From the Quarterly Review.

1. Histoire de la Révolution Française. Par A. Thiers et F. Bodin. 8vo. Paris. Vols. 1 and 2, 1823; vols. 3 and 4, 1824; vols. 5 and 6, 1825; vols. 7, 8, 9, 10, 1827.

2. Histoire de la Révolution de France. Par. M. Thiers. 10 vols. 8vo. 2d edition. Paris, 1828. 3. Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire. Par. A. Thiers, Ancien Président du Conseil des Ministres, Membre de la Chambre des Députés, et de l'Académie Française. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4. 8vo. Paris, 1845.

We believe that we shall be able-we are sure that there are superabundant materials-to demolish utterly and irretrievably M. Thiers' credit as an historian. Whatever of praise may be due to lively talents and great art, exclusively and without exception or scruple, employed to misrepresent and falsify en gros et en détail every subject he touches, we will not deny him; but we most deliberately and conscientiously believe, and shall, we trust, produce sufficient evidence to convince our readers, that in the fourteen octavo volumes of his histories now before us there is not one single page-hardly one line-of sincere and unadulter

ated truth.

omitted from the title-pages of the later editions. We are assured by a well informed authority that this work was originally composed on a much smaller scale, and was comprised at first in four small volumes in eighteens, which were to have formed part of the series of Historical Abridgments published by Le Cointe and Durey. But these booksellers, thinking that a better thing might be made of the book, cancelled the four volumes in 18mo. as waste paper, and it reäppeared with large additions, in an 8vo. shape, as the History of the Revolution."-Quévrard, tit. Thiers.

M. Sante-Beuve, in the article which we have just alluded to, gives an account of the origin of the work, and of the merit of the first livraison, still less flattering :

"The idea was Bodin's-who urged it upon Thiers, and seeing him working so well at it, resigned his coöperation with a good grace. Bodin was a man of some information, but of little power of mind--but he had acquired in that quart d'heure of 1823 a considerable reputation, so that his name was, in a case of need, (au besoin,) a species of authority and even patronage. This auxiliary name therefore was thus associated with that of M. Thiers in the first volume, but disappeared from the We may seem to owe an apology to our read- third. In these first two volumes it is evident that ers for not having sooner undertaken this task-the young historian was only a tyro, and had not but we have both reason and precedent for our yet attained either method or originality. Like silence. We find that our most popular Parisian most historians, after a study more or less adequate contemporary-calling itself, we know not why, of the facts, after inquiries soon and easily satisRevue des Deux Mondes-prefaces an article of the fied, and having said at once mon siége est fait," current year on M. Thiers' historical works writ- he gets out of the scrape by his style-by the draten by M. Sante-Beuve, of the Académie Française, matic interest of the narrative, and by some brilan avowed friend and panegyrist of M. Thiers, liant portraits. The publication of these two volwith a confession of a similar neglect. When he umes over, M. Thiers felt (and he himself confesses whom a party among our neighbors affect to call a it with that candor which is one of the charms of great historian, and still greater minister, and who superior minds) that he had almost everything to is, in a peculiar degree, "the child and champion" learn on the subject he had undertaken, and that a of the Revolution, has been so overlooked by his cursory perusal and a lively arrangement of maown critical coterie, the inattention of London re- terials and memoirs already published—was not hisviewers might pass for venial. But in truth there tory-such as he was capable of conceiving it."---has been no neglect of M. Thiers' work on either P. 223. side of the channel. It attracted early and considerable notice by its lively style, and a certain air of originality and pretence of candor which he had the tact and talent to assume; but, in spite of his varnish, the peculiar circumstances and patronage under which it made its appearance, and the spirit in which it was written, gave it the character-not of a serious and conscientious history-but of a bookseller's speculation on the state of political parties in France. No one, in fact, looked upon it in any other light than as a branch of the general | conspiracy then at work against the elder Bourbons —a paradoxical apology for the old revolution, and a covert provocation to a new one; and this was, we are satisfied, its chief motive-though there M. Thiers is now in the course of publishing a was, of course, something of literary ambition and continuation of this work, under the title of the something more of pecuniary speculation mixed up "History of the Consulate and Empire," of which with it. It appeared, too, with a very ambiguous four volumes have appeared, and which, with less aspect-the first livraison of two volumes bore the of the occasional merits of his first publication, exjoint names of A. Thiers and Felix Bodin-Bodin | hibits in so strong a degree the same spirit of unbeing a young littérateur employed by the booksellers in manufacturing a series of historical abridgments, who was willing to introduce his still younger and more obscure friend Thiers into this species of manufacture. The account given by M. Quévrard, in his elaborate history of French Bibliography, is as follows:

