which they belong with the base deed of It is a pity that substantial men like Mr. Laing, trusting perhaps to the ignorance of the British reader in points of continental history (for unfortunately history is not taught in our universities), should pollute their valuable pages with wholesale calumnies of this kind. How unprincipled and how malicious to talk of the Swedish aristocracy having sold Finland to the Russians, because one man was found among them who did a base thing! How little they had to do with the loss of Finland, the name of Adlerkreutz alone can testify. Finland was lost because Alexander of Russia was ambitious of territory, and could not resist a tempting opportunity to aggrandize himself at the expense of an ancient rival; because Gustavus IV. Adolphus was all his lifetime more ambitious of provoking a new, than careful to suspect an old, enemy, and generally also was deficient in military and political talent; because his ministers were scarcely more capable than himself, and wanted his principle; and, lastly, because the people in Stockholm generally, and the aristocracy in particular, were, from the beginning, opposed to a war that arose originally out of a Quixotic hostility to Na Swedish malcontents acted the part of good patriots" in deposing their king; or shall we take up Mr. Laing's note, and talk of the "faction who sold Finland to Russia, who sold his crown to his uncle Charles XIII., and the reversion of it to the present dynasty. Money or safety for themselves might be the price; still it was a foul transaction. Sweden lost Finland and Pomerania during Gustavns's reign: but was the loss from misgovernment on the part of the king, or from the most unblushing perfidy of Swedish nobles, who sold the fortresses and frontiers entrusted to them, without even the pretext of principle, for money? Was it possible to govern well with servants so corrupt? Was not the loss of these provinces similar to the loss, without any treachery in his servants, of the United States of North America, by our George III.? Did ever man dream that George III. and his dynasty ought to be deposed for the loss of America?"-Strange !-here again the English Conservative identifies himself with the revolutionary party in Sweden, applauding them as "good patriots;" while the Scotch Radical becomes a sort of Swedish Jacobite and Royalist, to plead valiantly for the ancient Wasa dynasty on the throne! The causes of this change of sides, so to speak, and reverted position of literary parties, are to be found in the doings of Bernadotte, after his dy-poleon, and were moreover French in their nasty was identified with the revolutionary party in Sweden; in the ratification of these doings by the congress of Vienna; and in the state of parties in Sweden when Mr. Laing wrote his book. As to the real merits of the question, the causes of the deposition of Gustavus were something more powerful than mere faction, and less pure than good patriotism. Arndt (p. 252) states three: the impracticable character of the king; the worthlessness and incapacity of his ministers; the entire want of sympathy between him and his people. These are the true causes: not one of them only, but all the three: and by the first one alone, so far as the king himself and not his race was concerned, those who study the history of the times carefully, will admit that the deposition was fully justified. On the one hand, however, Mr. Alison shows a want of historical perception when he talks only generally of" good patriots" in a country so long subject to aristocratic clique and cabal as Sweden: while, on the other hand, Mr. Laing fulminates wholesale anathemas like a mere partisan, and from his hatred to the men who govern Sweden now, does not hesitate to identify the whole body to sympathies and neutral in their political principles. With regard to the German war of 1805-7, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Swedish people were in the right. The French showed no wish to quarrel with them; and they ought, at least, to have remained neutral. The king who had not sense to sacrifice his own private feelings to this plain national interest, did not know the first duty of a ruler. With regard to Finland again, if the Swedish people in Stockholm did not support the sovereign, when once involved in a Russian war, "with mournful resolution," as Alison says; but if (as Arndt plainly proves) they despaired from the very beginning, and did everything that they could by their vain French talk to dispirit the soldiery, and weaken the hands of the government; then let them share the blame of the loss of Finland justly with the impracticability of the monarch and the incapacity of his ministers. That Finland might have been saved, for that chance at least, had its brave native soldiers been duly supported, the general character of the people, as well as their admirable conduct on that occasion, renders undoubted. If Mr. Alison will reconsider the matter, he will find that he is quite wrong in the assertion he makes that the contest was hopeless from the beginning. We have already said that by the obstinate and impracticable character of the king alone, we think the