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must concede to their extremes, lead it? To a war with Europe, and then to a republic - or to a republic, and then to a war with Europe.

This is the perilous position of the present Government in France. It took its origin from a course not natural to the character of the people; it remains based upon conditions to which the character of the people are opposed. Hence, a long series of agitationsand the dangers attendant upon a long series of agitations-if its policy be moderate. Hence, the chances of revolution on the one side, if it take a violent course to put down resistancethe chances of war on the other, if it take a violent course to obtain popularity a war and a revolution both leading to the same result.

Time, however, is the great resource of a state placed in this situation; for the effect of time is to blend and to harmonize opposing things, to introduce the character of a nation into the institutions-the institutions of a nation into the character of its people; and for this reason the policy which the present monarchy has to pursue is, and must be, a policy of expedients. A ministry must be formed sufficiently strong to sustain the weakness which exists in the principle of the government itself. This is the best chance, perhaps the only one, for the stability of existing things.

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And who could stand on the spot where I am now standing, with yon splendid confusion of domes and spires, of palaces and public buildings, stretching out before him in sight of the altars of Bossuet and Massillon; of the palace of Louis XIV. and Napoléon; of the Quai Voltaire, and the Senate of Foy--without feeling the wish (where all is great in recollections as in hopes) to unite the past with the future — and from the monarchy of the Fleursde-lis, and from the empire of the sword, and from the classic eloquence of the theatre, and from the noble reason of the tribune, to see, in letters, as in government, a new system arise, with the youth and freshness of which may be blended the venerability and majesty of by-gone years?

And yet is it impossible to see so many of this people ridiculing the past without comprehending its poesy or its power; plunging into the future, too ignorant of its depth; discontented with the present, without having any hope that satisfies, to supply the existence they would change—yet is it impossible to see the strife between the ideas and the habits- the reason and the imagination—the desires and the capabilities the fanaticism and the irreligion - the loyalty and the republicanism, of

this doctrinizing, democratizing, romanticizing, classifizing, religionizing, St.-Simonizing race, -without doubting, whether the prayers you offer up have any chance of being heard-whether the aspirations, which involuntarily you form, have any chance of being realized.

In the present monarchy there is neither the love for the new nor for the old; it rests not on the past, it contents not the future. It was taken by all as an indifferent substitute for something which their theory or their imagination taught them to consider worse. It has no hold on the affections, no root in the habits, no power over the passions, of the people magic bridle upon the genius of the time, which it would curb and guide.

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Still, let us not forget that the incertitude of its destiny is in the uncertain character of its origin -the blemish which disfigures it seems to have been inflicted at its birth. There is a scar on the rind of the young tree, which, as it widens every year, becomes at once more visible and more weak. And so in the monarchy of July, the time which displays, destroys-which expands, obliterates its defects.

END OF THE SECOND BOOK.

THIRD BOOK.

PREDOMINANT INFLUENCES.

Est enim admirabilis quædam continuatio seriesque rerum, ut alia ex aliâ nexa et omnes inter se aptæ, colligatæque videantur. — Cicero, Proœm. Lib. I. de Naturâ Deorum.

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