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calamity of the German war, but made herself more formidable than ever as a military power. Thanks to her vast internal resources, she has continued to prosper and pay her way, though she has reorganized her forces at an enormous expense, and replaced the strong natural frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine with artificial defences which experts pronounce to be well-nigh impregnable. Yet assuredly stability of government has done nothing for her, and "statesmen" rise to the surface with startling rapidity, to disappear like bubbles on the stream. Aspirants are beginning to realize that the path to power may be made somewhat too easy. A jealous rival asks no better luck than to push an embarrassing opponent up to the premiership. The victim must either be precipitated from that sad eminence or take the plunge sooner or later. His single object is to fall with a certain dignity, so that in the universal shattering or discrediting of political reputa. ticns, the revolution of the wheel of fortune may give him a second chance. It was thought that ministries had succeeded each other with startling rapidity in the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign; but with the extension of the suffrage and the democratic apotheosis, the pace has been accelerated with phenomenal velocity. "Ma foi," exclaimed Talleyrand, "il est bien distingué," when he saw an undecorated Englishman at a brilliant court reception where every one was glittering with crosses and stars. And that may be said now of any fairly prominent politician who has not figured and failed as a Cabinet minister.

Mr. Morley discussed the power of the press, not long ago, at a literary gathering in London. Whatever it may be here, in Paris it is distinctly tending to increase, because there is greater stability in the press than in the Parliament. Formerly the sparkling leader-writer who had made himself a name and become an authority almost invariably sought the suffrages of a Constituency. If he could speak half as well as he could write-and most

Frenchmen have persuasive facility of speech-he looked to office, crosses of the Legion, and a pension in retreat. Now the man who speaks habitually with the voice of the Temps or the Debats is far more of a power than the man who may make so brief a stay in the ministry that the office messengers have scarcely time to identify him. See recent caricatures in the Charivari, passim. Moreover, the leading pressmen not only have the agreeable sense of permanency, but they are as well paid as the ministers and infinitely more independent. The hopes the Parisian press hold out to the ambitious intellects of young France are forcibly illustrated by the present state of things in journalism. We know on sure authority that nothing is more desperately speculative than the venture of some clever young provincial who would take to journalism as a career or as the entrance to politics. If his contributions have the luck to be accepted in some provincial paper, he is seldom or never paid. If he is poor, he struggles on and perseveres in a garret on the French counterpart of the little oatmeal which is said to have nourished the early Edinburgh reviewers. It is touching and admirable to think of his manfully doing his best work, and keeping the fires of inspiration alive, cheered only by some faint, distant hope. Then perhaps the day comes when, like the Chatteris actors in "Pendennis," he finds he has attracted the notice of an omnipotent manager in the capital. The countryman goes up to Paris, transfers his literary headquarters to the Café Chose, is permitted or invited to sign his articles; and thenceforward, if he can stay as well as go the pace, his future is assured. The successful writer who signs is open to tempting offers, and it is necessary to pay him handsomely to retain his services. Moreover, he has a character to maintain, and though he may be unscrupulous or sophistical, in the main he is consistent. His support is courted, and if he be not actually bought, there are indirect ways in which a minister or promoter can engage the alliance of

an effective pen. If the worst comes to the worst, and his profession palls on him, he knows that he can always try a turn at the government of France.

Now that préfets pass like Cabinet ministers, the minor official appointments no longer offer the former in ducements to frugal Frenchmen who love a comfortable and assured income, the ribbon of the Legion, and local reverence. The prizes in successful journalism take many forms, and the leading journals are closely associated with the high finance. In France, as in Germany, many of the journals, like the railways, are financed by great Hebrew capitalists. It is no new thing; and to go no further back than the Second Empire, Captain Bingham gives a striking example of the power of the Rothschilds. Alfred de Musset, who was shy and sensitive, had been persuaded to read a new poem at the Tuileries on the distinct understanding that only the emperor and his consort were to be present. During the reading a gentleman entered, and the poet stopped. It might have been expected that the emperor would have resented the unprecedented intrusion, but the gentle man was Baron Rothschild. As he deprecated the money-lender's hold over an impecunious client, the poet had to be flattered into compliance, and the master of many millions remained to listen. We do not say that the devotees of mammon have become more eager or more unscrupulous since then, for that could hardly be. But the worship of mammon has become more absorbing and exclusive since the plutocracy is become the aristocracy of the democratic republic. Paris lost the show and seductive glitter which gilded the extravagances and corruptions of the Empire. The Elysian fields in the fashionable hours of the afternoon are more like the sombre realms of Pluto, though in fact Plutus is evidently the presiding deity. Vulgar ostentation is the predominating feature, and if one would shine, money one must have. The old restaurants which have disappeared-the Café de Paris, the Trois Frères, and Philippe's- were by no

