ceived in the saloons of 1847? I say nothing if some one had added that the object of that candidateship had been to succeed to the Prisoner of Ham!"

While people are disputing about names, laws, and words, the hurricane is gathering. "Amidst the variety of alarming news that comes from the provinces," asks M. Romieu, "do you ever hear speak of Legitimists or Orleanist movements? Does your paper ever inform you that in such or such a town the white flag has been hoisted, or the bust of the Count of Paris carried in procession? No; but tumults, Socialist vociferations, sanguinary songs, are heard on every side, and burst forth at every smallest local feast, or at the least motive for political meeting. How blind are they who do not see through their illusions, that these are the unmistakeable symptoms of approaching events, and that political interests have no longer a place in the gigantic struggle that will soon take place!" Super flumina Babylonis.-They are there those prolétaires who chant that canticle of hatred on the banks of the river of Paris, and of all the rivulets of France. They only breathe for the day when they shall take the little ones and dash them against the stones!"

66

It is no longer thirty peasants assembling, as old Mézerai relates it, to converse upon state matters, as in the case of the origin of La Jacquerie, now proclaimed by M. Romieu to be revived-" it is millions of peasants and of workmen, to whom the newspaper and the hawker carry every morning new aliment to their envy, their rage, and their execrations, no longer directed against the gentleman, for he is dead, but against the bourgeois, who has succeeded to him. The same horrors are preparing, but with more collectedness, more premeditation. There are everywhere words of order-not a tree, not a bush, that does not cover an enemy, prepared for the great social combat. The first peal of the alarm-bell will be repeated by boundless echoes, and chance will strike it."

As to the Chambers, union among representatives, legal enactments, and all other aged and obsolete proceedings, M. Romieu laughs at them as means to oppose to the forthcoming revolution of 1852. "It is not before such pasteboard palaces," he says, "that the RED SPECTRE will stop. Nothing can regulate the questions of our age but the cannon, and it will settle them, even if it must come from Russia."*

66

Of all modern words that a pseudo-philosophy and false sentiment have brought into fashion of late, M. Romieu is most irate with what is called Progress. I cannot," he says, "express the profound disdain that the word inspires me with; I should even say hatred, if it was possible to hate a word." In the world of science, art, invention, and discovery, he goes on to argue at length, there may be progress; in the moral world there can be not only no such thing, but the more mere Reason is trusted to, the greater is the divergence from wisdom, morality, and justice. Suppose," he justly remarks, "Socialism itself, which is called the height of progress, established, would men have less blood or nerves, less anger, love of luxury, hatred, envy, and jealousy?" "Mortal," he em

* It appears certain that the great European powers will never allow France to be devastated by a Red Republic. The Berlin correspondence of the 21st of April, not only states that a secret Austro-Russian treaty has been negotiated to protect Europe against the results of the crisis which is impending in France, but that the support of Prussia has also been sought for, and that Austria has already submitted to the Cabinet of Turin a proposal to march 200,000 troops through Piedmont.

phatically adds, "thou art nothing here below; whatever thou mayest do, whatever thou mayest attempt, thou must die. The minute that elapses for you in this terrestrial journey, even if it should be called an age, must have its end. And at that supreme moment, it will be as if it had had no duration! There will remain nothing of what thou hast said, nothing of what thou hast done. Where now is Progress?"

"M.

M. Romieu follows up this view of Progress, before which the whole doctrine falls strictly and metaphorically to the dust, by an eloquent comparison of Christianity, teaching us to suffer, because such is our lot here below, that we may live happy in another world; and Socialism, in which every man would live for himself, even to the contempt of God. Proudhon, who has constituted himself the extreme expression of revolt against Christianity, will also die in his turn. He will then feel the real value of terrestrial things, and that he might just as well have left them alone, for only one thing remains for all alike, and that is death."

M. Eugène Pelletan has declared, in the Presse of the 1st December, 1850, that not a child is born in France that is not a Socialist (“Il n'y a pas une femme qui accouche, a l'heure qu'il est, qui n'accouche d'un Socialiste"). Any puerile parliamentary arrangements to meet such a danger, is, according to M. Romieu, the combat of Don Quixote against the mills. The French nation, he declares, no longer exists. There is on the old soil of the Gauls some anxious rich, and many covetous poor; there is only that. The poor brought up to envy, to hatred, to thirst for pillage, are ready to devastate, with their millions of arms, the mansions, the abodes of the luxurious, and to disperse everything that appears to be an insult to them. France is no longer that privileged country which elected a constitutional legislation; it is now a collection of everything that fills you with dread in Paris, and of peasants ready to arm themselves with scythes, like the Poles, their brethren, to carry devastation far and wide in the name of equality. "How inglorious it is to go so idiotically to the guillotine, even if they lead us there in white gloves!"

