might well be likewise no more than a fiction in the presi dent.

Nevertheless, we are ordered by authority of the Doctrinarians, to prostrate ourselves in gaping admiration of the hierarchical gradation of the British constitution, as if there was the least resemblance between the most democratical of all democratical people and the most aristocratic of all aristocracies! With our neighbors, there is at least some reality, some truth in these institutions, because they correspond to their manners, to their social condition, to their ideas, to their prejudices, if you will. With us, all is fictionboth persons and principles.

Accordingly, to say what were yesterday, what are to day, what will be to-morrow the principles of the Chamber, would be no easy task. To say what are, at the moment I write, the principles of M. Sauzet, were a task more em barrassing still; and, in truth, it is a knowledge of little consequence either to the Chamber, or to M. Sauzet himself,

nor more to me.

For the rest, the principle which every President of the Chamber, without allusion to any in particular, seems to comprehend the best is, that he is to pocket, and does in fact, pocket punctually, some hundred thousand francs, for ringing his bell, tapping with his penknife on the desk, and re. peating twenty, thirty, forty times, during the same sitting, the following sacramental words: "Let those of the members who are in favor of adopting the motion please to stand up, and let those gentlemen who are of the contrary opinion please to rise!"

Think you not, reader, that so interesting a piece of work is well worth a hundred thousand francs, besides lodging, an equipage and servants? and for my part, I really do not deem it at all too much.

When Giton and Thersite, these pests of the tribune, begin to harangue in the Areopagus, I can, I Timon, give a drachme or two to the door-keeper to let me out and I get into the open plains.

But to be officially nailed to one's chair, to be obliged to hear Giton and Thersite from noon to sundown, without being able to fly them, nor to escape them—no, for a trade of this torture, a hundred thousand francs is not excessive, and I am sure that I would not be willing to earn them

GENERAL LAFAYETTE.

PUBLIC opinion has its prejudices. Thus, it has been said of three persons of the liberal party-Lafitte, Dupont de'l'Eure and Lafayette-that Lafitte did not compose his own discourses, that Dupont de l'Eure was merely a good man, and that Lafayette was but a simpleton.

But, Lafitte was the most clear-headed and comprehensive financier of our times. The good sense of Dupont de'l'Eure, as far as it goes, is said to prove, like Phocion's, the axe to many a labored speech. But Lafayette was a mere simpleton; oh! quite simple, I own: he believed, as did a multitude of simpletons which we have all been in common with him, in the promises of the government of July.

He imagined, the simpleton! that kings were to be found who would not resemble all other kings; that a man must love liberty because he drawls out some hurras in honor of it; that we were brought round to the golden age; that the reins might be thrown loose upon the back of the government, and it would curb itself. Subsequently when he saw that the same piece continued to be played day after day upon the great stage, and that the only change of decoration was, the substitution of a dunghill cock for the lily, he repented, wept bitterly, and striking his breast exclaimed "Pardon me, my God! pardon me, beloved comrades in liberty! I have been a dupe and a duper."

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Not a duper, I can well believe; but it

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was too much for you, Lafayette, to have been a dupe! Few are the men to whom Providence has given the opportunity and the means of regenerating their country and establisting is lberties. To lose this opportunity is a crime against one's avantry, Lafayette has committed two great faults from Lich In making to Naporeuth posterity will not absolve him. after the defeat of Waterloo, an opposition in the tribane and the cabinet, he divided our forces, and was tas co-operating, without meaning it, to the dismemberment of France. He failed to see, like the great Carnot, that Napo leon alone could then save the country, that the independence of the nation ought so to fill the soul of the citizen, that (to compare small things with great.) I would not hesitate myself, despite of my repugnance," as Manuel would say, to take sides with a certain personage, if I were well convinced that the said personage alone would, in a given case, prevent the subjugation and partition of France. For, before all liberty, before any form of government, before any political or social organization, before any administrative system, before anything and all things-the safety of the nation! that of July. The The second fault of Lafayette was imperial throne was vacant. Lafayette reigned the third day over Paris, and Paris reigned over France. Three parties We know what was expected by the were in deliberation. army and the people. But Lafayette allowed himself to be wheedled by the Orleanists. The tri-colored flag was played off before the old man's eyes. He was seized by the hand and covered with caresses. His head was turned with loudsounding flourishes about '89, Jemappe, Valmy, America, liberty, national guard, republican monarchy, citizen, transatlantic, and what not? In short, in the open Place de Greve and in presence of the people, he was put under the goblet and fingered away.

Lafayette, in his infantine candor, did not advert that he

had to do with profligates more profligate than those of the regency. When the patriots confided their alarms to him, he put a hand to his heart and pledged his own fidelity to liberty, for the fidelity of the others. In his deplorable blindness, he left everything to the management of the majority of the Chambers of 1830, who had in fact done nothing, and left nothing to the disposal of the people who had brought all about. Had not the patriots taken the word of Lafayette, who repeated to them naively what he was told, things would have been arranged in a different manner, and it would not be now forbidden, by the laws of September, to write the history of that other day of Dupes, which none could do with more fidelity than I, as the whole thing was acted behind the curtain where I was, and I alone took no part in the farce.

Lafayette was not an orator, if we understand by oratory that emphatic and loud-sounding verbosity which stuns the auditors and leaves but wind in the ear. His was a serious and familiar conversation, grammatically incorrect if you will, and a little redundant, but cut into curt phrases and relieved occasionally by happy turns. No figures, no highly-colored imagery; but the proper word in the proper place, the precise word which expresses the exact idea-no passionate transports, but a speech infused with feeling by the accent of conviction-no strong, cogent, elaborate logic, but reasonings systematically combined, obviously connected amongst each other, and resulting naturally from the exposition of the facts.

There was in the habits of his person and in his countenance, I know not what mixture of French grace, American phlegm and Roman placidity.

When he ascended the tribune and said: "I am a repub lican," no one felt tempted to ask him: "What is that you say, Monsieur de Lafayette, and wherefore the declaration?” Every one was satisfied the friend of Washington could not but be a republican.

He had a habit of speaking freely of the kings of Eu.

rope, whom he treated unceremoniously as despots, and as one power would another. He stirred up against them, in his wide propagandism, all the fires of popular insurrection. To the oppressed of every country he opened his house, his purse and his heart.

He should be seen when he resisted in the tribune the dastardly abandonment of the Greeks and the Poles. Then did his overflowing indignation rush on like a torrent; his virtue was eloquence, and his language, ordinarily cheerful, was charged with fire and lightning.

Lafayette had what is better than ideas, he had principles, fundamental principles, to which he ever adhered with an immovable pertinacity. He wished the sovereignty of the people both in theory and practice; and, in truth, this is the whole. But he troubled himself no more about the tyranny of all or of several, than that of one. He considered the substance rather than the form, justice rather than the laws, principles before governments, and the human race before nations. He would have free minorities under a dominant majority.

When the sturdiest characters gave way, when the finest geniuses passed one after another, under the yoke of Napoleon, and the nation, infatuated with his glory and conquests, ran to meet his triumphal car, Lafayette resisted the current of fortune and of men, without violence to others or struggle with himself, simply by the immovability of his convictions, like a rock that stands stirless amid the conflicting agitation of the waves.

The love of gold, from which kings themselves are not exempt, had no place in his great soul. The vulgar ambition of a throne was far beneath him; and at the utmost what he would desire would have been to be Washington, if he had not been Lafayette.

Lafayette experienced, even in his old age, that yearning of affectionate hearts to be universally loved. But this noble propension, so delightful to indulge in private life, is almost always dangerous in political affairs. A true statesman must