of their infatuated exclusiveness. The army was still open to them, and, to a small extent, the seats of justice; but they had almost ceased to display their characteristic gallantry in the one, or to be qualified for influence in the other. Drawn from their estates, on which the old loyal retainer had become the defiant tenant, by the superior attractions of the capital and the court, the love of degenerate pleasure supplanted the former passion for rule. They cultivated wit, grace, agreeable conversation and manners--the qualities which amuse and fascinate in the saloon-instead of the sterner qualities which command in the forum, or win immortal honor on the field. Many of them were debauchedmany utterly neglectful of the duties of religion and patriotism-all ruinously extravagant. The life of the court is always a life of expense; and what they were forced to squander on folly in Paris, they tried to reimburse by extortions in the provinces. They could still levy their cens and rentes-foncières on the poor landed proprietors; they could still raise their tolls from fairs and markets; they could still compel the farmers to grind their corn at the manorial mill, and to press their grapes at the manorial wine-press. But along with the heavy contributions gathered from their tenants, they reaped a bitter harvest of ill-will. Brilliant and beautiful personages, indeed, they were. Not in the world's history have there been more polished and graceful men than the old French noblesse-vivacious in talk, seductive in manners; but, alas! they were nearly as useless as they were polished, and as corrupt as they were charming. It was not from them that either the state or society could expect a regeneration.

As for the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, there were some who, imitating their superiors in respects in which they were least worthy of imitation-purchasing offices that they might sport aristocratic titles and affect aristocratic manners, yet despised by the aristocracy for their want of blood, and hated by the people for their aspirations to rank -had been already painted by Molière, in his Dandin and Jourdain. But there were others, of a very different stamp, who cared little about alliances with the "illustrious house of Sotenville," or the “eminent line of the Prudroteries," and pushed their fortune elsewhere with

infinitely greater effect. Availing themselves of the industrial spirit, which modern science had awakened, they gathered about them the most substantial tokens of success. They were traders, manufacturers, bankers, and financiers. With wealth also came offices not offices of high-sounding names, but of the most comfortable emoluments the richest intendencies and controllerships, and farmings of the revenue, were theirs; while the grave dignities of the law were showered upon them, and the schools opened their doors to them, and the rising power of the literary coteries paid them its court. For them Colbert and Turgot administered, and Montesquieu wrote, and the Destouches and the Beaumarchais, though they knew it not, cracked their jokes. Royalty was glad to borrow their money; nobility condescended to marry their daughters; but, like royalty and like nobility, they had no bowels for the people, whence they came. “Though the career of the nobility," says De Tocqueville, "and that of the middle classes, had differed widely, there was one point of resemblance between them --both had kept themselves aloof from the people. Instead of uniting with the peasantry, the middle classes had shrunk from the contact; instead of joining with them to combat injustice, they had only sought to aggravate injusticethey had been as eager for exceptional rights as the nobility for privileges. Themselves sprung from the ranks of the peasantry, they had so lost all recollection and knowledge of their former character, that it was not until they had armed the peasants, that they perceived they had roused passions which they could neither gauge, guide, nor restrain, and of which they were destined to be the victims, as well as the authors."

Meanwhile, what was the condition of the people-that goose whom all the others plucked? What has been, what is, the condition of the people everywhere, except in the democracies, and sometimes in them? Ignorance, suffering, wrong, and despair! But the French peasant vegetated, without guidance, in his misery, save from a church, which, though adorned by the most accomplished prelates and the most laborious and kind-hearted curés, was stained by remembrances of St. Bartholomew and the dragonnades. Our author has drawn

