single body, which was to be entirely and at once changed every second year. [This view of the Legislative Body, of the National Assembly as a despotic sovereign in opposition to the debilitated and helpless Executive Power, is just, and strikes us as original.]

"In 95, the sovereign power was divided between two bodies, one-fifth of which was annually changed. Now what is the concentration of the sovereign power, whether in an individual or a body, but despotism? What is the frequent and complete change of the depositary of this sovereign power, whether an individual or a body, but anarchy ?

"The constitution of 91 was a confused medley of despotic and anarchical principles. It merely translocated the despotism or legislative unity. It changed a hereditary for a biennial master. The new master was more absolute than the old, because he had not been opposed by parliaments (French), by nobility, by clergy, or by provincial states. On the other hand, the biennial change of this absolute sovereign kept every question unsettled, at least incessantly mooted anew. We might every second year pass from a monarchy to a republic, from a republic to a monarchy. A burst of enthusiasm, a decree extorted by fear, was all-sufficient for the change."

*

"It

placed a baseless, unsupported throne, in opposition to an omnipotent, everchanging sovereign. It gave to the shadow of a king neither the initiative of new laws, nor the right of dissolving the legislature, whilst the suspensive veto for two years could only enable him to incur the vengeance of the absolute master."

And this constitution of 91, so clearly and argumentatively condemn ed by Lucien Buonaparte, is the constitution par excellence which the Spanish Extraordinary Cortes of Cadiz, after having seen its failure in France nearly copied in 1812, which Portugal and Naples imitated at second hand, and which, after a second failure, though in an inverse sense,* in all those countries, has been revived with but little modification, and

forced upon the de facto Queens (if Queens de facto they still are) of Spain and Portugal.

We thought to have here terminated our extracts; but we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of here inserting this enlightened foreign Republican's view of the English Constitution, to which we alluded some pages back.

"In England, I have seen how well a really constitutional monarchy suits a great nation. We here behold, if not the best, yet a good and happy Republic, not in a programme, but in practice and in morals,-the legislative power, wisely divided amongst three authorities, each of which exercises unshackled its proper prerogative, the executive power possessing full latitude for doing good, neither having nor seeking any for doing evil, the judicial power so independent, that the obscurest person, like the greatest wealthiest lord, like the meanest or the most illustrious continental exile, feels perfectly secure under the guarantee of the jury, which no sacrilegious touch can pervert, of domiciliary inviolability, which no villany may profane. The elective branch of the legislature, chosen by eight hundred thousand electors out of a population of twentyfive millions, which, if far from universal suffrage, approaches five times nearer to it than our electoral law. Lastly, the House of Peers, accessible to every citizen, too powerful and too enlightened to yield to the allurements of the Court or the clamour of the multitude. These hereditary magistrates have for a century and a half been the defenders of the charter, the immortal work of their ancestors. Their tutelary supremacy will long remain the palladium of British liberty, provided they cease not to resist inflexibly the overflowing torrent of popular opinions, which nothing short of a social convulsion could satisfy; provided they do not forsake their own appropriate territory to defend themselves weakly upon that of their adversaries, but, influenced by state reasons, consider every new law proposed relatively rather to its probable action upon the constitution, as a whole, than to that

THE Frenchman has the happiest art of any man alive, of taking the pleasant part of any matter to his bosom, and totally dismissing the remainder. The rage for Egyptian trophies is the very last that we should conceive a national taste in France. Egypt once might have been a land of promise to the "Grande Nation," when M. Savary wrote every Parisian coterie into raptures with its rosewater, pavilions, and poetry, and every Parisian cabinet into frenzy with its gilded prospects of superseding all the British colonies, and stripping England of India by a march across the isthmus of Suez: or when M. Bonaparte carried his thirty thousand braves to found an empire in the East, take the Grand Turk by the beard, and give every barber in Paris the choice of a harem and a throne, Egypt might have sounded well in the native ear; but since the days of old Abercromby, and his style of managing the braves,-it might be presumed to have lost some of its attractions.

Quite the contrary. Egypt in France is still "Notre Égypte.' Aboukir, the 17th of March, the fate of the invincibles, and the finale of the "Armée de l'Orient," are completely wiped out of the picture, and Egypt and victory, the land of romance, of Napoleon and the savans, is as fresh and favoured in the national fancy as it was on the day when the grand charlatan himself left Toulon to exhibit his cups and balls before Turk and African on the classic shores of Alexander and Cleopatra.