"The first two volumes were written in common with M. Bodin, but M. Thiers having subsequently retouched them, the name of M. Bodin was VOL. VII. 35

LXXXIV.

LIVING AGE.

This certainly looks like candor, but at best would only be candor à la Thiers, which, as our readers will learn by and bye, is never more than an elusive apology for faults too gross to be either concealed or defended: we, however, strongly suspect that the errors which M. Sainte-Beuve thus indicates and M. Thiers confesses, are not the faults that we should complain of, but, on the contrary, some few approaches which his youth and inexperience made to truth and impartiality—for we find that M. Thiers' subsequent corrections of his first edition seem altogether directed towards ridding his book of such disordant and uncongenial qualities.

scrupulous partiality, of indefatigable misrepresentations and audacious untruth, that we feel it to be our duty to delay no longer our exposure of this complicated system of deception.

In the case of productions thus undertaken and carried on-not as serious history, but as a pecuniary and political speculation, and to serve accidental and personal purposes-the writer's individual circumstances are so intimately blended with the character of the work, that both M. Thiers'

admirers and adversaries think it necessary to preface their reviews of this book with a sketch of his life.

We, in following this example, shall avoid as much as possible any mere personality, and shall only observe on those circumstances which appear to have influenced his soi-disant historical la

bors.

for another profession; and his narrow circumstances, as well perhaps as his instinctive literary taste, naturally led him to that which is in France of the easiest access-the bar. We cannot now forbear to smile at the idea of M. Thiers en militaire; but we recollect that the "Historian of the Decline and Fall" professes to have learned something from his services in the Hampshire militiaand from the superabundant diligence with which the historian of the French Revolution loves to dwell on the details of the war, it is evident that he fancies that he had a vocation in that direction, and he dreams, perhaps, that if the peace had not imposed upon him the inferior necessity of being only prime minister, he might, himself, have been another First Consul.

In 1815 he removed to Aix, the seat of the chief tribunal of the department and of the schools of law, where he seems to have looked into codes and digests no more than was just necessary to pass a slight and almost nominal examination, while his real occupation was writing literary essays and getting up political mutinies against the existing government-a road that generally leads to the Tarpeian rock, but in his singular case carried him in triumph to the capitol.

