eyes

might say that every morning they sow a little shabby grass, which comes up at once, and which they mow down every evening. On such plains there are neither great oaks nor deep springs. What could the Wandering Jew know of all the things that passed before his ? He never could stop anywhere. From the place to which he saw the swallows come in spring, he never could see them take their autumnal flight. The noise of his own wandering steps prevented his hearing the silence of the nights. If he passed through a city where men were mustering to arms, he could not linger to see who would carry the day in it, the oppressor or the oppressed. Thus continual activity cuts the threads of thought. I hope you think this a pretty essay on laziness.'

To the same friend he sends one day a plan of study, which, so far from being the praise of inactivity, is almost too vast to be grasped by one mind, or carried out in one lifetime. To Madame d'Harcourt he says (October, 1850):—

'I will some day go over in detail a first sketch, which I dare say I have already made for you. It would be to take up the chain of all the great poets since the beginning, and to watch them passing from hand to hand the torch of the Ideal. One could make a list (it would not be a very long one) of all the men who by their imagination have in turns tinged the thoughts of other men, and note what is evanescent and what is enduring among the fleeting images of all that which is eternally beautiful, from the days of Job to those of Lord Byron. It would be like a rainbow which spans from the burning plains of the East to the fogs of England. In this walk through the past you would pass through the summer palace of Solomon; you would meet Homer in Troy, Sophocles in Athens; on the Aventine there would be Virgil, on the Arno Dante; and Eden itself would lie around Milton's little house. All the history of the world is in them, as good as in the chronicles of nations, only in words that burn with a more living fire. . . . You would not be obliged to read over what you already knew, only to fill up the gaps in your mind, and to go over recollections that had begun to grow dim in your memory.'

These passages strike us as charming, but we must not loiter in the flowery plains of literature even with a guide as unique as this man, who was the very embodiment of the critical faculty considered as opposed to the creative one. Acutely sensitive to artistic conditions, he subordinated all his faculties to reason and to taste, and he was at the same time a virtuoso in the art of friendship. This makes the charm of his easy, confidential, tender, and humorous style, and this will continue to give his readers an interest in his person, independent of the themes he has to treat or of the personages about whom he has something to tell. We shall do well, however, to glance with him at some of the actors on the stage of recent or contemporary history. Sometimes his judgment was

almost prophetic in its insight, sometimes it was warped by his excessive impatience of bombast and loud-swelling words. It was on account of their enthusiastic phrases that he disliked the Italian party of action. The very noise that they made worried him, and, like many bystanders both in France and England, he augured little success and less stability for their

mission.

For Lamartine our satirical if kindly critic felt nothing but impatience; for, as he said of him, What a noble river he would be, if he were not an inundation!' Doudan hated paradoxes and declamation, and not all the beauty of the Méditations' could reconcile him to the bombast of the poet-orator of Mâcon. Of his political creeds and nostrums Doudan says that he had such a store that his mind was at last like an apothecary's shop in disorder-a mixture of all the poisons and antidotes in common use.

But the greatest person of the day was undoubtedly Louis Napoleon, and of his character and talents Doudan seems from the very first to have formed a very unflattering, not to say unfavourable opinion. To this opinion he also held, conceiving it to be borne out by events, from the first fanfaronnade with the tame eagle, down to those agitated days of the last elections and of the last plébiscite, when the skies were lowering with storms, with the distress of nations, and with all the coming perplexity. Of the distress M. Doudan had his full share, remaining as he did at his post in Paris, and refusing to quit it in the following lines, which are an admirable transcript of his dutiful and simple mind. They are addressed to M. Célestin Doudan, a relation, with whom he had corresponded for more than fortythree years:

'Paris, Sept. 8, 1870.

‘DEAR FRIEND,—I am more sensible than I can say of the cordiality of the offer you make me, in the event of my quitting Paris during its siege. If my duties did not detain me here, and if my health permitted me to travel ever so little, I would have accepted your amicable and friendly proposition with lively pleasure, just as I receive it with much gratitude. We are here in the most horrible political crisis that the nation has ever known; an invasion following on hideous defeats; a revolution which is not the less dangerous because it was indispensable; and to conclude, the fermentation of all the most perverse instincts which may explode in the very midst of the gravest perils of this war. I hope that you have some security behind your ramparts: my memory draws them most distinctly. The bastions where I clambered as a child, and in spite of the artillerymen I searched for violets, must be to-day bristling with cannon. I hasten to close, for I was busy this morning, and send off this letter to-day lest the morrow should be already too late for the railway.'

After the entrance of the Prussians he writes to Mademoiselle Gavard:

'It seems as if a hundred years had passed in these four months. Already, during the revolution of 1848, I had had the same impression. Yet that was but a bouquet of roses in comparison with what we have seen, with what we see, and with what we have yet to see. One often finds in the Bible the words "treasures of wrath," and visibly these are what have been recently poured upon us, and with no sparing hand. It remains to be seen why these Germans, who are not by any means saints, who can give an air of romance to the vices of their domestic life, and an air of scientific system to the cruelty and pillage of their military life-it remains to be seen why these Germans are deputed to chasten us.'

