Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849

It is curious to see the natural instinct amusing itself, for the present, with such a mere nominis umbra as Louis Napoleon. In some way or other the hereditary prestige must be created; nothing less is satisfactory, and the "imperial fetishism" will answer very well till something more substantial is found necessary. Richard Cromwell was necessary to Charles II., and so is Louis Napoleon to Henry V. Napoleon still seems capable of giving France a dynasty; this possibility will be soon extinguished by the incapability of his representative. Louis will reign long enough to exhibit that recompense to Josephine, in the person of her grandson, which heaven delights to allot to a repudiated wife; and then, for his own sake, he will be called coquin and poltron. Napoleon will take his historical position as an individual, having no remaining hold on France; and the imperial fetishism will be ignominiously extinguished. Richard Cromwell made a very decent old English gentleman, and Louis Napoleon may perhaps end his days as respectably, in some out-of-the-way corner of Corsica. Let me again quote the French Mentor. He says, "There never has existed a royal family to whom a plebeian origin could be assigned. Men may say, if Richard Cromwell had possessed the genius of his father, he would have fixed the protectorate in his family; which is precisely the same thing as to say – if this family had not ceased to reign, it would reign still." Here is the formula that will suit the case of Louis Napoleon; but future historians will moralise upon the manner in which Napoleon himself worked out his own destruction. For the sake of a dynasty, he puts away poor Josephine. The King of Rome is born to him, but his throne is taken. The royal youth perishes in early manhood, and men find Napoleon's only representative in the issue of the repudiated wife. Her grandson comes to power, and holds it long enough to make men say – how much better it might have been with Napoleon had he kept his faith to Josephine, and contentedly taken as his heir the child in whom Providence has revealed at last his only chance of continuing his family on a throne! It makes one thing of Scripture, "Yet ye say wherefore? because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; … therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth, for the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away."

A traveller from the south of France says that he saw everywhere the portrait of Henry V. Besides the mysterious hold which legitimacy keeps upon the vulgar and the polite alike, there are associations with it which operate on all classes of men. Tradesmen and manufacturers are for legitimacy, because they love peace, and want to make money. The roturiers sooner or later learn the misery of mobs, and the love of change makes them willing to welcome home the king, especially as they mistake their own hearts, and flatter themselves that their sudden loyalty is proof of remaining virtue. Then the profligate and abandoned, they want a monarchy, in hopes of another riot in the palace. It may be doubted whether the blouses can be permanently contented without a king to curse. The national anthem cannot be sung with any spirit, unless there be a monarch who can be imagined to hear all its imprecations against tyrants: in fact, the king must come back, if only to make sense of the Marseilles Hymn.

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,De traîtres, de rois conjurés?Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,Ces fers, dès long-tems préparés?

What imaginable sense is there in singing these red-hot verses at a feast of fraternity, and in honour of the full possession of absolute liberty? Then, where is the sport of clubs, and the excitement of conspiracies, if there's no king to execrate within locked doors? Is Paris to have no more of those nice little émeutes? What's to be done with the genius that delights in infernal machines? Who's to be fired at in a glass coach? Everybody knows that Cavaignacs and Lamartines are small game for such sport. Your true assassin must have, at least, a duke of the blood. These are considerations which must have their weight in deciding upon probabilities; though, for one, I am not sure but France is doomed, by retributive justice, to be thus the Tantalus of nations, steeped to the neck in liberty, but forbidden to drink, with kings hanging over them to provoke the eye, and yet escaping the hand.

In 1796 de Maistre published his Considérations sur la France. They deserve to be reproduced for the present age. Nothing can surpass the cool contempt of the philosophical réactionnaire, or the confidence with which, from his knowledge of the past, he pronounces oracles for the future. Do you ask how Henry V. is to recover his rights? In ten thousand imaginable ways. See what Cavaignac might have done last July, had the time been ripe for another Monk! There's but one way to keep legitimacy out; it comes in as water enters a leaky ship, oozing through seams, and gushing through cracks, where nobody dreamed of such a thing. As long as even a tolerable pretender survives, a popular government must be kept in perpetual alarm. But you shall hear the Count, my Basil! Let me give you a free translation.