Louis Adolphe Thiers was born at Marseilles on the 16th of April, 1797, of very poor parentshis father being, we are told, a working locksmith. This topic has been handled invidiously by his detractors, and eulogistically by his admirers, to an extent which we cannot, in either sense, adopt. In revolutionary times sudden, and even brilliant, successes are not always the proof of merit: they are sometimes the very reverse, and not unfrequently the result of accident; and however honorable it may be to the individual to have raised himself to eminence from a very low origin, it rarely happens that he can emancipate himself altogether from the low feelings and habits in which he was brought up. Of this Bonaparte himself was to the last a remarkable example; notwithstanding his education in the military, and therefore noble, school of Brienne, he never, even in the highest of his elevation, could get rid of the narrow and jealous in- "M. Thiers, whose ardent and ambitious spirit stincts of his early humility; and though a con- seems to have had the presentiment of a brilliant queror and an emperor, he never was, in the Eng-futurity, already played in the law schools the part lish acceptation of that term, a gentleman. So M. of a leader of the party: he harangued, ranted, and Thiers-advocate, journalist, historian, minister, roared against the restored government-invoked nay, prime minister-has always been and always the recollection of a republic and the empire-bewill be essentially un peu gamin; and we can trace throughout his career a want of that consistency, decorum, and measure as the French call it-that discipline of mind, manners, and principles, which can rarely be learned under the precarious and reckless habits of low life. Whatever favorable training the young mind receives in such a case may generally be traced to maternal care; so in this case, we are told that the mother of M. Thiers, though fallen into extreme poverty, was of a decent bourgeois family, related, it is said, though distantly, to the two poets Chenier-Joseph, the Jacobin Tyrtæus, and André, his victim brother. By her connections she was enabled to obtain for her boy an imperial bourse, or, in more general 'language, gratuitous education in the public school of Marseilles; so that it must be admitted that M. Thiers may naturally remember with gratitude the Imperial régime. Here his progress is said to have been satisfactory from the first, and towards the conclusion of the course brilliant, though of the details no more is told than that he was a tolerable Latinist, and that he studied geometry with that taste for the military profession with which Bonaparte inoculated the rising generation; but in 1814-15 the military despot fell, and Thiers, like thousands of other embryo heroes, had to look out

*He very early dropped the Louis, as savoring, we presume, too much of royalism; and as Louis Philippe Egalité had done before him. This petty subterfuge was already characteristic of the man.

+ We have some doubt as to his classical attainments. Of the "bonnet rouge" of the Jacobins, he says, "a new kind of ornament, borrowed from the Phrygians, and which had become the emblem of liberty" (i., 261.) It was not new, nor borrowed from the Phrygians (see Prudhomme, No. 141.) The woollen cap was the common coiffure of the working classes; and a cap had not now become, but had always been, the emblem of the deified Liberty of antiquity. Again, in all the editions that we have seen of his History, we find the egregious blunder of confounding Eschines the rival of Demosthenes, with Eschylus the tragic poet (ix., 401 ;) which blunder is repeated in the English translation (v., 185.)

came an object of suspicion to his professors-of alarm to the police-and of enthusiasm to his fellow-students."-Galarie des Contemporains Illustres, No. 2.

At Aix he formed what our classical neighbors call a Pylades and Orestes friendship with Mignet, a young man whose circumstances were very similar to his own-cultivating, like him, small literature, and propagating ultra-liberalism under the guise of studying the law-like him producing a

History of the Revolution," and like him, and chiefly we believe by his patronage, rewarded— though not in so eminent a degree-by the July dynasty, with honors and offices, which it would be a ludicrous if it were not a revolting contrast with the high republican sentiments on which these patriots founded their reputation. About this time the Academy of Aix proposed a prize for the best "Eloge of Vauvenargues," a metaphysical and deistical writer of the last century, and a native of that town. Thiers contributed an essay-which, though applauded, was not, any more than its competitors, thought worthy of the subject, and the adjudication of the prize was adjourned to the next year. It is said that Thiers owed this mortification to his having allowed the secret of his authorship to transpire, and to the reluctance of the Academy to encourage the turbulent young lawyer, he next year sent in his former essay; but one "le petit Jacobin." Not disheartened, however, from an unknown hand had in the mean while arrived from Paris, which was so decidedly superior to all the others, that the academicians hastened to give it the prize-though they awarded Thiers the second place. On opening the sealed packets that contained the names of the authors, Thiers was found to be the author of both the first and the second-to the mortification, it is said, of the academicians and the triumph of the liberals. This work seems to us, from the extracts we have seen, to be a respectable coup d'essai, written with some thought, in an easy style, and peculiarly free from

the affectation and bombast which are the common | either Johnson or Goldsmith were able to afford characteristics of the French "eloge."

themselves on their first arrival in London-and we are induced to notice it only from the rapidity with which this humble scenery was changed, and its striking contrast with the singular elegance of M. Thiers' private residence in the Place St. George, and still more so with the splendor of the ministerial palace of the Boulevard des Capucines.