a fearful picture of the various obstructions by which the movements of the people were resisted, and of the oppressions by which they were overborne ; but fearful as it is, it is yet incomplete. No passion was stronger in the heart of a rural Frenchman than his passion for land-for some little corner of the universe which he might call his own. But in order to buy his land, supposing him to have inherited or amassed money enough to do so, he must pay a tax on the purchase-not to the government, but to one of his neighbors, who owned what was called the cens, or perpetual rent. When he is about to put in the seed, he may be summoned to the corvée, or to enforced labor upon his neighbor's land, or on the highway. If his seed be put in, and the harvest come, his neighbor's horses and hounds will trample it in pursuit of game, which he himself has no right to take. The remnant reaped, he carries it to market, paying a toll on the road, a toll on the bridge, a toll at the barriers of his province, and a toll at the market-place. He returns to his home, where he would consume the surplus of his produce in his family; but he finds that he must take the grain to the mill of his neighbor to be ground, and the flour to the oven of his neighbor to be baked; and then the tax-collectors will call upon him for a twentieth or a tenth of it in value, for the dues of the government; and the church will exact its dues, and for every moment that he withholds the amount, legal charges attach and accumulate, till the land itself is scarcely worth the claims against it.

"Picture,

if you can," says De Tocqueville, "the condition, the wants, the character, the passions of such a man, and estimate the store of envy and hatred he is laying up in his heart!"

What aggravated the sense of wrong under these multiplied burdens, was the perception that the kings were squandering millions upon idle wars, debauched favorites, and insolent courtesans. The conquests of the Grand Monarque had ended in financial embarrassinents, which no subtlety of Mazarin, no skill of Colbert could avert -the orgies of the Regency had turned the world of commerce into a gambling house, and the world of fashion into a bagnio: the reign of Louis XV. was ridiculed by his fellow-monarchs even, as the reign of the petticoats, under VOL. VIII.-31

secret

which the licentious atrocities of the parc aux cerfs surpassed the atrocities of the grottoes of Capri. For more than half a century, the state had writhed and tossed with disorders of finance, impossible to heal. Neither exactions nor arbitrary taxes, which only irritated the more-nor bankruptcies and confiscations, which only disaffected the more-nor yet the sale of offices and the substitution of paper for gold, which only intoxicated the more, could stop the ravages of the great cancerous deficit. All the wisest doctors of the purse, from Sully to Necker, had been employed on that disease, with partial reliefs ending in permanent aggravations. What were the labors of the Danaides, drawing water in sieves, to those of a French minister? The problem was, out of nothing and less, to extract much-and desperate were the attempts at the solution. Yet the gay creatures of the court-represented in the one sex by an Abbé Dubois, and in the other by Pompadourwent on singing, and dancing, and eating their "pleasant little suppers in pleasant little mansions,"'-as Rochefoucault names them, "consecrated to Cupid and his mother, and more enchanting than Paphos or Idalia,”- -as carelessly as the Pompeians may be supposed to have feasted on that sickly night, when a sulphurous cloud suddenly enveloped the Campagna.

All the while that French society was undergoing the slow but certain process of decomposition, there was one solid and enduring power growing up-the power of the Pen--which was but another name for that of Opinion. It is common to class the writers of that age under the general term of philoso-. phers, but they were as multitudinous in their kinds almost as the stars of the sky, and they agreed only in the determination of reducing everything to its naked elementary principles. Voltaire, the Mephistopheles, led on his glittering rabble of wits and epigrammatists; Montesquieu commanded the firmer cohorts of the publicists, and Rousseau, from his solitude, swayed the pathetic bands of sentimentalists and dreamers. They railed and scoffed, they reasoned and declaimed, they cracked jokes and enacted plays, laughing and weeping all to one end-the subversion of that world of complicated and stupid traditional privileges which harassed socie

ty. As we read it, at this day, the greater part of that motley literature seems to us inadequate to the effects it produced; but that is because we read it without the feeling of that deeper spirit out of which it sprang. Much of it is shallow; much of it wanton-a mere windy and brilliant schaum-wesen or foam; and all of it skeptical; yet it is easy to see that the skepticism, and glitter, and the very shallowness of it, indeed, is on the surface, while there is a soul within its soul, a depth beyond its depth, in the whole spirit of the age which it represented. Beneath the bubbles and froth of the stream, swept a mighty under-current of earnest thought and passionate enthusiasm. Voltaire was a scoffer and a trifler, but any one, who will read his letters on the cases of Calas and others, will see that he could be, also, a fanatic for liberty. Like him, the age scoffed and trifled, but could be fearfully in earnest. What everybody felt, what each one tried to express, in his way-in puns and plays, as in profound dissertations-was that right was greater than might-that nature was better than convention-that reason was superior to authority-and that institutions were made for man, and not man for institutions. Could there have been grander_or profounder thoughts than these? Had not the world travailed with them since the advent of Christ? Had not martyrs died, and heroes fought, and all the wise, and good, and gentle souls of the earth struggled for these, as of the very essence of the gospel? And now, after eighteen