revolution was fully justified. From whatever cause, in the spring of 1809, things had actually been brought to such a pass-that with Barclay de Tolly and his Russian legions almost at their gates without, universal weakness, confusion and mistrust prevailed within the walls of Stockholm. While the naked and starved militiamen were dying by thousands in the streets, the king shut himself up morosely in his palace, giving minute orders about the button-holes of their collars, "shutting his eyes that he might not see the storm,' and to all questions answered only-wAR. But war was, under such a captain, in the circumstances of the case, ruin. The king, however, as he always did, remained immoveable. Having during his short reign of ten years shown a singular capacity to provoke new enemies, to insult his allies, to talk the greatest things and to do the smallest-having lost one of the fairest provinces of his kingdom, and being in the fair way to lose another-being moreover since the constitutional changes of 1789 almost absolute, and not so manageable on a throne as an English George or William -his deposition seemed to offer, if not the only, at least the most obvious method of extricating affairs. To the aristocracy moreover he had just given mortal offence by dismissing them, in a moment of hasty and headstrong displeasure, from the honourable service of his body-guard. They were eager to seize an occasion for resuming the power of which Gustavus III. had deprived them, and finding the humour of the people indifferent or rather inclined to favour their views, clubbed together in their old familiar ways and arranged matters, not for an assassination this time, but for a plain deposition. A suitable occasion was easily found, A division of the western army was induced to leave the Norwegian frontier, and advance towards the city with sounding proclamations full of the misery of the times, and the dominant necessity of righting the wrong by a recurrence to the old piinciples of "Swedish liberty." An alarm was raised; the king at first did not know what to do; and then, to show his incapacity for meeting such an occasion, proposed to leave the city. To this of course the nobility objected. They came together and besieged the antechamber of the monarch. They entered. Baron Adlerkreutz laid violent hands on majesty from before, and Baron Silversparre from behind. With this, and with a single word-Your majesty will be pleased to deliver up your sword, the bloodless revolution of March, 1809, was achieved. The chief actor in this memorable scene, in this clever and politic "stroke of a party," was Major-General Charles Adlerkreutz, who had just returned, crowned with laurels, from the Finnish war,* and whose patriotism, in the right sense of the word, no one could suspect. Arndt says he had nothing to do with the plot or conspiracy itself; he was merely chosen as the hand to put it into execution; and a bold hand certainly was required to take a royal son of Wasa in his own den by the beard. A man was required who could look at steel; the king was not a man to yield without a blow; in fact, he did draw his sword, and but for the intervention of Silversparre, might have used it to some purpose. The bold aggressor and king-deposer is thus drawn at full length by our brave Rubens : "Adlerkreutz is nothing but a soldier; but this he is thoroughly. For long intrigues and intricate conspiracies, he has no talent and no patience. Courage, carelessness, and cheerfulness, are painted in his every act and gesture. Unquestionably he has ambition-altogether without ambition no public man can be what he isbut Adlerkreutz feels the freedom and the dignity of the men too much, to suffer the mastery of that terrible passion which creeps now like the snake, smiles now like the fox, and now conair of a man that can take what the day brings. sumes like the Furies. He bears with him the and make the best of it; but with all his lightheartedness, be preserves a collectedness,-with all his forgetfulness, a presence of mind,—that is ever ready to collect any scattered energy, and arm itself in instantaneous mail for the deed of danger. Adlerkreutz is the image of the most ready power of concentration. He is of a middlestature, and close set; uniting strength of body with agility of movement. His broad and cheerful brow depicts the dauntless and the fortunate soldier; his clear merry eye beams forth pru * Mr. Alison, in his account of this war, talks of "the brave Klingspor." A general histor an, who tails of every major and marshal that comes in his may not have minutely mastered the personal deway, should avoid epithets of this kind, unless he is quite sure of their applicability. M. Arndt, who parties and the public opinion, says that this Klingswas in Stockholm at the time, and who knew the por, though nominally at the head of the Finnish army which did such marvels in driving back the Russians, in fact never had been anything of a soldier, and "always kept at a respe li ble distance from powder and shot." So notorious was this at Stockholm, that, when the deposition had been effected, and the names of the conspirators were publicly known, the city wits passed