We do not pretend to follow M. Romieu in his long discursive evocation of the Red Spectre; suffice it, here and there, to string together a few of the more striking sentences illustrative at once of his mode of thought, his argument, and his apprehensions. Of all these, few have struck us more forcibly than his asseveration, that so corrupt are the masses in France, so utterly void of all religious feeling and moral sense, as to look upon everything that is not theirs as if it ought to be theirs, and to consider every sign of superiority, from the coat on one's back to the house of abode, or the vehicle of transport, as an insult! The liberal school of the day, in destroying what it was pleased to call prejudices that is, respect to man, to property, to the law, and to the Deity -was supposed to have filled up the void left with equally efficient philosophical dogmas: witness the practical working of this philosophy in the Spectre evoked by M. Romieu, and let us tremble that ever the same spirit should spread in our hitherto happy country-but happy no longer, if, harbouring foreign incendiaries, it should allow the spirit of a corrupt and jealous envy to creep abroad, to fill the bosoms of the poor and the working classes, to rouse their worst passions of desire, cupidity and covetousness, and to yell them on to destruction.

Yet there never was a philosophy of human origin that had not its ridiculous aspect. M. Romieu exposes and denounces a state of society

sufficiently awful to make the hair of many a timid politician stand on an end-M. Romieu sees no alternative but an armed and disciplined body led against the Red Spectre by a despotic inflexible Cæsar; but when M. Romieu himself begins to ponder upon the origin of such a fearful state of things, his meditations are as philosophical as those of a goose contemplating a pool that itself has made muddy.

The abolition of the lottery, he would have us believe, has been one of the causes of Socialism; not in the state of theory, but in the state of sentiment. And this is the truly Gallic manner in which the ex-prefect explains this proposition. "Formerly, when one of those men in blouses, who terrify you by their foresight, saw a splendid equipage passing with its high-bred horses-when he saw seated therein a young and pretty female, wearing a shawl, the mere price of which would have fed two families during a whole year, he did not feel himself influenced by a ferocious envy and hatred; he said to himself, I shall, perhaps, have all that to-morrow.' He returned to his cold garret without evil passions being aroused; he only indulged in comparative projects of luxury for the future, or disputed with his wife and children how the next prize should be disposed of. But now what are the reflections of the same man when the carriage passes before him? He says, 'Never can that belong to me. However good my conduct may be, however great my economy, never shall I have that which I see, and that which insults me!"

4

Another illustration is really so bad that we cannot record it here. Sodom and Gomorrah, Herculaneum and Pompeii, were not more fallen, more corrupt, morally and physically, than Paris, peopled in 1852 by the Red Spectres-we hope only conjured up by M. Romieu's politicocabalistic art, by way of introduction to a Cæsar in embryo.

It has been projected to revise the constitution, and the project has been a source of great anxiety. People ask one another what would be the result of such an act were it to be carried into execution. Suppose, say some, that a portion of the Legislative Assembly should withdraw in consequence, would there not ensue some eminent catastrophe? It has also been projected to revise the law of the 31st of May on universal suffrage. All such projects in face of the real danger M. Romieu holds to be worse than puerile. While serious intelligent men are discussing legislative enactments of insignificant purport, the devastating mob is every day receiving new recruits and attaining a higher degree of organisation. The insensate leaders of the social revolt which will devour themselves, hasten along the fatal slope upon which their doctrines and their ambition has cast them. More than one of these leaders is fully aware that the fearful struggle in which he has engaged himself will cost him his head; but so great is human pride, that it impels him even to such an extreme sacrifice. Besides, those very chieftains can no longer control their followers. Their terrible password-Appetite is not one calculated to preserve the immense crowd of their followers, dispersed in the most remote hamlets of France, in a peaceful attitude.

And even if these leaders were sufficiently powerful to restrain the hungry multitude to whom they have given a flag, nothing can prevent the great electoral agitation of 1852 from calling all their troops ready armed into the field of action. Peace will no longer be possible from that day forth in the smallest village. There will be no longer question of commissions and votes at that supreme hour. The struggle will no

Even those who preach

longer be carried on by argument, but by arms. most in favour of humanity know that force will be necessary to their success; and does not every one know how they would use it, had they but the opportunity? "Faith and Force-sole levers of human movements there is nothing without you that is not powerless and factitious! The material combat, despite the phraseology of the Ideologists, will never cease to be the supreme sanction of facts."

So strongly is M. Romieu imbued with this doctrine of Force, that he says he shall not regret having lived in these gloomy times, if he can only once see THE MOB-that filthy and stupid beast which he holds in horror -well chastised and fustigated. "Look at it," he exclaims, "whatever may be its costume, blouse or coat-whatever its manners, its education, its beliefs; in a saloon, where there is pressure to see or hear better; at the door of a theatre, where entrance is coveted; in the theatre itself, where there is impatience, and where wit is made to consist in beating feet and sticks; at the bar, singing that ignoble rhythm, which has become almost historical, under the name of the Air des Lampions,' on the public square, at break of day, when a head is about to fall under the knife of the guillotine. Look at the mob, everywhere and always, and you will find it, not only foolish, but imbecile, brutal, and idiotic, à faire vomir. It appears that the moment men are gathered together in masses, that a magnetism of stupidity and vulgarity is developed, and suddenly changes honest people into idiots or madmen."

