which is one of "the conditions of the life be that of France." He has neither symof the nation; or attempt to establish pathy with the Germans nor support from privileges, a concession to the moderate them, for though he has lived in exile, it Republicans, who are more afraid of aris- has been under the Austrian flag, just now tocracy than of the throne; promises com- by a funny turn of fortune rather popular plete amnesty, even to the extent of em- in France. He has not bombarded Paris, ploying men of all parties,- a bid for the and is not more hated there than any adhesion of the bureaucracy; and finally other King would be, perhaps less, for pledges himself to secure efficacious guar- Paris has no gossip to tell of his career. antees for the Pope, a bid for the village There is no especial reason that we see why curés, hitherto the strongest because the he should not be chosen, and two or three most interested friends of the Bonapartists. very powerful reasons in favour of such a The tone of the whole manifesto in fact is choice. His personality is almost unthat of a man who believes that a move- known, as unknown as that of Louis Napoment will be made in his favour, which leon in 1818, while his name is not un-, may succeed, if only the factions most known; for, after all, to say that the likely to resist can be temporarily conciliated. Is it conceivable that there is any ground for this tone, that the long despised Comte de Chambord is really one of the most probable candidates for the highest place in France? We cannot profess to answer the question with decision, but there is no visible reason for a peremptory No, and a good many for hesitation. Supposing a monarchy established at all, that is to say, supposing the great cities not to be conciliated, but to be held down, and M. Thiers to be dismissed — and in Paris at least, after this bombardment, the Assembly has no other alternative-the Comte de Chambord is quite as probable a monarch as any other. There is no man of the first eminence to be his competitor, no one in whom Frenchmen have any personal confidence, or to whom any party likely to vote for a monarchy has any devoted attachment. The Count may not be a strong man- though extremely little is known about him- but his rivals are not strong men either, at least if we may trust the indications that the Duc d'Aumale, able as he is as a critic, has in the crisis of his fortunes proved himself unequal to his great opportunities. His condemnation is that he is not now on the throne. The Count may not be able to reign, but he can sit in the chair of State just as well as the Comte de Paris, can select the same advisers, and is equally uncompromised by any incidents in his past career. He can have no personal enemies to punish, or personal injuries to avenge, or as he says with a sly dig at his cousins of the younger branch which recalls the satiric temper of Louis XVIII. personal fortune to build up. Being childless, is his suggestion, he can have no motive either to make money, or to form rich alliances, or to found a fortune, "unless it Bourbons are forgotten in France is, though perfectly true in one sense, more of an epigram than an fact. His selection, instead of adding one more to the list of dynastic parties, would eliminate one, for his heir is the Comte de Paris; and although the great Orleanists think that fact of a bad rather than a good importance, wishing their King to reign by election alone they cannot alter history, or decree that the Comte de Paris shall not one day be the lineal chief of the Bourbons. And finally, his election would relink the broken chain of history, and to a people so weary, so dispirited, so thirsty for repose, that of itself must have a certain charm. We do not see, if the Assembly declares for him, and that the cities are held down, and the peasantry refuse under the advice of the curés to resist, why the chances of Henry Cinq are not as good as those of any conceivable pretender. Of course, if the Army opposes, its opposition would be fatal; but there is no especial reason why the Army should oppose the Bourbons any more than the Orleanists, while the Count has at least this military merit that he has never been defeated. The dynasty could not, we believe, last; but it might preside with some dignity and great moderation through the interregnum during which France must rehabilitate itself, and allow time for the revival of political life and governing capacity in a country in which twenty years of despotism appear to have temporarily extinguished both. A republic would revivify France more rapidly, and allow far greater scope for the action of a man of genius; but if the Assembly wins, and declares for a throne, most Englishmen will believe that among pretenders the heir of Hugh Capet may be pronounced at all events the least objectionable. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for. warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in num. bers, price $10. Thrice luckless fruit! our world had been So grumbled I, when lo! a pair The mighty metamorphic change Said Laura: "You're a silly goose, To whelm with eloquent abuse And that old sneer at Mother Eve, Quoth I, "Sun-stinted fruit will lose I'm sweet as drops from Hybla's hive, SPIN me a rope of sand, or forge a chain Your chain would fly before a zephyr's breath: So your cold words of wisdom meet their death When Love's low whisper makes the heart grow fain. The match of Love is of so quick a sort It can be lighted with the merest touch; And let it once be kindled, e'en in sport, Cool reason, thawing, finds the flame too much. If love within our hearts an entry gain, that he lived in times when, to persist in an uncompromising course, was as impracticable as to walk straight amongst pitfalls or to keep clear of sunken rocks without tacking: that, whenever he joined or left a party or a cause, he did so because it had assumed fresh colours, or because a more effective mode of promoting the essential object of good government had broken upon him. THERE are few characters in English history better worth studying than that of Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury. He lived in most momentous times, and he played most important parts in them. He was a Royalist and a Parliamentarian by turns during the Great Rebellion; a kind of half-Cromwellian, The undertaking was one of no ordinary with monarchical leanings, under the boldness, and Mr. Christie is no ordinary Commonwealth; a courtier, a patriot, a biographer. Acute, cultivated, zealous, member of the Cabal, and a fierce Exclu- industrious, scrupulously accurate, justly sionist, under the Restoration. He changed sides with an audacity, a rapidity, and an adroitness, that make it difficult, almost impossible, to decide whether he was corrupt or incorrupt, whether he acted upon principle or no-principle, whether he adopted expediency, broad enlightened expediency, for the rule of his public conduct, or, in each successive crisis, simply waited for the tide, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. If