Paris, Hotel Bedford, April9, 1857.—We reached this place last night.
The Tocquevilles are in our hotel. I went to them in the evening.
Tocqueville asked me how long I intended to remain.
'Four weeks,' I answered.
'I do not think,' he replied, 'that you will be able to do so. Paris has become so dull that no one will voluntarily spend a month here. The change which five years have produced is marvellous.
'We have lost our interest not only in public affairs, but in all serious matters.'
'You will return then to the social habits of Louis Quinze,' I said. 'You were as despotically governed then as you are now; and yet thesalonsof Madame Geoffrin were amusing.'
'We may do so in time,' he answered, 'but that time is to come. At present we talk of nothing but the Bourse. The conversation of oursalonsresembles more that of the time of Law, than that of the time of Marmontel.'
I spent the evening at Lamartine's. There were few people there, and the conversation was certainly dull enough to justify Tocqueville's fears.
April10.—Tocqueville drank tea with us.
We talked of the Empress, and of the possibility of her being Regent ofFrance.
'That supposes,' I said, 'first, thatCelui-ciholds his power until his death; and, secondly, that his son will succeed him.'
'I expect both events,' answered Tocqueville. 'It is impossible to deny that Louis Napoleon has shown great dexterity and tact. His system of government is detestable if we suppose the welfare of France to be his object; but skilful if its aim be merely the preservation of his own power.
'Such being his purpose, he has committed no great faults. Wonderful, almost incredible, as his elevation is, it has not intoxicated him.'
'It has not intoxicated him,' I answered, 'because he was prepared for it—he always expected it.'
'He could scarcely,' replied Tocqueville, 'have really and soberly expected it until 1848.
'Boulogne and Strasbourg were the struggles of a desperate man, who staked merely a life of poverty, obscurity, and exile. Even if either of them had succeeded, the success could not have been permanent. A surprise, if it had thrown him upon the throne, could not have kept him there. Even after 1848, though the Bourbons were discredited, we should not have tolerated a Bonaparte if we had not lost all our self-possession in our terror of the Rouges. That terror created him, that terror supports him; and habit, and the dread of the bloodshed and distress, and the unknown chances of a revolution, will, I think, maintain him during his life.
'The same feelings will give the succession to his heir. Whether the heir will keep it, is a different question.'
Sunday, April12.—Tocqueville drank tea with us. I asked him if he had seen the Due de Nemours' letter.
'I have not seen it,' he answered. 'In fact, I have not wished to see it. I disapprove of the Fusionists, and the anti-Fusionists, and the Legitimists, and the Orleanists-in short, of all the parties who are forming plans of action in events which may not happen, or may not happen in my time, or may be accompanied by circumstances rendering those plans absurd, or mischievous, or impracticable,'
'But though you have not read the letter,' I said, 'you know generally what are its contents.'
'Of course I do,' he replied. 'And I cannot blame the Comte de Chambord for doing what I do myself—for refusing to bind himself in contingencies, and to disgust his friends in the hope of conciliating his enemies.'
'Do you believe,' I asked, 'that the mere promise of a Constitution would offend the Legitimists?'
'I do not think,' he answered, 'that they would object to a Constitution giving them what they would consider their fair share of power and influence.
'Under Louis Philippe they had neither, but it was in a great measure their own fault.
'They have neither under this Government, for its principle is to rest on the army and on the people, and to ignore the existence of the educated classes.
'You seethatin its management of the press. 'Montalembert, or Guizot, or Falloux, or I may publish what we like. We are not read by the soldier or by theproletaire.[1] But the newspaper press is subject to a slavery to which it was never reduced before. The system was first elaborated in Austria, and I daresay will be copied by all the Continental autocrats, for no inventions travel so quickly as despotic ones.
'The publicavertissementsare comparatively unimportant. Before a journal gets one of those its suppression has probably been decided on. Every day there are communications between the literary police and the different editors. Such or such a line of argument is altogether forbidden, another is allowed to be used to a certain extent. Some subjects are tabooed, others are to be treated partially.
'As the mental food of the lower orders is supplied by the newspapers, this paternal Government takes care that it shall not be too exciting.'
[Footnote 1: The lowest class.—ED.]
Paris, Monday, April13.—Tocqueville, Jobez, Marcet, St.-Hilaire,[1] Charles Sumner, and Lord Granville breakfasted with us.
The conversation turned on public speaking.
'Very few indeed of our speakers,' said Tocqueville, 'have ever ventured to improvise: Barrot could do it. We have told him sometimes that a speech must be answered immediately; and when he objected that he had nothing to say, we used to insist, and to assure him that as soon as he was in the tribune, the ideas and the words would come; and so they did. I have known him go on under such circumstances for an hour; of course neither the matter nor the form could be first rate, but they were sufficient.'
'In fact,' said Lord Granville, 'much of what is called improvisation is mere recollection. A man who has to speak night after night, gets on most subjects a set of thoughts, and even of expressions, which naturally pour in on him as soon as his argument touches the train which leads to them.
'One of our eminent speakers,' he continued, 'Lord Grey, is perhaps best when he has not had time to prepare himself. He is so full of knowledge and of inferences, that he has always enough ready to make an excellent speech. When he prepares himself, there istoomuch; he gives the House more facts and more deductions than it can digest.'
'Do you agree with me,' I asked, 'in thinking that Lord Melbourne was best when he improvised?'
'I agree with you,' answered Lord Granville, 'that his set speeches were cold and affected. He was natural only when he was quite careless, or when he was much excited, and then he was admirable.'
'Did not Thiers improvise?' I asked.
'Never,' answered Tocqueville. 'He prepared himself most carefully. So did Guizot. We see from the "Revue rétrospective" that he even prepared his replies. His long experience enabled him to foresee what he should have to answer. Pasquier used to bring his speech ready written. It lay on the desk before him, but he never looked at it.'
'That seems to me,' I said, 'very difficult. It is like swimming with corks. One would be always tempted to look down on the paper.'
'It is almost equally difficult,' said Tocqueville, 'to make a speech of which the words are prepared. There is a struggle between the invention and the memory. You trust thoroughly to neither, and therefore are not served thoroughly by either.'
'Yet that,' said Marcet, 'is what our Swiss pastors are required to do. They are forbidden to read, and forbidden to extemporise, and by practice they speak from memory—some well, all tolerably.'
'Brougham,' said Lord Granville, 'used to introduce his most elaborately prepared passages by a slight hesitation. When he seemed to pause in search of thoughts, or of words, we knew that he had a sentence ready cut and dried.'
'Who,' I asked Sumner, 'are your best speakers in America?'
'The best,' he said, 'is Seward; after him perhaps comes Winthrop.'
