h the sword is allowed always to rest, as
pomp in time of peace, as weapon in time of war--such a royalty they
feel to be their best protection. Why, then, should they, in their
electoral capacity, be thrust on by a blind rage to destroy it? But all
this train of reflection we might have spared ourselves. M. Louis Blanc
knows it all, and, if you will wait a reasonable time, he will show you
that he knows it. He will put it to you very forcibly--in another place.
Accordingly, some ninety pages off, he tells us:--"At bottom, the middle
class (_la bourgeoisie_) sees in the monarchy a permanent obstacle to
democratic aspirations: it would have subjected royalty, but not
destroyed it."

For the enlightenment of those who may wish to write history in the most
captivating manner, and at the least possible expense to themselves, we
will reveal another fruitful expedient. There are two ways of writing
history. You may either deduce its great events from certain wide and
steadily-operating causes, as the growing wealth or intelligence of a
people, or you may raise a vulgar wonder by describing them as the
result of some quite trivial incident. In the one case, you appeal to a
philosophic taste; in the other, to a popular love of the marvellous. A
revolution may be represented as the inevitable outbreak of the
discontent and misery of the people; or it may be traced, with all its
disasters, to the caprice of a courtier, or perhaps the accidental delay
of a messenger. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a
shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the man--and so all was
owing to the want of a nail!

The two manners seem incompatible. Never mind. Use them both--both
freely, independently--just as occasion prompts, and the effect
requires. Flatter the philosophic taste that delights in generalities,
and please the childish wonder which loves to fancy that the whole
oak--trunk, branches, leaves--lay in the acorn. M. Louis Blanc has
certainly no idea of forfeiting either of these attractions by laying
claim to the other. Observe the ease and boldness with which he embraces
them in his narrative of the fall of Napoleon, and the restoration of
the Bourbons. He commences in the generalizing mood.

"The fall of Napoleon lay in the laws of the development of the middle
classes. Can a nation be at the same time essentially commercial and
essentially warlike? Napoleon must have renounced his great part of
military chief