6 and satisfying the amour propre' of a doubtful and displeased adherent. The minister had a graceful manner, an imposing person—a countenance noble, handsome, and agreeable-great tact, considerable talent-and very wise and large views in favour of the industry and the intelligence of the country. Attached to no party, he professed to stand upon the general ground of moderate men and moderate opinions. He wished to make the King-"not as Henry III. the chief of the Leaguers, but as Henry IV. the father of his people." This was the idea, as this was the comparison which above all others pleased Louis XVIII. Shortly after the dissolution of 1815, he himself had said to M. Ravez, "Trop d'agitations ont malheureusement troublé la France: elle a besoin de repos, il lui faut pour en jouir des députés attachés à ma personne, à la légitimité, et à la Charte, mais surtout modérés et prudens.” To another person his language had been the same. "Les sages amis de la légitimité et de la charte," he had said, "veulent avec moi et comme moi le bonheur de la France-ils sont convaincus que ce bonheur est dans le repos, et que le repos ne peut naître que de la modération." These were the views of the King: these were the views of his minister. From September 5th, up to the retirement of M. de Richelieu, and the nomination of M. Dessolle, there had been a continued series of mild but popular concessions. The formation of the army, the election of the chamber, had undergone two great and liberal alterations; the press, though still fettered, was more free- and France, beginning to enjoy the blessings of internal liberty, had delivered herself on better terms than she might have expected from foreign occupation. The ministry of M. Dessolle had been formed on the determination to maintain the new law of election. This law contained no violent scheme of popular government, for it gave but eighty thousand electors to a people of twentyseven millions, but it had almost completely excluded the 'extrème droite,' (the more bigoted royalists,) and brought Grégoire and Manuel into the chamber. A little more parliamentary experience would have taught the monarch that he had nothing to fear from two or three obnoxious elections, and that on the contrary a government gains by meeting chiefs of a hostile party front to front in a place of public discussion. The nomination, however, of the ex bishop of Blois,* the mitred regicide, threw even Louis XVIII. into consternation. Already he had supported his ministers by a creation of peers, and in a letter, the copy of which I have been shown, denounced the fatal effects of an unforgiving policy;† but the republican elections startled him: the constitution of the chamber had been changed in order to restrain the violence of the ultra-royalist faction; he trembled lest he should be thrown into the violence of a faction still more to be dreaded. The system he sought was, as I have said, a system of moderation, but placed under the necessity of a choice, he would have preferred the 'coterie' of the Comte d'Artois, to the coterie' of M. Lafitte. The chamber at this time was split into different divisons. There was the right, at the * Grégoire. To any person at all acquainted with the correspondence of Louis XVIII. it would be useless to speak of the peculiar pains which he took with all the letters and billets, the writing of which was one of his principal amusements and occupations; penned in a very small neat hand, in very pure and studied phraseology, these little documents contained a great deal of good sense and dignity when their subject was serious, a great deal of grace and gallantry when it was not. head of which were Messrs. Corbières, Villèle, and Labourdonnaye. The left, at the head of which were Manuel, Dupont de l'Eure, Lafayette, Lafitte, and Ternaux. Each of these sections had two parties, the more moderate of which adhered to M. de Villèle on the one side -to Monsieur Ternaux on the other. The government was supported by the left centre, the Doctrinaires,' a title then coming into notice, and a portion of the right centre— which it gradually lost as it tended towards. more liberal measures, and might hope to regain if it remeasured its steps. No ministry can long stand completely balanced between two parties; it must have some tendency. The tendency of the French ministry had hitherto been liberal, and it had gradually been verging towards the left : but there was a party towards the left with whom it could not venture to make terms, and there was a party towards the right which still clung to it, and which had considerable influence in the other chamber. I have said that there was a party hostile to the Bourbons in the chamber, but that party was still small. Benjamin Constant-Foythe wisest, the ablest, the most popular, and the most eloquent of the côté gauche, were all attached to a constitutional monarchy and an hereditary succession. That party (and with that party the press) offered their undividedtheir zealous and active support to M. Decazes, if he would maintain untouched the existing law of election. On the other hand, the droite of the chamber, the court, and finally the king, were for its modification. In an evil hour for legitimacy, M. Decazes abandoned the opportunity by which he might for ever have crushed the two parties-here struggling against the dynasty, there against the nation. With Benjamin Constant, Foy, Ternaux, and he would at that time have had Lafitte, added to the whole force of the Doctrinaires, and his own personal party on the centre gauche, M. Decazes, strong in his own ability, strengthened by the popular voice, would have been able to wield the whole force of the country and of the monarchy, and to have smitten down his enemies on either side. Attached to the king, exposed to the remonstrances of the Carlsbad confederacy, irritated, perchance, by some inju dicious liberal attacks, he resolved, I repeat, in an evil hour, to retrace his steps. It is fair to acknowledge, however, that he did not do this in the ungenerous spirit of a renegade: moderate in his advance, he was moderate in his |