means cheap, but the others which have replaced them, and are most in vogue for the moment, seem to seek to recommend themselves by extortionate charges. Still more significant is the fact that the foreign ambassadors find the outlay which used to suffice insufficient now. For diplomatic hospitality must satisfy and gratify the guests, and the haute finance, which is not the least important element of the society which is to be conciliated, expects to be entertained as it entertains. There is a lower stratum filled by the people of passage, who flock to the grand hotels or occupy a sumptuous apartment for the season. They have made their piles by pork or petroleum, by stocks or silver in North America; they have swindled the State and the foreign immigrants in Argentina or Mexico; they have enriched themselves by Transvaal gold or by diamonds in the Orange Free State; or they may be simply respectable parvenus who, having more money than they need, have gone over to Paris to have a good time. Their careless expenditure may be beneficial to trade, but it forces up the cost of living to all classes. The result is a choice of alternatives to the many whose modest or precarious incomes are barely sufficient for their wants. Either they carry French frugality to parsimony, pinching and saving, or they are tempted to risk small speculative ventures. If they win, they increase their stakes, for there is no such enticing passion as successful gambling. There are still leviathans who conceive daring schemes and plunge heavily for millions of francs, as in those days of the Empire and imperial concessions and sleeping partnerships with all-powerful ministers, which Zola has depicted in the Debacle with exceptionally realistic vigor. But now the class of players has deteriorated, as at the tables of Monte Carlo. Still, as Paris will always be the heart of France, the Bourse is more than ever the soul of Paris. It is the financial journals, or the financial columns in the political papers, which are sought and read with most anxious avidity. Nothing gives more piquancy

to your morning paper than the possibility that some sudden rise or fall may announce either temporary riches or ruin. The spread of dangerously speculative investment is obviously demoralizing to any community, butthough, we confess, we can detect few signs of that-it should conduce to amicable international relations. The man who has an open bull account, or who has placed his savings in Egyptians or in South African mines, cannot desire that his country should quarrel with the English, however much he may dislike us. Nor does he. But neither the careful père de famille nor the hardy speculator can control the irresponsible rhapsodists of the Assembly or the firebrands in the press, who play solely for their own hands, and pander to the blind passions of the populace.

One other set of adventurers we must advert to, who still set their faces towards the capital in spite of hard economical facts and sore discouragement. They are a dangerous legacy of the ostentation and indirect corruption of the Empire, as they were the backbone and partly the origin of the Commune. When Haussmann was carrying out his wholesale demolitions and reconstructions, he employed crowds of workmen at high wages. Distress in the provinces was relieved by the assurance of engagements in Paris. The Empire passed, but the workmen remained to recruit the ranks of the Communists and draw wages for playing at soldiers. The building which gave them employment had increased the room-rents and the cost of living by sweeping away the old rookeries and rabbit-warrens. Labor chômes now, and the monts de piété of the northern quarters do a brisker business at present than the Bourse. Yet a golden tradition is slow to die out, and illinformed provincials still flock to the fabled El Dorado where the rich veins were exhausted a quarter of a century ago. Nor need we add that there can be no more perilous element than a mass of precariously employed workmen, in possession of the suffrage, who

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can menace by their mass meetings and emi-secret societies the demagogues and tribunes who are eager to truckle to them. Had Boulanger had a grain more resolution, had there been Fleury to force him to set the spark to those explosive materials, the conspirators of the Café de la Madeleine might have succeeded like Kinglake's Brethren of the Elysée.

