and irrational expenditure raised the price enormously of all the luxuries and of many of the necessaries of life; it has become more and more difficult to live honestly; to the honest with fixed and limited incomes it has become very difficult to live at all. Strange sad stories are told of the low straits that all, especially the upper classes and the pleasure-hunters, are reduced to to keep afloat: strange stories of the costly luxury in which ladies of rank and position insist upon indulging; sad stories of the means by which alone that cost can be defrayed. Probably this exasperation of the national passion for material splendour and material enjoyment will be found in the end to be the worst legacy which the Empire has bequeathed to France, and the heaviest sin to be placed to the debit side of the Imperial régime.* - loans which he introduced, and which is believed to have been his own design, has furnished the peasantry - always a hoarding class- with a ready and secure investment for their savings. Formerly they invested these solely in the purchase of land, which yielded a very low interest and cost extravagantly dear.* Now they lend to the Government and obtain four or five per cent. for their money; and naturally are interested in the stability of the dynasty which is thus at once their enricher and their debtor. The elasticity of the revenue is a fair indication of the prosperity of a nation. Now, though we believe no new taxes have been imposed, the ordinary revenue has risen from 1,360 millions of francs in 1850 to 1,722 millions in 1869. The Emperor early perceived the importance of railway enterprise for developing the resources of the country, and he fostered it by what were regarded as inordinately liberal concessions. The result has answered his expectations. Thus : Railroads open for traffic in France. 1849 1860 1867 The general commerce of France has augmented at a surprising rate. The increase has been fourfold in the last twenty years. In estimating the benefits to Europe and to France with which the Emperor may be fairly credited, we will begin, as before, with the pecuniary part of the account. It has been his steady aim, ever since his accession, to enrich his nation by encouraging its enterprise and developing its resources, to turn active minds from politics by concentrating their attention on the pursuit of material wealth, and to make men rich in order to compensate them for not being free. He has followed this obvious line of policy with his usual sagacity and persistency as far as was compatible with his other, and often scarcely reconcilable, desire for the establishment of his influence over the affairs of Europe; though it is certain that he has often marred his purposes and defeated his primary object, by the sense of insecurity which his dark and intriguing disposition has spread through the political world, rendering the tranquillity and confidence so necessary to com- Years mercial undertakings often deplorably and fatally precarious. Still his success has been remarkable; - France has grown 1848 rapidly rich under his reign, and producers, at least, have benefited largely by the rise 1867 of prices in nearly all home articles, while the wages of the working classes have been very considerably enhanced by lavish expenditure and artificial employment. The future, no doubt, has been recklessly sacrificed to the present; and loans instead of 1847 1,270,700,000 taxes have supplied the means of Imperial 1848 1,158,000,000 extravagance. But the system of open Perhaps the support of the Pope and the occasional deference to the clerical party might be added; but neither the extent nor the practical operation of these egarements are easy to measure, and we are by no means clear that a parliamentary government might not have offended in the same direction. Total value of merchandise imported into and exported from France, distinguishing the value of imports for consumption and of French produce, exported in each of the years 1847-48 and 1867-68: 1847 1868 Years IMPORTS. Total imports Francs 1,342,800,000 1867 3,934,200,000 . 3,026,500,000 3,303,700,000 Exports of home produce Francs 891,100,000 833,700,000 .2,825,900,000 . 2,789,900,000 *The average price of land has fallen considerably in France during the Empire. Enquete agricoleRapport officiel, par M. de Morny. wider dominion both in Asia and the West; had seen her incorporating neighbour after neighbour in defiance of resistance and of right, like a vast boa-constrictor first lubricating them with diplomatic slime, then crushing them in the close embrace of her The Emperor is well known to be far ahead of his countrymen in his views of commercial policy. He is at heart a Freetrader; they are in the main Protectionists. But he has had the nerve to force upon them to a considerable extent his own enlightened notions. The Commercial Treaty". protection," then swallowing them by the between England and France, now so much impugned by malcontents on both sides of the Channel, could never have been negotiated under either the Bourbons, or the Orleanists, or a Republic. Yet observe how trade has thriven under its auspices. slow process of absorption. Finland, Bessarabia, the Crimea, Trans-Caucasia, were already seized and annexed. The turn of Denmark and Turkey was coming, and then all Europe would be enfolded in her grasp. From this fate the Crimean war delivered us. The power of the Colossus was broken up for a long period to come, and her indiTotal value of imports and exports of mer-rect influence on the position of Austria, chandise from and to France in each of the Prussia, and the minor German States enyears 1858-9, 1867-8: UNITED KINGDOM. Imports from Years France £ 1858 13,271,890 £ 4,863,131 Exports to France British Foreign £ tirely ceased. For the last fourteen years she has concentrated her efforts on internal improvements, and has exercised scarcely 4,879,070 any perceptible control abroad, and the difference has been felt in every country and 4,807,602 city from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. 