'I should have thought it difficult,' I said, 'to speak well in theSenate, to only fifty or at most sixty members.'
'You do not speak,' answered Sumner, 'to the Senators. You do not think of them. You know that their minds are made up. Except as to mere executive questions, such as the approval of a public functionary, or the acceptance or modification of a treaty, every senator comes in pledged to a given, or to an assumed, set of opinions and measures. You speak to the public. You speak in order that 500,000 copies of what you say, as was the case with my last speech, may be scattered over the whole Union.'
'That,' I said, 'must much affect the character of your oratory. A speech meant to be read must be a different thing from one meant to be heard. Your speeches must in fact be pamphlets, and that I suppose accounts for their length.'
'That is true,' replied Sumner. 'But when you hear that we speak for a day, or for two days, or, as I have sometimes done, for three days, you must remember that our days are days of only three hours each.'
'How long,' I asked, 'was your last speech?'
'About five hours,' he answered. 'Three hours the first day and two hours the second.'
'That,' I said, 'is not beyond our remotest limit. Brougham indeed, on the amendment of the law, spoke for six hours, during the greater part of the time to an audience of three. The House was filled with fog, and there is an H.B. which represents him gesticulating in the obscurity and the solitude.'
'He,' said Lord Granville, 'put his speech on the Reform Bill at the top.'
'The speech,' I said, 'at the end of which he knelt to implore the Peers to pass the bill, and found it difficult to rise.'
[Footnote 1: Barthélemy de St-Hilaire is now Thiers' private secretary and right hand.—ED.]
Tuesday, April14.—Z., Sumner, Lord Granville, Tocqueville, M. Circourt, St.-Hilaire, and Corcelle breakfasted with us.
The conversation took the same turn as yesterday.
'May I venture,' said Lord Granville to Z., 'to ask whom of your opponents you feared the most?'
'Beyond all comparison,' answered Z., 'Thiers.'
'Was not D.' I asked, 'very formidable?'
'Certainly,' said Z. 'But he had not the wit, or theentraînementof Thiers. His sentences were like his action. He had only one gesture, raising and sinking his right arm, and every time that right arm fell, it accompanied a sentence adding a link to a chain of argument, massive and well tempered, without a particle of dross, which coiled round his adversary like a boa constrictor.'
'And yet,' said M., 'he was always languid and embarrassed at starting; it took him ten minutes to geten train.'
'That defect,' said Lord Granville, 'belonged to many of our good speakers—to Charles Fox—to Lord Holland. Indeed Fox required the excitement of serious business to become fluent. He never made a tolerable after-dinner speech.'
'Among the peculiarities of D.,' said M., 'are his perfect tact and discretion in the tribune, and his awkwardness in ordinary life. In public and in private he is two different men.'
'It is impossible,' said Tocqueville, 'to deny that D. was great in a deliberative body, but his real scene of action is the bar. He was onlyamongthe best speakers in the Constituent Assembly. He isthegreatest advocate at the bar.'
'Although,' said M——, 'at the bar, where he represents only his client, one of the elements of his parliamentary success, his high moral character, does not assist him. Do you remember how, on the debate of the Roman expedition, he annihilated by one sentence Jules Favre who had ventured to assail him? "Les injures," he said, "sont comme les corps pesants, dont la force dépend de la hauteur d'où ils tombent."'
'One man,' said Z., 'who enjoys a great European reputation, I could never think of as a serious adversary, that is Lamartine.
'He appeared to me to treat the sad realities of political life as materials out of which he could compose strange and picturesque scenes, or draw food for his imagination and his vanity. He seemed always to be saying to himself: "How will the future dramatist or poet, or painter, represent this event, and what will be my part in the picture, or in the poem, or on the stage?"
'Il cherchait toujours à poser.—He could give pleasure, he could give pain—he could amuse, and he could irritate,—but he seldom could persuade, and he never could convince. Even before the gate of the Hôtel de Ville, the most brilliant hour of his life, he owed his success rather to his tall figure, his fine features, attractive as well as commanding, his voice, his action—in short, to the assemblage of qualities which the Greeks called [Greek: hupokrisis] than to his eloquence.'
'Was not,' I said, 'his contrast between the red flag and the tricolor eloquent?'
'It was a fine bit of imagery,' said Z., 'and admirably adapted to the occasion. I do not deny to him the power of saying fine things—perhaps fine speeches, but he never made agoodspeech—a speech which it was difficult to answer.'
'If anyone,' he continued, 'ever takes the trouble to look into our Parliamentary debates, Lamartine will hold a higher comparative rank than he is really entitled to. Most of us were too busy to correct the reports for the "Moniteur." Lamartine not only corrected them but inserted whole passages.'
'He inserted,' said M, 'not only passages but facts. Such as "applaudissements," "vive émotion," "hilarité," often when the speech had been received in silence, or unattended to.'
'I remember,' said Corcelle, 'an insertion of that kind in the report of a speech which was never delivered. It was during the Restoration, when written speeches were read, and sometimes were sent to the "Moniteur" in anticipation of their being read. Such had been the case with respect to the speech in question. The intended orator had inserted, like Lamartine, "vifs applaudissements," "profonde sensation," and other notices of the effect of his speech. The House adjourned unexpectedly before it was delivered, and he forgot to withdraw the report.'
'Could a man like Lord Althorp,' I asked, 'whom it was painful to hear, hold his place as leader of a French Assembly?'
'Impossible,' said Tocqueville, 'unless he were a soldier. We tolerate from a man who has almost necessarily been deprived of a careful education much clumsiness and awkwardness of elocution. Soult did not speak much better than the Duke of Wellington, but he was listened to. He had, like the Duke, an air of command which imposed.'
'Was there,' I said, 'any personal quarrel between Soult and Thiers?'
'Certainly there was,' said Z., 'a little one. I will not say that Soult was in Spain a successful commander, or an agreeable colleague, or an obedient subordinate, but whenever things went wrong there, Soult was the man whom the Emperor sent thither to put them to rights. Great as Thiers may be as a military critic, I venture to put him below Napoleon.'
'I have been reading,' I said, 'Falloux's reception speech, and was disappointed by it.'
'In his speech and Brifault's,' said Circourt, 'you may compare the present declamatory style and that of thirty years ago. Brifault has, or attempts to have, thelégèretéand the prettiness of the Restoration. Falloux isgrandioseand emphatic, as we all are now.'
'Falloux,' said Z., 'made an excellent speech the first time that he addressed the Chamber of Deputies. The next time he was not so successful, and after that he ceased to be listened to.
'But in the Constituent Assembly, and indeed in the Legislative, he acquired an ascendency. In those Assemblies, great moral qualities and a high social position were rarer than they were among the Deputies, and in the dangers of the country they were more wanted. Falloux possesses them all. He is honest and brave, and in his province employs liberally and usefully a large fortune.'