their ready joke upon dangerous achievement, otherwise Klingspor would the whole affair thus: "It could have been no very have had nothing to do with it." P. 447. soon discerns that coolness and collectedness are dence and cunning. Round his sharply chiselled heart and hand as a true Swede, as Gustamouth and his manly chin there plays at times vus Wasa did of yore, the brother of the an expression of voluptuousness; but he that un- brave Dalecarlian yeomen rather than the derstands to read the features of the human face, servant of the nobility in Stockholm. If the guides and goddesses of his life, who stand he does this-and he may be assured there as his faithful guards and sentinels, even on those is no other way of making a new dynasty Occasions when he allows himself to float care- strong in any country, much less in Swelessly with laughter-loving fools upon the bick-den-he has no cause to vex himself with ering tide of the moment. Adlerkreutz may be apprehensions about Russia, whatever some out-manoeuvred and deceived on occasion by paltry tricks which he neither knows nor needs, persons may speculate. That extraordinabut he will nevertheless always do what he has "y power had played out its game of agwilled to do: nay, the out-manoeuvrers and the grandizement on the Baltic at the peace of deceivers themselves he will force in the end to Frederickshamm, 17th of September, 1809. do his will, and not theirs." Those who wish to observe the further motions, must look to the Black Sea, and the banks of the Danube. Those who admit the expediency of the Swedish Revolution generally, and consider the deposition of the reigning monarch as a thing that in the circumstances could not well be avoided, are apt to object to the sweeping style in which it was executed-to the wholesale abandonment and It is 1840. II., III. Par M. LOUIS BLANC. Tomes I., THIS is a remarkable work. So strong is the sensation it has created in Germany, as well as in France, that we must introduce it to the notice of our readers, in spite of its incomplete state. Three volumes of the promised five have already appeared. Three editions were demanded of the first volume before the second was published, although the publication takes place by weekly livraisons. The second and third volumes have already had two large editions, the demand increasing. outcasting of an ancient famous and well- ART. III.-L'Histoire de Dix Ans, 1830deserving race which it involved. hard to see why the conspirators might not have adopted the same course that their party had done in the case of the assassination of Gustavus III; appointed a regency, and waited for the majority of the son of the deposed monarch. This would have been both more gentle towards the monarch, who was unfortunate rather than culpable, and more "patriotic" towards the nation, whose sounder heart would beat in more loyal sympathy to a descendant of Gustavus Wasa, than to any foreign, Danish or French, prince adoptive. But the necessity of the moment urged; and besides the personal safety of the chief ac- And this success is explained by the taltors, a matter which they could not easily ent of the author no less than by the abdisregard, the nobility had an old heredita-sorbing interest of the theme. The ten ry enmity with all princes of the Wasa years, 1830-1840, were troubled, stirring, stock; and while the Muscovite czar was and important times to every European knocking at their door, salvation was look-nation; to none so much as France. The ed for nowhere, by the foreign-fangled revolution of July-those Glorious Three French of the north," but in French al- Days; the revolutions of Poland and Belliance, and in the patronage of the Europe- gium; the siege of Antwerp; the insurfeared "hero of all centuries:" for so Ad-rections at Lyons and Grenoble, with the lersparre, the leader of the western army, in his proclamation above mentioned, published to the stupid people the expected countenance of Napoleon But the dynasty of Bernadotte is what the French politicians call an accomplished fact ;" and we shall act more wisely than Mr. Laing in letting it alone. The king himself is now eighty years of age, and cannot live, in the common course of nature, to do much more harm or good by the large exercise of his royal veto against the quinquennial army of bills by which he is besieged. The .crown-prince has one plain duty to reign VOL. XXXII. 3 countless conspiracies and insurrections at Paris; the cholera morbus, with its eighteen thousand victims in Paris alone; the Duchesse de Berri and La Chouanerie; the taking of Algiers; five attempts at regicide; St. Simonism; Republicanism, and innumerable other 'isms;' these are brilliant subjects, brilliantly treated by M. Louis Blanc. 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans' is one of those works so often libelled by being called 'as interesting as a novel;' were novels a tithe as interesting, they would be what they pretend. It has all that we require in a novel, and much more. It is a narrative of events real, striking, absorbing: the sub- which his book abounds. Speaking of the incompetence of the Legitimatists to shake the Orleans dynasty he says, 'Les révolutions se font avec des haines fortes et de violents désirs: les légitimistes n'avaient guère que des haines.'