At last, at seven o'clock in the morning of Friday the 30thabout fourteen hours having been unfortunately and unaccountably lost-M. de Mortemart set out for Paris; he carried the ordonnance for his own appointment: the other six M. Mazas put into the pocket of his jacket-he had no coat-and secured with a pin lest he should lose them.' Finding great difficulty from the mob at the barriers, they alighted from their carriage and entered Paris on foot, and having further disordered their already disordered dress as a kind of disguise, walked separately, in order not to attract notice. The interior was silent and tranquil, the windows were not yet open, no horses nor carriages, and scarcely any inhabitants in the streets. 'What a calm!' said Mazas. The calm of force,' replied M. de Mortemart. M. Mazas admires the depth' of this expression; we have the misfortune of thinking that it shows that M. de Mortemart was little suited for the part he was selected to play. The calm was, we think, that of the habits of a great town at an early hour, and of an indifference and apathy in the great body of the middle classes of the people, who neither opposed M. de Polignac's ordonnances nor M. Lafitte's insurrection. A person so pre-occupied with the notion of the force of the insurrection as to see this in a circumstance which assuredly afforded no evidence of it, was manifestly certain to fail in the task of resisting it; and it was, we presume, some knowledge of his character, that induced M. Lafitte to stipulate that, of all men in France, poor M. de Mortemart should be named first minister. 6 As they proceeded through the empty town, M. d'Argout persuaded the duke to go at once to M. Lafitte's the focus of the insurrection-before he went to the Hotel de Ville to exhibit his powers and commence his ministry-strange advice and as strangely adopted. On their way, they happened-curious coincidence!-to pass through the street where resided M. Bérard, a leading deputy of the liberal party, who, by another coincidence equally strange, happened, with some other liberal deputies and friends, to be standing in the street. Poor Mazas felt, or at least expresses, no wonder at all this; but he observed, that when M. d'Argout presented the Duke of Mortemart to Bérard, the latter seized upon him with great eagerness, s'empara de M. le Duc avec beaucoup de chaleur,' and dragged him into his house, assuring him that he should risk his personal safety by going to M. Lafitte's-besides, added M. Bérard, you come to negociate an arrangement-it is too late;' and in order that, if the point were before doubtful, it might really be too late, M. Bérard contrived to detain the Duke of Mortemart above an hour in his house. We can easily believe that this hour was not lost by M. Bérard and his friends, particularly when we find, in the sequel, that that this M. Bérard was the person who was charged with the composition of the new charter by which Louis Philippe was called to the throne, and which is now commonly known in France by the derisive cognomen of La Charte Bérard. It must be confessed, that accident had given a strange direction to M. de Mortemart's proceedings. In short, M. de Mortemart, under the advice of M. Bérard, neither went to Lafitte's, according to his second intention, nor to the Hotel de Ville, according to his first, but made his way to the Luxembourg-the palace of the peers-where M. de Semonville, an officer of that assembly, resided-whence he wrote a letter to Lafayette at the Hotel de Ville, to announce the six new ordonnances, and his own appointment. This had no effect but to hasten the elevation of the Duke of Orleans to the government, under the title of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom,-and so ended, before it began, the ministry of M. de Mortemart. But his troubles were not at end, they hunted him,' he complained, like a wild beast.' It is quite clear that this hunting was not a mere popular effervescence-it was the tactic of the predominant party, who endeavoured to prevent M. de Mortemart's making an effort, as he had announced his intention of doing, in favour of the Duke of Bordeaux. In short, it appears to us quite certain that M. de Mortemart was all along nothing but a stalking-horse, behind which the revolutionary party were ripening and advancing their proceedings; and who, brave soldier and honourable gentleman as he may be (we wish he had not accepted the Russian embassy) was manifestly ungifted with either the political sagacity or the moral courage which the station, into which he had been so strangely called, demanded. But another and more curious scene now opens upon us. In the middle of the night the Duke of Orleans sent to desire to see M. de Mortemart, who was concealed in an entresol at M. de Semonville's he wished to see him, he said, dans l'intérêt de la cause du roi-'for the advantage of the royal cause.' M. de Mortemart consented,-he arrived at the Palais Royal about day-break (3 a.m., July 31st.) He found the duke overcome with heat and fatigue and only half-dressed. His Royal Highness hastened to accost him as follows:: 'Duke of Mortemart, if you see the king before I do, tell him that they have brought me by force into Paris; but that I will be torn in pieces before I will permit the crown to be placed on my head. The king, no doubt, reproaches me with not having joined him at St. Cloud-I am sorry for it but I was informed as early as Tuesday evening, that some persons were urging his majesty to arrest me, and I confess I had no desire to throw myself into a wasp's nest-on the other hand, I was equally afraid that the Parisians would come for me. me. I, therefore, shut myself up in a hiding-place known only to my family-but last night a mob invaded my house at Neuilly, and insisted, in the name of the assembly of deputies, on finding me. Being told that I was absent, these people declared to the duchess, that they must carry her and all her children to Paris, to be kept prisoners till I should be found. The duchess, terrified at her position, sent me, by a sure hand, a most pressing note, requesting me to appear. I could not resist such an appeal; I returned to rescue my family, and the mob brought me hither very late in the evening.'