'Were those the merits,' I asked, 'which opened to him the doors of theAcademy?'
'Certainly,' answered Z. 'As a man of letters he is nothing, as a statesman not much. We elected him in honour of his courage and his honesty, and perhaps with some regard to his fortune. We are the only independent body left, and we value in a candidate no quality more than independence.'
'I am told,' I said, 'that Falloux is now an ultra-Legitimist.'
'That is not true,' said Z. 'He is a Legitimist, but a liberal one. He would tolerate no Government, whatever were its other claims, that was not constitutional.'
'Your Academic ceremonies,' I said 'seem to me not very well imagined. There is somethingfade, almost ridiculous, in the literary minuet in which therécipiendaireand the receiver are trotted out to show their paces to each other and to the Academy. The new member extolling the predecessor of whom he is the unworthy successor, the old member lauding his new colleague to his face, and assuring him that he, too, is one of the ornaments of the Society.'
'Particularly,' said ——, 'when, as was the case the other day, it is notorious that neither of them has any real respect for the idol which he is forced to crown. Then the political innuendoes, the under-currents of censure of the present conveyed in praise of the past, become tiresome after we have listened to them for five years. We long to hear people talk frankly and directly, instead of saying one thing for the mere purpose of showing that they are thinking of another thing. The Emperor revenged himself on Falloux by his antithesis: "que le désordre les avait uni, et que l'ordre les avait séparé.'"
'How did Falloux reply to it?' I asked.
'Feebly,' said ——. 'He muttered something aboutl'ordrehaving no firmer adherent than himself. In these formal audiences our great man has the advantage. He has hismotready prepared, and you cannot discuss with him.'
We talked of the French spoken by foreigners. 'The best,' said Circourt, 'is that of the Swedes and Russians, the worst that of the Germans.'
'Louis Philippe,' said Z., 'used to maintain that the best test of a man's general talents was his power of speaking foreign languages. It was an opinion that flattered his vanity, for he spoke like a native French, Italian, English, and German.'
'It is scarcely possible,' said Tocqueville, 'for a man to be original in any language but his own; in all others he is forced to say what he can, and that is generally something that he recollects.'
'I was much struck by that,' said Z., 'when conversing with Narvaez. He had been talking sensibly but rather dully in French, I begged him to talk Spanish, which I understand though I cannot speak. The whole man was changed. It was as if a curtain had been drawn up from between us. Instead of hammering at commonplaces, he became pointed, and spirited, and eloquent.'
'Is he an educated man?' I asked.
'For a Spaniard,' answered Z., 'yes. He has the quickness, the finesse, and the elegance of mind and of manner which belong to the South. The want of book-learning contributes to his originality.'
'The most wonderful speaker in a foreign language,' said Sumner, 'wasKossuth. He must have been between forty and fifty before he heard anEnglish word. Yet he spoke it fluently, eloquently, and evenidiomatically. He would have made his fortune among us as a stump-orator.'
Tuesday, April28.—Tocqueville drank tea with us.
We talked rather of people than of things.
'Circourt,' said Tocqueville, 'is my dictionary. When I wish to know what has been done or what has been said on any occasion, I go to Circourt. He draws out one of the drawers in his capacious head, and finds there all that I want arranged and ticketed.
'One of the merits of his talk, as it is of his character, is its conscientiousness. He has the truthfulness of a thorough gentleman, and his affections are as strong as his hatreds. I do not believe he would sacrifice a friend even to a good story, and where is there another man of whom that can be said?'
'What think you of Mrs. T——-?' I inquired.
'I like her too,' he replied, 'but less than I do Circourt. She has considerable talent, but she thinks and reads only to converse. She has no originality, no convictions. She says what she thinks that she can say well; like a person writing a dialogue or an exercise. Whether the opinion which she expresses be right or wrong, or the story that she tells be true or false, is no concern of hers, provided it bebien dit.'
'The fault of her conversation,' I said, 'seems to me to be, that while she is repeating one sentence she is thinking of the next, and that while you are speaking to her, she is considering what is to be her next topic. I have noticed this fault in other very fluent conversers. They are so intent on the future that they neglect the present.'
'It is rather a French than an English fault,' said Tocqueville. 'The English have more curiosity and less vanity, than we have; more desire to hear and less anxiety to shine. They are often, therefore, bettercauseursthan we are.Le grand talent pour le silence, or, in other words, the power of listening which has been imputed to them, is a great conversational virtue. I do not believe that it was said ironically or epigrammatically. The man who bestowed that praise knew how rare a merit silence is.'
'May we not owe that merit,' I asked, 'to our bad French? We shine most when we listen.'
'A great talker,' I continued, 'Montalembert, is to breakfast with us.Whom shall I ask to meet him?'
'Not me,' said Tocqueville, 'unless you will accept me as one of the chorus. I will not take apremier rôle, or any prominentrôle, in a piece in which he is to act. I like his society; that is, I like to sit silent and hear him talk, and I admire his talents; and we have the strong bond of common hatreds, though perhaps we hate on different, or even opposite grounds, and I do not wish for a dispute with him, of which, if I say anything, I shall be in danger. If we differed on only one subject, instead of differing, as we do, on all but one, he would pick out that single subject to attack me on. I am not sure that even as host you will be safe. He is more acute in detecting points of opposition than most men are in finding subjects of agreement. He avoids meeting you on friendly or even on neutral ground. He chooses to have a combaten champ clos.
'Take care,' he added, 'and do not have too manysommités.They watch one another, are conscious that they are watched, and a coldness creeps over the table.'
'We had two pleasant breakfasts,' I said, 'a fortnight ago. You were leader of the band at one, Z. at the other, and the rest left the stage free to the great actor.'
'As for me,' he answered, 'I often shut myself up, particularly after dinner, or during dinner if it be long. The process of digestion, little, as I can eat, seems to oppress me.
'Z. is always charming. He has anaplomb, an ease, avervearising from his security that whatever he says will interest and amuse. He is a perfect specimen of an ex-statesman,homme de lettres, andpère de famille, falling back on literature and the domestic affections. As for me, I have intervals ofsauvagerie, or rather the times when I am notsauvageare the intervals. I have many, perhaps too many, acquaintances whom I like, and a very few friends whom I love, and a host of relations. I easily tire of Paris, and long to fly to the fields and woods and seashore of my province.'
We passed to the language of conversation.
'There are three words,' said Tocqueville, 'which you have lost, and which I wonder how you do without,—Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle. You are forced always to substitute the name. They are so mixed in all our forms that half of what we say would appear abrupt or blunt without them.