* The second is really a profound mot: of the Buonapartist party he says: il avait un drapeau plutôt qu'un principe. C'était là l'invincible cause de son impuissance.'t jects of immense interest to all readers, and the style unusually excellent. As a narrative we know of few to compare with it, even in French History. Eloquent, earnest, rapid, brief yet full of detail; it has the vividness of Carlyle or Michelet, without_transgressing the rules of classic taste. The style, though not free from an occasional inelegance, is remarkable for concinnity and picturesqueness, alternating between rhetoric and epigram. The spirit of the work is avowedly republican. The author never disguises his sympathies or convictions; yet, at the same time, is fully alive to all the errors of his party, and reveals the true causes of their ill success. Impartial he is not: no man with strong convictions can be so. You cannot hold one idea to be sacred, and regard its opponents as priests; you cannot believe one course of policy tyrannous and destructive, yet look upon its ministers as enlightened patriots. All that impartiality can do is to make allowance for difference of opinion, and not deny the sincerity of an opponent: to anathematize the doctrine not the man. M. Louis Blanc is, in this sense, tolerably impartial. An excellence not to be overlooked in his book is the portraiture of remarkable men. Louis Philippe, Lafayette, Lafitte, Casimir Périer, Guizot, Thiers, Odillon Barrot, Mauguin, Armand Carrel, and Dupont (de l'Eure), with many others, are brought out in strong relief. But M. Louis Blanc describes a character mostly by epigrams. This has the advantage of effect, and of producing a lasting impression; with the disadvantage of all epigrams. in sacrificing a portion of the truth to effect. Nothing can be happier than the way he hits off the restlessness of Thiers: plus d'inquiétude que d'activité, plus de turbulence que d'audace.' But it is surely too much to talk of Metternich as 'un homme d'état sans initiative et sans portée.' The portrait of Lafayette may be quoted as a fair specimen of the author's judgment of men. L'Histoire de dix Ans' is not conspicuous for any profound views; its philosophy is often but philosophic rhetoric. But it is not without excellent aperçus, and "As to M. de Lafayette, at that time he could acute penetration of motives. There is a have done everything and he decided on nothing. great deal of the Journalist visible in the His virtue was brilliant yet fatal. In creating work. M. Blanc is a young man still, edits for him an influence superior to his capacity, it 'La Revue de Progrès,' and is more fami- in stronger hands, would have altered the destionly served to annul in his hands a power, which, liar with Journalism than with social science. nies of France. Nevertheless Lafayette had His work manifests both the advantages and many qualities essential to a commander. His disadvantages of such a condition. If the language as well as his manners presented a rare Journalist is incapable of that calm review of mixture of finesse and bonhommie, of grace and things, and those laborious generalizations, austerity, of dignity with haughtiness, and of fawhich the social philosopher elaborates from miliarity without coarseness. To the one class his abstract point of view; yet is he the eur, although mixed up with the mob; to the he would always have remained a grand seignmore conversant with the concrete special in- others he was born one of the people, in spite of stances. more familiar with the motives and his illustrious origin. Happy privilege of prepassions of political parties, more ready to serving all the advantages of high birth, and of understand every coup d'état. M. Blanc making them be pardoned! Add moreover that shows a thorough penetration into the spirit M. de Lafayette possessed at the same time the of each party, and sees the germs of strength penetration of a sceptical and the warmth of a believing soul; that is to say, the double power or of disease. He has lived amongst con- of fascinating and containing his audience. In spirators; dined with legitimatists; been the carbonari meetings he spoke with fiery enfamiliar with Buonapartists. Above all he ergy. At la chambre he was a witty and charmunderstands the national spirit: its reckless ing orator. What then did he want? Genius daring, insouciance, gaiety, love of excite--and more than that, will. M. de Lafayette ment, of military glory, idolatry of sym- events, he would have been pained at seeing willed nothing hardily, because, unable to direct bols, and facility of being led away by them directed by another. In this sense he was sonorous word, or pompous fo: mula. One of the people himself, he rightly under- • Revolutions are effected by means of strong stands the people's nature. We may illus-hatred and violent desires: the legitimatists had a trate this power of penetration by the citation of two of the numerous epigrams with scarcely anything but hatreds. † It had a Banner rather than a Principle. Therein lay the invincible cause of its impotence. was