Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/12

 Numidian god failed when at the helm, mercilessly used up in no time, caught in his own net of woven fancies, "of Heaven, and earth, and God, and men forlore," after scorning the base degrees whereby he did ascend. "Luckless speech," with "bootless boast," sum up his past official career, for which an Englishman would have to pay full dear by being sent "upon the lonesome wild," and there sing his solitary song. Is France greater in truth, and the middle or labouring classes in France happier? Quite the reverse, to all appearances. As was expected by those who know Frenchmen: high-sounding speeches, dishonoured pledges, political uneasiness, social disturbances, a fast approaching civil war, a ferocious bigotry (the laughing-stock of Europe) which robs Frenchmen of even "freedom to worship God," the rottening of the sound imaginations and feelings of a nation naturally generous, moral, religious, highly intelligent, and brave, but unstable, alas! as water, and pliable as the reed that is shaken by the wind. That constitutes MM. Léon Gambetta's and Clemenceau's balance-sheet for 1875-1882. Such are the results naturally to be expected from any man engaged in politics, who hangs on weak concessions for party ends, made especially to a "popular" clamour of which the distinctly cowardly and brutal features cannot and shall not be tolerated by Monarchical Europe.

Past and current History at least allow a stranger to think that French Monarchists, Conservative and Liberal, have given and would give again a better account of themselves, and that both France and all classes of Frenchmen would more comfortably fare at the hands of men who own a nature not less patriotic (to say the least), are possessed of more self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control; of a knowledge of both France and the world at large not less practical, far wider, less narrow