'Then thetutoyeris anuancethat you want. When husband and wife are talking together they pass insensibly, twenty times perhaps in an hour, from thevousto thetu. When matters of business or of serious discussion are introduced, indeed whenever the affections are not concerned, it isvous. With the leastsoupçonof tenderness thetureturns.'
'Yet,' I said, 'you never use thetubefore a third person.'
'Never,' he answered, 'in good company. Among thebourgeoisiealways. It is odd that an aristocratic form, so easily learned, should not have been adopted by all who pretend to be gentry. I remember being present when an Englishman and his wife, much accustomed to good French society, but unacquainted with thisnuance, were laboriouslytutoyeringeach other. I relieved them much by assuring them that it was not merely unnecessary, but objectionable.'
May2.—Tocqueville dined with us.
A lady at thetable d'hôtewas full of a sermon which she had heard at the Madeleine. The preacher said, sinking his voice to an audible whisper, 'I will tell you a secret, but it must go no farther. There is more religion among the Protestants than with us, they are better acquainted with the Bible, and make more use of their reading: we have much to learn from them.'
I asked Tocqueville, when we were in our own room, as to the feelings of the religious world in France with respect to heretics.
'The religious laity,' he answered, 'have probably little opinion on the subject. They suppose the heretic to be less favourably situated than themselves, but do not waste much thought upon him. The ignorant priests of course consign him to perdition. The better instructed think, like Protestants, that error is dangerous only so far as it influences practice.
'Dr. Bretonneau, at Tours, was one of the best men that I have known, but an unbeliever. The archbishop tried in his last illness to reconcile him to the Church: Bretonneau died as he had lived. But the archbishop, when lamenting to me his death, expressed his own conviction that so excellent a soul could not perish.
'You recollect the duchesse in St.-Simon, who, on the death of a sinner of illustrious race, said, "On me dira ce qu'on voudra, on ne me persuadera pas que Dieu n'y regarde deux fois avant de damner un homme de sa qualité." The archbishop's feeling was the same, only changingqualitéinto virtue.
'There is something amusing,' he continued, 'when, separated as we are from it by such a chasm, we look back on the prejudices of theAncien Régime. An old lady once said to me, "I have been reading with great satisfaction the genealogies which prove that Jesus Christ descended from David. Ça montre que notre Seigneur était Gentilhomme."'
'We are somewhat ashamed,' I said, 'in general of Jewish blood, yet theLévis boast of their descent from the Hebrew Levi.'
'They are proud of it,' said Tocqueville, 'because they make themselves out to be cousins of the Blessed Virgin. They have a picture in which a Duc de Lévi stands bareheaded before the Virgin. "Couvrez-vous donc, mon cousin," she says. "C'est pour ma commodité," he answers.'
The conversation passed to literature.
'I am glad,' said Tocqueville, 'to find that, imperfect as my knowledge of English is, I can feel the difference in styles.'
'I feel strongly,' I said, 'the difference in French styles in prose, but little in poetry.'
'The fact is,' said Tocqueville, 'that the only French poetry, except that of Racine, that is worth reading is the light poetry. I do not think that I could now read Lamartine, though thirty years ago he delighted me.'
'The French taste,' I said, 'in English poetry differs from ours. You read Ossian and the "Night Thoughts."'
'As for Ossian,' he answered, 'he does not seem to have been ever popular in England. But the frequent reference to the "Night Thoughts," in the books and letters of the last century, shows that the poem was then in everybody's memory. Foreigners are in fact provincials. They take up fashions of literature as country people do fashions of dress, when the capital has left them off. When I was young you probably had ceased to be familiar with Richardson. We knew him by heart. We used to weep over the Lady Clementina, whom I dare say Miss Senior never heard of.
'During the first Empire, we of the oldrégimeabandoned Paris, as we do now, and for the same reasons. We used to live in our châteaux, where I remember as a boy hearing Sir Charles Grandison and Fielding read aloud. A new novel was then an event. Madame Cottin was much more celebrated than George Sand is now. For all her books were read, and by everybody. Notwithstanding the great merits of George Sand's style, her plots and her characters are so exaggerated and so unnatural, and her morality is so perverted, that we have ceased to read her.'
We talked of Montalembert, and I mentioned hissortiethe other day against the clergy.
'I can guess pretty well,' said Tocqueville, 'what he said to you, for it probably was arésuméof his article in the "Correspondant." Like most men accustomed to public speaking, he repeats himself. He is as honest perhaps as a man who is verypassionnécan be; but his oscillations are from one extreme to another. Immediately after thecoup d'état,when he believed Louis Napoleon to be Ultramontane, he was as servile as his great enemy the "Univers" is now. "Ce sont les nuances qui se querellent, non les couleurs;" and between him and the "Univers" there is only anuance. The Bishop of Agen has oscillated like him, but began at the other end. The other day the Bishop made a most servile address to the Emperor. He had formerly been a furious anti-Bonapartist. "How is it possible," said Montalembert, "that a man can rush so completely from one opinion to another? On the 4th of December in 1851 this same Bishop denounced thecoup d'étatwith such violence that the President sent me to the Nuncio to request his interference. Now he is on his knees before him. Such changes can scarcely be honest." Montalembert does not see that the only difference between them is that they have trod in opposite directions the very same path.'
Thursday, May5.—Tocqueville and I dined with M. and Madame de Bourke, and met there General Dumas and Ary Scheffer.
We talked of Delaroche's pictures, and Scheffer agreed with me in preferring the smaller ones. He thought that Delaroche improved up to the time of his death, and preferred his Moses, and Drowned Martyr, painted in 1853 and 1855, to the other large ones, and his Girondins, finished in 1856, to the earlier small ones.
We passed on to the increased and increasing population of Paris.
'The population of Paris,' I said, 'is only half that of London, while that of the British Islands is not three-fourths that of France. If you were to double the population of Paris, therefore, it would still be proportionally less than that of London.'