hundred years, in dim, confused shapes, but veritably, they had got possession of a whole people-of a people wretched, yet gallant, excitable by mere impulses to transports of ferocity-"more capable of heroism than of virtue, fuller of genius than good sense"--suspicious and generous, vain and self-sacrificing alike, and thoroughly persuaded, as Carlyle says, that nothing stood between them and the golden age, but a few traitors. That people arose, and it was the Revolution! It arose, not in its wrath at first, but with a calm, sublime energy; all ranks, each individual, appeared to be animated by a generous love of reform; but the obstructions were as inveterate as they were numerous to fret it into impatience; the leaders of every party were incompetent, none knowing what he wished, or how to accomplish it when he did know; the king was amiable but weak, the nobles better courtiers than chiefs, and the republicans rhetors who had learned their phrases out of the annals of Greece and Rome. Of the men that early arose to take command, the best hearts among them, like Lafayette or the Girondists, had very little head, and the best heads, like Mirabeau and Danton, had corrupt hearts. They could not act together, and there was no positive doctrine capable of crystalizing the molten metal into form.

But, of the conduct of the Revolution and its results, we may, perhaps, have an opportunity to speak, when our author shall have presented the second volume, which he promises on this subject.

This was the order from the frigate to our consort-a long black steamer, that was always breaking her pistonrods, or bell-cranks, or smashing her cylinder-heads, or getting the dash-pots into hot water, and coming into port with temporary plank escape pipes to be continually patched up, repaired, and otherwise made to go. There wasn't a harbor, from Gibraltar to Trieste in the Mediterranean, where she had not been taken apart, put together again, and tinkered up generally. She was, in fact, an everlasting steam joke.

Now, there is a deal to be said in favor of paddling locomotion in a fine war-steamer, where everything plays easily and smoothly; and, barring the permeating dust from the coal bunkers, the heat from those volcanoes of furnaces, and the perfume of the oiled cotton and the engine, a steamer is not a bad contrivance to plough salt water in. A sailing vessel, however, is the cleanliest and tidiest, and, indeed, for a long sea residence, many unhappy mariners prefer it; particularly when those on board have no bother with the ropes and sails, while the hawsers are taut ahead fast to a steamer, tugging you against wind and sea. Then it is all fun and no work.

So it was with us, on board the flagship, as we hitched on to our consort and drove her with a strong rein past the island of Tino, one fine November afternoon.

We were all at the gun-room mess, devouring soup, preliminary to dinner.

The Commissary, R. Peeteet, U. S. N., who looked out for our cash and subsistence, was seated at the foot of the table. Surgeon A. A. Archimedes Franklin Lint, Lorimer, Doctor Bristles, Jack Toker, Wash. Mirrick, Bimshaw, Bays, and a lot more of us were there. All tip-top republicans, who touched the pen, and drew our pay regular at the first of every month.

Anybody tell where we're bound?" suggested Lint. He was of a controversial disposition, and fond of argumentation.

"Ask the Flag; he's in the cabinet," said Bimshaw.

The Flag, however, refused to open his lips, save for okra soup.

Posey," ejaculated Bays, the marine, to the wine boy, "you needn't pass the lachryma to Mr. Gringo, till he comes to terms."

"Oh! by no means," said Bristles, "and if he don't make a clean breast of it, won't I fly-plaster him in the back, when he complains of the lumbago again."

66

Come, out with it," said Toker, authoritatively, "or I'll order the cockpit bread-rooms broke out this afternoon, and smother you in bread

dust."

"Port Mahon !" they wailed. Heaven save us! Have we been broiled in Muscat. stewed in Shanghai, baked in the Piræus, and roasted in Rio and Benin, and now to be mildewed in old Mahon, and fed on red-legged partridges, and our thirst quenched with monkey soups! Oh! wirra, wirra!”

