Page images
PDF
EPUB

lant friend Lamorriciere succeeded in repressing, after much hard fighting, this formidable insurrection in the province of Oran. Other Arabs now, however, endeavoured to imitate the conduct of Abd-el-Kader; one Mohammet-ben-Abdallah, at the head of a large number of the followers of the prophet, required Cavaignac to become a Mahometan, and on his refusal to comply, attacked the town of Tlemçen with a large force. On the 30th of March, 1846, the Moslem and Christian forces met; the conflict was short and decisive: Cavaignac, at the head of his troops, charged the Arabs sword in hand. The victory was complete; the fanatical leader left behind his colours, his arms, his horse, and numerous prisoners in the hands of the conqueror. After this he made an expedition to subdue the hostile tribes, comprised in the district lying to the south of Tlemçen and Mascara, towards the Schott Lakes. After an absence of two months he returned to Tlemçen, with the satisfaction of having received the homage of the warlike tribes residing in this barren district. At the close of 1847, the Emir Abd-el-Kader (after a gallant struggle during fourteen years) submitted to the power of France; and, relying on the plighted word of his conquerors, surrendered himself a prisoner of war. The Arab inhabitants of the whole of Algeria having lost their chieftain, found it useless to contend any longer against the skill of the French invader. Cavaignac was engaged in all the military operations that led to the surrender of Abd-el-Kader. The command of the whole of the province of Oran was now conferred upon him; and the labours of war having ceased, he turned his attention with success to the civil government of that province. He was at Oran at the outbreak of the French revolution in February, 1848; and there he received intelligence, on March 2, that Louis Philippe had ceased to be King of the French. Ca. vaignac immediately proclaimed this important event, and declared that all must pay obedience to the newly-constituted republican authorities. provisional government of the French republic forwarded to him a commission as General of Division in the army, and at the same time appointed him Governor-General of Al

The

geria; he, consequently, left Oran, and arrived at Algiers on March 10, to take possession of this high office.

The various partial insurrections that had occurred since 1830, and the disputes that had taken place on dif ferent occasions between Louis Philippe and the republicans, had more than once shown the great political strength of the latter party. It had been for some time evident, to even the most casual observer, that a great alteration must, ere long, take place in the government of France. It was, however, usually supposed (even by the republicans themselves), that in all probability no change would occur until after the death of Louis Philippe; but various circumstances united to cause the sudden downfall of this once powerful sovereign. The annual expenses of the state had greatly increas ed since Louis Philippe became king of the French, and his government was obliged to meet an annual deficit in the budget, by having recourse to new loans. Rumours had long prevailed of corrupt practices in the subordinate government offices; but in 1847, gross personal corruption was brought home to a cabinet minister. Great odium was cast on the chamber of peers (a body never popular in France), by the discovery of a murder committed by one of their number on the person of his own wife, and by the subsequent suicide of the criminal, under circumstances which gave rise to the popular belief, that a peer of France had not been so strictly guarded as a criminal of inferior rank would have been. A knowledge that the number of persons enjoying the elective franchise was nu merically less than the number of places in the gift of the crown, and the belief that the majority of the chamber of deputies owed their election to unscrupulous bribery on the part of the government, had raised an universal cry for electoral reform even among the persons of the most moderate political opinions. Louis Philippe however, had the inconceivable folly to declare himself, in a speech from the throne, opposed to all parlia mentary reform. A bad harvest and general commercial distress had caused great suffering among the working classes in the course of the winter. These several causes led to the catas trophe in February, which hurled the younger branch of the Bourbon family

from the throne. A recollection that he had, on more than one оссаsion, sacrificed the real interests of France to those of his own children, and of the Orleans family, caused him to leave Paris unattended by the sympathy of any class of his late subjects. The French army in Africa had considered the appointment of the Duc d'Aumale, (a young man without any experience), to the governor-generalship of Algeria, as a slight put upon the superior claims of their own officers; and, therefore, when Eugene Cavaignac proclaimed the French Republic at Algiers, he not only acted in accordance with the sentiments of his earliest youth, but met with the approbation and sympathy of the whole of the army in Algeria, who saw in his eleva tion to the post of governor-general, the just reward of personal merit. In the proclamation which General Cavaignac addressed to the inhabitants of Algiers, he alluded in feeling terms to the memory of his brother Godefroi. He says::

