e narrow foundation of the
_bourgeoisie_. Louis Philippe and one or two of the members of his
family, succeeded in obtaining some personal popularity, but it was only
in the comparatively small class, the _pays legal_, with which they
shared the emoluments of Government, and it was not sufficient to raise a
single hand in their defence when the masses, whom the Court could not
bribe or caress, rose against it. The Orleanist-Fusionists are
Bourbonists only from calculation. They wish for the Comte de Paris for
their king, not from any affection for him or for his family, but because
they think that such an arrangement offers to France the best chance of
a stable Government in some degree under popular control: and they are
ready to tolerate the intermediate reign of Henri V. as an evil, but one
which must be endured as a means of obtaining something else, not very
good in itself but less objectionable to them than a Bonapartist dynasty
or a Republic.

* * * * *

'The Legitimists have been so injured in fortune and in influence, they
have been so long an oppressed caste, excluded from power, and even from
sympathy, that they have acquired the faults of slaves, have become
timid, or frivolous, or bitter. Their long retirement from public life
has made them unfit for it. The older members of the party have forgotten
its habits and its duties, the younger ones have never learnt them. Their
long absence from the Chambers and from the departmental and municipal
councils, from the central and from the local government of France, has
deprived them of all aptitude for business. The bulk of them are
worshippers of wealth, or ease, or pleasure, or safety. The only
unselfish feeling which they cherish is attachment to their hereditary
sovereign. They revere Henri V. as the ruler pointed out to them by
Providence: they love him as the representative of Charles X. the
champion of their order, who died in exile for having attempted to
restore to them the Government of France. They hope that on his
restoration the _canaille_ of lawyers, and _litterateurs_, and
adventurers, who have trampled on the _gentilshommes_ ever since 1830,
will be turned down to their proper places, and that ancient descent will
again be the passport to the high offices of the State and to the society
of the Sovereign. The advent of Henri V., which to the Orleanist branch
of the Fusionists is a painful means, is to the Legitimist b