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cle, as well as a belief neither sufficiently apparently so much a general tendency to consistent in tone with the dutiful Cathol- superstition which was at the basis of icism officially expressed in the last sen- Louis Napoleon's particular illusion, but tence of his will, nor with the "enlight- that it was the heat and intensity of imened" views of his more radical adhe-agination with which he dwelt upon the rents, to admit of the hypothesis that he fact of his relationship to his uncle, and wrote these clauses of his will for the on the political consequences which this sake of any effect they might be supposed relationship might involve, that led to the to have on the people of France. We are superstition. In short, the illusion was disposed to think that even in his last ex- the over-growth of a particular vein of ile, when his sainted uncle's protection intense thought in which any politician of had so entirely failed him, he would not the same birth and origin would necessahave hesitated to reaffirm these same su- rily have more or less indulged, and not a perstitions. Indeed, a man who trusted mere individual instance of a generally so much to the angelic guardianship of superstitious temper. Louis Napoleon's an Emperor who had completely broken superstition was due to the enormous exdown in his own career, would hardly aggeration of a shrewd and sagacious withdraw his confidence because the tu- conviction, — that his relationship to the telary power had also failed to save the First Emperor was a mine of unworked prestige of his protégé from a catastrophe power which he could work if he pleased. of a similar, though more humiliating na- It was not the wild exaggeration of a ture. It would be hardly reasonable to germ of religious feeling, but the wild expect a man even from the other world exaggeration of a perfectly correct worldto show more sagacity in overruling the ly appreciation of the power that lay for destiny of another than he had shown in him in the connection with the great Emruling his own. Indeed Bishop Butler peror. There are superstitions which would have constructed a very ingenious come of religious feeling, superstitions argument to show that the same moral in which the impression exaggerated is and intellectual defects which showed a more or less religious impression, like themselves in Napoleon I.'s career as religious melancholy generally, and the Emperor and General, might have been religious visions of such a dreamer as expected a priori to show themselves Swedenborg; and again, there are suagain in his career as guardian angel. perstitions which come of mere overWe believe we may assume, then, that concentration of thought on some these superstitious beliefs of the late Em-half-felt and half-perceived chance of peror were not only a real part of his worldly advancement. Thus, Macbeth's mind, but were very deeply ingrained in superstition was evidently little more it, were of the very warp of his character. than the dreamy exaggeration of the There would seem to be something murderous ambition in his own mind. strange in the admission of what may be And Louis Napoleon's was, we suspect, called such an intellectual taint in the nothing more than the exaltation of his character of one who was able to gain the own profound belief that the heir of the position which Napoleon III. did gain in great Emperor ought to find in that EmEurope, and it will seem not perhaps the peror an immense store of political power less strange if we hold that it was in great and the occasion for a brilliant destiny. measure by virtue of this taint and in This notion, long entertained and cherconsequence of it, that he was able to ished and dreamt upon, led no doubt to reach the height he did. For no one can a perfectly sincere conviction that the really doubt that but for Napoleon III's late Emperor was the actual author of all firm belief in superhuman influences aid- his nephew's highest dreams, most ambiing his plans, he hardly would have ven-tious plans, and most successful political tured either on the successful or on the silly enterprises by which he endeavoured to gain the French Throne. That a great part of the moving force of Napoleon III's career was in his superstition, the Emperor's will seems to us to place almost beyond doubt. And yet it will seem, as we have said, remarkable that a man of the Emperor's great power should have been the victim of this strange kind of illusion, till we observe that it was not

ventures. Nor apparently would his mere belief in the power of his birth have been adequate to qualify him for his actual career, without the superstitious extension which it continually took in his mind as the working of a potent will external to himself, and wielding powers which he could not wield. This unsafe and indeed in its essence insane exaggeration of his sense of the political value of his birth, had this advantage for him, that it gave