1867 33,734,803. 12,121,010. 10,901,410 The Continent has been relieved from an 1868 34,584,343 10,633,721 12,861,449 undefined, but a most sensible oppression, as well as from a future danger. 1859 16,870,858 4,754,354 We have debited Louis Napoleon with the entire cost of the Crimean war. It is but fair, therefore, that he should be credited with the whole benefit, immediate and secondary, which Europe has reaped from that fearful episode of slaughter and waste. It cannot be denied that ever since the overthrow of the first Napoleon, to which she largely contributed, Russia has exercised a growing and a baneful influence on the politics of central and southern Europe. She was everywhere the mainstay and bulwark of oppression - the unfailing hope of despots in the last resort, in their tyrannical enterprises and in their hour of danger. She had lain like an incubus upon the progress of the Continent towards a freer and a happier day. She had been the soul of the Holy Alliance. She had been always ready to step forward and trample out the first sparks of liberty and the budding hopes of patriots. She had replaced Hungary under the yoke of Austria when Austria herself had proved unequal to the task, and she had been the reserve power in the back-ground which had indirectly enabled Austria to keep down the everseething ferment of Italian independence. Moreover she was able to dictate to despotic monarchs as well as to protect them. Her power was known to be great and was believed to be irresistible. She was moreover grasping as well as oppressive. For forty years Europe had watched with anxiety the steady and stealthy steps of the great aggressor towards ever wider and For the liberation of Italy, its independence of foreign domination, and its erection into a united kingdom, the Emperor is, we think, entitled to the full credit. It is true that he did not accomplish or even design or foresee the whole that has taken place. It is true that events travelled faster and further than he intended, and in some measure exceeded and even traversed his views. Still it remains true that he and he only made the liberation of the peninsula possible, and achieved the first great step towards its attained completion. He drove the Austrians out of Lombardy. He opened the way to the obvious further operation, the junction of the Emilian Provinces with Piedmont. He permitted the Garibaldian adventure. He obtained Venetia from Austria and handed it over to the king who had so signally failed to win it by his own power. Without his intervention in 1859, the Italian people could have done nothing for themselves. Native insurrection had failed repeatedly, and foreign aid was clearly indispensable. Italy was made by Magenta and Solferino; Magenta and Solferino were the Emperor's own deed, and, we may add, without the previous achievement of the Crimean war, Magenta and Solferino never would have been attempted, or would have had a very different result. Moreover, it must be remembered that the Italian war of independence is due not to France, but to the personal volition of the Emperor. Every Orleanist statesman blamed him, and the great majority of French politicians of all classes deemed the emancipation and unification of the peninsula an injury to French interests and a blunder in French policy. Under Louis Philippe or Charles X., under any parliamentary system, probably under any republic, no such Quixotic piece of generosity would have been adventured. with a military capacity almost miraculous in its instinctive insight, and an iron will that overcame for many years every conflicting volition, he had no other genuine qualification for rule or sway over men or States. His contempt for the rights and feelings of those with whom he had to deal was perpetually exasperating hostility which no military genius less wonderful than his could have suppressed. His ignorance and insolence, no less than his ambition, were for ever precipitating him into blunders which undid in a day the achievements of the most astonishing victories. He had thousands of dazzled devotees; probably not one truly attached friend. He fascinated the imaginations of men: he never won their love. He had no generosity, no sense of justice, no capability of affection. He grasped at the fame and credit that belonged to others, just as greedily and meanly as at the possessions and acquisitions of others. His falsity was, probably, something quite unequalled: his heartlessness the same. Perhaps so completely bad England, too, as well as Italy, has been undeniably a debtor to the good-will of the Emperor. He regards this country with respect, perhaps even with a certain gratitude for the long refuge it afforded him, and for