-p. 128. We believe the duke was sincere in all this, not only because he voluntarily said so, but from a small incident which convinces us that these immediate events took him, also, by surprise. Of his numerous household and staff, he had not one soul in attendance; a single aide-de-camp, who was not even in turn of duty, hearing in the country of what was going on in Paris, hastened to town, and very opportunely arrived in time to be the official attendant, and the only one, of the duke: but this does not alter our opinion, that this Neuilly mob, like those that hunted M. de Mortemart, were directed by the Orleanist 'clique,' who wished to spare his Royal Highness the disgrace of appearing to volunteer to plunder his king and cousin, and who moreover felt that if the duke were to display any ambition for the crown, it would be the surest way, in the then temper of men's minds, to defeat their object; and that to conciliate public opinion towards his elevation, it was absolutely necessary to give the whole drama the air of popular force and princely reluctance. The duke proceeded to say, that he had been named LieutenantGeneral of the kingdom, as the only mode of preventing Lafayette's proclaiming a republic. At this period of the conversation another incident occurred, which we shall relate in Mazas' own words, and as, no doubt, he heard it from M. de Mortemart :— 'While these two personages were thus discussing such important questions, a frightful tumult was heard, which gradually increased and approached. At length M. Barthois' (the aide-de-camp before mentioned) entered, and told the prince that the occasion of all this noise was a mob who insisted on seeing his royal highness. "Is it a deputation of the students or of the national guard?" "Not at all-'tis a mob of the lower orders, who will see you, and, if you do not appear, will overwhelm all opposition, and force their way into this apartment." "Tell them that I am quite exhausted, and undressed; that I cannot receive them, but that I will see their leader-bring him in." This broke up the conference with M. de Mortemart, who departed, assuring the duke that he would acquaint the king with the state of affairs. 'I have been assured,' continues Mazas, that the popular leader introduced by M. Barthois was a lively picture of the conspirator in a melo-drama, melo-drama, and that he was in a frightful state of excitement and disorder. "We are come," he said, "to name thee king; but we will have thee alone we will have neither peers nor deputies--they are all rascals. Thou art a good prince-thou wilt govern well-and that's all we want!" The prince, exceedingly astonished at the tone and expressions of the speaker, replied, that if he were to be king, he would only be so on condition of having both peers and deputies. The man replied, but with more respect, dropping the thee and thou, "Well, settle that as you like, only we will have you for king." -p. 131. Well may Mazas liken this fellow to the conspirator in a melodrame he was, no doubt, one of the dramatis personæ de la comédie de quinze ans,' and, we have little doubt, belonged to the same clique' which had the night before composed the mob at Neuilly, and his arrival was, we are equally convinced, so timed as to coincide with the visit of M. de Mortemart. That great historian and prophet of human nature, Shakspeare, has, with miraculous sagacity, exposed, two hundred years before it was acted, M. Lafitte's drama-a drama which seems to have had its due effect on the simplicity of M. Mazas, and perhaps of M. de Mortemart. Duke. Alas! Why would you heap those cares on me? I do beseech you, take it not amiss, I cannot, nor I will not, yield to you, 'Buckingham.-If you refuse it, as in love and zeal, If accept their suit; you deny them, all the land will rue it. Duke.-Will you enforce me to a world of cares? Well, call them again-I am not made of stone."-RICHARD III., Act 3. Sc. 7. Mazas, under the influence of the Duke's professed reluctance, adds a curious and rather mysterious observation : There occurred subsequently many important circumstances highly honourable to the Duke of Orleans, but considerations of a higher interest forbid my revealing them.'-p. 132. These no doubt were circumstances indicative of his royal highness's fidelity to the king, and his regret at the revolution, and * The use of thee and thou is, in French, the last degree of familiarity and insolence. his his personal reluctance to ascend the throne. We cannot take upon ourselves to decide how much of the spirit of Gloster actuated the Duke of Orleans, who seems, indeed, if he was not altogether a reluctant tool, to have been, at least, an intimidated and irresolute usurper; but sure we are that his elevation was the work of a knot of dirty intriguers carried on for their own purposes, and associated to a royal name, not so much for his advancement as their own. They succeeded for a moment; but after an ephemeral favour, the new monarch took an early opportunity of turning round upon them, and they are now bewailing in poverty and obscurity the defeat of their hopes and the ingratitude of Louis Philippe. The days are passed when the triumphant Richard sent his greedy asssociate and creator, Buckingham, to the block; but, with a due allowance for the change of manners, the course is substantially the same and Louis Philippe has abandoned Lafitte to bankruptcy and the miserable resource of a scanty and unpaid public subscription. But we must bring this article to a conclusion, though we have by no means exhausted the interesting subjects which Mazas treats. The remaining and greater part of the work relates in detail the final journey of the royal family to the coast. He rejoined them on the route, with the intention of partaking their exile; they at first accepted his services-but circumstances obliged the unhappy fugitives to narrow the number of their attendants, and Mazas expresses a generous regret at being one of those unavoidably left behind. Our readers will see that this work opens many curious scenes of the late fatal drama hitherto little known, and leads us to expect future information concerning the practices by which the catastrophe was brought about; and it is comfortable to have additional reason to hope that, if Louis Philippe be not the greatest hypocrite that ever lived, his conduct, though not distinguished by highminded generosity, may have been at least fair and honest; that he lent his countenance to the revolution only when the mischief had become inevitable,-when his refusal might have produced general anarchy; that his first wish was to preserve the monarchy for its rightful possessors; and that if he has finally occupied the throne in his own right, he has been driven to do so by the ambition, the ingratitude, the folly, and the crimes of others, and not instigated by any original bad passions of his own. On the whole, it is now evident and admitted, even by the chief actors in it, that the revolution of July was not a national movement, that it was guided by no national object, and that it has accomplished no national good. Ever since the restoration, a party, small in numbers, but wealthy, clever, and active, had been preaching sedition through the press, of which it had made itself master, |