The chief interest and value of Captain Bingham's volumes are that they throw some novel and instructive light on the course of French history since the prince president, after making his coup d'état, claimed to have re-established the empire on national suffrage. They are desultory and gossipy, and we must necessarily treat them in a gossipy and desultory fashion. The writer speaks with a certain authority. Married to a Frenchwoman, he mixed much in Parisian society; he acted as correspondent to the original Pall Mall, to the Scotsman, and other papers; he was always on the search for facts; he had the entrée to the ministries and the salons. He says he kept no diaries; but, like M. Blowitz, the famous correspondent of the Times, he has a marvellously exact and tenacious memory. We have checked his volumes, so far as they concern the Empire, with those of Felix Whitehurst, who, when corresponding for the journal "with the greatest circulation in the world," was a favored Cloud, and Compiègne. We know that and petted guest at the Tuileries, St. Whitehurst would introduce ladies and gentlemen to the emperor without even the ceremony of a previous request; and we have found Whitehurst, who knew more of the court gossip than most men, always in essential accordance with Bingham. Moreover, the writer can vouch personally for the truth of various statements which seem someCaptain Bingham's what startling. reminiscences of the two sieges-and through both he remained in residence as correspondent, per balloon or otherwise-are especially curious, and his sketches of celebrities or notorieties are shrewd, incisive, entertaining,

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freely illustrated by suggestive anecdote.

financiers, coulissiers, and promoters looking out for lucrative concessions. It was certain that every public enterprise was handicapped with exorbitant commissions; it was as certain that no State secret could be kept if money were to be made by selling it.

The "Recollections" begin in the spring of 1865 with the death of De Morny. The emperor owed a debt of gratitude to the astuteness and determination of his illegitimate brother, and, to do him justice, he was not back- The French might have looked leniward in paying such debts. He gave ently on such palace scandals, as the the embarrassed duke the Mexican imperial intrigue with Marguerite question; he mixed himself up in the Bellanger, of which we have such an scandalous affair of the Jecker bonds; amusing account as might make matter and so the shady transactions of the for a comedy at the Palais Royal. They speculative Swiss banker led on to had been accustomed to the amorous Queretaro, Sedan, and Wilhelmshöhe. indiscretions of their greatest monarchs As for De Morny, he was the most of Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze. brilliant and attractive type of the They might have tolerated the financial adventurers who were the treacherous scandals, for they sympathized with props of the Empire. Dissipated and and envied the fortunate offenders. prodigal, he had nevertheless high But the Empire to maintain itself was intellectual qualities, and he exercised bound to be successful, and to flatter a magnetic fascination on individuals. the national pride by the glorification of Notoriously a faithless husband, he the great nation. When the emperor's charmed his wealthy and highborn wife star was eclipsed and he lost credit into devoted attachment. He grasped for political sagacity, his constitutional at money like Fouquet, and like Fou- adversaries seized the opportunity, and quet he lavished it magnificently on the Radical agitators began to raise graceful hospitality and the generous their heads. Even in early days he had patronage of genius and the arts. But been faced in the Assembly by three money he was bound to have, and so sarcastic and incisive debaters who had the ill-fated Maximilian was sent to taxed all the suavity and tact of the Mexico. "He preferred leaving this President De Morny. But Favre, world as the Regent d'Orleans did. He Picard, and Emile Olivier were guarded had to choose between renouncing the in their invective, and studiously conpleasures or sins of youth and a sudden fined themselves to the limits of correct catastrophe, and he chose the latter." parliamentary debate. Now there were It gives an idea of his sumptuous style ugly storm-warnings in the perorations of living, that when he died there were of popular demagogues, who may have one hundred and forty-five horses in his been actuated by enthusiasm, the stables. But that extravagance was thirst for notoriety, or by far-sighted one of the weaknesses of the Second as worldly wisdom. The emperor of Rusof the First Empire. Adventurers sia honored his parvenu brother with a sprung from nothing, or with no family visit on the occasion of the Exhibition inheritance, received liberal salaries, of 1867. Politically it was merely an which they were expected to spend. unfortunate contretemps that the czar Lavish as the salaries were, the rivalry should have been shot at in the Champs of ostentation made them insufficient, Elysées. It was more ominously sigand if he lived on his appointments, the nificant that the illustrious guest should husband and father saw no means of have been insulted at the Palais de providing for his family. To give a Justice by a lawyer who had already man exalted hereditary rank with in- the ear of the courts, It was coarsely adequate income was virtually com uncivil, to say the least, when M. pelling him to practise Oriental Floquet, stepping forward, shouted corruption. So the ministers naturally "Vive la Pologne!" with general apbecame the sleeping partners of proval. For it has always been the fate