him the sense of an unlimited power to |tween a superstition of this kind, — vulfall back upon, whereas the sane convic-gar in origin, whatever it be in manner, tion would have given him no such assur- and that grander and deeper kind of suance, but would have told him that there perstition which comes of religious awe were very well marked limits to the and wonder. The Emperor seems to have strength it lent him, that it was a mere had exceedingly little of this. He reopportunity for his use, not an indepen-garded himself not as the servant of dent force on which he could lean. Of Heaven, but as the protégé of the first course it is never safe for men to believe Buonaparte. What he was to do in the they have a force behind them which they world was not God's will, but the will of have not got; but it does seem that some the "Exile of St. Helena." He worslow natures like the late Emperor's need shipped at second-hand; was the instruthis sort of false stimulus to give them ment of an instrument; and felt not that staying-power, if they are to be anything he was serving Man as a Divine tool, but great at all as men of action. Louis Na- that he was working out the uncompleted poleon in our view was not naturally at thought of the coarse genius with whom all constituted for a man of action. He he claimed relationship. Never was there was a slow, hesitating dreamer, of consid- less of that humility, awe, and wonder erable power and lucidity, who had no which are at the basis both of true worgifts for action; but just as nature some-ship, and often also of that extra-belief or times seems to go out of her way to pro- Aberglaube, which, according to Mr. Arvide a compensation even by a sort of nold, constitutes superstition, than in the monstrosity for a great deficiency, just as late Emperor's heated illusions about the she sometimes gives a dwarf arms of pre- protection of his demi-god uncle. It was ternatural strength and length, so Louis the worship of the Roman world for the Napoleon was in great measure made into divus Augustus over again in a cruder a man of action from a mere dreamer by and somewhat baser form. The late Emthe growth of the morbid superstition peror's mind could not reach, and did not which led him to find in his uncle's de- care to reach, the throne of the supreme parted soul a sort of fetish that impelled Omnipotence at all. He stopped at the him into the thick of the contest. Com-best idol he could form for himself of the moner men have a milder degree of the Divine Ruler, - namely, the caricature same kind of superstition. When the contained in that coarse, vigorous, fertileMr. Whitbread who gave rise to Can-minded, supremely self-willed incarnation ning's celebrated couplet, recalled solemnly to the House of Commons the fact that the day was sacred to him because it was at once the day of the foundation of the Brewery and of his father's death, whereupon Canning wrote down,

This day I still hail with a smile and a sigh,
For his beer with an e, and his bier with an i,

– Mr. Whitbread had evidently been unconsciously engaged in making a mild sort of fetish of the founder of his own fortunes, precisely similar in kind to that which Louis Napoleon, with a more grandiose imagination, made of his mighty uncle. The Emperor's egotistic exaggeration of the importance of a relationship which had transmitted hardly any hereditary quality for empire to him, was nevertheless a superstition the constant brooding on which made him into an emperor, as a queen-bee is made by being fed on a particular kind of food into a queen. But the superstition was essentially vulgar in origin, though taken up into a grandiose nature capable of a certain loftiness of manner and phrase.

In fact, there is no real connection be

of selfish ambition who had founded the Democratic Empire of France and his own house. It was a poor, pinchbeck kind of worship, and led, as such kinds of worship do, into superstitions that are at least as ruinous in the end, as they are sometimes, by accident and for a time, mines of political force.

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does not seem to take the malady of sus- | curse of France does not seem to take picion nearly so violently as the nature root easily in Spain. The danger rather of the Frenchman. There was - as De Tocqueville very well brought out in those latest chapters of his book on the French Revolution which Mr. Henry Reeve has just added to the second edition of his excellent translation a universal expectation of completely new social forces and new possibilities of government, pervading Europe for years before the French Revolution, an expectation which, added enormously to the exciting character of that great event. Throughout Europe men believed that they were on the eve of changes in which society would be quite transfigured, and this belief, which, curiously enough, pervaded most completely not those classes which were most miserable, but those which were far above want and living in luxury, stimulated every wave of emotion and passion which spread over France, and intoxicated the actors in those great scenes. Spain has at least the advantage that the changes which her political and social life seem destined to undergo are no longer waited for with awe, as if they were the results of the inspiration of a sort of divine Muse. The excitement of the drama has been in great degree discounted by the history of the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848. Spain knows that no golden era of society is to be expected from any changes, however fundamental; that the alternative between anarchy, and strict taxation under It seems, however, from the accounts, some form of government, is the only al- that the actual Government is not only ternative to be hoped for; that the most not in fault for suppressing the Permaenthusiastic republics have once and nent Committee appointed by the Naagain been much severer sufferers than tional Assembly before its separation, but even despotic States; that if a Federal that it was almost compelled to take that Republic is to succeed, the Federal Re- course. A rebellion had been apparently public must not hope to restore a social organized by the friends of the PermaParadise, but must drill its troops, im- nent Committee against the Government. pose discipline, resist riot, adjust taxa- The Government was called upon by the tion, and enforce justice. There is now, Permanent Committee to revise the thanks to France, no vast illusion, no course decided on by the National Asrainbow of imaginary hope, to dazzle the sembly, to recall that body and put off eyes even of ignorant Spain. There may the election of a Constituent Cortes. An be great changes for the better, or great armed demonstration, it is said by " Monchanges for the worse,- and for a time,archical" Volunteers, was made in faat least, we fear the latter are the more likely, but there will be no such wild intoxication as alone rendered the great French agony of hope and fear possible. And fortunately, too, Spain takes differences of political opinion easier than France. Carlists, Alfonsists, Radicals, and Republicans, get on very fairly together, except during the crisis of a physical struggle. That "fear" which M. Gambetta justly tells us is the great