M. Thiers had before this been called to the bar; and practised, or rather endeavored to practise, but with, as might be expected from his temper and his studies, very little success; and so, impatient of an obscure and humble position, he and his bosom friend Mignet set out in September, 1821, to try their fortunes in Paris-" rich in hope and talents, but very low in cash." Their expedition to the capital reminds us of that of Johnson and Garrick to London, and, like our moralist, their chief, if not only resource was a recommendation from some friend in the provincial city to a fellow-towns-actress, (1822.) This we have never seen, and it man resident in Paris.

The first publication of M. Thiers, of which we have any notice, will appear to an English reader an odd début for a politician of such eminence. It was a biographical essay on the life of Mrs. George Anne Bellamy, en tête of the " Mémoires" of that

is now, we suppose, a curiosity. He must also at this period have been writing his "History," of which two volumes were published in 1823, in less, it seems, than two years after his arrival in Paris. But his chief employment and resource was the Constitutionnel, in the columns of which he soon distinguished himself by the vivacity and taste of his literary contributions, and by the vigor and boldness of his political articles. The Constitutionnel rose in 1825 to 16,250 subscribers, the greatest number of any journal in Paris; while the Journal des Débats, written in a moderating and conservative spirit, had only 13,000-a number, however, equal to that of all the other journals of Paris put together. At the July revolution the Constitutionnel had reached near 20,000, while the Débats had fallen off to 12,000; and the most popular of the pure Royalist journals did not exceed 5000. This is a sufficient indication of the political feeling of the reading public. M. Thiers' growing value was duly appreciated. M. Lafitte felt that he had made a prize: he introduced him into the higher circles and confidence of his party; and this not only flattered M. Thiers' vanity and taste, but it extended his sphere of knowledge and of thought, and stimulated at once his diligence and his en

This patron was the then celebrated deputy Manuel, who, like themselves, had been a barrister at Aix elected for the violence of his liberalism into Bonaparte's chamber of the 100 days, and subsequently reëlected by the same party, he was now the boldest and most eloquent orator of the opposition, of which Lafitte, then considered one of the wealthiest bankers of Europe, was the patron, paymaster, and, we believe, the chief manager. There can be little doubt that, even at this time, Lafitte must have suspected, if he had not actually begun to feel, those commercial embarrassments which, some years later, ended in a great and somewhat scandalous bankruptcy; but, as always happens in such desperate cases, he was not on that account the less profuse of what was really other people's money, in endeavoring to bring about another revolution, for the purpose-such was his predominant and almost avowed idea-of raising the Duke of Orleans to the throne. The press, which had been so utterly enslaved by Bonaparte, had, like the prototype of Mind in the heathen mythology, started at once into life, full grown and full armed; and seeming to challenge not liberty only, but sovereignty, it became the chief engine to overthrow the only French govern-ergy. ment that had ever allowed it anything like free- Lafitte was a light and giddy man, with a great dom. Opposition newspapers were founded with flux of plausible talk, and an ultra-Gascon vanity. the double object of influencing public opinion and It was no uncommon thing to hear him tell Engof enlisting and rewarding the young and clever glishmen, "Je suis le Fox de ce pays-ci." His politerary adventurers with whom the system of cheap sition as a great banker gave him a reputation for education and the sudden limitation of the military solid talents which he never possessed, and a profession had overstocked society. Manuel re- degree of weight and authority which he never commended his two young patriots to Lafitte, who deserved. Whether from his secret financial very soon provided for them by employing Mignet transactions with Bonaparte, which were very in the Courier, and Thiers in the Constitutionnel. extensive-or from some pique against the reOne of M. Thiers' young friends, Loève Wymar, stored family-or from higher motives of political gives the following account of the "very modest" conviction-or from some lower and more personal habitation-even after he had obtained some repu-influences which were subsequently imputed to tation among his associates of the future primé him-it is certain that he very early "affichait" minister at France ::his enmity to the restoration :-so much so that in "I clambered up the innumerable steps of the 1814 an eminent Englishman-to whom he was dismal staircase of a lodging-house situated at the declaiming in that strain-pleasantly told him bottom of the dark and dirty Passage Montesquieu, "that he was sorry to find that the House of Lain one of the most crowded and noisy parts of Pa- fitte had declared war against the House of Bourris. It was with a lively feeling of interest that I bon." When subsequently his neglect of his opened, on the fourth story, the smoky door of a business and the expenses of his political intrigues little room which is worth describing-its whole had involved him in pecuniary difficulties, it was furniture being an humble chest of drawers-a bed- very natural that he should become more and more stead of walnut-tree, with white linen curtains-anxious to merge-or excuse-or perhaps repair two chairs and a little black table with rickety Jegs."-Hommes d'Etat de France.

