in the story. The author seems to have taken every good quality possess ed by different men and placed them all in the person of his beloved Nathan. His hero far exceeds in perfection the gods of the ancients. He speaks French like a Frenchman; German like a German; Spanish like a Spaniard; English of course, and we are led to infer that if he chose he could converse in the language of Timbuctoo, Malay, or in the Sanscrit. In fact, he excelled in all things-was perfect in dancing, music, tragedy, yachting, and the law. He is made to possess nearly all these qualities before he was even sent to school!! He was also better looking than any of his comrades--a perfect Apollo. One gets tired of this hero called Nathan, and cannot help asking, with the poet,

"How one small head could hold it all."

As a story, "The Metropolites" is a failure. There are many good passages in it; but it is too inflated in style, too absurd and impossible in its scope and plot, and too pretentious, to suit the merest tyro in light literature. It ends too abruptly-in fact, the story is not finished; for only one or two of the characters are disposed of, and you are left to imagine what became of the author's beau ideal of a man-Nathan. But there is no danger of such a question troubling the reader, for it is very few will have the patience to wade through its pages to the end. If there be any such, we pity them.

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny. By O. A. Brownson, LL.D. New York: P. O'Shea.

We have seen some of the advance sheets of Dr. Brownson's forthcoming work with this title. The book will be out in the course of this month. It will make a very handsome octavo

1

I.

Ir is the sad destiny of those who outlive their generation to be called upon to speak over the graves of friends, companions, and chiefs who have the happiness of being the first to depart. Forced to envy those who precede them their lot, they readily yield to the temptation of beguiling their regrets by recalling their memory; and while thus essaying to lighten their own griefs, they think, perhaps not justly, that they have something of which to remind forgetful contemporaries, or which they may teach an indifferent posterity.

The élite of the men who date from the early years of the century begin already to be decimated by death, and this death which strikes them with a premature blow, while in the full possession of the gifts which God had lavished on them, has often been preceded by a disgrace or a retreat so prolonged that we naturally regard them as having long since entered into history. Their stern and melancholy fate, aggravated by the inconstancy of their country, may at least serve to lengthen the perspecfive from which our eye contemplates

them.

VOL. II. 19

What can less resemble the times in which we live than those early and splendid years of the parliamentary royalty in which Léon de la Moricière was first revealed to France and to glory? A whole powerful generation, delivered from military despotism and the imperial censorship, enfranchised, brought up, or completed by the free and loyal régime of the Restoration, was then in full sap and full bloom. A constellation of rare men, men of original powers and popular renown, appeared at the head of all the great departments of the national intelligence, and fulfilled the first condition of the life of a people that are free and master of their destiny. The nation was governed or represented by its most eminent men. All its living forces, all its real wants, all its legitimate interests, were represented by men of an incontestable superiority. The names of Casimir Perier, RoyerCollard, Molé, Berryer, Guizot, Thiers, Broglie, Fitz James, Villemain, Cousin, Dufaure, gave to the contests of the tribune and to the country itself an éclat never surpassed, not even in 1789. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset stamped poetry with a character as original as ineffaceable. Ary Scheffer, Dela

roche, Delacroix, Meyerbeer, in the arts; Cuvier, Biot, Thénard, Arago, Cauchy, in the sciences; Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Tocqueville, in history and political philosophy, opened new paths, into which rushed the ardent and high-spirited youth of the nation. Lacordaire and Ravignan made radiate from the Christian pulpit a halo of eloquence and popularity unknown since Bossuet.

Perhaps this fertile opening of political, intellectual, and moral life did not encounter an analogous development in the military life; perhaps this purely civil glory extinguished the necessary attraction of the glory of arms. To this doubt, the army of Africa takes upon itself to reply.

In the ranks of that army new men, predestined to glory, began forthwith to appear. Each year, each day, augmented their renown. The true soldiers of free and liberal France were found. We learned to greet in that army a new line of soldiers, as chivalric, as formidable, as brave, as the bravest among their fathers, and adorned with virtues but too often wanting in our soldiers in former times -modest and austere virtues, civic virtues, which were the honor, and in the hour of danger the salvation, of their country. The illustrious Changarnier is the only one of that glorious phalanx that can receive here below the homage of our loyal gratitude. Of his noble companions, some, like Damesme, Négrier, Duvivier, Bréa, gave themselves to be killed in the streets of Paris in 1848, so that France might remain a civilized country; others, and the most illustrious, Cavaignac, Bedeau, La Moricière, have died one by one, obscurely and prematurely, rendered by implacable destiny useless to the country they had saved. This oppresses the heart, and certainly does no honor to our times.