of unlucky Poland to be the object of the sentimental attachment of subversive France, though nothing but disappointments and baffled hopes have come of relations that have invariably been abruptly broken off when French selfishness demanded the sacrifice of the protégé. Had the Empire been as stable as it appeared to superficial observers. Floquet had finished his career before it was well begun. But in French politics it is the unexpected one may confidently expect, when a man has physical stamina as well as talent and pluck. The exiles of Cayenne or New Caledonia may come home to fill high Cabinet office, and trim the sails of the State in critical emergencies, if they do not actually steer the ship. Floquet, branded by the Imperialists as the blackest of sheep, lived to become president of the Chamber and prime minister.

And dear as the Russian Alliance is to France, even Russian statesmen consented to tolerate him in the latter capacity. They knew, to be sure, that it was hardly worth while to object since, though there to-day, he would surely be gone to-morrow.

Meantime Rochefort caused far more anxiety than Floquet. Had his nerve been equal to his intellectual audacity, he might more than once have precipitated a crisis, and notably at the funeral of Victor Noir. Martyrdom, in the shape of fine or imprisonment, he was ready to court, but he shrunk before bullets and the sabres of the gendarmerie. He stung like a hornet, he was perpetually renewing his venom, and the hum, like that of the restless mosquito, was ever troubling the tranquillity of the autocrats of the Tuileries. A typical French wit, the fluency, fire, and fertility that fed the daily Lanterne were simply amazing; he had something of the blighting mockery of Voltaire; he had a diabolical instinct for making self-seeking statecraft ludicrous; and more damning than all was the undeniable fact that the Empire supplied unfailing subjects for his satire. Like the hornet or mosquito, he was always ready to search out the exposed points, or to sting an open sore into fes

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tering. He was banished of course, or rather he took flight; but when the pestilential little news-sheet had been proscribed in France, a good stroke of contraband business was being done between Brussels and Paris. Each smuggled copy of the Lanterne fetched a fancy price, and passed from hand to hand, to be read with keen expectation. The laughers were with Rochefort. Louis Napoleon was not so cold-blooded a man as is generally supposed, and we fancy he paid Rochefort the compliment of cordially detesting him. He would gladly have dropped him down oubliette à la Catherine de Medicis, or welcomed him to Compiègne and St. Cloud with Merimée and About. But Rochefort was one of those crossgrained and envenomed assailants who are neither to be petted nor flattered. Assuredly, in spite of common sense and self-interest, he would have stung the hand that sought to caress him. Like Floquet, he survived to play a conspicuous part in French politics, and to be a thorn in the side of Thiers and Gambetta. The elections of May went daily against the government. The great industrial and commercial cities cast in their lots with democratic Paris. The Empire, in dire distress, had declared for Liberal institutions; but the conversion was too sudden to seem sincere. Emile Olivier, who was already understood to be transacting with the system he had bitterly denounced. was hooted down by a crowded audience when he sought to obtain a hearing. Among the notable members then returned to the Assembly was M. Jules Grévy. In connection with him. Captain Bingham gives another striking example of the irony of circumstances, and the instability of French political convictions. The moral is that a wise man should never commit himself, however strongly he may feel at the moment. Opposing Louis Napoleon for president, Grévy had insisted with forcible arguments that there should be no such office. He preferred the form of government by committees. And yet! before he became officially the first man in France, Captain Bing

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