Amongst the warning examples of the perils of autocracy in mortal hands, alike to the one who holds and to the hosts. who bow to it, there are few so striking as the fact that both the Napoleons who have reigned more or less absolutely over France were, at decisive crises of their fate, unnerved by disease, and rendered incapable, for the moment, of giving that impulse to action which, without their accustomed initiative, all around them had become incapable of supplying. So early as 1806, after Jena, the first Napoleon, suffering from violent pains of the stomach, was heard' to exclaim that he carried within him the seeds of premature death, and should die of the same disease as his father. The first of the crises at which the great Napoleon's illhealth struck a blow to his fortunes was at the battle of the Moskowa, in September 1812, which laid open the old Muscovite capital to his army; the second was after the great battle which drove back the allied armies from Dresden in August 1813. In the first instance the Russian antumn had struck a chill through his frame, which seems to have rendered him, for the time, incapable alike of that prompt decision and of that swift action to which he had owed all the astounding successes of his past career. He remained at a distance from the field of battle, which rendered his unerring coup d'œil unavailable, and apparently accounted for the incomplete results of the murderous day of the Moskowa. In the second instance, on the morrow after the battle of Dresden, a recurrent attack of his old internal enemy (which led those around him to suspect poison) disabled him from following up in person the intimidating effects of the defeat which he had inflicted on the Allies the day before,2 gave them time to take breath, and beat his lieutenants in detail-the master's eye and word being for the moment withdrawn.

The second French Cæsar, in like manner, at two decisive crises of his fate, seems to have been physically incapable of casting into the scale of events the weight of a decided will.

By Count Lobau.

2 Souvenirs Militaires, par M. le Duc de Fezensac, pp. 253-453.

At the moment when the question of peace or war with Germany yet hung in suspense, if Napoleon III. had remained master of himself-and others-he would scarcely have suffered his hand to be forced by his entourage into that disastrous conflict. The Gramonts and Leboeufs-the coxcombs of court diplomacy and the bravoes of court militarism-would scarcely have been suffered to substitute their provocative swagger in the Chambers, and empty boasts of preparedness 'down to every button of every gaiter' in the army, for the better grounded misgivings of a ruler who, if no heaven-born king of men, had yet acquired faculties for rule which had long preserved him in possession of rule in France, and had long imposed respect and fear of change, perplexing monarchs '-on Europe.

Twice, within the lifetime of two generations (17891852) the wheel of revolution in France ran full circle through anarchy to Cæsarism. A third anarchy began to adventure resurrection' in the Paris Commune of 1871. It must be hoped, though it may be too soon yet to hope confidently, that the fatal sequence will this time be averted, and that France is not again fated to submit herself to a third Cæsarism -a third recourse to autocracy as a preferred alternative to ochlocracy-a poison administered to expel a poison— Tyranny to get rid of Anarchy. This may be, and this in France twice has seemed, a political necessity. Thrice repeated, it could scarcely be regarded otherwise than as a necessity of decadence.

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347

XI.

THE NAPOLEONIC AUGUSTAN AGE IN PARIS.

1. Das Neue Paris. Unsere Zeit, 1857.

2. Paris Nouveau et Paris Futur. Par Victor Fournel. Paris, 1865.

3. Paris-Guide, Par les Principaux Ecrivains et Artistes de la France. 2 vols. Paris, 1867.

4. Paris unter dem Zweiten Kaiserreich. Von Rudolf Gottschall. 4 Bde. Leipzig, 1871.

5. Paris, ses Organes, ses Fonctions et sa Vie dans la Seconde Moitié du XIX Siècle. 5 vols. 8vo. Par Maxime Ducamp. Paris, 1869–74.

'WHEN I grope back among the dim recollections of my Parisian childhood,' says the first of two German writers who have successively treated of New Paris' in Unsere Zeit,' it seems to me as if I had known quite another Paris, contrasting with Paris of to-day much as the fantastic city scenery in Gustave Doré's "Wandering Jew" contrasts with the architectural splendours of John Martin's Bible pictures.'

