of liberty, their own work? For all purposes truly national, centralization is the only

correct system; for in such cases it is nothing more nor less than organization, division and economy of labour, concentration of

power and efficiency. But as soon as it is extended beyond this, and absorbs powers essentially provincial, local, or private in their

nature, it is no longer the guarantee, but the annihilation of self- M.A.. London: Chapman and Hall. 1868.

government. M. de Bonnechose justly censures the policy of the Constituent Assembly, which consummated this illegitimate extension of the principle of centralization :—

" Perceiving an obstacle to their enterprise in the ancient provincial organization of the country, they extinguished their provinces ; they divided them, split them up into scanty fragments, deprived them of all common action and of all those natural bonds created by heroic names, memorials, and historic traditions. The provinces thus isolated and. separated one from the other, it presently needed but the word of a master to prevent their making the least effort without his orders, or of settling for themselves the simplest question or the most trilling affairs. Paris thus became more and more the burning hearthstone of all our interests, of all political contests, and of all ambition ; the equili- brium of the body sccial has been disturbed for the apparent benefit of a single city ; on the banks of the Seine there has been concentrated. movement and life, whilst almost everywhere else there is naught but paralysis and death."

In his preface our author sketches a plan for the gradual restitu- tion of the lost local liberties of France, —an object which he justly regards as the first step towards the inauguration of s. healthy political life among his fellow-countrymen. He proposes no sweeping changes, but seeks to build on the basis of things as they are, recommending in particular the concession of certain powers to the existing General Councils of Departments. It is beyond our purpose here to discuss this proposal in detail, nor does M. de Bonnechose enter sufficiently into particulars to enable us te give a decided opinion on the merits of his special plans. We agree with him, however, so far as to hold that it is to a judicious extension of liberty in this direction that we must look for the veritable "crowning of the edifice," of which "an august, speaker" has as yet bestowed on France no more than the name.

Before parting with these two volumes, we will add that we de not know any work of the same compass which is better suited to the wants of the English student or general render. The present, translation is, on the whole, very fairly done ; although it, is not. so perfect as not occasionally to remind the reader that it is a trans- lation. We must do the publishers the justice to say that the work is printed in a beautifully clear type ; but they will do well.

in another edition to remove the numerous press errors which, abound, particularly in the latter portion of the first volume.