Among all those valiant knights, the youngest, the most sympathetic, the most brilliant, and the most rapidly popular, was this same La Moricière, who has just been torn from us

by death while still so full of fire, light, and life, of strength and faith, of physical and moral strength, of faith in God and in the future of France. Although few to-day know, or, having known, remember, that the future conqueror of Abd-el-Kader, a simple lieutenant of engineers at the taking of Algiers by Marshal Bourmont, faithful to the traditions of his royalist race, accompanied to the coast almost alone that disgraced and pro. scribed conqueror, and then returned to take his rank in the army where he was to conquer the most brilliant renown, without suspecting, assuredly, that he himself would one day experi ence injustice, ingratitude, proscription. exile, and forgetfulness. But all the world knows that the name of La Moricière, as that of Changarnier, is inseparably connected with the most dramatic episode of our African history-the two expeditions against Constantine. The pencil of Horace Vernet has made us all familiar with those prodigious exploits; he has made live again for us the immovable intrepidity of Changarnier, inclosed in the square battalion that saved the army on occasion of the first retreat. and then the impetuous daring of La Moricière at the head of his Zouaves, the red fez on his head, the white bur nous on his shoulder, rushing the first up to the breach, where he was soon to disappear in the cloud of smoke and dust, in the midst of a fearful explosion, to be found again, his eyes almost destroyed, under a formless group of soldiers blackened with pow der, their garments charred, and their flesh burnt.† From that day he was married to fame. All France felt what has been so well rendered by Tocqueville in a private letter dated November, 1837: "I am even more interested in La Moricière than I can

* I must be permitted to refer for all the details of the military career of General de la Mori cière to the article of M. de Meaux in Le Correspondant for April, 1860.

+Les Zouaves et les Chasseurs à pied,” by his Royal Highness the Duke d'Aumale, 1855. H toire de la Conquite d'Alger," by Alfred Nette

ment.

explain. He carries me away in spite of myself; and when I read the account of his storming of Constantine, I seem to see him arrive first at the summit of the breach, and my soul for the moment is with him. I love him also, I believe, for France; for I cannot help believing that there is a great general in that little man."

*

Zouaves

Incorporated with the from the foundation of the corps in 1830, it was he who, in gaining with them all his grades up to that of colonel, created the European reputation of that unequalled troop, at the same time that by his vigilant activity in the Arab bureaus, he preluded his remarkable faculties as an organizer and administrator. Major-general at thirty-four, lieutenant-general at thirtyseven, governor-general of Algeria ad interim at thirty-nine, he never quitted Algeria till he had rendered it for ever French by forcing Abd-elKader to surrender his sword to the Duke d'Aumale, a young and meritorious prince, whose own rising glory was soon to set unexpectedly in the sad night of exile. He quitted Algeria in the beginning of 1848, and bore with him a reputation whose brightness was dimmed by not a shade or a breath. His courage, his rare strategic ability, the number and splendor of his victories, were enhanced by the most rigid integrity and at the same

Tocqueville, born the 29th of July, 1805, was nearly of the same age with La Moricière, who was born the 6th of February, 1806. Before being colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies and in the ministry, they had, still young, met in 1823 at Versailles, where Tocqueville was a judge auditor, and where he received a visit from La Moricière, then hardly out of the Polytechnic School. In a letter of that date which is found in the precious collection published by M. Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville traces a portrait of the future hero which remained a striking likeness to his last days: "I must say that I have been charmed with him personally; I thought I saw in him all the features of a truly remarkable man. I who am habituated to live among men profuse in words with little meaning, was wholly surprised at the craving for clear and distinct understanding with which he seemed to be constantly tormented. he stopped me to demand an account of one idea The sang froid with which before proceeding to another, which several times a little disconcerted me, and his manner of speaking of only what he perfectly understande, have given me an opinion of him superior to almost any that I have ever formed of any man at Arst sight."

time by a humanity and a generosity all the more meritorious from the pain it must have cost his impetuous nature to exercise it in favor of barbarous enemies who massacred and mutilated our soldiers who were taken prisoners.*

He re-entered France, already invested with a sort of legendary halo, and was everywhere recognized as the true type of disinterested heroism, intelligent boldness, moral dignity, independence a little haughty, and liberal instincts, which become the armies of France, at least such as they were then.