"In speculating about counter-revolutions, we often fall into the mistake of taking it for granted that such reactions can only be the result of popular deliberation. The people won't allow it, it is said; they will never consent; it is against the popular feeling. Ah! is it possible? The people just go for nothing in such affairs; at most they are a passive instrument. Four or five persons may give France a king. It shall be announced to the provinces that the king is restored: up go their hats, and vive le roi! Even in Paris, the inhabitants, save a score or so, shall know nothing of it till they wake up some morning and learn that they have a king. 'Est-il possible?' will be the cry: 'how very singular! What street will he pass through? Let's engage a window in good time, there'll be such a horrid crowd!' I tell you the people will have nothing more to do with re-establishing the monarchy, than they have had in establishing the revolutionary government!.. At the first blush one would say, undoubtedly, that the previous consent of the French is necessary to the restoration; but nothing is more absurd. Come, we'll crop theory, and imagine certain facts.

"A courier passes through Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyons, and so en route, telling everybody that the king is proclaimed at Paris; that a certain party has seized the reins, and has declared that it holds the government only in the king's name, having despatched an express for his majesty, who is expected every minute, and that every one mounts the white cockade. Rumour catches up the story, and adds a thousand imposing details. What next? To give the republic the fairest chance, let us suppose it to have the favour of a majority, and to be defended by republican troops. At first these troops shall bluster very loudly; but dinner-time will come; the fellows must eat, and away goes their fidelity to a cause that no longer promises rations, to say nothing of pay. Then your discontented captains and lieutenants, knowing that they have nothing to lose, begin to consider how easily they can make something of themselves, by being the first to set up Vive-le-roi! Each one begins to draw his own portrait, most bewitchingly coloured; looking down in scorn on the republican officers who so lately knocked him about with contempt; his breast blazing with decorations, and his name displayed as that of an officer of His Most Christian Majesty! Ideas so single and natural will work in the brains of such a class of persons: they all think them over; every one knows what his neighbour thinks, and they all eye one another suspiciously. Fear and distrust follow first, and then jealousy and coolness. The common soldier, no longer inspired by his commander, is still more discouraged; and, as if by witchcraft, the bonds of discipline all at once receive an incomprehensible blow, and are instantly dissolved. One begins to hope for the speedy arrival of his majesty's paymaster; another takes the favourable opportunity to desert and see his wife. There's no head, no tail, and no more any such thing as trying to hold together.

"The affair takes another turn with the populace. They push about hither and thither, knocking one another out of breath, and asking all sorts of questions; no one knows what he wants; hours are wasted in hesitation, and every minute does the business. Daring is everywhere confronted by caution; the old man lacks decision, the lad spoils all by indiscretion; and the case stands thus, – one may get into trouble by resisting, but he that keeps quiet may be rewarded, and will certainly get off without damage. As for making a demonstration – where is the means? Who are the leaders? Whom can ye trust? There's no danger in keeping still; the least motion may get one into trouble. Next day comes news —such a town has opened its gates. Another inducement to hold back! Soon this news turns out to be a lie; but it has been believed long enough to determine two other towns, who, supposing that they only follow such example, present themselves at the gates of the first town to offer their submission. This town had never dreamed of such a thing; but, seeing such an example, resolves to fall in with it. Soon it flies about that Monsieur the mayor has presented to his majesty the keys of his good city of Quelquechose, and was the first officer who had the honour to receive him within a garrison of his kingdom. His Majesty – of course – made him a marshal of France on the spot. Oh! enviable brevet! an immortal name, and a scutcheon everlastingly blooming with fleurs-de-lis! The royalist tide fills up every moment, and soon carries all before it. Vive-le-roi! shouts out long-smothered loyalty, overwhelmed with transports: Vive-le-roi! chokes out hypocritical democracy, frantic with terror. No matter! there's but one cry; and his Majesty is crowned, and has all the royal makings of a king. This is the way counter-revolutions come about. God having reserved to himself the formation of sovereignties, lets us learn the fact, from observing that He never commits to the multitude the choice of its masters. He only employs them, in those grand movements which decide the fate of empires, as passive instruments. Never do they get what they want: they always take; they never choose. There is, if one may so speak, an artifice of Providence, by which the means which a people take to gain a certain object, are precisely those which Providence employs to put it from them. Thus, thinking to abase the aristocracy by hurrahing for Cæsar, the Romans got themselves masters. It is just so with all popular insurrections. In the French revolution the people have been perpetually handcuffed, outraged, betrayed, and torn to pieces by factions; and factions themselves, at the mercy of each other, have only risen to take their turn in being dashed to atoms. To know in what the revolution will probably end, find first in what points all the revolutionary factions are agreed. Do they unite in hating Christianity and monarchy? Very well! The end will be, that both will be the more firmly established in the earth."

