great French Africa to be carried eastward to the
Atlantic, has prepared, and is preparing, for France in the perhaps not
distant future a new chapter of political accidents upon the possible
gravity and extent of which prudent Frenchmen meditate with dubious
satisfaction.

The sceptre passed as quietly from Louis XVIII. to Charles X. in France
as from George IV. to William IV. in England. So far, indeed, as public
disorder indicates public discontent, the English monarchy was in
greater peril during the period between 1815 and 1830 than the French
monarchy. When the Revolution of July came, no man thought seriously of
asking France to accept a second trial of the Republic, and the crown
was pressed upon the Duc d'Orleans, with the anxious assent of
Lafayette, the friend of Washington, Mirabeau's 'Grandison-Cromwell' of
the Revolution of 1789. Under the long reign of Louis Philippe France
again prospered exceedingly. French art and French literature more than
recovered their ancient prestige. Attempts were made to restore the
elder branch of the Bourbons and to restore the dynasty of the
Bonapartes. But no serious attempt was made to restore the Republic.

The Revolution of 1848 took even Paris by surprise. The Republic which
emerged from it filled France with consternation, and opened the way at
once for the restoration of the Empire. On December 10, 1851, the French
people made the Prince-President Dictator, by a vote the significance of
which will be only inadequately appreciated if we fail to remember that
the millions who cast it were by no means sure that, by putting the
sword of France again into the hands of a Napoleon, they would not
provoke the perils of a great European war. France did not court these
perils, but she preferred them to the risks of a republic.

I spent many months in France at that time, and to me, remembering what
I then saw and heard among all sorts and conditions of men, not in the
departments only but in Paris itself, the persistency with which the
leaders of the present Republican party have set themselves, ever since
they came definitely into power with M. Grevy in 1879, to reviving all
the most odious traditions of the earlier Republican experiments, and to
re-identifying the Republic with all that the respectable masses of the
French people most hate and dread, has seemed from the first, and now
seems, little short of judicial madness.

It did not surprise me, therefore, in 1885, t