'That is true,' said Tocqueville, 'but yet there are many circumstances connected with the Parisian population each of which renders it more dangerous than the London one. In the first place, there is the absence of any right to relief. The English workman knows that neither he nor his family can starve. The Frenchman becomes anxious as soon as his employment is irregular, and desperate when it fails. The English workmen are unacquainted with arms, and have no leaders with military experience. The bulk of the Frenchmen have served, many of them are veterans in civil war, and they have commanders skilled in street-fighting. The English workmen have been gradually attracted to London by a real and permanent demand for their labour. They have wives and children. At least 100,000 men have been added to the working population of Paris since thecoup d'état.They are young men in the vigour of their strength and passions, unrestrained by wives or families. They have been drawn hither suddenly and artificially by the demolition and reconstruction of half the town, by the enormous local expenditure of the Government, and by the fifty millions spent in keeping the price of bread in Paris unnaturally low. The 40,000 men collected in Paris by the construction of the fortifications are supposed to have mainly contributed to the revolution of 1848. What is to be expected from this addition of 100,000? Then the repressive force is differently constituted and differently animated. In England you have an army which has chosen arms as a profession, which never thinks of any other employment, and indeed is fit for no other, and never expects any provision except its pay and its pension. The French soldier, ever since 1789, is a citizen. He serves his six years because the law and the colonel force him to do so, but he counts the days until he can return to his province, his cottage, and his field. He sympathises with the passions of the people. In the terrible days of June, the army withstood the cries, the blessings, the imprecations and the seductions of the mob, only because they had the National Guards by their side. Their presence was a guarantee that the cause was just. The National Guards never fought before as they did in those days. Yet at the Château d'Eau, the miraculous heroism and the miraculous good luck of Lamoricière were necessary to keep them together. If he had not exposed himself as no man ever did, and escaped as no man ever did, they would have been broken.'
'I was there,' said Scheffer, 'when his fourth horse was killed under him. As the horse was sinking he drew his feet out of the stirrups and came to the ground without falling; but his cigar dropped from his mouth. He picked it up, and went on with the order which he was giving to anaide-de-camp.
'I saw that,' said Tocqueville. 'He had placed himself immediately behind a cannon in front of the Château d'Eau which fired down the Boulevard du Temple. A murderous fire from the windows in a corner of the Rue du Temple killed all the artillerymen. The instant that Lamoricière placed himself behind it, I thought that I saw what would happen. I implored him to get behind some shelter, or at least not to pose as a mark. "Recollect," I said, "that if you go on in this way you must be killed before the day is over-and where shall we all be?"'
'"I see the danger of what I am doing," he answered, "and I dislike it as much as you can do; but it is necessary. The National Guards are shaking; if they break, the Line follows. I must set an example that everyone can see and can understand. This is not a time for taking precautions. IfIwere to shelter myself,theywould run."'
'How does Lamoricière,' I asked, 'bear exile and inactivity in Brussels?'
'Very ill,' said Scheffer. 'He feels that he has compromised the happiness of his wife, whom he married not long before thecoup d'état.'
'Changarnier at Malins, who lives alone and has only himself to care for, supports it much better.'
Tocqueville and I walked home together.
'Scheffer,' he said, 'did not tell all that happened at the Château d'Eau. Men seldom do when they fight over their battles.'
'The insurgents by burrowing through walls had got into a house in the rear of our position. They manned the windows, and suddenly fired down on us from a point whence no danger had been feared. This caused a panic among the National Guards, a force of course peculiarly subject to panics. They turned and ran back 250 yards along the Boulevard St. Martin, carrying with them the Line and Lamoricière himself. He endeavoured to stop them by outcries, and by gesticulations, and indeed by force. He gave to one man who was trying to run by him a blow with his fist, so well meant and well directed that it broke his collar bone.'
'At length he stopped them, re-formed them, and said: "Now you shall march, I at your head, and the drummer beating the charge, as if you were on parade, up to that house." They did so. After a few discharges, which miraculously missed Lamoricière, the men in the house deserted it.'
'What were you doing at the Château d'Eau?' I asked.
'We were marching,' he said, 'with infantry and artillery on the Boulevard du Temple, across which there was a succession of barricades, which it was necessary to take one by one.
'As we advanced in the middle, our sappers and miners got into the houses on each side, broke through the party walls, and killed the men at the windows.'
'Those three days,' he continued, 'impress strongly on my mind the dangers of our present state.'
'It is of no use to take up pavements and straighten streets, and pierceParis by long military roads, and loop-hole the barracks, if theExecutive cannot depend on the army. Ditches and bastions are of no useif the garrison will not man them.'
'The new law of recruitment, however, may produce a great change. Instead of 80,000 conscripts, 120,000 are to be taken each year. This is about all that are fit for service. They are required to serve for only two years. If the change ended there our army would be still more a militia than it is now. It would be the Prussian Landwehr. But those entitled to their discharge are to be enticed by higher pay, promotions, bounties, and retiring pensions—in short, by all means of seduction, to re-enter for long periods, for ten, or fifteen, or perhaps twenty years. It is hoped that thus a permanent regular army may be formed, with anesprit de corpsof its own, unsympathising with the people, and ready to keep it down; and such will, I believe, be the result. But it will take nine or ten years to produce such an army—and the dangers that I fear are immediate.'
'What are the motives,' I asked, 'for the changes as to the conscription, the increase of numbers, and the diminution of the time of service?'
'They are parts,' he answered, 'of the system. The French peasant, and indeed theouvrier, dislikes the service. The proportion of conscripts who will re-enlist is small. Therefore the whole number must be large. The country must be bribed to submit to this by the shortness of the term. The conscript army will be sacrificed to what is to be the regular army. It will be young and ill-trained.'
'But your new regular army,' I said, 'will be more formidable to the enemy than your present force.'
'I am not sure of that,' he answered. 'The merit of the French army was the impetuosity of its attack, the "furia Francese," as the Italians called it. Young troops have more of this quality than veterans. The Maison du Roi, whose charge at Steenkirk Macaulay has so well described, consisted of boys of eighteen.'
'I am re-editing,' I said, 'my old articles. Among them is one written in 1841 on the National Character of France, England, and America,[1] as displayed towards foreign nations. I have not much to change in what I have said of England or of America. As they have increased in strength they have both become still more arrogant, unjust, and shameless.
'England has perhaps become a little more prudent America a little less so. But France seems to me to be altered. I described her as a soldier with all the faults of that unsocial character. As ambitious, rapacious, eager for nothing but military glory and territorial aggrandisement. She seems now to have become moderate and pacific, and to be devoted rather to the arts of peace than to those of war.'
'Franceischanged,' answered Tocqueville, 'and when compared with the France of Louis XIV., or of Napoleon, was already changed when you wrote, though the war-cry raised for political purposes in 1840 deceived you. At the same time, I will not deny that military glory would, more than any other merit, evennowstrengthen a Government, and that military humiliation would inevitably destroy one. Nor must you overrate the unpopularity of the last war. Only a few even of the higher classes understood its motives. "Que diable veut cette guerre?" said my country neighbour to me; "si c'était contre les Anglais—maisavecles Anglais, et pour le Grand Turc, qu'est-ce que cela peut signifier?" But when they saw that it cost only men, that they were not invaded or overtaxed, and that prices rose, they got reconciled to it.
'It was only the speculators of Paris that were tired of it. And if, instead of the Crimea, we had fought near our own frontiers, or for some visible purpose, all our military passions, bad and good, would have broken out.'
[Footnote 1: This article is republished in theHistorical andPhilosophical Essays. Longmans: 1865.—ED.]