This was probably as good accommodation as

*It was proved in a subsequent suit between the Bank of France and the house of Lafitte & Co., that in 1828 the latter were already insolvent to the amount of about £400,000. How long this deficit had been growing up did not appear.-Deur Ans de Règne, p. 422.

his own insolvency in a general confusion; and he was not, in such circumstances, likely to forget that the Duke of Orleans was the richest subject in Europe, and in a condition, if he should become King of France, to be magnificently grateful.* It

*When Louis Philippe found himself obliged to dismiss the Lafitte ministry in March, 1831, the extent of his pecuniary gratitude to M. Lafitte was the subject of

Expels the Parliament.
Military despotism.

Richard Cromwell set aside.
Restoration of Charles II.

Amnesty to all but regicides.
Popish and Ryehouse plots.
Unpopularity of the Duke of York.
Fear of the Jesuits.

James II., late King's brother.
Suspected birth of the Pretender.
Influence of the Jesuits.

Royal Declarations of indulgence.
Convention parliament.

Flight and abdication of the King.
Expulsion of him and his family.
They take refuge in France.

And, finally, both revolutions arrived at the same
identical result-the calling to the vacant throne
the late king's cousin, being the next male heir after
the abdicating family.

It must indeed be admitted that there had been, throughout the whole course of the French Revolution, a chain of very remarkable coincidences with corresponding events in English history, which we have before incidentally noticed, but which we think it is worth while to exhibit more clearly in the following synopsis :

Louis XVI.

Unpopularity of the Queen.
The National Assembly.
Flight to Varennes.

Trial and execution.

Government by the Convention.
Bonaparte.

Expels the Councils.

Military despotism.

Napoleon II. set aside.

Restoration of Louis XVII.

Amnesty to all but regicides.

Conspiracies of Berton, Bories, &c.
Unpopularity of Count d'Artois.
Fear of the Jesuits.

Charles X., late King's brother.
Suspected birth of D. of Bordeaux.
Influence of the Jesuits.

Royal Ordinances.

Meeting of the dissolved Chamber.
Flight and abdication of the King.
Expulsion of him and his family.
They take refuge in England.

title to the crown should be a guarantee for all the interests that had grown out of the Revolution.

This was no doubt the basis and reasoning of M. Lafitte's project, which artfully allied itself with and assumed the direction of all other dissatisfactions and disturbances as they successively appeared. One instance, out of many, too little noticed at the time and since almost forgotten, is worth recalling:

"On the morning of the 11th of March, 1821, an insurrection broke out in Grenoble, the leader of the mob proclaiming "that a revolution had been effected in Paris-that the king had abdicated

properties, and whom they really hated as antagonists of their principles, and rivals to their newfangled aristocracy. Many even of those who most wished for peace and quiet under the shelter These leading coincidences, and some collateral of a monarchy were not sorry to have a monarch ones too complicated for a synopsis, are very curi--the son of a regicide-whose own revolutionary ous, and at first sight surprising-but they are not unnatural nor even accidental-they only prove, when closely examined, that the rule of like causes producing like effects, is almost as certain in the moral and political as in the physical world. But there were in France stronger incentives to the change of dynasty than existed in England. The English rebellion had not essentially disturbed the great foundations of society-and the English Restoration endangered no private rights, and rather satisfied than alarmed public principle. But in France everything had been subverted-bouleversé-not merely the face of things, but the things themselves; property, above all, had changed hands, and that too under the operation of such cruel and unjustifiable illegalities as could not but render the new possessors very sensitive as to their titles. The usurping government of France had This singular anticipation of the events of July, been moreover of longer duration, and had of 1830, proves at least what were the predominant course spread deeper roots, and it had created an ideas of the movement party. In the trial of Berextensive nobility and gentry of its own :-now all tin, in 1822, the law-officers of the crown distinctly those interests and feelings were offended, and charged these and similar disturbances upon a pretended to be alarmed, by the return of those directing committee in Paris, and by name on its whom they affected to fear as claimants of their leading members, Generals Lafayette and Foy, an angry discussion. It was alleged, on the part of the and MM. Lafitte and Manuel. This grave impuking, that he had paid in 1831 for M. Lafitte 12,000l.tation was denied at the time-rather faintly, that he had given him 400,000l. for the forest of Breteuil, because the parties were afraid of daring the minwhich, as it produced only 80007. a year, was considerably istry to the proof; but since the July revolution it above its value-and that he had guaranteed a loan from has been boasted of. Sarrans makes it a new the Bank of France to M. Lafitte of 240,000l. These facts were all contested-the guarantee it was said cost claim for Lafayette on the gratitude of his counrothing-and on the whole it appeared that the liberality try, that his own head and that of his son were was not excessive; but what honest claim could M. Lafitte have for any liberality at all-or was Louis Philippe to confess that, like old Didius, he had bought the crown?

that the Duke of Orleans had been placed at the head of a provisional government-that the tri-colored flag had been hoisted, and the constitution of 1791 restored.'"-Lacretelle, Restor., iii., 31.

That was Lafayette's reason.-Sarrans, Rév. de 1830, vol. i., p. 195.

risked on this occasion. And M. Thiers, in his | Revolution, and even the most liberal amongst pamphlet "La Monarchie de 1830," published in them had a tendency to keep alive and sharpen the 1831, states that the idea of the Duke of Orleans' feelings of shame and horror with which the elevation "dated from fifteen years before, and majority of the French people looked back on that every intelligent mind had already designated those disastrous and disgraceful days, and in an him for king" (p. 25.) This probably was true especial degree on the most profligate and odious only of M. Lafitte and the "intelligent minds" of cause and accomplice of all those atrocitieshis own special friends and followers; but it is-Philippe Egalité. Now, towards producing the like the more celebrated phrase of "la comédie de son-little known to the public except as the son quinze ans"-an admission that such were the sentiments and doctrines into which the patronage of M. Lafitte had enlisted, amongst a great many others, MM. Mignet and Thiers.*

