M. de Vilelle had skilfully prepared for an event which he had long foreseen. He was as well established in the confidence of Charles X., the Dauphin, and the Dauphiness, as of his late master, Louis XVIII. All three looked upon him as the ablest and the most valuable of their devoted adherents. But the minister soon discovered that little dependence could be placed on the mind or heart of Charles X. Louis XVIII. was a moderate of the old system, and a liberal-minded inheritor of the eighteenth century. Charles X., on the contrary, was a true emigrant and a narrow bigot. Louis XVIII. was sceptical and egotistical, but serious and sincere. When Charles X. acted sensibly it was from propriety, from complaisance, from the desire of pleasing, not from conviction. 'Charles X.,' says M. Guizot, 'wavered 'from contradiction, from inconsistency to inconsistency, until 'the day when, given up to his own will and belief, he committed 'the error which cost him his throne.'

During the three years from the accession of Charles X. to his own fall, M. de Vilelle not only made no stand against the inconsiderate fickleness of the king, but even profited by it to strengthen himself against his various enemies. Vilelle undertook to make Charles X. pursue a line of policy sufficiently temperate and popular to save him from being exclusively in the hands of the party to whom he was devoted. Skilful in varying his advice according to the necessities and chances of the moment, he at one time abolished and at another revived the censorship of the journals, occasionally softened or aggravated the execution of the laws, always endeavouring, and frequently with success, to place, in the name of the king, liberal demonstrations and effusions by the side of words and tendencies which recalled the old system and the pretensions of absolute power. The same spirit governed the minister in the Chambers, where all influential opinions were conciliated to a certain extent. Thus the bill on the system of inheritance and the right of primogeniture afforded hope to the aristocratic, while the bill on sacrilege fostered the passions of the fanatical. It was, however, his calm and correct distinction between the possible and the impossible which made and kept Vilelle minister. He survived the law of justice and love' of M. de Peyronnet, and fell in 1827, after having established a censorship, created seventy-six new peers, and dissolved the Chambers.

Vilelle, notwithstanding some faults, was a prudent and sagacious minister, who carried some good and prevented many bad measures. He mitigated the bigotry of the King, held the violent of his party within bounds, and retarded, for some years, the fall of Charles X. He was succeeded by the able and amiable

M. de Martignac, whose career of office was short. He, in turn, was succeeded by Polignac, whose deplorable ministry led to the Revolution of 1830, and the deposition of the elder Bourbons. It was one among the strange hallucinations of M. de Polignac, according to M. Guizot, that he fancied himself a friend to constitutional government. In the mediocrity of his mind and the confusion of his ideas, he neither understood the English society he wished to imitate, nor the French system he desired to reform.

By far the most interesting chapter in this volume is the personal one. There is not much of the personal pronoun in these pages, so that we see little of the youth or man in undress. He is always measured and posé in this volume, weighing his words and balancing his sentences. We hold this to be a great defect. M. Guizot either speaks in his professional, his Chamber of Deputies, his Company, his Cabinet, or Ambassadorial voice. There is no naturalness, freedom, unreserve, or what the French call abandon, in his revelations. He does not tell of his youthful or juvenile follies-what were his feelings on his father's execution-what his impressions of 1794-who were his preceptors or fellow pupils at Geneva, or what was the system of teaching then and there adopted. He does not even speak of the schools of law in Paris, into which he must have entered in the earliest days of the Empire. This is a capital defect. The boy, as Wordsworth says, is father to the man, and we should like to have an inkling of the earlier career of this Francis W. Guizot, who is so able and instructed a man, and has played so prominent a part in France. All we are told is, that when with Collard, Jordan, De Barante, and Guizot were struck from the list of State Councillors by a ministry of which De Serre, the friend of the latter, was an influential member, the author, Guizot, received from all quarters testimonies of sympathy. Madame de Condorcet, with whom he had never been intimate, lent him her country-house, and here he prepared to resume, in the Faculty of Letters, his course of modern history. He quitted public life with a species of satisfaction mingled with regret. He felt, he tells us, as a man who throws off a burden not unwillingly borne, or as one who passes from a warm into a cool and refreshing atmosphere. In the bosom of this calm and satisfying country life, he pursued his studies with indefatigable industry, and laid the foundation of those solid and serviceable attainments which have since stood him in such excellent stead. Not being of an age to enter the Chamber, he used his pen instead of his tongue, and published four essays on public affairs, every one of

Martignac-Guizot's Lectures-Aide-toi Society.

175 which was destined to survive the occasion which called it forth. During the years between 1820 and 1829 it was that M. Guizot dedicated himself to historical literature. Between these years he amassed materials for his Memoirs relative to the History and Revolution of England, and also for the History of France. Nor were his studies limited to history. He translated the principal tragedies of Shakspeare, wrote largely in the Revue Francaise, the Globe, and other publications. All the while he continued his course of lectures on the history of Civilization in France. When the conciliatory ministry of Martignac succeeded to the Vilelle Cabinet, he was permitted at the same time as Villemain and Cousin to re-open his lectures at the Sorbonne. No lectures ever delivered within the walls of that time-honoured establishment excited greater interest or drew greater crowds. It was not so much the nature of the subjectthough this was highly interesting-as the mode of treatment that captivated and enthralled.

It was evident that M. Guizot had carefully and conscientiously studied his subject, that he had well weighed it in his mind, and profoundly reflected on it. From 1828 to 1830 this able professor continued to attract a large audience of attentive hearers by his clear and powerful style, his admirable delivery, and his dignified, thoughtful, and reflective treatment of his subject. It was not merely to young men and to Frenchmen that M. Guizot spoke. There were at his lectures youths and old and middle-aged men, natives and foreigners-Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, Spaniards, Poles, Russians, and Englishmen, among the most undistinguished of whom thirty years ago was the writer of these lines.