Wednesday, May13.—Tocqueville came in after breakfast, and I walked with him in the shade of the green walls or arcades of the Tuileries chestnuts.
We talked of the Montijos, which led our conversation to Mérimée and V.
'Both of them,' said Tocqueville, 'were the friends ofCountess Montijo, the mother.
'V. was among the last persons who knew Eugénie as Countess Théba. He escorted her to the Tuileries the very evening of her marriage. There he took his leave of her. "You are now," he said, "placed so high that I can only admire you from below." And I do not believe that they have met since.
'Mérimée took a less sentimental view of the change. He acknowledged his Empress in his former plaything, subsided from a sort of stepfather into a courtier, and so rose to honour and wealth, while V. is satisfied to remain an ex-professor andun homme de lettres.'
* * * * *
We met Henri Martin, and I asked Tocqueville what he thought of hisHistory.
'It has the merit of selling,' he said, 'which cannot be said of any other History of France. Martin is laborious and conscientious, and does not tell a story ill; but he is a partisan and is always biassed by his own likings and dislikings. He belongs to the class of theorists, unfortunately not a small one, whose politicalbeau idéalis the absence of all control over the will of the people-who are opposed therefore to an hereditary monarchy-to a permanent President—to a permanent magistracy-to an established Church—in short, to all privileged classes, bodies, or institutions. Equality, not liberty or security, is their object. They are centralisers and absolutists. A despotic Assembly elected by universal suffrage, sitting at most for a year, governing, like the Convention, through its committees, or a single despot, appointed for a week, and not re-eligible, is the sort of ruler that they would prefer. The last five years have perhaps disgusted Martin with his Asiatic democracy, but his earlier volumes are coloured throughout by his prejudices against all systems implying a division of power, and independent authorities controlling and balancing one another.'
We talked of the Secret Police.
'It has lately,' said Tocqueville, 'been unusually troublesome, or rather it has been troublesome to a class of persons whom it seldom ventures to molest. A friend of mine, M. Sauvaire Barthélemy, one of Louis Philippe's peers, was standing at the door of his hotel reading a letter. A gentleman in plain clothes addressed him, announced himself as anagent de police, and asked him if the letter which he was reading was political. "No," said Barthélemy, "you may see it. It is a _billet de mariage." "I am directed," said the agent, "to request you to get into this carriage." They got in and drove to Mazas. There Barthélemy was shown into a neat room with iron bars to the windows, and ordered to wait. After some time Louis Pietri, the Préfet de Police, arrived.
'"I am grieved," he said, "at giving you so much trouble, but I have been commanded to see you in this place, and to inform you that the Emperor cannot bear that a man in your high position should systematically misrepresent him.
'"L'Empereur fait tout ce qu'il peut pour le bonheur de la France, et il n'entend pas supporter une opposition aussi constante et aussi violente. Effectivement il ne veut pas d'opposition. Voulez-vous le tenir pour dit, Monsieur, et recevoir de nouveau mes excuses du dérangement que j'ai dû vous causer? Pour le présent vous êtes libre."'
[Mr. Senior left Paris on the next day.
M. de Tocqueville paid his promised visit to England in June, and was received with a perfect ovation.—ED.]
London, July 10, 1857.
I was too ill, my dear friend, to go to you yesterday. Dr. Ferguson tells me that I have been doing too much, and prescribes perfect rest.
I have already read half your journal of 1857. It is very curious; but I am glad that you have disguised me.
It is terrible to be in London, and to see so little of you; but the force of circumstances is greater than the force of wishes.
Ever yours,
Tocqueville, August 6, 1857.
You may already have had news of me through some of our common friends, my dear Senior, but I wish, besides, to give you some myself, and to thank you again for the kind welcome I received from you and in your house during my stay in London.
I regret only that I was unable to be more with you, and that, in spite of myself, I was drawn into a whirlpool which carried me away and prevented me from following my inclinations.
I have returned, however, full of gratitude for the marks of consideration and affection showered upon me in England. I shall never forget them.
I found my wife already installed here, and in good health; and I have resumed my busy and peaceful life with a delight which does honour to my wisdom. For I had been so spoiled in England that I might have been afraid of finding my retreat too much out of the way and too quiet. But nothing of the sort has happened. The excitement of the past month appears to have added charms to the present.
Nevertheless, I have not yet set to work again, but I am full of good resolutions, which I hope to execute as soon as I have completely returned to my usual habits. These first days have been devoted to putting everything into its regular order.
In France we are almost as much interested as you in England in the affairs of India. Everyone, even in the country, asks me for news of what is going on there.
There is a natural disposition to exaggerate the evil and to believe that your dominion is overturned. For my part, I am waiting with the utmost and most painful anxiety for the development of the drama, for no good can possibly result from it; and there is not one civilised nation in the world that ought to rejoice in seeing India escape from the hands of Europeans in order to fall back into a state of anarchy and barbarism worse than before its conquest.
I am quite sure that you will conquer. But it is a serious business.
A military insurrection is the worst of all insurrections, at least in the beginning. You have to deal with barbarians, but they possess the arms of civilised people given to them by yourselves.
My wife, who has preserved her English heart, is particularly affected by the spectacle which Bengal at present affords.
If you have any more particular news than is to be found in the newspapers, you will give us great pleasure by communicating them.
Remember me to Mrs. and Miss Senior, and to your daughter-in-law.
My wife sends many kind regards to them, as well as to you.
Adieu, dear Senior. Believe in my sincere affection.
P.S.—I fancy that the first effect of the Indian affair will be to draw still closer the alliance between England and France.
Tocqueville, November 15, 1857.
I am somewhat angry with you, my dear Senior, for not having yet given us your news.[1] It is treating our friendship unfairly, I have not written to you because I doubted your following exactly your intended route, but I will write to you at Athens, as I think that you must now be there. If you have followed your itinerary your travels must have been most interesting to you, and they will be equally curious to us. I conclude that you only passed quickly through the Principalities in following the course of the Danube. I, however, had depended on you for furnishing me with clear ideas of a country which is at present so interesting to Europe, and which I think is destined to play an important part in the future. And what say you of our friends the Turks? Was it worth while to spend so much money and to shed so much blood in order to retain in Europe savages who are ill disguised as civilised men? I am impatient to talk to you, and almost equally so to read you.
I shall have little to tell you. I have not stirred from home since I left England, and am leading the life of a gentleman-farmer; a life which pleases me more and more every day, and would really make me happy, if my wife were not suffering from an obstinate neuralgic affection in the face. I fear that she may have to go to some mineral waters, which she would be sorry to do; for, as you know, she hates travelling, and does no justice to the reputation for wandering possessed by the English race.