is an apathy too great to admit of the people taking any side definitely, so as to render organization possible. As the French have always had a genius for centralization,— which it is a pity, by the way, they did not manage to impart more effectually to the Spaniards during their occupation of Spain, the Spaniards appear to have always had and still to have, a taste for decentralization, and the fear is that this will so favour disorganization as to render the process of new political crystallization difficult, tardy, and inadequate. The example of Madrid has none of the fascination for the other great cities of Spain, for Barcelona, and Seville, and Malaga, that the example of Paris has for Lyons, and Marseilles, and Bourdeaux. This indeed, is the argument for that "Federal" Republic which is now apparently in the ascendant. But this fact makes the political future of Spain even more uncertain than the political future of France ever was. Spain is like a ship built in cellular compartments, less easy to wreck as a whole, more easy to break up into distinct parts. Now that the Army is in active decomposition, and that the voice of the only actual authority left, is favourable to Federalism rather than unification, it becomes a very difficult matter indeed to anticipate the course of political change.

vour of this policy, so that it became a question of life and death between the Permanent Committee and the Government. If the Permanent Committee had won, there would have been a coup d'état and a reaction. But the victory of the Government only means the dissolution of the Permanent Committee. The unitary party, some of them Reactionists— including apparently Marshal Serrano some of them Radicals, clearly demanded

a retrograde step, and the indefinite post- | federation, and Federalists governing ponement of the election of the Constit-only by the favour of the masses, and uent Cortes. They have been beaten in without any power to enforce their will fair fight, and Señor Castelar and his friends remain at the head of affairs, and intend to convoke the Constituent Cortes for the 1st of June, when there seems at present little doubt that the idea of a Federal Republic will be broached, and probably command the votes of a majority of the members.

concerning any matter on which the masses do not regard it with complacency, it seems to us more than likely that Spain is on the way to a complete dissolution of her political unity into its elements.

But though we see, or think we see, signs of a much longer interval than we had hoped before civil order can be reBut to our minds, it matters far less established in Spain, we are disposed to what kind of government is to rule at think that the very process of disinteMadrid, than what sort of authority that gration itself is as likely as not to overgovernment is to exercise. The reason come that strong municipal feeling, that we look upon the crisis at Madrid as a new preference for the authority of local junstage in a slowly-developing revolution, is tas and the federal idea, which is now for that hitherto at every change in the political the moment clearly in the ascendant. kaleidoscope since the death of General History seems to show that a despotic Prim, there has been clear loss of admin- monarchy, while it admits of something istrative force to the Government. Ama- very like practical federation under it, deo found little, and that little ebbed without endangering the outward form of gradually away, during his short reign. national unity, has very little tendency to The Republic which succeeded Amadeo inherited a very small remnant of authority, but even that it has wasted through the fear of incurring unpopularity. It cannot maintain any of its Captains in Catalonia, but removes one after the other for their unpopular measures for restoring discipline to the demoralized Army. The last report, not yet confirmed before the news came of the struggle in Madrid, was that General Velarde was about to resign because his measures of discipline against the mutinous soldiers were not supported by his civil superiors. Of course it is the special danger of a Federal Government to yield too much to local opinion on all political matters. But a Federal Government without a central army to depend upon is not really a Government at all, it is only a Board for hearing complaints from all sides on which it has no power to take action. With the Northern provinces overrun by the Carlists, with secret Alfonsists clothed in whatever military prestige may be left to the officers of the Army, with Radicals did before. dreading the break-up of Spain into a

produce such ardent popular love of national unity as we have seen prevalent in Europe of late years. But it seems also to show that the inevitable tendency of popular revolutions like that which is now progressing in Spain is to bring about,through much grief, through tribulation and anguish, and perhaps much blood, — that sense of mutual need and mutual dependence out of which true national unity grows. Revolution on the large scale, on such a scale as Spain seems but too likely to undergo,- is a terrible fire; but it does frequently seem to fuse the component elements of national life as nothing else fuses them, and this in spite of the bitter party animosities it is apt to excite. We fear the Federal Republic in Spain is little more than a name for a period of revolution; but we should expect to find that the Federal idea itself would hardly survive the chaos into which it will probably plunge Spain, and that Spanish unity will mean a much more solid thing after the chaos than it

ONE reason why Christianity has so little success in the world is because professing Christians subordinate it to so many other considerations. Local residence, occupation, friendship, marriage, are settled, and the question of religion goes for little or nothing. It is compromised, and a compromise is close to a surrender. Were it the ruling principle with

Christians, it would be on the sure way to the world's throne, though it might be through suffering. "Art thou a King then? He answered, Thou sayest. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."

