that religious faith and
respect for things holy are nowhere more necessary than in the bosom of
democratic and liberal associations. I believe he discovered this a
little too late, when he found himself individually confronted by the
passions which his ballads had fomented, and the dreams he had
transformed to realities. He then hastened, with sound sense and
dignity, to escape from the political arena, and almost from the world,
unchanged in his sentiments, but somewhat regretful and uneasy for the
consequences of the war in which he had taken such a prominent part.
Under the Restoration, he was full of confidence and zeal, enjoying his
popularity with modesty, and more seriously hostile and influential than
any sonneteer had ever been before him.

Thus, after six years of government by the right-hand party, and three
of the reign of Charles X., matters had arrived at this point--that two
of the chief royalist leaders marched at the head of an opposition, one
against the Cabinet, and the other against the Clergy, both becoming
from day to day more vigorous and extended, and that the Restoration
enumerated a ballad-maker in the first rank of its most dangerous
enemies.

This entire mischief and danger was universally attributed to
M. de Villele; on the right or on the left, in the saloons and the
journals, amongst the Moderates and the extreme Radicals, he became more
and more an object of attack and reproach. As the judicial bodies had
acted in affairs which regarded religion, so the literary institutions,
on questions which concerned their competence, eagerly seized the
opportunity of manifesting their opposition. The University, compressed
and mutilated, was in a state of utter discontent. The French Academy
made it a duty of honour to protest, in an address which the King
refused to receive, but which was nevertheless voted, against the new
bill on the subject of the press, introduced to the Chamber in 1826, and
withdrawn by the Cabinet three months afterwards. In his own Chamber of
Peers, M. de Villele found neither general goodwill nor a certain
majority. Even at the Palais Bourbon and the Tuileries, his two
strongholds, he visibly lost ground; in the Chamber of Deputies, the
ministerial majority declined, and became sad even in triumph; at the
court, several of the King's most trusty adherents, the
Dukes de Riviere, de Fitz-James, and de Maille, the Count de Glanderes,
and many others,--some through party spi