character was inconsistent with the permanent welfare of France, and his overthrow became an imperative necessity. His military exploits achieved immortality for his name, but yielded to the world nothing save wonder and regret.

SECOND RESTORATION.

LOUIS XVIII. reascended the throne in July, 1815. For sixteen years had Napoleon held France in his stern grip. His intellect, his will, and his glory, had confounded opposition; but with his disappearance, the Nation relapsed once more into the hands of Politicians.

The Allied Sovereigns and their Statesmen, who entered Paris a second time in 1815, must have pondered deeply over the situation. For twenty-six years France had been in their eyes little else than a common nuisance: first with her Revolution, its anarchy, bloodshed, and subversive principles; next with her Napoleonic Wars, assailing and subjugating all nations in turn. Twice had Europe risen in self-defence, and twice had France been stricken down. How to extinguish such a volcano must have been a perplexity to the conquerors. Various projects were discussed. Should the Feudal System be restored? Should the Absolute Monarchy be set up again? But Feudality without the Middle Ages, and Absolute Monarchy without the Seventeenth century, would be anachronisms and shortlived. Europe, irritated and bewildered, returned home, and left France to the solution of her own destiny.

Napoleon suppressed, and his conquerors gone, France, I repeat, fell once more into the possession of her Politicians; and her history since then is simply the record of their conflicts for supremacy-each set struggling in turn to outwit the others. A new Constitution, called the "Charter of 1814," inaugurated the return of Louis XVIII. This Constitution gave the Executive power to the King, and divided the Legislative power between two Chambers: an Upper Chamber composed of Peers, some hereditary and others for life; and a Lower one consisting of Deputies, elected by qualified suffrage.

Two parties immediately sprung up, which were the natural product of the circumstances. One consisted of the Aristocracy and Clergy, who had been persecuted and decimated by the Revolution. These naturally desired that France should return to the condition in which they were the dominant classes. They proposed that Agriculture should be the chief interest; that cultivation on a large scale should be restored; that great properties should be reconstituted with Entail and Primogeniture; that the Clergy should be supported by the State; and that the Administrative Centralization reorganized by Napoleon, which enabled the Government to control the country, should be abolished. short, they hoped to revive the Feudal System, the system of the Middle Ages, the government of the Aristocracy, which Richelieu had suppressed. They were as much opposed to an Absolute Monarchy as to an Absolute Democracy. They always believed that France was their heritage, quite forgetting that they had been superseded by the Absolute Monarchy, and that both had been supplanted by the Revolution. This was the

In

Feudal party, which dreamt that ancient France could be galvanized and set up again.

Opposed to it was the party that was born in the seventeenth century, and survived the vicissitudes and horrors of the eighteenth century. They denied that the Supreme power belonged either to the Aristocracy or the Monarchy; it was, they contended, the property of the Nation, to be used by its agents or delegates for the benefit of all. This was the party of Modern France. It represented all the new interests that had grown up, and consisted of the new men that aspired to govern the country. It was composed of the parliamentarians, the bankers, manufacturers, merchants, physicians, and lawyers; in fact, the descendants of that Middle Class which once stood between the Aristocracy and the masses.

The struggles between these parties, between ancient France and modern France, filled up the reign of Louis XVIII. The King was a sensible man, with a love for belles-lettres, and no taste for politics and its noisy jargon. The lessons of his eventful life were not forgotten. The ancient Monarchy of France in the person of his brother had sunk in a sea of blood. An exile and wanderer for twenty-three years, he returned to France, not to sit on the throne of his ancestors-it had vanished -but to play the novel rôle of Constitutional King. Either from indifference or prudence, he held aloof from the contests that raged around him. He could feel no sympathy for a party that sought to resuscitate an Aristocracy meant to curb alike the Monarchy and the masses. He comprehended, on the other hand, the folly of resisting a party that impersonated the France of his day. For nearly ten years he held the balance evenly between them, choosing as his Minister,

at one time the Duke Decazes, the leader of modern France, and at the other, M. de Villèle, the chief of the "Impracticables," as the party of ancient France was christened. When dying, he laid his hand on the head of his young grand-nephew, the Duke de Bordeaux,* and said, "Let my brother husband tenderly the Crown of this child."

*The Duke de Bordeaux, better known as the Count de Chambord, was born in September, 1820, and was grandson of Charles X. His father, the Duke de Berry, was assassinated, in February, 1820, as he was leaving the Opera-house, by the fanatic Louvel, a saddler, who declared his object was to extinguish the elder branch of the Bourbons.

K

DOWNFALL OF THE MONARCHY.

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

CHARLES X., brother of Louis XVI., and of the last King, succeeded to the throne in 1824. Up to this time he bore the title of Count d'Artois. He emigrated in 1789, and was active in urging the Foreign Powers to invade France and put down the Revolution. He returned in 1814, untaught by the fearful events that had occurred, and unconscious of the vast moral and material change that had ensued. This was exemplified by his reply when asked, on his arrival in Paris, if he found any alteration. "Only a Frenchman the more," he answered, alluding to himself. He was a man of small capacity, and great irresolution-just the combination to lead to a catastrophe. During his brother's reign, he identified himself with the reactionary party, and readily yielded to the perilous influence of the Clergy.

He was no sooner in power, than under the counsel of his Minister, M. de Villèle, he authorized the adoption of several indiscreet measures, which soon aroused public indignation. Alarmed at the outcry, he called M. de Martignac to his side, 1827, and calmed the universal dissatisfaction by a wiser policy. Unable, however, to resist the pressure of insidious advisers, and still profoundly ignorant of public sentiment in France, he