of such a man-the first step would naturally be an attempt to efface or extenuate the crimes of the father. It was therefore, as we suspect, decided by the leaders that in addition to the light troops At first their coöperation was confined to their of newspapers and pamphlets, the heavy artillery respective newspapers, but it soon overflowed into of regular history should be brought into action, other channels, and produced, as we think, a very and that while the inestimable benefits and the imstrange occurrence. These two young men, mortal glory conferred on France by the Revolubosom friends-inhabiting, together it seems, the tion should be blazoned to the highest, its crimes poor apartment before described, (Gal. des Con- and horrors should be palliated and excused; and temp., vol. i., p. 8,) and working for a precarious that, as an important corollary to the general delivelihood-suddenly came before the public as sign, the case of Egalité should be kindly yet rival authors, each with a "History of the French cautiously handled-keeping him in a shadowy Revolution." The works were no doubt very dif- background-not wholly unnoticed, lest it should ferent in their styles-Mignet's being a kind of post be said that the Revolution was ashamed of him— mortem anatomical lecture, which exhibited little not altogether white-washing him, lest outraged more than the skeleton of the subject; while truth should rise up and remonstrate too loudlyThiers' presented the revolution dressed up like a but just mentioned where he could not well be player for the stage, with the most elaborate omitted, with a charitable ambiguity-the prudent endeavor to conceal its deformities, and to give it, precursor of that bolder insult to the feeling and by theatrical illusion, an air of grace or of gran- common sense of all mankind, which was, when deur. But, notwithstanding this marked differ- the plot had ripened into success, to proclaim him ence in the execution of the works, it still seems "le plus honnête homme de la France." Of course very strange that two young men, in such very it would add greatly to the effect if all this should peculiar circumstances, should have simultaneously be done in two solemn and substantial historical undertaken tasks so nearly identical-so likely to works, so different in size, style, general arrangeforce them into a kind of rivalry or collision, and ment, and character, that they never could be susto spoil in some degree each other's market. pected of being concerted fabrications of the same Finding no explanation of this odd occurrence in shop. We do not venture to say, and indeed can the reviews or biographies, we are driven to our hardly think, that these twin histories were conown conjectures; and the following appears to us cocted solely for this Orleanist project. There to be at least a plausible solution of the enigma. were no doubt, as we before said, the concurrent, if not primary, object of literary profit and fame, and a powerful share of the old revolutionary impulse in the minds of the writers; but we do believe, and think we could show from a concurrence of minute circumstances, that they were written in concert-that Thiers is only an amplification of Mignet, or Mignet a table of contents to Thiersand that both, whether spontaneously or by the suggestion of the leader of the party, were made subservient to the general views of the new revolutionists, and collaterally of their designs in favor of the Duke of Orleans. It is at least certain that if they had been undertaken with that special object, they could hardly have fulfilled it better. We shall examine in due course M. Thiers' mode of handling these matters; but in order to have done with M. Mignet, we shall at once produce all the passages of his philosophical history in which this *The Duke of Orleans, however, was too prudent to primum mobile of the Revolution, the Duke of mix himself personally in these matters, and it seems Orleans, is mentioned and they are but three. that he had never seen M. Thiers till the night between The first introduces that prince-very much áprothe 30th and 31st July, 1830. But M. Sainte-Beuve, in stating this, states also, with the blind inconsistency of pos des bottes-for the purpose of denying that he his school, a most remarkable fact, which entirely contra- had any real party influence in the Revoludiets his own object; he says that "Manuel advised tion:Thiers early not to see the Duke of Orleans." Why should Manuel have thus early advised a penny-a-liner, "The Duke of Orleans, to whom they [that is, as Thiers then was, not to see the Duke of Orleans? all mankind, except MM. Mignet & Co. have imWhat could Thiers have had to do with the Duke of Or-puted a party, had very little influence in the leans? We, however, in spite of M. Sainte-Beuve's assembly-he voted with the majority, and not the unlucky suggestion, persist in our disbelief that the duke was ever directly concerned in any of M. Lafitte's earlier intrigues. He may have had some notion of his design, but probably kept himself clear of all guilty participations.

We have already stated M. Lafitte's fixed and passionate desire to place the Duke of Orleans on the throne, and we have sufficient indications of the indefatigable intrigues and profuse expenditure with which he pursued that object; but he met little sympathy-in fact, the great difficulty he found in accomplishing it, even after the July revolution had vacated the throne, proves that there was no public opinion with him or the duke; and so with that confidence which financiers are apt to have in their power to influence public credit -he resolved to bring his candidate into fashion, and raise the character of the House of Orleans, as he might do the price of bank-stock; but the antécédens of that house were not favorable to this speculation-all former historians had joined in a chorus of indignation against the crimes of the

majority with him. The personal attachment of some few members-his name-the fears of the court-the popularity with which his opinions were rewarded hopes much more than plots-gave