"You feel as well as I do, that the memory of my excellent brother still lives in the heart of the citizens, who have chosen me to preside over your affairs. In naming me, they have wished to make it understood that henceforward the government of this colony shall be established on foundations worthy of a republic."

And in his proclamation to the army he says:

"In appointing me to this elevated post, the government have desired, in the name of the French nation, to honour the memory of a virtuous citizen and of a martyr to liberty. As regards myself, you will find me such as I always have been; for to you, soldiers, I am not a new man. As regards yourselves, your duty is comprised in one word-obedience. But obedience not to the arbitrary will of one man, but obedience to the military laws which have been made by the wisdom of the nation."

The first care of General Cavaignac was to place the coast of Algeria in a state of defence, in case any foreign power should be so ill-advised as to interfere with the internal government of France. And then, turning his attention to civil affairs, he proclaimed

that the press in Algeria henceforward should be free.

The Provisional Government in Paris had considerable difficulty in finding a fit person to hold the office of minister of war; and after mature consideration, offered that high position to General Cavaignac. He, however, at that time declined to accept the proposition that was made to him; for he was well aware of the unfortunate dissensions that prevailed at the council-table of the Provisional Government; and he was un.. willing to take oflice without the certainty that the views of his friends, Messrs. Lamartine and Arago, would command a majority. At the approach of the time for the election of the members of the new National Assembly by universal suffrage, General Cavaignac was solicited to allow himself to be put in nomination for Algeria. He, however, refused this proposition, on the ground that an official person ought not to be a candidate for any place where it might be supposed that his official position could be used in his own favour. He was returned for the departments of the Seine and of the Lot. He selected to sit for the latter department, in consequence of its being that which had formerly returned his father to the National Convention. He was at Algiers when the assembly met on the 7th of May, and when an executive commission was appointed to carry on the government of France, he quitted his government, and came to Paris to attend to his duties as deputy for the Lot.

He arrived in Paris a few days after the criminal attempt of the Red Republicans, on the 15th of May, to overawe the deliberations of the National Assembly. The executive commission gave him the appointment of minister of war, which he did not now refuse; and on the 23rd of May, the president of the National Assembly confided to him the command of the troops whose duty it was to guard the Assembly. The part taken by Cavaignac in re. pressing the insurrection in Paris, at the latter end of June, is now a matter of European history. Without discussing the question as to whether wiser precautions might not have been taken by the executive commission to prevent the outbreak of that sanguinary struggle, or whether the general himself was not to blame, as minister

of war, in not securing the presence of a larger number of troops in Paris, before the insurrection broke out, there can be no doubt that his conduct in those days of terror, his unflinching bravery and his great coolness amid the fire of the barricades, as well as the prudent military measures he took after the insurrection had broken out, evinced consummate judgment, and saved civilised Paris from the horrors of

anarchy and confusion. General Cavaignac, on the third day of the insurrection, was appointed chief of the executive power of France, and was invested by the National Assembly with dictatorial powers. It has been thought by many, that in abolishing the liberty of the press, in imprisoning an editor of a newspaper, and in repressing the right of meeting at political clubs, he carried too far his dictatorial powers, and trampled on the liberties of the people; but it should not be forgotten that when he was appointed chief of the executive power, anarchy prevailed in France, the authority of the executive commission had been set at nought; and that since he has been at the head of the government, order has been re-established both in Paris and in the departments of France, and that he has himself discontinued the harsh measures which he at first thought it necessary to adopt.

