he initiative; it is the 14th
of July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the
monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French
rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in
eruption for twenty-six years--such was the dream. The solidarity of the
Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs
with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It is
true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural
reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional
order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the
conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, and
that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always cropping
up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones;
after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter.
Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant
on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality;
Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights
of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it
Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress,
call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is
already fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches its goal strangely. It
employs Wellington to make of Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator.
Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the tribune. Thus does
progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman.
It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the
man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid
of Father Elysee. It makes use of the gouty man as well as of the
conqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo,
by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had
no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in
another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the
thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued
its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.

In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that
which smiled in Wellington's rear; that which brought him all the
marshals' staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a
mar