the friendly and frank reception it gave to that national decision in his favour, which sanctioned or at least condoned the forestalling action of the coup d'état. He appreciates our institutions and understands our strength also better than most of his countrymen. More than once has he stood our friend when our language or proceedings had irritated the morbid susceptibilities of Frenchmen, once certainly (after the Orsini attempt) he saved the anger and jealousy of the hotter spirits in the army from bringing on a war; and bas, as a rule, a man, one so unscrupulously cruel, so adhered steadily and even anxiously to the English alliance, when probably any other Government would have relinquished it. It would be wrong for us to withhold our frank expression of appreciation of the services he has thus rendered to this country as well as to his own; and the practical value of the service is not diminished even if we admit that egotism and policy and not kindly feeling was the prominent inducement to the course pursued. Nor ought we to be less candid in admitting his radical superiority to his uncle in many, perhaps in most, essential points of character. We say this, not because he has stood our friend when the first Napoleon was our most malignant foe; it is that we are at last beginning really to understand what manner of man his predecessor was. Thanks partly to the Napoleon correspondence and to M. Lanfrey's highminded and equitable analysis of its disclosures, we see the great conqueror of the age in his true colours, - as probably the very worst, and assuredly the very vulgarest, of all the men of genius who have figured in the Western world. Endowed utterly without one redeeming moral trait, CHANTREY'S tablet, executed on the order of Dr. Booth, to the memory of Kirke White, is to be removed from the old church of All Saints, Cambridge, now in the course of demolition, to the chapel of St. John's College. On Thursday the Cambridge vestry, in compliance with the wishes of the families of White and Booth, passed a resolution to that effect. From The Cornhill Magazine. TWO LADIES TWO HOURS. I "Girl, get you in!" She went, and in one month · WHAT restless genius is it that takes so malicious a pleasure in shifting and mingling the various materials of which daily life is composed? No sooner are a set of people and circumstances comfortably sorted out together, than they are suddenly engulphed, dispersed, revolved away, -no sooner are they well dispersed than all the winds, and horses, and laws of gravitation are struggling to bring them together again. Take, for instance, a colony of people living next door to each other and happily established. How long are they left in peace? One dear member crosses the sea- - another soon follows, and the remainder cannot fill up the gap. Or let us even take a company of five or six persons comfortably talking round a fire. How long will their talk last on? An hour rarely-half-an-hour, perhaps even ten minutes is something saved out of the rush of circumstance; and then a clock begins to strike any number from one to twelve; an organ to grind distractingly; a carriage to roll slowly, crushing the gravel outside. Visions flit in of expectant wives and husbands, of impatient coachmen, of other semi-circles enter Mrs. Grundy, five o'clock tea, the fire begins to smoke, or what not, and the comfortable little circles jar, break up, disperse in all directions. And, indeed, if a certain number of people are happily established together, the whole combination of accidental circumstances is against them, and nothing can happen that will not interfere more or less with their harmony. Years ago a little set of people had been sitting round the fire at Brand House, and had dispersed east and west, and for a dozen years, and on the day about which I am writing, some of them had come together again by an odd accident. It is true they were sitting in stiffer attitudes than when they had last assembled, and some of them seemed to have wigs and masks on, compared to their old remembrance of each other. A little girl who was playing in her pinafore last time, is now dressed up as a real young lady, with a red petticoat, and looped grey dress, and round grey eyes, and a chignon; a young fox-hunting parson is disguised as an archdeacon; the hostess, who was a handsome and dignified person twelve years ago, has put on a black front and spectacles, which certainly do not improve her appearance; the least changed of the party is a young man, who had just come of age when they last met all together. He has grown a thick beard, he has trav elled, and learnt to smoke a narghilé since his last visit to Brand House; but, on the whole, he is not greatly altered. They have been sitting for an hour, and reading and talking of one thing and another, while a log of wood has changed into blue and golden flames. Mrs. Brandiscombe, in the wig and spectacles, announces an arrival by the six-o'clock train. Her son-in-law, the Archdeacon, and his lady, who are returning home next day, talk about stations and cross-roads and convenient trains. The young traveller, it seems, is leaving too, and going to another country-house, called The Mount, about a mile off. The young lady is pressed to stay. "Dear Caroline (the expected guest) "would be so disappointed to miss her." The girl hesitates, blushes up, says she thinks she must go home with her