We have now stated the principal events in the life of Eugene Cavaignac; it would extend this article to too great a length, and, perhaps,

weary our readers, if we were to attempt to review the various speeches he has made in his place in the Na tional Assembly, or to pass a judg ment on the various measures he has thought it right to introduce for the better government of France; suffice it to say, that although General Cavaignac is not an orator, he has succeeded in commanding the attention of the National Assembly, not only out of deference to the high office which he holds, but by the evident honesty of intention, and by the straightforward, though blunt, manner in which he expresses his opinions. His military occupations have probably prevented him from becom ing so well versed in the science of politics, as other members of the Na tional Assembly, who have made it more particularly their study; but the singleness of purpose he has shewn during a most trying period of political excitement, has earned for him the well-merited reputation of being an honest Republican, and of being, on all occasions, actuated by a sincere desire to promote the welfare and well-being of France. Eugene Cavaignac is in person rather above the middle height, and bears a dig nified expression of deep thought, and of high command, on his countenance; in private life he has the polished demeanour of a well-bred gentleman, while at the same time his appearance is that of a man accustomed to the sternness of military discipline.

SONNET

TO THE INFANT SON OF AN OLD FRIEND (T. D.).

Upon that baby forehead, large and high,

Features well formed, soft hands together pressed
O'er the calm heavings of thy little breast,

While veiling lashes fringe each slumbering eye,
Methinks that with a human sympathy,

Transient but true, a stranger's gaze might rest,
And one fond prayer be, by strange lips, addressed

To Him who rules what men call destiny.

But thou to me art with a light of love

Array'd, which streams from many a passèd year;

Thine infant ways and words shall often move,
In earliest friends of mine, a smile or tear;
And finest sympathies of hearts shall prove
Dear to thee yet-to me, long since, how dear!
W. R. H.

November 13, 1818.

THE TOWN, ITS MEMORABLE CHARACTERS AND EVENTS.*

"Here we go up, up, up,

And here we go down, down, downy;
Here we go backward and forward,
And heigh for London towny."

THIS is almost the pleasantest of Leigh Hunt's many pleasant books. It is quite astonishing to contemplate the originality which he has the power of diffusing over subjects treated of by so many writers. The materials of such a work as this before us, are necessarily drawn from a thousand antiquarian writers, some of them the most leaden-headed of men, yet in the-volumes there is not one dull page-not one chapter which does not carry the reader on to the end. It is a book which so enchains the attention, that it is absolutely difficult to lay it aside. In many of Mr. Hunt's works there are passages addressed to peculiarities of taste which could not be sympathised with by those living beyond the conventional wishes which were appealed

to.

The grotesque and the whimsical were, it would so seem, affected. We were not disposed to be reminded of Montaigne or of Addison, as often as our author wished to call them to our remembrance. Mr. Hunt, too, often seemed to be thinking not of his subject, but of the way in which others would treat it. The reader was in earnest while his author seemed to be jesting, and this provoked momentary impatience. Still there was everywhere such exuberant good-nature, such fulness of heart, such a determination to be pleased with everything and everybody, that each successive work added to the number of Hunt's friends; for it is impossible to think of him as a stranger, whether it so happens that his readers may have met him or not. For the last few years his publications, at least such of them as we have seen, have been for the most part reprints of his contributions to periodical works; and to this, in part, perhaps, is to be ascribed the feeling, that although he must now

have as grey hairs as any of his critics, he yet seems a young man, and a young man he certainly is in heart and affections.