his changes had uniformly, or even generally, coincided with his interests or supposed views of personal advancement, there would be little room for doubt; but they did not. Making no allowance for him on this score, historians, poets, and lawyers, have joined in a chorus of reprobation. The brilliant rhetoric of Macaulay, the splendid satire of Dryden, the inexhaustible wit of Butler, the forensic acuteness of Lord Campbell, have been combined against his fame; yet no one of these formidable assailants can be deemed unexceptionable as a witness or a judge, and all of them together ought not to preclude renewed inquiry or appeal, if it can be shown that they were swayed by prejudice or imperfectly acquainted with the facts. In the full and complete Life before us, Mr. Christie has undertaken to show this: to prove that historians, poets, and lawyers, are equally at fault: that Shaftesbury was not a bad man, if an erring one: that his admitted faults and vices were less those of the individual than of the age: * A Life of Anthony Ashley, First Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683. By W. D. Christie, Formerly Her Majesty's Minister to the Argentine Confederation and to Brazil. 2 vols. London and New York, 1871. confident in his resources and his views, he possesses (what we recently commended in Sir Henry Bulwer) the marked advantage of a peculiar training for his task. He has held high appointments in the diplomatic service, and he was an active member of the House of Commons for some years. In suggesting that biographers of statesmen will always be the better for some practical acquaintance with public affairs or statesmanship, we are not afraid of incurring the satirical reproof implied in the well-known line "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." Shaftesbury himself foresaw that he would be hardly judged by posterity. "Whoever considers the number and the power of the adversaries I have met with, and how studiously they have, under the authority of both Church and State, dispersed the most villanous slanders of me, will think it necessary that I in this follow the French fashion, and write my own Memoirs, that it may appear to the world on what ground or motives they came to be my enemies, and with what truth and justice they have prosecuted their quarrel; and if in this whole narration they find me false or partial in any particular, I give up the whole to whatever censure they will make." Such is the commencement of a meditated autobiography, which breaks off abruptly at the most interesting point; just when "my life is not without great mixtures of the public concern, and must be much intermingled with the history of the times." This fragment, however, is valuable as an illustration of the period and the writer. In describing or (to use his own expression) "setting down his his name, so that it should not be parted youthful time - including the particulars with." of his birth, family, and education - he Clarendon has recorded that many of incidentally throws light on national man- the great men who took part in the ners; whilst his sketches of contempora- | Civil War were little men. An accurate ries are remarkable for fineness of percep- notion of Shaftesbury's bodily proportion, firmness of touch, rich racy expres- tions is conveyed by Dryden's nervous sion, and vitality. One of them, that ofcouplet : Mr. Hastings, "son, brother, and uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon," (often reprinted) has won a place in popular literature by these qualities. There is another autobiographical fragment, which skims over parts of his early life in a more cursory fashion; there is also extant a Diary for four years and a half of his middle life; but little more than bare well-known facts are to be collected from these documents; which occupy less than thirty pages of Mr. Christie's Appendix, and afford little aid when we come to the vexed questions or debateable ground. It is just possible that on approaching this same ground, Shaftesbury paused and thought better of it, or that the maxim, attributed to an eighteenth-century diarist, occurred to him: "Whenever you have made a good impression, go away." The Fragments leave a decidedly favourable impression, which their completion or continuation might have disturbed. 66 "A fiery soul, which working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay." He took after his mother and maternal grandfather in these respects. "Sir Anthony Ashley was of great age, but of strong sense and health; he had been for wisdom, courage, experience, skill in weapons, agility, and strength of body scarce paralleled in his age, of a large mind in all his actions, his person of the lowest. His daughter was of the same stature, a modest and virtuous woman, of a weaker mould, and not so stirring a mind as her father. Sir John Cooper was very lovely and graceful both in face and person, of a moderate stature, neither too high nor too low, of an easy and an affable nature, fair and just in all affairs." Sir Anthony Ashley, when nearly fourscore, had taken to wife a young lady under twenty, near of kin to the Duke of Buckingham, "from whom he expected great preferment and, from her, children; but he failed of his ex 'My birth (he states) was at Wimborn St. Gyles in the County of Dorsett, on the 22nd day of July, 1621, early in the morn-pectation in the first, and his age, with the ing; my parents on both sides of a noble virtue of the young lady, could not help stock, being of the first rank of gentry in him to the latter." He accordingly setthose countries where they lived." It ap- tled all his fortune on his son-in-law and pears from this and other passages that daughter for their lives with remainder in the term "noble" was then used in Eng-fee to Shaftesbury, "for he grew every day land, as it is still used on the Continent, more and more fond of me, being a pratto designate merely ancient lineage or ing boy and very observant of him.” Sir good birth. "My mother's name (he con- Anthony died in 1627, and Lady Cooper tinues) was Anne, the sole daughter and (the mother) in 1628, whereupon Sir John heir of Sir Anthony Ashley, knight and Cooper (the father) took for his second baronet, lord of the manor and place wife the widow of Sir Charles Moryson, where I was born; my father, Sir John and daughter and coheir of the Lord VisCooper, knight and baronet, son of Sir count Camden, a lady beautiful and of John Cooper, of Rockborn in the county great fortune, a discreet woman of a large of Hamshyre. I was christened by the soul, who if she had not given some jealousy name of Anthony Ashley, for, notwith- to both her husbands, and confirmed it afterstanding my grandfather had articled with wards by marrying the person (Sir Richard my father and his guardians that he should Alford) mought (sic) have been numbered change his name to Ashley, yet, to make amongst the excellent." This marriage all sure in the eldest, he resolved to add 'caused the removal of the family to Cashio 66 |