Traits and traces of old Paris still stood out on all sides in uneffaced sharpness, so that the romantic school of writers, of which Victor Hugo was at the head, had no trouble in making palpable to the sense how Paris might have looked in the middle ages. The leading lines of the picture of old Paris had not then become irrecognisable. Relics of old constructions were nowhere as yet wanting; gabled façades, low doors with penthouse roofs, projecting balconies and turrets at stret corners; in the interior courts, winding stone staircases, with dilapidated balustrades and landings; old pumps adorned with delicate and beautiful ironwork; groups in relievo on walls, images of saints in niches, old churches converted into depôts and magazines-vaulted halls inside, mutilated monsters of Gothic sculpture outside. The municipal authorities were not then so inexorably rigid as they are now in requiring all houses to dress their 1 Now first published.

ranks, and all projections beyond the ground-line to be cut away. Paris had then its hills and valleys. The bridges were not, as now, broad and level thoroughfares, but steep and slippery passes. After the slightest frost carriages could not surmount the steep acclivities of the Pont Neuf, the Pont au Change, the Pont Marie, and the Pont de la Tournelle. Rain of any continuance rendered the streets impassable. No regular provision was then made for carrying off the rainfall from the gutters. Instead of the present lead and iron pipes which carry it down the walls, old stone spouts stretched their necks and arms over the streets, and plentifully bedewed the passengers. The roofs shed their rainy tears without stint from every corner. The kennels swelled in the twinkling of an eye into torrents. The distant sewers had not gorge wide enough for the confluent streams. Lakes were formed at their point of confluence, and the neighbouring streets rapidly became river-beds. Tradesmen shut up their shops, and did their best to shut out the deluge [as Mrs. Partington did to sweep out the Atlantic]. When the rain ceased, the shutters were again taken down, and the shop-boys busied themselves with big sponges to mop up the moisture. By degrees the deluge subsided. The jagged and irregular Ararats of pavement on each side the street showed their summits. People re-emerged from the wide passages and doorways, where they had sought refuge from the rain, and picked their steps heedfully over the slippery ways. And now the street ferryman or pilot brought out his planks, and bridged the street rivers a narrow, perilous bridge, which none but a dancingmaster or acrobat could cross without fear and trembling. Accordingly those who did cross very commonly forgot their fee to the ferryman- Passez, payez !' It would really seem as if I were merely repeating in stumbling prose what Boileau wrote in smooth verse near two centuries back, and yet I paint simply after nature. It is not my fault if Paris of 1834 in many points looked exactly like Paris of 1693.

The transformation of Paris from a mediæval to a modern city, achieved under the last Napoleon, had for centuries been the day-dream of amateurs and architects, and the paper-project of governments, from Henri Quatre to Madame de Pompadour, and from Tavannes to Voltaire. That prophet of the French, prescient, it would almost seem, of a Napoleon Emperor and a Haussmann Prefect, though scarcely of a Paris incendiary Commune, wrote in 1749 as follows::

In less than ten years Paris might be made the wonder of the world. It is high time those at the head of the administration of the most opulent capital in Europe should make it also the most commodious and the most magnificent. Heaven grant some man may arise energetic enough to form such projects, firm enough to carry them out, endowed with a mind enlightened enough to embrace them in their whole extent, and possessed of the requisite credit and influence to secure their success.

The Prince de Ligne, that spirituel and frivolous Frenchman of Brussels, was more in earnest than usual in pressing the most sweeping schemes for the transformation of Paris. In a Mémoire sur Paris,' written about the year 1780, he put forward the following amongst other architectural projects which have since been carried into execution:'A grand place must be cleared from the Tuileries to the old Louvre. Those wretched sheds and booths in the Carrousel-that Rue Saint Nicaise-dishonour Paris by petty methods of making money of everything. The truly great economy is to consult economy not at all!' Further on the Prince de Ligne indulges in a fresh burst of indignation against all who might oppose to his projects 'ce vil mot d'argent.' Napoleon the First said of Corneille-If he had lived in my time, I would have made him a prince. Napoleon the Third might have said of the Prince de Ligne

If he had lived in my time, I would have made him a member of my Municipal Commission.' There was a curious proviso in the Prince de Ligne's projects for embellishing Paris-viz. that if any new churches were built, they should have no steeples. The Revolution soon shelved that proviso after its own fashion. In the instance, indeed, of the old church of Saint Jacques la Boucherie, it was the church that was demolished while the tower was left standing, and converted into a patent shot manufactory. The Second Empire re-converted it into a solitary pièce de décoration in the newly-formed square Saint Jacques.

It was predicted of the Second Empire by Alexis de Tocqueville, on its first establishment, Il ne fondera rien, mais il durera.' One thing at least that Empire founded-New Paris.