CHAPTER XXIV.

SUCH as we have faintly sketched it was the scene of convulsion and confusion which, in the beginning of 1848, everywhere met the eye throughout the continent of Europe,-' distress of nations with perplexity,' and 'men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after the things which were coming on the earth.' The bonds of society seemed to be unloosed, and turbulence and disorder to have taken the place of law and the discipline of government. In the general chaos it was not easy to foresee what further convulsions might ensue. before peace should be restored, and the angry passions and wild theories by which the social fabric was shaken to its centre should be succeeded by the reign of practical good sense and the self-imposed restraints of genuine liberty.

Amid the general storm England and Belgium stood forth as a beacon to the nations that it was not necessary to look to a republic for the highest measure of personal freedom and happiness, or of national strength. The Belgian republicans, who had formed a strong party in 1830, when King Leopold accepted the throne, had dwindled into insignificant proportions during the eighteen intervening years of his wise administration. An attempt at a revolutionary movement in Brussels, on the 28th of February, met with no encouragement from the people, and was put down at once. When about a month afterwards an expedition, concerted in Paris and armed from the public arsenals by M. Ledru Rollin, then Minister of the Interior there,

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BELGIUM REMAINS UNSHAKEN.

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descended upon the Belgian frontier, in place of meeting with the sympathy on which it had counted, it found itself unexpectedly surrounded at Quiévrain by a united force of military and peasants, who quietly marched off some of the invaders to prison, whilst others were conducted back to the French frontier.

'Belgium,' the Queen wrote to King Leopold, a few days afterwards, is a bright star in the midst of dark clouds. It makes us all very happy.' It is easy to conceive how welcome to the Queen and Prince was the assurance that one kingdom had remained unshaken amid the general upheaval, and that the kingdom of one who was endeared to them by so many ties. What they had endured since the outburst of the revolutionary tempest in Paris will be best shown. by a few words from a letter of Her Majesty on the 6th of March to Baron Stockmar: 'I am quite well-indeed. particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th enough for a whole life,-anxiety, sorrow, excitement, in short, I feel as if we had jumped over thirty years' experience at once. The whole face of Europe is changed, and

I feel as if I lived in a dream.'

Besides the anxieties, specially due to their position, which were occasioned to the Queen and Prince by the course of public events abroad, they had to suffer much from natural sympathy with their relatives, to whom these. events bad brought misery and disaster. As one by one the members of the French Royal Family arrived to claim their sheltering kindness, the terrible contrast to the circumstances under which an affectionate intimacy with them had grown up could not fail to excite deep emotion. "You know,' writes the Queen, in the letter to Baron Stockmar just cited, my love for the family; you know how I longed to get on better terms with them again. . . . and you said, "Time will alone, but will certainly bring it about." Little

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STATE OF GERMANY.

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did I dream that this would be the way we should meet again, and see each other all in the most friendly way. That the Duchess de Montpensier, about whom we have been quarrelling for the last year and a half, should be here as a fugitive, and dressed in the clothes I sent her, and should come to thank me for my kindness, is a reverse of fortune which no novelist would devise, and upon which one could moralise for ever." 1

The convulsion in Germany had brought ruin upon the estates of Prince Hohenlohe, the husband of the Queen's halfsister, and of her half-brother, Prince Leiningen. Writing on the 27th of March to the Queen, the Princess Hohenlohe says, after mentioning that her husband Prince Ernest will go to attend the Diet at Frankfort in compliance with the King of Würtemberg's wish: What this meeting will bring, God knows! I mean for Germany. For us, personally, there is nothing more to be done at present. We are undone and must begin a new existence of privations, which I don't care for, but for poor Ernest I feel it more than I can say.'

Each successive letter from the Princess brought more vividly home the state of utter confusion which reigned around her. 6 All minds,' she writes from Stuttgart (3rd April), are on the stretch, as well they may be, while so much, everything is at stake. Never was such a state of lawless "vagabondage" as there is now all over Germany, more or less. At all hours of the day young men are walking about the streets doing nothing. The work-people have nothing to do, the merchants can sell nothing, the manufacturers

To-day is historical,' says Lady Lyttelton, writing from Windsor on the 6th March, Louis Philippe having come from Claremont to pay a private (very private) visit to the Queen. She is really enviable now, to have in her power and in her path of duty such a boundless piece of charity and beneficent hospitality. The reception by the people of England of all the fugitives has been beautifully kind.'

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STATE OF GERMANY.

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have nothing to occupy their work-people, and are obliged to dismiss them.' Again, writing four days later, the Princess says: I think you can hardly have an idea of the state Germany is in now. The want of respect for all that is called law is dreadful. I don't speak of ourselves, or out of fear; there is no danger at this moment for us more than any other "Bürger," but the spirit of utter demoralisation in the lower classes is something beyond belief. . . . In Baden it is worse, and more or less this spirit is the same all over Germany, and unfortunately those that are in the good and right principles are afraid to act and speak. . . . You have no idea how low Ernest sometimes is; it quite distresses me to see it. I think women can bear up better against the blows of misfortune than men, particularly when they cannot be active in the strife round about them, but see things go down more and more every day, and are yet not able to move a hand to steady the wheel.*

From Coburg and Gotha, too, came from time to time accounts of violence and revolutionary excitement of a most disquieting kind. You know,' the Queen writes to Baron Stockmar (22nd April), 'how attached I am to that country, how I longed to see our little Coburg again. You will therefore imagine easily how deeply grieved I am to see the present state of things; for in their present wild madness they tear down all that was good and useful, as well as what ought to be destroyed. . . . It is wonderful to see how my dear Prince bears up under so much anxiety and distress: for these one must feel, if one loves one's country and sees the awful state things have got into. But he is full of courage, and takes such a large and noble view of everything that he overlooks trifles, and looks solely to the general good. . . How can one be happy, when one sees and hears of such misery all around? The poor Hohenlohes and Charles Leiningen have suffered much. And then these poor exiles

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RECEPTION OF ORLEANS FAMILY.

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at Claremont! Their life, their future breaks one's heart to think of. How one must pity them all!'

There were some who were disposed to infer from the personal kindness shown by the Queen and Prince to the Orleans family, that the establishment of a Republic in France was regarded at our Court with active hostility. Speaking on the 28th of February, Lord John Russell had anticipated such mistaken surmises by stating, that while it was not the intention of the Government to interfere in any way whatever with any settlement France might think proper to make with respect to her own government, he did not believe England would refuse to perform any of those sacred duties of hospitality which she has performed at all times to the vanquished whoever they were, whether of extreme royalist opinions, of moderate opinions, or of extreme liberal opinions. Those duties of hospitality,' he added, amid the cheers of the House, have made this country the asylum for the unfortunate, and I for one will never consent that we should neglect them.' But even the jealous suspicions of the French Provisional Government, which took the shape, a few days afterwards, of an official complaint on account of the kindness shown in England to the ex-Royal family, might have been quieted, could they have known in what terms the Queen had written to King Leopold on the 1st of March, three days before Louis Philippe reached the English coast.

'About the King and Queen we still know nothing. We do everything we can for the poor family, who are indeed sorely to be pitied. But you will naturally understand that we cannot make cause commune with them, and cannot take a hostile position to the new state of things in France. We leave them alone; but if a Government which has the approbation of the country be formed, we shall feel it necessary to recognise it in order to pin them down to