It is not very easy to give an account of this book. We have said that Hunt's style, in some of his works, is not free from something which, however natural, is not unlikely to be regarded by readers unfamiliar with his manner, as affectation. From this fault, a serious one, and which has done much to restrict the number of his readers, these volumes are wholly free. Nothing can be more perfectly English than the style is throughout. A few phrases, differing by their colloquial plainness from the ordinary language of the printed books of the present period, tell occasionally of the old writers, among whose works his favourite studies seem to lie; but this occurs not half as much, nor to our tastes, half as pedantically, as in the works of Southey. Hunt's is a graceful, natural style for the most partresembling spoken rather than written language. In short, the book is a cordial, chatty, winter fireside book. We do not so much walk through London with him as listen to him telling of his walks. His sympathies are with the great men who have lived in London rather than with London itself. The descriptions of buildings please us less than the associations of persons, often with the humblest lanes and thoroughfares; and Mr. Hunt's book is very rich in this sort of interest. The changes of manners from the earliest times to the period of which Mr. Hunt was personally a witness, are here very amusingly shown. If the book has a fault, and one must be almost a reviewer to find one, it is that the thread of association, which in this book unites topics most

* "The Town, its Memorable Characters and Events." By Leigh Hunt. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1848.

VOL. XXXII.-NO. CXCII.

3 B

remote from each other, is their accidental connexion with some London street. Men that you never have thought of are presented naturally enough together to the mind of one who knows London well, by the accident of having been born, or lived-at intervals, perhaps of centuries-in the same locality; but to all persons who know little of the great Babel, this link of association is one that does not ever suggest itself; and hence, the contrasts are often very abrupt. The execution of Lord Russell, for instance, prepares us but ill for an election promise of the Duke of Newcastle, and the extraordinary accident by which it was kept. A very affecting passage from "Burnet's History," and "Lady Russell's Letters," harmonise little with "a laughable and true story," connected with the Duke of Newcastle, told in a curious miscellany, entitled "The Lounger's Commonplace Book." These, however, if faults, are the faults of Mr. Hunt's subject, not his own; and we doubt, indeed, whether they are faults at all. "There are," says Goldsmith, "a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties." This was an author's preface to one of the most charning works ever written, we speak of the "Vicar of Wakefield," of which we never saw one of the hundred faults, till pointed out by criticism, and in spite of the criticism we forget them whenever we read the book, which we have done again and again, and which we shall do again and again. Yet how easy would it be to write a review of it, exhibiting its impossibilities and incongruities, and dealing with fiction as if it were fact, and as if the writer who had addressed the imagination were to weave his tale on the supposition that there was no such faculty in his reader-as if all these difficulties which disturb the pedestrian critic, were difficulties or interruptions at all to the winged faculty which overflies them altogether. We envy in Mr. Hunt the genial sympathies which make him think of every thing in its true human aspect, which make him see even in the most vicious states of society, such good as is in them-finding man, after all, everywhere, not a devil, but а "damaged archangel." Of Johnson,

surely, among the best things we know, is the tender judgment with which he regarded all error and all frailty— the defences which he perpetually made for his friends, whose outward acts were not exactly squared by conventional standards. Of this a hundred instances might be given. take one from Boswell, with Mr. Hunt's comment on the biographer.

We

"Campbell," said Johnson, "is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has good principles." "On this" (we quote

Hunt), "says Boswell, in a note, I am inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend, Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could, without remorse, absent himself from public worship, I cannot." Now, Hunt, like Johnson, teaches us to sympathise with all— to think a man may be religious who goes to church, and another who stays away, to feel that there may be a good deal of stern independence becoming a great man, in Penn refusing to take off his hat, or honour, with bonnet-worship, his father, the old admiral; and nevertheless imagine the old admiral by no means wrong in thinking this peculiarity of manners a very absurd one, and not the less absurd "for being elevated into theological importance." The quaker, refusing to take off his hat in a court of justice may, if judged of by the thoughts actuating him in resistance, be easily a more fitting subject of admiration, than the beadle, who removes it from the refractory disputant's head. The latter, however, represents society, seeking to maintain the decencies of life, and the value of Mr. Hunt's catholic taste, is this, that he exhibits the inner principle, justifying each. Men are happier-men are better-men are more forbearing— more charitable to each other-from the influence of such books as this. There is a pleasant poem of Leigh Hunt's, in which he gives us a little story, from D'Herbelot, which illustrates happily the train of thought which his present book suggests. We may as well transcribe it :

« PreviousContinue »