his own. afraid of every one, but more than all of himself. classes. Of the higher, because men need Power enchanted, but frightened him; he would outlets for their activity, and because ambihave braved its perils, but he dreaded its embar- tion is a stimulant powerful as the main rassments. Full of courage, he was entirely de- chance' of the bourgeois; of the lower, ficient in audacity. Capable of nobly suffering violence, he was incapable of employing it with because want feels for want, misery for profit. The only head that he could have de- misery, and generosity is the constant virlivered to the executioner, without trembling, tue of those who need it in return. With this conviction that egotism is the bour"As long as he had to preside over a provision-geois vice, it is somewhat discouraging to ary government, he was competent, he was enchanted. Surrounded by a little court, at the Hôtel de Ville, he enjoyed the boisterous veneration which was paid to his age and celebrity, enjoyed it with an almost infantile naïveté. In that cabinet, where they governed by signatures, there was considerable fuss about very little action. This was a situation admirably adapted to small intellects, because amidst these sterile agitations, they deluded themselves respecting the terror which they felt for all decisive acts." : 6 which that class is taking in European histrace the rapid increasing development tory. It impresses us the more strongly with the necessity for doing all to counteract the narrow-minded utilitarianism, which is usurping such a throne in men's souls; and endeavour to make people fully understand Göthe's profound saying: That the beautiful needs every encouragement, for all need it and few produce it; the useful encourages itself.' M. Louis Blanc, in several cases, shows the fatal effects to the republican party of Having brought his preliminary sketch Lafayette's want of audacity. It is certain down to the opening of the revolution of that this quality, which served Danton in- July, M. Louis Blanc then commences his stead of genius. is indispensable in revo-history of the ten years, 1830-1840. The lutions as M. Blanc admirably says: In first volume is devoted to a spirited and detimes of struggle audacity is prudence; for tailed narrative of the Glorious Three in a revolution confidence has all the ad- Days,' with the unparalleled examples of vantages of chance.' mob heroism, and touching episodes of 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans' opens with a civil war. The second and third volumes preliminary sketch of the state of parties continue the history down to the siege of from the return of the Bourbons and ban- Antwerp. The accounts given of the St. ishment of Napoleon to Elba, down to the Simonians, of the cholera morbus, of the commencement of the revolution of 1830. various insurrections and abortive conspiThis is one of the best portions of the book. racies, of carbonarism, and of foreign poliThe author vividly shows how completely cy, will be read with universal interest. M. the Restoration was the work of the bour-Louis Blanc has not only preceding histogeoisie. Napoleon fell because he wished ries, pamphlets, and newspapers, from which to make France military, and the tenden- to gain his information; it is apparent cies of the nation at large were commercial. Rome and Carthage have been and will ever be too adverse in principle to be united; one or the other must succumb. Napoleon did not see this, and he fell. M. Louis Blanc takes great pains to exhibit the Nevertheless the grave student of cruel egotism of the bourgeoisie throughout history will often demur. He will see conthe calamities which have befallen France. versations reported at length which it is He points with withering sneers to every highly improbable, if not impossible, should testimony of it, without seeing that ego- ever have been authenticated; he will see tism is the vice of the middle classes. They motives purely inferential ascribed as unare exclusively bent upon the bien être questionable; he will see accounts of minthe 'main chance.' They have neither the isterial intrigues and royal falsehoods, rerefinement and the large ambition of the ported as if the author had been present upper classes, nor the heroism and poetry all the while. Moreover, M. Louis Blanc of the lower. Their object in life is not is a young man; he is a journalist; he is a to enjoy, but to collect the means of enjoy-partisan; yet the knowledge he displays, or ment. They are bent only on making for- assumes, implies not only greater age and tunes. The rich think more of spending experience than he can possess, their money; the poor have no hope of fortune. Heroism, and its nurse ambition; self-sacrifice, generosity, and humanity; these are virtues of the higher and lower throughout that he has had access to unpublished documents, and to the communications of various living actors in the scenes described. Some of these obligations he names; others he leaves the reader to infer. but also astounding universality of personal relations with opposite parties. We mention this as a caution to the reader. We by no means accuse M. Blanc of falsehood, or of |