life, it will be made very clear that he was no more beaten in the cabinet by Châteaubriand, Montmorency, and Villèle, than in the field by Marmont, Massena, or Soult. That France did invade Spain, contrary to the advice given by the Duke of Wellington from his Government, and corroborated by his own private opinion, is true, but there was no room for any trial of diplomatic skill or struggle in the affair; he gave his advice, but only advice, and advice so disinterested and so rational, that it is said to have had a great effect on the mind of the ablest and wisest of the French ministers whom M. Maurel has named-M. de Villèle-though he was subsequently overborne by his rasher colleagues. Nay, it happens by a singular coincidence that, on the Duke of Wellington's return through Paris from this very mission in which M. Maurel thinks he was defeated by the French diplomatists, he had an audience of Louis XVIII. to repeat the advice he had given at Verona, and the King, says M. Lamartine, who had long before discerned that the Duke was a statesman as well as a soldier, was, like M. de Villèle, much affected by his opinion.'* Whatever of diplomatic struggle there was in the affair was in the French Ministry itself, and fatal were its results. M. de Montmorency was dismissed, and replaced by M. de Châteaubriand, who (we say it with personal regret) giddily and selfishly separated himself from M. de Villèle, thwarted him in all his measures, and finally, by a series of party intrigues, led to the overthrow of the wisest, the most moderate, and, till these unhappy dissensions, the strongest government that the Restoration had had. Thus those three diplomatists whom M. Maurel describes as 'beating the Duke of Wellington in statesmanship,' showed their boasted abilities only in defeating and ruining each other, dethroning their sovereign, and plunging their country in a series of revolutions of which who can foresee the end? We must now conclude. We have, we are aware, given an imperfect idea of the entraînant, though somewhat discursive style of the original, but we hope that we have added not inconsiderably to its value and authority by the elucidations and corroborations of the author's reasoning afforded by our extracts from the Duke's conversations, and we wish we saw any reason to expect that a work at once so amusing and instructive, so attractive and so convincing, was likely to exercise in France the salutary influence which it certainly would have if it could be read there; but we are informed that it is expressly prohibited in France, and we can ourselves say, in confirmation of the truth of this strange exercise of despotism, that we have "Hist. de la Rest. vol. vii. P. 79. been been unable to procure a copy at any shop in Paris, and that persons high in the literary and political circles of that centreas they love to call it-of liberality and civilisation-of literature and of light-had not-when we last heard from Parisbeen able to obtain a sight of it. We can scarcely believe such monstrous tyranny, but, if it be true, our regret at the impediment thus arbitrarily interposed to personal justice and to historical truth is considerably alleviated by the consideration that such an impediment is already a testimony, odious, indeed, but decisive, to the truth and justice which it attempts to smother. It is also a wholesome and instructive lesson to see that the grand constitutional principles which France boasts of having conquered and consecrated in 1789-that the expansive liberties of the Republic, which they tell us have survived and excused its horrors-that the ineffaceable and immortal glories of the old Empire, and finally the stupendous agency of universal suffrage-or, in plainer terms, the omnipotent gendarmerie of the new one-are all together afraid to face a shilling pamphlet, in which there is not a fact, and hardly a word, that is not forty years old—of European notoriety-of the most unquestionable authenticity and veracity, and of which the sole offence can be that a Frenchman ventures to lay before his countrymen in their own tongue a review of historical facts which have been for almost half a century inscribed in the annals of all the other nations of the world. For our parts we confess that it is chiefly for the sake of France herself that we care that M. Maurel's estimate of the Duke of Wellington should make proselytes amongst his countrymen. She is now expiating in a strait-waistcoat her former extravagances, and her prospects are worse than dark; but we still hope and believe that there is in France, under that fearfrozen surface, a depth of good feeling and good sense which must eventually awaken a degree of moral and political courage sufficient to deliver her from the monstrous anomaly that she has during such a rapid succession of revolutions and usurpations exhibited, of being at once the wonder, the contempt, and the terror of the rest of the world, and-we really believe-of herself. M. Maurel's work is marked with that moral courage, and we heartily wish that we could extend its influence. Happy will it be for France and the world if she can be taught that the true glory of soldiers and statesmen, and the real safety and dignity of nations, is to be found in those eternal principles of justice and truth, of which the Duke of Wellington was while living, and has bequeathed to us in his works, the most perfect model. Those,' to borrow M. Maurel's eloquent expressions, VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXIV. 2 P ' were were the qualities by which this man won step by step the admira- AS IT ALREADY IS-WILL GO DOWN WITH STILL INCREASING GRANDEUR Erratum to last Number, p. 248, for eighteen full-manned pilot boats,' read |