Cool, certainly; is it not, my Basil? The legitimists are the only Frenchmen who can keep cool, and bide their time. Chateaubriand has observed, in the same spirit, that there is a hidden power which often makes war with powers that are visible, and that a secret government was always following close upon the heels of the public governments that succeeded each other between the murder of Louis XVI. and the restoration of the Bourbons. This hidden power he calls the eternal reason of things; the justice of God, which interferes in human affairs just in proportion as men endeavour to banish and drive it from them. It is evident that the whole force of de Maistre's prophecy was owing to his religious confidence in this divine interference. He wrote in 1796. That year the career of Napoleon began at Montenotte; and, for eighteen years succeeding, every day seemed to make it less and less probable that his predictions could be verified. The Bourbon star was lost in the sun of Austerlitz. The Republic itself was forgotten; the Pope inaugurated the Empire; Austria gave him a princess, to be the mould of a dynasty, and the source of a new legitimacy. France was peopled with a generation that never knew the Bourbons, and which was dazzled with the genius of Napoleon, and the splendour of his imperial government. But the time came for this puissance occulte, cette justice du ciel! When the Allies entered Paris in 1814, it was suggested to Napoleon that the Bourbons would be restored; and, with all his sagacity, he made the very mistake which de Maistre had foreshown, and said, in almost his very words – "Never! nine-tenths of the people are irreconcilably against it!" One can almost hear what might have been the Count's reply – "Quelle pitié! le peuple n'est pour rien dans les revolutions. Quatre ou cinq personnes, peut-être, donneront un roi à la France." What could Talleyrand tell about that? The facts were, that in four days the Bourbons were all the rage! The Place Vendôme could hardly hold the mob that raved about Napoleon's statue; and, with ropes and pulleys, they were straining every sinew to drag it to the ground, when it was taken under the protection of Alexander!14 What next? In terror for his very life, this Napoleon flies to Frejus, now sneaking out of a back-window, and now riding post, as a common courier, actually saving himself by wearing the white cockade over his raging breast, and all the time cursing his dear French to Tartarus! A British vessel gives him his only asylum, and the salute he receives from a generous enemy is all that reminds him what he once had been in France. Meantime these detested Bourbons are welcomed home again, with De Maistre's own varieties of Vive-le-roi! The Duke d'Angouleme, advancing to the capital, sees the silver lilies dancing above the spires of Bordeaux: the Count d'Artois hails the same tokens at Nancy: not captains and lieutenants, but generals and marshals, rush to receive His Most Christian Majesty; and the successor of the butchered Louis XVI. comes to his palace, after an exile of twenty years, with the title of Louis the Desired! Nor are subsequent events anything more than the swinging of a pendulum, which must eventually subside into a plummet. If the first disaster of Napoleon, in the fulness of his strength, could make France welcome her legitimacy in 1814, why should not the imbecility of the mere shadow of his name produce a stronger revulsion before this century gains its meridian? There is a residuary fulfilment of de Maistre's augury, which remains to the Bourbons, when all of Napoleon that survives has found its ignominious extinction. Then will the ripe fruit fall into the lap of one who, if he is wise, will make the French forget his kindred with the fourteenth and fifteenth Louises, and remember only that Henry of Bordeaux has before him the example of Henry of Navarre.