"And yet the mob governs; and it is its government that has been chosen! It would not be too much in return for such an infliction to ask to be present at the tumbling down of this dirty empire. It is to be hoped that we shall see the Saturnalia of the day come to an end. This renovation of the human race can only be accomplished by a flood of human gore. But the movement will be prompt, however terrible it may be. The chief, who is to appease this immense tumult, will soon show himself. Who is he? and can he be even guessed at? No; not this evening, nor to morrow; but he exists, and we have seen him pass by: one of those men before whom all succumb as by instinct."

There is no doubt of the fact. France is far too much of a military nation to allow itself to be devastated by a mob of predatory Socialists. The RED SPECTRE will, when on foot, be exorcised by the bayonets, the sabres, the cannon of the soldiery of 1852; as the Canailles of La Jacquerie in 1358 fell one upon another at the mere sight of knightly armour, and were cut down and slaughtered like beasts (we are quoting Mézerai) by the gallant Anglo-Gascon Captal de Buch and the Count of Foix. The Times has, with M. Romieu, avowed that the conclusion of so perplexing a situation of affairs as is now presented in France can only be terminated by superior force. "It may," it said, in a leader of April 23d," be the force which sometimes changes the form of government in an hour, or the contest which arrays a nation in the camps of civil war. But this much is certain, in political as well as natural science, that when a stream is dammed up by obstacles it cannot surmount, the accumulated waters will force a passage and open a channel." If it must be so, it is just as well to be prepared for the coming struggle; and however much we may regret it for the sake of humanity, still it is to be hoped that the Red Spectre of 1852, if it does make his appearance, will meet with a reception that will be a lesson to all turbulent states.

NOTES OF THE OPERA.

A CERTAIN poet of the olden time declared that the soul itself was nothing but harmony; if it be so, and that its well-being depends on that harmony remaining undisturbed, how much gratitude do we not owe to those who keep our souls in tune, and vary the pleasures of existence with a continuous stream of sweet sounds, like those bees so eloquently described by Homer, the prince of melody, as pouring ceaselessly out of a hollow rock, in endless companies, and settling on the sweet flowers of Spring.

To Mr. Lumley-the very high priest of music-is the town, therefore, a debtor for the unwearied diligence and untiring zeal he displays in catering for the flocks of impatient amateurs who, the moment the happy tidings reach them that the Opera season has begun, hasten to his flowerwreathed temple, ready to yield themselves up to the delights which they know are prepared for them.

It must, however, be confessed that seldom, at so early a period of the musical year as the present, has the treat in store been so richly developed as the season of 1851 has permitted. Little could the uninitiated expect that, while waiting, with what patience they could muster, for the unapproachable beauty of the songs of Sontag-little could they reckon on the gratification which awaited them when the magnificent theatre under Mr. Lumley's control threw open its wide portals and let the light within stream forth.

It is true that Paris is now incredibly near London, and it is also true that the language of our neighbours is as familiar as our "Household Words" to most of us, and that we might have known by the Paris papers what a star had risen in the musical world in the person of the "wondrous sweet and fair" Caroline Duprez; yet were we taken by surprise when she burst upon us in London, and, full of timidity, modesty, grace, and youth, told to the listening ear of hundreds that Sontag had not absorbed all the melody floating in the enchanted air she breathes.

When this lovely syren of seventeen appeared as the tender and ill-starred bride of Lammermoor, charming and interesting as we found her, the tremor of a first introduction to a London audience, which might naturally bewilder her, bewildered us altogether; and we were so much struck with her beauty, her youth, and the magnitude of the task she had undertaken, that a full appreciation of her powers was, perhaps, impossible. But since she has made a character her own in the delightful opera of "Gustave"-one of the most stirring and animated of Auber's compositions-we seem to know her thoroughly; and having at once thrown off all nervousness as to her astonishing powers, we are ready to abandon the accomplished artist to her fame, without taking her extreme youth into consideration at all. In her charmingly fantastic dress as a page, her animated acting, her spirit and enthusiasm, the pretty Caroline so won all hearts, that she established herself a favourite in her first scene, and only added to the admiration she excited every time she appears.

This opera of "Gustave," to which the indefatigable Scribe has furnished words, is an important acquisition to the stores of the theatre, and, since no less than twenty years have elapsed since the subject was introduced as a drama to an English audience on an English stage, it may be looked upon as altogether new. The plot is very stirring, and,