who
forgot all political resentment, and remembered only her personal
regard for these fallen princes.

The overthrow of the Orleans dynasty in 1848 was a complete surprise,
and men have never ceased to see something disgraceful in its amazing
suddenness. Here was a great king, respected for wisdom and daring,
and supposed to understand at every point the character of the land
he ruled, his power appearing unshaken, while it was known to be
backed with an army one hundred thousand strong. And almost without
warning a whirlwind of insurrection against this solid power and this
able ruler broke out, and in a few wild hours swept the whole fabric
into chaos. Nothing caused more surprise at the moment than the
extreme bitterness of animosity which the insurgents manifested
towards the king's person, unless it were the tameness with which he
submitted to his fate and the precipitancy of his flight. There was
something rotten in the state of things, men said, which could thus
dissolve, crushed like a swollen fungus by a casual foot. And indeed,
whether with perfect justice or not, Louis Philippe's Administration
had come to be deemed corrupt some time ere his fall. The free-spoken
Parisians had openly flouted it as such: witness a mock advertisement
placarded in the streets: "_A nettoyer, deux Chambres et une Cour_":
"Two _Chambers_ and a _Court_ to clean." A French Government that had
been crafty, but not crafty enough to conceal the fact, that was
rather contemned for plotting than dreaded for unscrupulous energy,
was already in peril. The still unsubdued revolutionary spirit,
working under the smooth surface of French society, was the element
which accomplished the destruction of this discredited Government.

The outbreak in France acted like a spark in a powder magazine; ere
long great part of Europe was shaken by the second great
revolutionary upheaval, when potentates seemed falling and ancient
dynasties crumbling on all sides--a period of eager hope to many,
followed by despair when the reaction set in, accompanied in too many
places by repressive measures of pitiless severity. The contemptuous
feeling with which many Englishmen were wont to view such Continental
troubles is well embodied in the lines which Tennyson put into the
mouth of one of his characters, speaking of France:

"Yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,
The king is scared, the soldier will not