There is, indeed, another conceivable end. C'est l'arrêt que le ciel prononce enfin contre les peuples sans jugement, et rebelles à l'expérience.15 If France does not soon come back to reason, we shall be forced to think her given up of God, to become such a country as Germany, or perhaps as miserable as Spain. But we must not be too hasty in coming to conclusions so deplorable. Let the republic have its day. It will work its own cure; for the chastisement of France must be the curse of ancient Judah. "The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and everyone by his neighbour; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." For the mob of Paris, who got drunk with riot, and must grow sober with headache; for the blousemen and the boys who have pulled a house upon their head, and now maul each other in painful efforts to get from under the ruins; and for the miserable philosophes who see, in the charming state of their country, the fruit of their own atheistic theories; for all these it is but retribution. They needed government; they resolved on license: God has sent them despotism in its worst form. One pities Paris, but feels that it is just. My emotions are very different when I think of what were once "the pleasant villages of France." Miserable campagnards! There are thousands of them, besides the poor souls starving in provincial towns, who curse the republic in their hearts; and, from Normandy to Provence and Languedoc, there are millions of such Frenchmen, who care nothing for dynasties, or fraternities, or democracy, but only pray the good Lord to give peace in their time, that they may sit under their own vine, and earn and eat their daily bread. For them – may God pity them! – what a life Dame Paris leads them! If, with the simplicity of rustics, they were for a moment disposed to be merry last February – when they heard that thereafter loaves and fishes were to fling themselves upon every table, for the mere pleasure of being devoured – how bitterly the simpletons are undeceived! Their present notions of fraternity and equality they get from hunger and from rags. It is not now in France as in the days of Henry IV., when every peasant had a pullet in the pot for his Sunday dinner. That was despotism. It is liberty now – liberty to starve. There is no more oppression, for the very looms refuse to work, and water-wheels stand still; and the vines go gadding and unpruned, and the grape disdains to be trampled in the wine-vat. Yes – and the old paysan and his sprightly dame, who used to drive dull care away in the sunshine – she, with her shaking foot and head, and he with his fiddle and his bow, they have liberty to the full; for their seven sons, who were earning food for them in the sweat of their brow, have come home to the old cabin, ragged and unpaid; and they lounge about in hungry idleness, longing for war, but only because war would provide them with a biscuit or a bullet. What care they for glory, or for constitutions? They ask for bread, and their teeth are ground with gravel-stones. Let England look and learn. If she has troubles, let her see how easily troubles may be invested at compound interest, with the certainty of dividends for years to come. Is hard thrift in a kingdom so bad as starvation in a democracy? And whether is it better to wear out honestly, in this work-day world, as good and quiet subjects; or to be thrust out of it, kicking and cursing, behind a barricade of cabs and paving-stones, in the name of equality? These are the common-sense questions, that every English labourer should be made to feel and answer.

It provokes me, Basil, that my letter may be superannuated while it is travelling in the steamer! The changes of democracy are more frequent than the revolutions of a paddle-wheel. Adieu. Yours,

Ernest.

DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO

Dalmatia and Montenegro. By Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson. London: Murray.

It is really astonishing that our want of information respecting Dalmatia, and its neighbourhood, has not long ago been supplied. It is by no means easy, now-a-days, to hit upon a line of country that may afford subject-matter for acceptable illustration. Travellers are so numerous, and authorship is so generally affected, that the best part of Europe has been described over and over again. You may get from Mr Murray a handbook for almost any place you will. Manners and customs, roads, inns, things to be suffered, and notabilities to be visited – in short, all the probable contingencies of travel between this and the Vistula, are already noted and set down. We take it upon ourselves to say, that it is one of the most difficult things in life to realise the sense of desolation and unwontedness that are poetic characteristics of the traveller. How can a man feel himself strange to any place where he is so thoroughly up to usages that no locandière can cheat him to the amount of a zwanziger? And, thanks to the books written, it is a man's own fault if he wend almost anywhither except thus μύστης γενόμενος.