The obelisk of Luxor is now at last erected in Paris-in the centre of the finest square in Paris-which square it entirely disfigures, and for which disfiguration_we are by no means grieved. Let no Parisian savant practise the small sword for our bosom on reading this. We have no possible desire to throw him into a state of belligerency. Let no hero of the demisolde curl up his mustaches on hearing our opinion, and threaten us with his pistol for our liberty of speech. We have not the slightest intention of going to war for the

VOL. XLI. NO. CCLV.

glory of the rencontre; but we do not hesitate to say that we regard those removals of ancient monuments as an offence to good taste, good sense, and good feeling, and that there we are not sorry to find them turn out in disappointment. The obelisk, while it stood among the ruins of the ancient Egyptian palace, was a striking memorial of memorable times. It was appropriate to the spot-it gratified the sense of fitness-it stood a fine monument of great, wise, stirring, and strange things that had occurred actually around the spot where it stood. It virtually formed a part of the historic evidences of the country, and to the man of science, scholarship, and cultivated imagination, it fur nished the feelings which belong to the actual view of any relic of the mighty past, in the scene where all the living evidences of its greatness have gone down to the dust. But what can those feelings have to do with the "Place Louis Quinze" in Paris; the solemn solitude of the desert with the bustle of fiacres and fishwomen-the sacred characters of science and religion with the jangle of hurdy-gurdies and the prattle of holiday pedestrians the dim and time-bleached record of the dead of thousands of years ago with the spruce impertinences of plaster-walls, and the flattering sculptures of a Parisian palace-garden?

It is true that England has brought away Egyptian monuments, but it is to be remembered that those monuments were actual captures from the French-Egyptian army, and were already removed from their original position. It is true that she has the Elgin marbles; but let it be remembered that if she did not possess them they would probably be not now in existence, as the Turks were daily shooting them down with their muskets, breaking them down for their buildings, or burning them into lime. If England have gone beyond this, we as freely protest against the principle in her case as in any other. But France has led the way, is the great remover, and has not yet learn

C

ed, keen as the moral lesson was, the propriety of leaving the great works of past genius, power, and wisdom to their original possessors, or to the land which covers their graves. To restore the obelisk to its old and natural site in the palace of Luxor is now, of course, hopeless. Yet to that site it ought to be restored. It is only there that it can ever suitably stand, can ever add to the grandeur of the surrounding scene, or can ever call up any one of that host of thrilling and true ideas which belong to the sight of noble monuments on their own soil. The disappointment of the Parisians, on the whole, might be anticipated. The expense of bringing the obelisk from Egypt was immense, and the stone cuts but a poor figure after all. The hieroglyphics go for little in the citizen eye, to which they are merely grotesque scratches covering a long brown mass of uncouth form. It is about seventy feet high, and about seven feet in diameter at the foot. It now looks bare and barbarian, and, in the eyes of the French, would have been infinitely outdone by a brick pillar well plastered over, with a fawn or a fiddler at the top. At Luxor, however, it once stood on a porphyry base, covered with suitable sculptures of Ammon, the Nile, Anubis ; and with its sister monolithe, for there were two, and this, the smaller, probably caught the approving gaze of many a lotus-eating philosopher of the days of Egyptian renown. Moses and Aaron may have marked the hour by its shadow as they stood waiting in the courts of the great king; and Pharoah himself may have taken an oracle or an omen from it before he let loose his cavalry on the frightened multitude of Israel. But now it is a mere impediment to the erection of a Maypole, and will probably make way in the next revolution for the statue of Lafayette or some other charlatan who will tell the Parisians that they are the finest people on the surface of the globe. A little mortification, too, occurred in the attempts to raise the stone. The French engineers of every kind have a habit of pronouncing themselves the first in the world; yet, in the face of the world, and, what was much worse, in the face of the idlers of Paris, all the élite of the engineers were hard at work for weeks

raising scaffolds, compiling machinery, and piling stone upon stoneand all in vain. In this way they built an inclined plane large enough for the rampart of a first-rate fortification, and costly enough to have made Louis Philippe sick of his enterprise. Yet no sooner was all brought to the test, than machinery refused to move, ropes to pull, steam-engines to drag, and the obelisk to get upon its feet. Some awkward accidents, too, befell the populace, who had crowded too near, for the pleasure of giving their opinions on the performance. Some were killed by the fall of ladders and pullies, some were mutilated; and the whole affair was rapidly falling into disfavour, when, after about three weeks of toil and tribulation, the pillar was at last got up. The populace had a day of gazing; and the monument, if the spirit of its sculptor haunts its sad and sepulchral height in our days, may have the satisfaction of knowing, by the negligence of the passers-by, that its quarrel with the spoilers is more than avenged.

Ireland was once the land of bards. But its harps have twanged deplorably out of tune since the rebellion of "the ever glorious 98," the rout of Vinegar Hill, and the hanging of priests Murphy, Roche, and the other embryo cardinals, who expected to take the short way to Rome, by getting on horseback pike in hand. That period was fatal to thewhole generation of patriot rhymers. The Inishowen stills have vainly tried to keep up the national genius by the spirit of the bogs; the Corn Exchange is content with prose gone mad; the Trades' Unions regard the faculty of talking nonsense, as quite equivalent to either reading or writing. And since Captain Rock sings no more, the highwaymen, pickpockets, and patriots of Ireland are condemned to perish without their fame. How many load the prisons, the prison-ships, or the seaffold, thus defrauded of their honours, is beyond our calculation.

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi."

And doubtless many of those who have finished their career in Sydney, or in the hulks, have wanted only opportunity to rival the laurels of the Great Agitator himself. In the unadorned