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Yet even when penning these bitter lines the instinct of a critic is strong in Doudan, and he stops himself to speak to his correspondent of one of Trollope's novels which he has just read: There are three different lines of action in it, 'which have all very little connexion between each other. This comes of the necessity for making long novels, when one has only a small picture in one's mind-one makes a gallery of them instead of one great painting.'

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The lady who has compiled and edited the letters of M. Doudan has no doubt worked for the sake of his memory and of his friends, and she has been rewarded by the great popularity of her book. The perusal of it gives so much pleasure that it seems ungrateful to point out its shortcomings; but Madame du Parquet must allow us to regret the method in which she has arranged these letters, or rather the way in which she has given them to the public without any adequate arrangement at all. When the second volume closes, the year 1872, that of the writer's death, has been reached, and France, under the rule of the Maréchal-président, acknowledges the influence of the d'Harcourts, d'Haussonvilles, and Broglies, of the families among which Doudan's life was spent, and some, if not all, his opinions were fostered. It is, therefore, very annoying to take up the third and fourth volumes, and to perceive that, as their publication has been an afterthought, we are suddenly lifted back to 1832 and to the great visitation of the cholera. This batch of letters of course ultimately also brings us down to the Prussian invasion, the siege of Paris, and M. Doudan's death. We can but hope that in some future edition the faults of arrangement may be remedied; and with the view to a re-issue we would also suggest that there is a want of notes, or of some connecting thread, however slender, to give continuity to the

VOL. CXLVIII. NO. CCCIII.

book, and to make it continue to be intelligible when the generation of M. Doudan's friends shall have passed away.

Take an example of our meaning. The death of the amiable Duchesse de Broglie is dwelt on, and letters in the first volume attest all the love and grief of her survivors. But of the death of the Duc de Broglie nothing is said till the fourth volume, though that event, occurring in 1870, deprived him of the man to whom he owed the happiness of a lifetime, and France of a statesman and a patriot. Happily M. de Broglie did not live to witness the worst calamities of his country. Although he had long retired from active life, his influence continued to be felt through his friends.

When the Empire began to feel that the sweets of power are accompanied with great difficulties, the edifice showed that the strain put on it was too great. Then it was that those liberal politicians, who had hitherto kept aloof from it, either saw, or fancied they saw, the favourable moment for offering some support to a Government which had been established by a gross attack on their personal freedom. Even to the Emperor they hoped to give salutary lessons of constitutional reform. The representatives of this wise liberalism met in the Duc de Broglie's house, and their host was allowed to congratulate himself and them on the peaceful revolution which might possibly be effected by their influence. But though inclined to hope for the best, and even to aid in the restoration of those constitutional liberties which they believed to be essential to the existence of good government, the merited distrust which the liberal statesmen of France felt towards the Empire could never be removed. In our opinion the doctrinaires carried their theory of resistance to the democratic spirit of the age much too far, and never felt true confidence in the people. They were enlightened and philanthropic aristocrats planted in a country which had annihilated aristocracy. The whole tone of M. Doudan's letters, and of the society in which he lived, is aristocratic, though no doubt they are the expression of noble and liberal principles. But the virtues and patriotism of the French aristocracy in the present century cannot regain what was lost by the frivolity and the abuses of former times, and the efforts recently made to regain their ascendency by a reactionary policy have only renewed and aggravated their defeat.

ART. VII.-1. Histoire politique et sociale des Principautés Danubiennes. Par ELIAS REGNAULT. Paris: 1857.

2. Rumänien. Von E. BRAUN. Leipzig: 1877.

IN N the present posture of affairs, and with the limited information vouchsafed to us down to the time at which we write, it would be idle to attempt to make any practical remarks on the proceedings of the great Congress of the European Powers now assembled at Berlin. We rejoice that this Congress has met, and met in a spirit favourable to the peace of Europe and to the establishment of friendly personal relations between the leading statesmen of Europe. That in itself is a considerable benefit, and we believe that the results anticipated from the Congress will be mainly due to the private and personal intercourse which has taken place between those illustrious persons. The British Government had given to the world in Lord Salisbury's Circular a sketch and a pledge of its policy on the Eastern Question, which was accepted by this country and applauded by Europe. We only trust that they will firmly adhere to it. For ourselves, we have no reason to dissent from the views expressed in that celebrated document, since they are identical with the principles we have consistently defended in this journal, and with the old traditions of the Whig party in opposing the aggressions of Russia.

But, although we have at present no remarks to make upon the Congress, one subject has been brought under discussion there, on which it may even now be useful to contribute something to the information of our readers. We shall, therefore, devote the following pages to a more particular account of the relations of Russia and Roumania. Roumania has no especial claims on our sympathy. She chose to wage war against the Porte without the slightest provocation, and to cast in her lot with Russia, when she ought rather to have opposed the violation of her own territory and privileges. She has, therefore, incurred the fate of the lesser animals in the fable who went hunting with the king of beasts. Nevertheless, the existence and independence of Roumania are of European interest. They are based upon the faith of treaties to which we are all parties. They affect the security of the navigation of the Danube. And no part of the Treaty of San Stefano excited more indignation in this country than the black ingratitude and perfidy with which Russia violated her engagements to the gallant little ally, who had flown to her assistance in the hour of need, and attempted to rob him of the territory an