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the Dutchman and the Fleming.--It even bears hard on exceptional men of phlegmatic temperament, such as the Guizots and other disciples of Montesquieu, who by some untoward accident have been born on the wrong side of the channel. But it is eminently suited to the brilliant, the intelligent, the military, the artistic, the brave, sincere, and generous, but inconstant and explosive race, now ruled over by Louis Napoleon.

We must remember that the hereditary tendency of the Slaavic races to absolute government arises from an excessive submission to authority-causes which materially differ from those of this form of government in the Celtic races; for in the latter case military government seems to spring from an habitual tendency to revolt, or, to use a gallicism, to recalcitration. Thus extremes touch; the Slaavic tendency to absolutism being positive, the Celtic negative. As regards liberty, the Slaav always falls short of it; the vivacity and impetuosity of the Celt makes him run far beyond it. Hence, in our own day, M. Guizot's doleful tale of "Mécomptes" and "Espérances déçues". Those Guizots, Montalemberts, and Villemains, respectable by their spotless probity, and illustrious by their erudition and attainments, seem to expect that France, like a Saxon nation, will stop short at a given point, and not carry out a principle to its utmost consequences. Between this brilliant coterie and France, there appears to us to exist a wide and impassable gulf. The whole of the history of France is an illustration of that extremism which does nothing by halves. Need we point out the prostration before the grandeur of Louis XIV., the ultra-sybaritism of the age of his great-grandson, the extension of the sensationalism of Locke to the atheism of Holbach, the revolution itself, with those "orgies of crime" from which M. Guizot turns away his eyes in disgust?—all concur to explain and agree with the spectacle which France now presents. Throughout her poorer populations a wide spread smouldering socialism, abounding in disciples of Rousseau and Babœuf, who, true

to the principle of levelling all privilege, would not even make an exception in favor of property; and, on the other hand, the vast majority of the people in the provinces, who, preferring solid experience to a fallacious logic and philanthropic plausibilities, see in a military monarchy a more simple barrier to the democratic extremism of the nation, than in the complicated and delicate machinery of an English system. Their diseases are not our diseases, and therefore their remedies should not be our remedies. To quit metaphor, with the Saxon temperament, the governing few are controlled by the many within the limits of the classes possessing property and intelligence; with the Celtic the many must be restrained by the governing few.

We have neither the rapid intelligence and charming exposition of the Frenchman; nor the recondite astuteness of the Slaav; nor the high sense of beauty of the Italian; our painting is good, but not great; our sculpture and music are null; our architecture is, with rare exceptions, abominable, but we have surely reared the grandest and most august political edifice that the world has as yet seen. Let us be content then to worship at the shrine of Britannia. To erect a similar temple has not been given to all the Gentiles. Variety of structure and division of labour is the law of God in all the material universe; why should it not be so in the organism of human society? If whole families of nations have from age to age, in consequence of some occult law of physiology, a uniform political development, the intelligence that refuses to acknowledge in this a Higher Will than that of mere soldiers, statesmen and agitators, must indeed be "darkness visible".

Such are not the sentiments of the untravelled part of my fellow countrymen; but they certainly are the opinions of those who have had a varied practical acquaintance with the nations of the continent, and who,carefully collating the phenomena of history with the established principles of physiology,-believe that the laws

of political science are not absolute, but entirely relative to national temperament. The French of the nineteenth century appear to me to have utterly failed in their imitations of the British form of government, which is foreign to their character, habits, and historical antecedents; but in arts what language can express the admiration called forth by this race of modern Gauls? It was in Paris, on my return from the East, while transported with enthusiasm by the works of the Coutures and Proudhons, that I saw around me those extensive demolitions and architectural renovations which show Louis Napoleon to have understood the genius of his own people, which shines brightest in the application of the fine arts to all the necessaries and luxuries of civilized existence.

CHAPTER XI.

SCHUMLA.