66

Gentlemen," said the First Luff with a pleasant frown. "howling is contrary to regulation. We should be patriotic, and go where duty calls us, without a murmur. Glass of wine with you, purser?"

Purser Peeteet was the only member of the mess who seemed to be indifferent as to where the frigate went, so long as she had water under her keel. He merely muttered, as he plunged the carving-knife through the side bone of a walnut-stuffed turkey:

"If this meeting have any observations to make, they had better organ ize; yes, sir, organize, draw up resolutions and reduce them to form-to form, sir, instead of raising all this riot."

The conversation, after this reproof, became more subdued and general; and with the delicious music of La Favorita floating over our heads on the gundeck, we resigned ourselves to dessert and Port Mahon in perspective. Moreover, the frigate, without canvas to steady her, was beginning to roll and wallow in a very undignified manner; and not caring to slide about the gunroom, I went to the upper deck.

After struggling through the waves all night, close beside the high mountainous coast, at daylight we tugged into Genoa, where we dropped anchor, and remained a day or two.

were

In the evening, Mirrick and I, after flânering about the Strada Nuova, paused at the book-shops, dipped into a French bazaar, where we bought bogus jewelry for the natives of Minorca, took coffee with some of our officer friends of the Sardinian Bersigliari, and finally procured our entradas to the magnificent white marble opera-house of Carlos the Happy.

The season had not fairly commenced for good music, and we were only regaled with a miserable buffa opera, which set us off to sleep. Between the acts, however, we had a beautiful ballet, and then the Persiani--not the divine artiste of that name, but a lot of jugglers from Persia. They performed all sorts of feats-such as sticking their heads on the floor, and galloping around that part of their system with their legs, then putting their feet in their waistcoat pockets, and jumping about like unto crickets on their knee-joints. One descendant of the prophet ran with great celerity up a long pole, and tried to pull it up after him, but failed miserably and came down on his back, to the disgust of the spectators. Mirrick and I were diverted, however, and even A. A. Franklin Lint, who had joined us in the parquet, found leisure, during his struggles of winking at that beautiful Condessa up there in the boxes-who had fallen desperately in love with him -through his lorgnette, to be amused, also.

The following afternoon, under the hempen wings of our wig-wagging consort, we turned our faces from Genoa, and, in twenty-four hours after, we rounded the bluff promontory of La Mola-the eastern cape of Minorcaand stood up the narrow inlet to Port Mahon.

All the world knows that Port Mahon is the finest harbor on the face of the earth. Mighty fleets can repose with perfect safety within its landlocked arms, as they have for scores and scores of years, from the time of the Druids, down to the bloody wars on water, of the English, French, and Spaniards.

The entrance is as narrow, proportionably, as the neck is to a flask of champagne. The shores are bold; and the water deep enough for the greatest Leviathan ever built. On the left, as you enter, stand the remains of the strong fortress of Saint Philip; its long and irregular lines, where cannon once frowned, are now in ruins; the vast excavations, where, in times past, two thousand horses were stabled, with huge bomb-proof magazines and interminable subterranean galleries, now a confused mass of stones and rubbish. In a word, this great castle was blown up, according to the treaty of Amiens, in June, 1802, when it was given up to Spain. But had the officer in command waited for his duplicate instructions, which countermanded the first orders, England would have proved recreant to her plighted word, as she did with Malta, Cape Town, and Pondicherry, and still kept her lion's paw on Minorca. These facts are matters of history. Nevertheless, Minorca must, for all time, be a bone of contention between France and England. It is midway between Gibraltar and Malta, and a half-way house from France to her possessions in Algeria. It is positively essential to France, and there is not a doubt in my mind though I have never peeped into the secret archives of the French embassy at Madrid-that Louis Napoleon had resolved to seize the island in May, 1852; but John Bull got wind of the design, and Admiral Dundas hovered about the place with seven ships of the line, until the French Dictator turned his attention to affairs in the Orient. The Spaniards themselves, however, after nearly half a century of inaction, have, at last, begun in earnest to put the port in a state of defense.

By treaty, Spain cannot restore Saint Philip, but she has chosen a far better position, and on the shelving ascent of La Mola she is rapidly rearing a great series of fortifications, which not only protect the approaches from the sea, but command the harbor itself.

It