XXX. 1834. April 15. scarce any opposition. At the same time the Chamber CHAP. of Peers was, by a royal ordonnance, erected into a court of high commission, for the trial of the persons implicated in the late disorders; and ulterior measures were adjourned till the public mind might be prepared for them, by the revelations which might be expected at the trials, as to the extent and objects of the conspiracy. In the mean time, however, advantage was taken of the general alarm to ask supplementary votes of credit, to the amount of 36,000,000 francs (£1,400,000), from the Chambers, in order to raise the effective force of the army to 360,000 men and 65,000 horses. The Chambers cut down the sums demanded to one-half, but enough was left to bring up the military establishment to that enormous amount, which was the more remark- 221, 223; able, as all danger of foreign war was at an end, and it iv. 303. was to be arrayed only against domestic enemies.1 1 Moniteur, 1834; Ann. April 16, Hist. xvii. L. Blanc, M. de As if she never could be weary of showering upon Louis 52. Philippe her favours, Fortune at this period delivered him Death of by death from not the least determined and formidable of Lafayette, his enemies. On the 20th May, M. de Lafayette breathed his last in his seventy-sixth year. He expired, serene and calm, of an affection of the chest. He received a magnificent funeral from the gratitude of his countrymen but the passions were burnt out, illusions had vanished; and though there was a great assemblage, no revolt, as at the funeral of Lamarque, followed his obsequies. It took place on the 22d, and the pall was borne by Generals May 22. Fabvier and Ostrowski, the American chargé-d'affaires, an elector of Meaux, M. Odillon Barrot, and M. Eusèbe Salveste. The pall-bearers were thus selected to repre- Ann. Hist. sent the various nations of the globe and interests in Cap. viii. society, to which, during his long life, he had become Blanc, 307. endeared.2 2 xvii. 253; 2, 4; L. Lafayette was one of the men whose character pre- 53. sented such strange contradictions that it could have His characarisen only during the shock of a revolution. Descended VOL. V. X ter. XXX. 1834. CHAP. of an old and noble family, enjoying high rank, and having mingled from his earliest years in the very first society, he was entirely aristocratic, both in his inmost feelings and manners. He had none of the morgue aristrocratique in his heart, but all the polish of the highest breeding in his manner. These mental qualities, had he been cast in an ordinary time, would probably have rendered him a mere ordinary character, and he would have lived respected, beloved, but unknown. But in addition to these, he was strongly tinctured with one quality which, in man or woman, never exists without deeply affecting the destiny, and in his case brought him forth on the stormy theatre of revolution. He was inordinately vain, and this disposition rather increased than diminished with the advance of years. In troubled times, when the great majority of men are on the popular side, this desire can only be gratified in its full extent by embracing their principles and forwarding their views. They will give the meed of their applause, in the first instance at least, on no other condition. This was the secret of Lafayette's democratic principles, as it is of most other men of a similar excitable temperament, whose lot is cast in troubled times. 54. He was personally brave, meant well, and was actuated by Continued. a sincere desire for the establishment of order with freedom. Hence more than once he boldly stood forth to check the excesses of the Revolution, and he was in consequence obliged to fly France, and owed his life to his fortunate confinement in an Austrian dungeon. But his thirst for popularity never failed to bring him back to the feet of the popular idol, and involved him, in the latter years of his life, in many contradictory acts and discreditable connections. He was the enemy of Napoleon, and yet at the head of all the conspiracies formed during the Restoration to overturn the government of the Bourbons; he was mainly instrumental in placing Louis Philippe on the XXX. 1834. throne, and yet his life, from that event, was a continual CHAP. intrigue to effect his dethronement. The Government was perfectly aware of this, and possessed ample proof of his treasonable practices; but they did not venture to bring him to trial: like O'Connell, he was too powerful to be punished. Like all fanatics, whether in religion or politics, he was insensible to the lessons of experience, and deaf to the voice of reason. The "hero of the two worlds" was as devout an optimist and believer in human perfectibility, and the virtue and wisdom of the working classes, in the close of life, when fifty years of trial and suffering had demonstrated the futility of these ideas, as when in its commencement the American Revolution ushered in the deceitful dawn. Yet, strange to say, while sacrificing consistency and endangering his life in the worship of the idol of popular sovereignty, he preserved to the last his aristocratic habits and inclinations: his manners under the Citizen King were still those of the vieux régime; he married all his daughters to men of old family; and by his testament he directed his body to be interred in the cemetery of Picpus, on the Mont Valerien, amidst armorial bearings, and at the back of a convent of nuns, as in the days of feudal pride. 