I can tell you nothing on politics which you will not find in the newspapers. The great question at present for all civilised Governments seems to be the financial. The crisis from which America and England are suffering will probably extend everywhere. As for India, you are out, not perhaps of your difficulties, but of your greatest dangers. This affair, and that of the Crimea, show how little sympathy there is for England abroad. There was everything to interest us in your success—similarity of race, of religion, and of civilisation. Your loss of India could have served no cause but that of barbarism. Yet I venture to affirm that the whole Continent, though it detested the cruelties of your enemies, did not wish you to triumph.
Much of this is, without doubt, to be attributed to the evil passions which make men always desire the fall of the prosperous and the strong. But much belongs to a less dishonourable cause—to the conviction of all nations that England considers them only with reference to her own greatness; that she has less sympathy than any other modern nation; that she never notices what passes among foreigners, what they think, feel, suffer, or do, but with relation to the use which England can make of their actions, their sufferings, their feelings, or their thoughts; and that when she seems most to care for them she really cares only for herself. All this is exaggerated, but not without truth.
Kindest regards from us both to you and to Mrs. Senior.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Senior was at this time in the East.—ED.]
Tocqueville, February 10, 1858.
I was delighted, my dear Senior, to receive a letter from you dated Marseilles. You are right in remaining till the spring in the South. We trust to meet you in Paris in March.
I say no more, for I cannot write to you on what would most interest you—French politics. Much is to be said on them; but you will understand my silence if you study our new Law of Public Safety, and remember who is the new Home Minister.[1] For the first time in French history has such a post been filled by a general—and what a general!
I defer, therefore, until we meet, the expression of feelings and opinions which cannot be safely transmitted through the post, and only repeat how eager I am for our meeting.
Kind regards to Mrs. Senior.
[Footnote 1: General Espinasse.]
Tocqueville, February 21, 1858.
I received your letters with great pleasure, my dear Senior, and I think with still greater satisfaction that I shall soon be able to see you.
I shall probably arrive in Paris, with my wife, at about the same time as you will, that is to say, about the 19th of next month. I should have gone earlier if I were not occupied in planting and sowing, for I am doing a little farming to my great amusement.
I am delighted that you intend again to take up your quarters at theHôtel Bedford, as I intend also to stay there if I can find apartments.
I hope that we shall be good neighbours and see each other as frequently as such old friends ought to do.A bientôt!
[Mr. Senior ran over to England for a few weeks instead of remaining in Paris. The meeting between the two friends did not, therefore, take place till April.—ED.]
Paris, Saturday, April17, 1858.—We had a discussion at the Institut to-day as to a bust to fill a niche in the anteroom. Rossi was proposed. His political merits were admitted, but he was placed low as to his literary claims as an economist and a jurist. Dupin suggested Talleyrand, which was received with a universal groan, and failed for want of a seconder. Ultimately the choice fell on Dumont.
'Nothing that is published of Talleyrand's,' said Tocqueville to me as we walked home, 'has very great merit, nor indeed is much of it his own. He hated writing, let his reports and other state papers be drawn up by others, and merely retouched them. But in the archives of theAffaires étrangèresthere is a large quarto volume containing his correspondence with Louis XVIII during the Congress of Vienna. Nothing can be more charming. The great European questions which were then in debate, the diplomatic and social gossip of Vienna, the contemporary literature—in short, all that one cleverhomme du mondecould find to interest and amuse another, are treated with wit, brilliancy, and gaiety, supported by profound good sense. When that volume is published his bust will be placed here by acclamation.'
Monday, April19.—I dined with Lanjuinais, and met Tocqueville, Rivet, Dufaure, Corcelle, Freslon, and one or two others.
They attacked me about the change of sentiment in England with respect toLouis Napoleon.
'While he was useful to you,' they said, 'you steadily refused to admit that he was a tyrant, or even an usurper. You chose to disbelieve in the 3,000 men, women, and children massacred on the Boulevards of Paris—in the 20,000 poisoned by jungle fever in Cayenne—in the 25,000 who have died of malaria, exposure, and bad food, working in gangs on the roads and in the marshes of the Metidja and Lambressa.'
'We did notchoose', I answered, 'to disbelieve any thing. We were simply ignorant.Iknew all these facts, because I have passed a part of every year since 1847 in Paris; because I walked along the Boulevards on the 20th of December 1851, and saw the walls of every house, from the Bastille to the Madeleine, covered with the marks of musket-balls; because I heard in every society of the thousands who had been massacred, and of the tens of thousands who had beendéportés; but the untravelled English, and even the travelled English, except the few who live in France among the French, knew nothing of all this. Your press tells nothing. The nine millions of votes given to Louis Napoleon seemed to prove his popularity, and therefore the improbability of the tyranny of which he was accused by his enemies.Iknew that those nine millions of votes were extorted, or stolen by violence or fraud. But the English people did not know it. They accepted his election as the will of the nation, and though they might wonder at your choice, did not presume to blame it.'
'The time,' they answered, 'at which light broke in upon you is suspicious. Up to the 14th of January 1858 the oppression under which thirty-four millions of people within twenty-four miles of your coast, with whom you are in constant intercourse, was unknown to you. Their ruler insults you, and you instantly discover that he is an usurper and a tyrant. This looks as if the insult, and the insult alone, opened your eyes.'
'What opened our eyes,' I answered, 'was not the insult but theloi de sûreté publique. It was the first public act which showed to England the nature of your Government.
'When we found, erected in every department, a revolutionary tribunal, empowered to banish and transport without trial; when we found a rude soldier made Home Minister, and the country divided into five districts to be each governed by a marshal, we saw at once that France was under a violent military despotism. Until that law was passed the surface was smooth. There was nothing in the appearance of France to show to a stranger that she was not governed by a Monarch, practically, indeed, absolute, but governing as many absolute Monarchs have done, mildly and usefully.
'Of course we might have found out the truth sooner if we had inquired. And perhaps we ought to have inquired. We busy ourselves about our own affairs, and neglect too much those of other countries. In that sense you have a right to say that we chose to be ignorant, since our conduct was such as necessarily to make us ignorant. But it was not because Louis Napoleon was our ally that we chose to be ignorant, but because we habitually turn our eyes from the domestic affairs of the Continent, as things in which we have seldom a right to interfere, and in which, when we do interfere, we do more harm than good.'
We talked of the manner in which theloi de sûreté publiquehas been carried out. And I mentioned 600 as the number of those who had suffered under it, as acknowledged to me by Blanchard in the beginning of March.
'It is much greater now,' said Lanjuinais. 'Berryer on his return from Italy, a week ago, slept in Marseilles. He was informed that more than 900 persons had passed through Marseilles,déportésunder the new law to Algeria. They were of all classes: artisans and labourers mixed with men of the higher and middle classes. To these must be added those transported to Cayenne, who were sent by way of Havre. As for the numberexpulsésandinternésthere are no data.'