Race apart, these Africans, as brilliant as original in the military history of Europe, as foreign to the brutal manners of the soldier of fortune led by Gustavus Adolphus and Frederic II. as to the savage and cruel pride of the lieutenants of Napoleon, showed themselves always the citizens of a free country, the missionaries of civilization, as well as the first soldiers in the world.

But military glory did not suffice for La Moricière. Sensible to an attraction then all powerful, he aspired to enter political life, and as soon as he was initiated into it he relished it, and devoted himself to it with that passion which he carried into everything he undertook. In 1846 he solicited and obtained the suffrages of his fellow

citizens. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he took his place with the moderate opposition. By a privilege rarely accorded, it was given him to conquer at once, on this new and dif

"In leaving the shores on which he had land. ed young and obscure, and which he quitted illustrious without appearing old, he bore with him a recollection more precious than the fame of his heroic deeds; his glory was without a stain, his hands, always burning for the combat, were sullied by no abuse of victory. When the irritation prisoners was at its height, La Moricière, puragainst an enemy that massacred our soldier suing one day a tribe that was in insurrection notwithstanding their oaths, and having driven them to the sea, he suddenly halted his columns and suspended his vengeance. What fear had seized his intrepid soul? He himself tells us: In the disposition of mind in which our soldiers then were, that vengeance might have been too severe !' Beautiful and touching words, which reveal the man in the warrior, and attest a fear of excess in the bosom of a courage that paused at no obstacles."-Le Général de la Moricière, by Viscount de Meaux, p. 11.

ficult battle-field, a distinction and an authority almost as fully acknowledged and as legitimate as that which he had gained on the theatre of his exploits in Algeria.

La Moricière was born with the gift of eloquence-that gift which is the first condition neither of the love of liberty nor of the exercise of power, but which is seldom separated from either in countries and times which › permit free discussion. He united the three qualities, very rare, which the prince of contemporary orators, M. Thiers, exacts of those who aspire to govern-knowledge of public affairs, ability to expose them lucidly and in order, and the weight of character necessary to defend them. But, against the ordinary rule, his eloquence was not at all the result of labor. With him the orator was not slowly disengaged, as with the most illustrious, step by step, in a continuous progress toward perfection; he revealed himself at once as a bold and successful improvisator, who, on a chosen ground, had nothing to fear from anybody. He jeered those who passed for eloquent without having his extemporary facility. "You Academicians," said he, "must always retire to make the toilet of your speech, and are never ready when you are wanted." As for him, he was always ready, and it was a real pleasure to hear him, and to see him spring to the tribune, to mount it as if it were his horse, stride it, so to speak, and master it at a single word, with the ease of the perfect horseman-then broach the most complicated questions, provoke the most formidable adversaries, even M. Thiers himself, overcome the tumult, regain and fix the distracted attention, instruct and charm even those whom he failed to convince. His eye sparkling, his head aloft, his voice thrown out by jerks, he seemed always in speaking to be sounding a charge. He managed figures, metaphors, arguments, with as much celerity, dash, and freedom as his Zouaves. Supple and impetuous, bounding as

the panther, he turned around his adversary, as if seeking his vulnerable point, before springing upon and prostrating him. Rarely did he descend from the tribune without having moved his auditory, enlightened a question. corrected a misapprehension, repaired a defeat, prepared or justified a victory. Never was the celebrated word of Cato on the Gauls, Rem militarem agere et argute loqui, more exactly verified. Under this relation, as under so many others, he was the most French of the Frenchmen of our age.

When

This double superiority was manifested with an éclat as sudden as complete in the midst of the frightful dangers of the revolution of February, 1848. Named minister by a last effort of expiring legality, he presented himself with his accustomed intrepidity before the insurgent populace. The populace mistook and outraged him: dragged from his horse, wounded with the thrusts of a bayonet, he with difficulty escaped with his glorious life from the cowardly assassins. the Provisional Government issued from the mob, he would neither serve it nor combat it. But he promised to accept the Republic, and to be loyal to it, if it would preserve the army. That army was about to become, in the hands of the National Assembly and under the orders of the African generals, the last bulwark of European civilization. When the terrible days of June came to show the depth of the abyss excavated by February, La Moricière was then by the side of his friend Cavaignac, who, become his chief, after having been his lieutenant, and retained himself from per sonally engaging in the struggle by his duties as head of the executive, hastened to confide to him the princi pal part in repressing the most terrible insurrection that ever broke out in the most revolutionary city in the world. Those who were there-those who breathed the inflamed atmosphere of those solemn and terrible days, run through those narrow streets incumbered with barricades and heaps of the