55. his rise and public life. Napoleon said in his letter to his brother Joseph, "Caress literary men and philosophers, but do not take Lamartine: them into your councils: consider them as you do character in coquettes, amuse yourself with them, but don't marry them." Another man of great genius, who first rose into political eminence at this period, afforded a striking confirmation of this remark. LAMARTINE has already been considered in his permanent and immortal character, as a great historian and poet; but he was also a statesman and politician; and for a brief period he stood forth with prominent effect in the revolution which closed the reign of Louis Philippe, and the causes of which were already in full activity. Not less vain and ambitious of popularity XXX. 1834. CHAP. than Lafayette, as implicit a believer in human perfectibility and the virtue and intelligence of the humbler classes, he was possessed of incomparably more genius, and rested his opinions on a more durable basis. He referred constantly to the injunctions of charity and the spirit of universal benevolence, which are to be found in every page of the gospel; and it would undoubtedly be well for mankind if these injunctions and that spirit were generally embraced in the world. But he entirely forgot, as the amiable fanatics of his description generally do, that the corruption of human nature is the corner-stone of the whole system of Christianity; that if we are told to love our neighbour as ourselves, we are not less constantly told that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;" and, therefore, that while the precepts of our Saviour undoubtedly point to an extension of charity and beneficence to a degree never yet practised among men, they give no countenance to the idea that men can ever with safety be intrusted with powers wider than have heretofore been found practicable in the world. 56. But although his political opinions are all tinged with Continued. this amiable but fatal illusion, and accordingly his political career, when they came to be put in practice, was very soon terminated in blood; yet he made a great step in political science, and deserves the lasting thanks of humanity for having achieved it. He detached democracy from its most dangerous ally, TERROR. He had, like Robespierre, visions of the islands of the blessed, but they were not like his, arising out of a sea of blood. He constantly inculcated the love of mankind in the ultimate ends which the legislature had in view, but also in the means by which it was to be obtained; he did not say that evil was justifiable if good might come of it. Simple as this step appears, and entirely as it is conformable to the best precepts, both of religion and morality, it required no ordinary man to take it, and no common courage to avow it, in public. Accordingly, when Lamartine, in XXX. 1834. March 1848, refused to put on the red cap, the emblem CHAP. of blood, in front of the Hôtel de Ville, he did so at the immediate hazard of his own life, and to the eventual destruction of his own influence. The first instinct of the multitude, when they gain possession of power, whether in social or political conflicts, invariably is to secure and increase it by terror; their first weapons are too often the dagger and the torch. It is this disposition, natural and intelligible in the circumstances in which they are placed, which always renders their sway so calamitous, and causes it to be terminated, after a brief period of suffering, in joyfully-hailed despotism. Probably this disposition is so strongly founded in human nature, that to the end of the world it will never be entirely obliterated; but whoever takes the initiative in opposing it, is a friend to mankind; and whoever hazards his own life in the resistance, deserves the eternal gratitude of the species, for it is thus only that the fabric of durable freedom is to be erected. 57. ties as a and orator. Lamartine's legislative views and talents, as an orator, are deeply tinged by the romantic and ardent temper of His qualihis mind. He is in the highest degree eloquent. Several of statesman his speeches in the Chamber of Deputies and at public meetings, since published in his collected works, are models of the most moving and persuasive style of oratory. He does not discard facts or practical views, but he views them all with a poetic eye, and through the bright illumination of a Claude Lorraine atmosphere. It is this which renders his speeches so influential and attractive, alike when listened to or read; the mind is carried away, as by the sound of delicious music, by the brilliancy of his ideas, the mellifluous flow of his language. are all, however, prepared; their extraordinary beauty proves this. No man can compose such sentences extempore. He is not, therefore, and never will be, a practised debater; and his turn of mind is too imaginative and poetical to admit of his taking an interest in, or making They |