'In the Department of Var, a man was found guilty in 1848 of joining in one of the revolutionary movements of that time. His complete innocence was soon proved; he was released, and has lived quietly on his little estate ever since. He was arrested under the new law and ordered to bedéportéto Algeria. His friends, in fact all his neighbours, remonstrated, and sent to Paris the proof that the original conviction was a mistake. "Qu'il aille tout de même," was Espinasse's answer.
'In Calvados the Préfet, finding no one whom he could conscientiously arrest, took hold of one of the most respectable men in the department. "If," he said, "I had arrested a man against whom there was plausible ground for suspicion, he might have been transported. This manmustbe released."'
'Has he been released?' I asked.
'I have not heard,' was the answer. 'In all probability he has been.'
'In my department,' said Tocqueville, 'thesous-préfet, ordered by the Préfet to arrest somebody in the arrondissement, was in the same perplexity as the Préfet of Calvados. "I can find no fit person," he said to me. I believe that he reported the difficulty to the Préfet, and that the vacancy was supplied from some other arrondissement.
'What makes this frightful,' he added, 'is that we now know that deportation is merely a slow death. Scarcely any of the victims of 1851 and 1852 are living.'
'I foretold that,' I said, 'at the time, as you will find if you look at my article on Lamartine, published in the "Edinburgh Review."'[1]
[Footnote 1: SeeJournals in France and Italy.—ED.]
April20.—We talked of the political influence in France of thehommes de lettres.
'It began,' said Tocqueville, 'with the Restoration. Until that time we had sometimes, though very rarely, statesmen who became writers, but never writers who became statesmen,'
'You hadhommes de lettres,' I said, 'in the early RevolutionaryAssemblies—Mirabeau for instance.'
'Mirabeau,' he answered, 'is your best example, for Mirabeau, until he became a statesman, lived by his pen. Still I should scarcely call a man of his high birth and great expectationsun homme de lettres. That appellation seems to belong to a man who owes his position in early life to literature. Such a man is Thiers, or Guizot, as opposed to such men as Gladstone, Lord John Russell, or Montalembert.'
Wednesday, April21.—I dined with D. and met, among several others, Admiral Matthieu the Imperial Hydrographer, and a general whose name I did not catch. I talked to the general about the army.
'We are increasing it,' he said, 'but not very materially. We are rather giving ourselves the means of a future rapid increase, than making an immediate augmentation. We are raising the number of men from 354,000 to 392,400, in round numbers to 400,000; but the principal increase is in thecadres, the officers attached to each battalion. We have increased them by more than one third. So that if a war should break out we can instantly—that is to say in three months, increase our army to 600,000 or even 700,000 men. Soldiers are never wanting in France, the difficulty always is to find officers.'
'I hear,' I said, 'that you are making great improvements in your artillery.'
'We are,' he answered. 'We are applying to it the principle of the Minié musket, and we are improving the material. We hope to make our guns as capable of resisting rapid and continued firing as well and as long as the English and the Swedish guns, which are the best in Europe, can do. And we find that we can throw a ball on the Minié principle with equal precision twice as far. This will double the force of all our batteries.'
'Areyou,' he asked me, 'among those who have taken shares in theRussian railways?'
'No,' I said. 'They are the last that I wish to encourage.'
'Englishmen or Frenchmen,' he answered, 'who help Russia to make railways, put me in mind of the Dutch who sold powder to their besiegers.
'The thinness of her population—that is, the vast space over which it is scattered—alone prevents Russia from being the mistress of Europe. If her 64,000,000 were as concentrated as our 34,000,000 are, she would be irresistible. She loses always far more men in marching than in fighting.'
'The events of the war,' I said, 'lead me to believe that the goodness of the Russian soldier is exaggerated. They were always beaten, often by inferior numbers.'
'In the first place,' he answered, 'those who were beaten at Sebastopol were not the best Russian soldiers. They were short small men, generally drawn from the neighbouring provinces. The Russian Imperial Guards and the Russian Army in Poland are far superior to any that we encountered in the Crimea. In the second place, they were ill commanded. The improvements of weapons, of science and of discipline, have raised the privates of all the great military nations to about the same level. Success now depends on numbers and on generalship. With railways Russia will be able to bring quickly a preponderating force to any point on her frontier. Her officers are already good, and for money she can import the best generals; indeed, I do not see why she should not breed them. Russia is civilised enough to produce men of the highest military qualities.'
I asked Admiral Matthieu about the naval preparations of France.
'The "Moniteur,"' I said, 'denies that you are making any.'
'The "Moniteur,"' he answered, 'does not tell the truth. We are augmenting largely, both the number and the efficacy of our fleet.
'Four years ago, at the beginning of the Russian war, we resolved to build a steam fleet of 150 steam ships of different sizes for fighting, and 74 steam ships for the transfer service, and to carry fuel and stores. Though we set about this in the beginning, as we thought, of a long war, we have not allowed the peace to interrupt it. We are devoting to it sixty-five millions a year (2,600,000_l_.) of which from fifteen to seventeen millions are employed every year in building new ships, and from forty to forty-two in adding steam power to the old ones. We hope to finish this great work in fourteen years.'
'What,' I asked, 'is the amount of your present fleet of steamers?'
'We have thirty-three screws,' he answered, 'fifty-seven paddles, and sixty-two sailing vessels in commission, and seventy-three, mostly steamers,en réserve, as you would say, in ordinary.'
'Manned by how many men?' I asked.
'By twenty-five thousand sailors,' he answered, 'and eleven thousand marines. But ourinscription maritimewould give us in a few months or less one hundred thousand more. Since the times of Louis XVI. the French Navy has never been so formidable, positively or relatively.'
'How,' I asked, 'has your "Napoleon" succeeded?'
'Admirably,' he answered. 'I have not seen the "Wellington," but she is a much finer ship than the Agamemnon. Her speed is wonderful. A month ago she left Toulon at seven in the morning, and reached Ajaccio by four in the evening. But the great improvement is in our men. Napoleon knew nothing and cared nothing about sailors. He took no care about their training, and often wasted them in land operations, for which landsmen would have done as well.
'In 1814 he left Toulon absolutely unguarded, and sent all the sailors to join Augereau. You might have walked into it.
'In 1810 or 1811 I was on board a French corvette which fought an action with an English vessel, the "Lively." We passed three times under her stern, and raked her each time. We ought to have cleared her decks. Not a shot touched her. The other day at Cherbourg I saw a broadside fired at a floating mark three cables off, the usual distance at which ships engage. Ten balls hit it, and we could see that all the others passed near enough to shake it by their wind.