The inclement weather of departing winter and approaching spring put a stop to all warlike movements, until the Russians crossed the Danube. Snow covered all the hills that rose so abruptly around the city of Schumla; the sky was generally bleak and grim while the blast from the Balkan and the Black Sea whistled dolefully through the rickety wooden houses, and shook their fragile casements with loud rattle. The poor sentry in his great coat cowered under the nearest shelter; the numerous Bashi Bozouks, no longer flaunting in gay Asiatic attire and bright colours, or prancing in cortége with brandished lance to the low roll of their diminutive kettle drums, thronged the Cafés and barbers' shops, while rain and thaw turned the streets into running rivers.

But Schumla was for all that full of life and movement. The eyes of all Europe were directed to this spot; here centered all the action of the Porte on the army of Roumelia, and from hence radiated all the direction of its resources by Omer Pasha to Widdin, to Silistria, and the mouths of the Danube. Here were grouped round the Generalissimo eminent representatives of all the services and talents, military and political, of Turkey, in earnest preparation for the momentous struggle of the spring-Ismael Pasha, now returned laurel-crowned from Kalafat and Citate - and Shekib Pasha, the experienced diplomatist of London, St. Petersburg, and other Capitals, announcing with loud chuckle and radiant visage the departure of Baron Brunow from London and of Count Orloff from Vienna. Besides them were several foreign Officers and military commissioners, some high in rank, others eminent for their talents, sent by the principal powers of Europe-by France and England, to concert active measures for the approach of summer-and by the others to report and observe the vortex, which had become so comprehensive in its sweep as to give no assurance that the most distant neutrals might escape being ultimately engulphed. To these must be added a crowd of Europeans of all nations-honest soldiers-shipwrecked politicians and nondescript adventurers, all keen for employment by the "Lofty Government" and thronging the antichambers of Omer Pasha,-Germans, Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Wallachians. These gentlemen were mostly of the democratic persuasion, and I got on very well with them, all things considered. According to my experience of these gentlemen, they like Turkey, for they find a great deal of equality- but no compactly cemented aristocracy, or phlegmatic Saxon nationality, or any other indispensable requisite of constitutional liberty. In England, or any other constitutional country, a democrat is a fish out of water-but here in Turkey they seemed quite at home.

Even with the Turks themselves, there was the old camp and the new, Old Turkey and Young Turkey; the

former, fine old figures with ample paunch and white beard, who had risen to the rank of general by bravery --but guiltless of Euclid and Jomini-nay, whispers fame in softest pianissimo, sometimes even of common reading, writing and cyphering. But they had taken a part in the Greek war, or the last Russian "Sefer" of 28' and regretted the old times when Pashas were unlimited Satraps, forgetting that the squeezer was himself squeezed-that the man who ordered off heads so glibly was himself in terror of the bowstring-and that the fanatic Tyrant of the provincial wealthy Christian was the abject dependent on his own banker in Constantinople. Not so young Turkey. Instead of going backward, we went forward with the Frenchified Turk or Islamised Frank to changes never dreamt of by the other-equality of Moslem and Christian before the law-already adopted, to be sure, in theory, but not yet put in practice - mosque entails, modified, converted and made contributable to the state, Ulema all paid by the Sultan and a hook put in the nose of their fanaticism; and last, not least, the large Christian population of the Ottoman Empire conscribed, or recruited for the army, and able European officers, not merely as instructors receiving pay, but having actual rank and command, as the only condition of the science of Europe utilising the first-rate raw material which the Ottoman Empire offers in population and in territory for becoming again a powerful military state. In short, the whole vessel of state drifting into a new ocean, of which the past furnishes no experience, and in which lead and look-out supply the place of charts and compass. All this occasions endless surprise rather than satisfaction to the elders of the present generation-many a "Mashallah" with upturned eyes and the lugging out of a huge watch as a refuge from the painful subject-or as if the death of the good old times was approaching by minutes, seconds and hours, and not by slow decennia.

Many years must certainly elapse before the changes above indicated take place, but the war will undoubtedly

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