Thoughts by the Way,

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MISUSE OF WORDS. It is amusing, if not | poets and some other writers, the word was something pitiable, to see how a simple Eng- employed to signify 'both,' it did not in this lish word, the word either, is systematically case before the court." Though such was the misunderstood and misapplied. The real decision, we do not expect that the misuse of meaning of the word is, one or the other;" either will be dropped. In comparison with just as, in a negative sense, neither signifies, each, the word is thought pretty, and it will 'not one nor the other." Shakespeare, in An- doubtless continue to be misapplied, both in tony and Cleopatra, uses both words correctly: speaking and writing; though, perhaps, testa Lepidus flatters both, tors have received a salutary lesson on the subject.

Of both is flattered; but he neither loves,
Nor either cares for him.

From a strange freak, the term either has been
very commonly employed to signify each of
two, or both. For example, "there stood a
pillar on either side of the gateway;" or, "they
were seated on either side of the fireplace;
or to take two examples from Lord Lytton's
last novel, "A pleasant greensward bordered
it on either side"-"the mouth singularly
beautiful, with a dimple on either side," the
meaning in each case being "both sides;" or,
to go a peg lower in the literary scale, and
quote from the comic song of the Bear-skin

Coat:

Fine pockets, large and wide,
Stood out from either side.

The error

This misuse of either is not new.
occurs several times in the authorized version
of the New Testament. Two instances may
be given. "They crucified two other with
him, on either side one," St. John xix. 18.
"On either side of the river was there the tree
of life," Rev. xxii. 2. It says little for the
scholarship of the translators that they should
have perpetuated this abuse of our vernacular,
and sanctioned an error so inveterate as to be
now almost past correction. Perhaps sound
has had something to do with the improper
use of either. Consisting of two syllables, it
may be considered to be more fluent and ele-
gant than the little word each; in which way
sound is probably preferred to sense. Fashion,
however, cannot be permitted to alter the
plain meaning of the English language, and
we are glad that, according to the newspaper

We might present other instances of the inveterate misuse of words, but content ourselves with drawing attention to one of daily occurrence. We refer to the word none, which

is simply a contraction of "no one," or "not
one," and is accordingly to be used in applica-
tion to only one thing. Instead, however, of
46 none is,"
speaking of it in the singular, as
or "not one is," or "not one was," it is almost
constantly pluralized; writers saying, "none
"none were." They might just as
well say "no one were," which they would
hardly think of doing. As the English lan-
guage is a precious inheritance, it would surely
be worth while to avoid such a petty misuse
of a very simple class of terms.

are," or

Chambers' Journal

AMONG other evils which the world seems destined to endure until it comes to an end is Greek brigandage. It was confidently asserted a short time ago that arrangements had been entered into between the Greek and Turkish Governments by which brigandage on the Greco-Turkish frontiers was to be extirpated, but it appears that the proposed convention remains in abeyance. In consequence of the recent change of the Ottoman Foreign Minister, the Porte, says the Levant Herald, has not yet communicated to the Hellenic Legation the proposal it desires to substitute for that suggested by the Greek Government for the able extent on the border, within which the lately vindicated in a suit in Chancery. We Greek and Turkish troops, either alone or in give the matter briefly, as it is related. "A concert, should be free to pursue or otherwise certain testator left property, the disposition of which was affected by the death of either' of two persons. One learned counsel contended that the word 'either' meant both; in support of this view he quoted Richardson, Webster, Chaucer, Dryden, Southey, the history of the crucifixion, and a passage from Revelation. The learned judge suggested that there was an old song in the Beggars' Opera, known to all, which took the opposite view:

report, the correct definition of either was

How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away. In pronouncing judgment, the judge dissented entirely from the argument of the learned counsel. Either' meant one of two, and did not mean both.' Though occasionally, by

establishment of a neutral zone of a consider

operate against the brigands without restric tion. The Seraskierate, it is understood, objects that this intermediary frontier belt of some twenty-two miles in extent would embrace the Turkish town and fortress of Arta, and a number of Turkish villages and castles in the mountain ranges of Otrys and Agraphi, and it presumably does not altogether favour a plan which would give Greek troops a free range in those places. It seems nevertheless rather hard on those who are robbed and murdered by the brigands that the two Governments, whose duty it is to preserve order and prevent crime on their frontiers, should have any difficulty in coming to an understanding on this question. In the meantime how the brigands must chuckle!

Pall Mall.

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