In truth, European travelling is pretty nearly reduced to the work of verification. Events are according to prescription; and there remains very little room for the play of an exploring spirit. The grand thing to be explored is a matter pysychological rather than material; it is to prove experimentally what are the emotions that a generous mind experiences, when vividly acted upon by association with the world of past existences. Beyond doubt, this is the highest range of intellectual enjoyment; and to its province may be referred much that at first sight would appear to be heterogeneous, as, for instance, delights purely scientific. But at any rate, we must all agree that the main privilege of a traveller is, that he is enabled to test the force of this power of association. It is an enjoyment to be known only by experiment. No power of description can give a man to understand what is the sensation of gazing on the Acropolis, or of standing within Ἁγία Σοφία. It is as another sense, called into existence by the occasion of exercise.

To any but the uncommonly well read, there has hitherto been meagre entertainment in travelling among the Slavonian borderers on the Adriatic. It has been impossible to realise on their subject these high pleasures of association, because so little has been known of the facts of their history; rather should we perhaps say, that, of what has been known, so little has been generally accessible. But we are happy to find that the right sort o' "chiel has been amang them, takin' notes." The way is now open; and henceforth it will be easy to follow with profit. The book which Sir Gardner Wilkinson has given us seems to be exactly the thing which was wanted; and certainly the use of it will enable a man to travel in Dalmatia as a rational creature should. No mere dotter down of events could have passed through the course of this country without producing a document of considerable value. The widespread family of which its inhabitants are a branch have been intimately mixed up with the history of the Empire and of Christendom; and now again we behold them playing a conspicuous part in European politics. Modern Panslavism deepens the interest to be felt in this family, and quickens the anxiety to know what they are doing and thinking now, as well as what they have done in days of old. In the present volumes we have, besides the memoranda of things existing, a compendium of Slavonian history and antiquities, and an exhibition of the degree in which the race have been mixed up with European history. Besides this, an account is given of their more domestic traditions, of which monuments survive; and it must be a man's own fault if, having this book with him, he miss extracting the utmost of profit from a visit to the country.

In one way, we can surely prophesy that this book will prove the means of bringing to us increase of lore from out of that land of which it treats. It will naturally be taken on board every yacht that, when next summer shall open skies and seas, may find its way into the Mediterranean. Among these birds of passage, it can scarcely be but that some one will shape its course for this land of adventure, thus, as it were, newly laid open. It is a little, a very little out of the direct track, in which these summer craft are apt to be found, plentiful as butterflies. They may rest assured that in no place, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pharos of Alexandria, can they hope to find such provision of entertainment. The stories they may thence bring will really be worth something – a value much higher than we can vote ascribable to much that we hear of the well-frequented shores of the French lake.

We prophesy, also, that an inspiriting effect will be produced on men better qualified even than the yachtsmen for the work of travel – we mean on the gallant officers who garrison the island of Corfu. They occupy a station so exactly calculated to facilitate excursions in the desirable direction, that it will be too bad if some of them do not start this very next spring. We do not recommend the Adriatic in winter time, and so give them a few months' grace, just to keep clear of the Bora. Let them, as soon as possible after the equinox, avail themselves of one of those gaps which will be occurring in the best-regulated garrison life. Times will come round when duty makes no exaction, and when the indigenous resources of the island afford no amusement. Should such occasion have place out of the shooting months – or when, haply, some row with the Albanians has placed Butrinto under interdict – woful are the straits to which our ardent young fellow-countrymen are reduced. A ride to the Garoona pass, or a lounge into Carabots; or, to come to the worst, an hour or two's flané round old Schulenberg's statue, are well in their way, but cannot please for ever. All these things considered, it is, we say, but likely that we shall reap some substantial benefit from the leisure of our military friends, so soon as their literary researches shall have carried them into the enjoyment of this book. Dalmatia is almost before their very eyes. If hitherto they have not drifted thither, under the combined influences of a long leave and an uncertain purpose, it is because they have not been in a condition to prosecute researches. We must not blame them for their past neglect, any more than we blame the idleness of him who lacks the implements of work. Give a man tools, and then, if he work not, monstrare digito. Henceforth they must be regarded as thoroughly equipped, and without excuse. Let us hope that some two or three may be roused to action on the very next opportunity – that is to say, on the very next occasion of leave. Let us hope that, instead of sloping away to Paxo, or Santa Maura, they may shape their course through the North Channel, and begin, if they please, by exploring the Bocca di Cattaro.