uncle the Archdeacon; she shall see her friend at dinner; she cannot accept the Merediths' invitation to The Mount; she is wanted at home. They all try to persuade her to change her mind; and just as she is giving way the carriage is announced. Mrs. Brandiscombe instantly rises to get ready, and they all disperse; some go to their rooms, some out into the cold dim December world all round about; their voices die away on the staircase and passages, and everything is silent. Janet Ireton, the young lady in the chignon, is delayed in the hall for a minute by Mr. Hollis of the beard, who asks her if she is going to walk with her uncle. Janet answers shyly and quickly, and springs upstairs lightfooted. She comes upon the two elder ladies leisurely proceeding down the passage. uncle was waiting for her in the hall, rolling an umbrella, and prepared to start. Janet walked away still disturbed in her mind. "What has become of Mr. Hollis ?" said the Archdeacon, looking up and down the misty garden. "He promised to wait for us here." "Who wants Mr. Hollis ?" said Janet. "He is most to blame, if those are his real" Come along, uncle John; we shall lose intentions," says Mrs. Brandiscombe. "He the best part of the day." should not cause a young girl to be remarked upon; it is not the first time." "It is his way, mamma," says Mrs. Debenham, the Archdeacon's second wife. "The Archdeacon won't believe me. What does it matter? he is very nice. I assure you, he means nothing. Don't you remember how he flirted with me and with Oh, Janet, I didn't hear you." II. WHO does not know the look of furniture in a room lately vacated, as it stands about the chimney-piece in confidential proximity? A sort of faint image of the people who are gone is still in the deserted chamber. Stuffed arm-chairs with sprawling castored legs turned towards each other, a “ Hm — ah ! — girls cannot be too care- duchesse with a grand lace back in an afful," says Mrs. Brandiscombe, turning into fected attitude by the table, a sprinkling of her room, while Janet, with tingling ears light bachelor cane-chairs joining into the and cheeks, flies down a side passage. The conversation, and then the hostess's state coachman, to his indignation, is actually kept waiting ten minutes. 66 Janet, who is in her great room at the end of the passage, fastening a black hat, with a smart red feather, becomingly on the top of her chignon, is surprised by a tap at the door, and an apparition of Mrs. Brandiscombe herself, ready veiled, and gloved, and caped, and prepared for her daily airing in the close carriage. chair in its chintz dressing-gown by the chimney corner, with its work-basket, its paper-cutter, and its book by its side. The book at Brand House is Early Years of the Prince Consort. There is a lozenge and a coat of arms upon the paper-cutter. One of the castored chairs has been reading the Guardian, which is now lying in a dead faint upon the floor all doubled over. On the grand lace-covered cushion rests a little green book of poetry, with a sprig of holly to mark the place. Everything is quite silent, and a coal falls into the fender, which conscientiously reflects the fire. There is a distant roll (not so loud as that which announces the arrival of the carriage on the Almost quite," Janet said, wistfully, stage), then more silence; some one walking looking into the old lady's wrinkled face. in the garden looks in through the tall win"I have had a delightful holiday. Every-dow. You may see through the glass that body has been so kind I don't "Although it is against my custom to keep the horses waiting," says the old lady, it has occurred to me that, as I am going to call upon Mrs. Meredith, you might like to send some message. Are you quite determined to return home to-morrow? I merely wished to ascertain your intentions," said the shrouded figure, preparing to go."We are only too glad to keep you, Janet; although I cannot but agree with my daughter in her opinion of our guest. He has, if I don't mistake, a very special reason for wishing to prolong his stay in this neighbourhood a lady whom he knew... But I am not at liberty- I merely wish to express a hope that your name may not be coupled with his, and to approve of your self-respect and prudent consideration for other people's opinion." Mrs. Brandiscombe had been uttering dark oracles ever since Janet's arrival, but none so definite as this. The girl listened, half angry, half incredulous, half indignant. Then she ran downstairs in no very amiable frame of mind. Mr. Hollis was gone. Her it is the gentleman with the black beard and black eyes and country leggings who was lately established by the lace chair. He walks away and disappears behind a laurel-bush, and then nothing more happens till the clock begins to strike. With the last stroke of four comes a sound of voices, a rustling of silks. The door opens wide, and a lady is standing in the middle of the room, looking curiously up and down with bright slow glances. Her glances are those of a well-esteemed and well-satisfied person. People look what they are, gazing at other lives; they look what they feel when they are sitting being gazed at. It is curious to note the different expressions with which people see the daily life-pictures that pass before them, the long portrait-galleries, the pictures of still life for housekeepers, the tableaux de genre in our homes. Some look criti |