M. Guizot was one of the founders and most active members of the Society of Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera, and was more than once on the Directing Committee composed of men, many of whom have risen to high offices, such as Humann, Duchâtel, Merilhou, Montebello (formerly Minister of Louis Philippe, now Imperial Ambassador at Petersburgh), Charles de Rémusat, Thiers, Arago, Duvergier de Hauranne, Bastide, Tascherau, Odilon Barrot, Ferdinand Barrot (now Ambassador at Brussels), Flocon Godfrey, Cavaignac, &c. None of the numerous societies which have existed in France had a more direct effect in precipitating the Revolution of 1830, and changing the dynasty, than this Society. To his connexion with it M. Guizot owed his election for Lisieux, which took place on the 23rd of October, 1830. All the different shades of opposition-Lafayette and Chateaubriand, Dupont de l'Eure and De Broglie, Barrot and Bertin de

Veaux seconded his candidateship. His first speech was on the address of the 221 in 1830; and on the same occasion Berryer also spoke.

With the presentation of the address of the 221 to the King the volume closes, and shortly after occurred that Revolution which brought M. Guizot into office under Louis Philippe. From 1830 to 1848 he was, with slight intermissions, employed in various departments of the public service, but since the 24th of February, 1848, he has held wholly aloof from public affairs. He refused to be a candidate at the elections of 1849, nor has he in anywise participated either as elector or administratively to the present order of things. To that order of things he is clearly and conscientiously opposed, and has made that opposition felt by the publication of various articles in the Revue Contemporaire, by divers pamphlets, tracts and volumes, such as Cromwell sera-t-il roi, l'Histoire de la Republique et de Cromwell, Etude historique sur Washington, and, though last not least, by the Memoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Mon Temps. In this latter volume, so far as it has hitherto gone, we learn but little new on public affairs. M. Guizot is not merely a keen and competent observer, but an accurate narrator, and it is difficult to believe he tells us all he knows of the reign of Louis XVIII. It is true he was then young, and was not in the confidence of Talleyrand, or Dambray, or Fouché, or Pasquier, or Pozzo di Borgo, or Richelieu, or Vilelle, or Vaublanc; but he knew well Montesquiou, Jaucourt, St. Cyr, De Serre, Louis, Portal, and Decazes, and it is astonishing how little he reveals to us of these men. In the case of Decazes there may be the objection that he is still living; but how much might be told about the others without violating the most delicate sense of honour or the necessary reserve imposed by good feeling and good sense. The tone of the book is throughout becoming, but it is somewhat too dignified and passionless for a memoir. Yet this very

austerity and coldness of manner gives to the indignant, though measured, protests of M. Guizot against the despotism and the many vices of the present system a more pregnant meaning a deeper significancy. He seems to feel that it is a high and holy duty to announce that history and truth must stand in perpetual opposition to

a pagod sway,

With head of brass and feet of clay.'

Therefore it is that he repeats a quotation which he recited from Chateaubriand more than half a century ago to Madame de Staël. 'It is in vain that Nero triumphs, Tacitus has

Imperialism-Derby, Disraeli, and Malmesbury.

177

been born in the Empire.' The tone of M. Guizot, like that of Tacitus, is distinguished by elevation and moral dignity; and in an age of sordidness and sensuality, when the good, the great, and the really enlightened in France have no consolation but in the memory of the past and the consciousness of their own rectitude, he does his best to reawaken his countrymen to the recollection of their lost liberties and rights. He does not believe in the duration of a Government which, in appearance, is sufficiently revolutionary to dispense with being liberal, and he has sufficient faith in the recuperativeness, elasticity, and vigour of his countrymen to feel assured that they will promptly escape from the despotism of a man to whom they have surrendered some of their best rights, and who has confiscated to his own benefit some of their best liberties. The publication of the work at this time is peculiarly apropos. The prestige which the Emperor of the French has exclusively enjoyed among the fashionable circles, among our younger nobility, and with female leaders of ton in the beau monde, and with all speculators in stock and scrip, has during the last six months been rudely shaken, and now there is scarcely a human being with the capacity to think who does not believe that the Emperor and the Empire have seen their best days. Even the English politicians who most contributed to the success of the coup-d'état in 1851-one eminent Liberal and the three Ex-Protectionists, Derby, Malmesbury, and Disraeli-now begin to perceive that the star of Imperialism is no longer in the ascendant, and that within six months theremay be an awful, sudden, domestic crash, or that which may lead. to a domestic crash in France-a foreign war of injustice and. aggression. It is true Lords Derby and Malmesbury still call the Emperor illustrious and great in vindication of their own consistency, and that as he is still in possession of an Imperial throne, Mr. Disraeli fawns upon him as he did from the beginning; but the initiated are well aware that the existing feeble Cabinet is ill at ease on the condition of France, and quite at a loss to conceive what are the inscrutable projects of this reserved and mysterious man to whom they lent so helping a hand in 1852. Ever since the conspiracy of Orsini, the Emperor and his advisers appear to have lost all sense and discretion, and to have been paralysed by fears not imaginary, but too real. Terror has rendered Louis Napoleon not merely unreasonable but cruel; and the demands for a Conspiracy Bill-demands too eagerly listened to by the late Cabinet-increased the desire to convert our criminal code and our justiciary and police systems into additional and extra-legal means of Imperial safety.

The withdrawal of the Conspiracy Bill, the acquittal of Simon