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librarians who have united great learning to a love of books, is the best practical answer to all sneers about the two being incompatible. Nor, while we count among us such names as Pannizi, Laing, Birch, Halket, Bandelo, and Tod, is the race of learned librarians likely to decay.

It will be worth while for the patrons of public libraries, even in appointments to small offices, to have an eye on bookish men for filling them. One librarian differs greatly from another, and on this difference will often depend the entire utility of the institution, and the question whether it is worth keeping it open or closing its door. Of this class of workman it may be said quite as aptly as of the poet, Nascitur, non fit. The usual testimonies to qualification-steadiness, sobriety, civility, intelligence, &c.may all be up to the mark that will constitute a first-rate book-keeper in the mercantile sense of the term, while they are united in a very dreary and hopeless keeper of books. Such a person ought to go to his task with something totally different from the impulses which induce a man to sort dry goods or make up invoices, and enable him to do so with perfect success. In short, your librarian would need to be in some way touched with the malady which has been the object of these desultory remarks.

Perhaps this may afford a hint to the Civil Service Commission. We are not aware that they have yet set forth the qualifications of the librarian with the same judicious and practical success with which they have pointed out the peculiar departments of learning suitable to the tide-waiter and the letter-carrier. They have nothing to do but to adopt the precedent they have so successfully followed in other cases -to find the most famous book connected with the department, and make a judicious selection from its index. Thus may the examination

sheets, which are to make perfectly capable public servants, be enriched by such terms as the following: Abridgement, Alcoran, Aldus, Alexandrian Library, Annals, Back-title, Ballad, Bestiarium, Bibliography, Binding, Black-letter, Block-book, Boards, Breeches, Bible, British Museum, Broadside, and so forth; nor omitting, in their proper order, calf, cut copy, gilt top, morocco, tooling, and Turkey. The technology

or, as the profane will perhaps insist in terming it, the slang or jargon

having been officially sketched, may be remitted to an adept to revise and report; and then the thing is completed, and a department of the public service is insured against incompetency, idleness, and dishonesty for all time to

come.

Thus would the propensity which heretofore has been a laughingstock and a scorn be raised to the dignity of a qualification for public office. Should this fortunate result, however, not be achieved-should matters take, as they more probably will, the totally opposite direction, and the bibliomaniac book-fancier, book-hunter, bibliophile, or by whatever name you choose to call him, be subjected to the special attention of those wise men who so disinterestedly propose to take all their more erring brethren in charge, and subject them to the treatment suitable to their unhappy condition— then shall we put in these, our rambling remarks, as a plea for gentleness and leniency towards the special class of patients of which we have been discoursing, hoping that their rigid custodiers will at least admit that their malady is in itself comparatively harmless, and that, however improper it may be to permit any set of human beings to depart from the line which philosophy and physiology and other ologies have laid down, yet this particular kind of aberration has the palliative quality of being attended with beneficial results.

THE ORLEANS MANIFESTO.

THE observation is not quite new, that there is a wonderful power in print. We have called the Press the Fourth Estate of the Realm. But the power of print does not so much consist in the putting of written characters into type, as in the fact that when in that state they are capable of almost infinite multiplication or reproduction. So the power resides not in print, as such (for Mr Weller senior could print, though he could not even write), but in published print. Yet, further, publication is a term capable of misleading as to the power of published print; for, whereas it necessarily only denotes one process, it is often taken to imply two; and thus a power is unduly ascribed to all published print, which can only be applied to such print as is published under favourable conditions. The Germans, whose language, though more lengthy and clumsy, is more purely logical than ours, say that a book is "given out" (herausgegeben) by such and such a publisher; whereas "publication" implies not only the giving out on the part of the publisher, but taking in on the the public; and, as all publishers know, this second process does not always follow the first. So that, if we wish to be strictly correct when referring to the power of published print, it must be understood that we imply that general public reception. In that case, a book is the real Proteus of our times, which, though a bold spirit may bind, none can entirely quell, since as soon as it is suppressed in one form or edition it slips away into others, until it wearies out the patience of the power that would imprison it. Proteus was conquered at last by Ulysses; but any man of modern times, endowed with half the wisdom of that wily Greek,

would give up in despair the attempt to put down a book. The most patient man in the world wished that his enemy had written a book; in modern times he might wish his enemy to have the task of suppressing one, and learn by doing so the peculiar trials of patience. We are all familiar with the ways by which a book is forced on the public by its friends, but none is so effectual as to get some disguised friend or indiscreet enemy to endeavour to put it down. There is only one effectual way of putting a book down-that of proving, by extracts from itself, that it is unreadably dull. But let it be understood either that it is generally wicked or particularly mischievous, and it is sure to run through half-a-dozen editions at least, and, perhaps, be translated into as many languages. These observations may seem to involve superficial truism, and yet it is strange how persons in eminent position often act in violation of their principle. We recollect the solemn burning of a presumed heretical book in one of the halls at Oxford, and its consequence, that in a day or two every undergraduate had read it, the majority being greatly disappointed at finding it not half so bad as they expected. If the heretic had been caught and burned instead, there being no second copy of him, it would have been more to the purpose, and there would have been a certain grim satisfaction of justice. And, lately, the volume called Essays and Reviews, now so well known in the controversial world, has, we understand, been driven through eight or nine editions by the fulminating powder of episcopal denunciation; and, furthermore, the intended prosecution of one of the writers in the Court of Arches will

Lettre sur l'Histoire de France, par HENRI D'ORLEANS (Duc d'Aumale). Berlin, Julius Abelsdorff. 1861.

popularise effectually the matter of the book, and cause it to become the talk of every club, readingroom, and even pothouse parlour, in the kingdom. And we cannot think that Louis Napoleon's ministers-for we cannot suppose that so injudicious an order originated with himself-displayed their knowledge of the world in the condemnation of the printers and publishers of the Duc d'Aumale's letter, and by the infliction of an imprisonment which the good sense of the Emperor has thought fit to revoke, though the mischief has already been done as far as the advertisement of the offending pamphlet is concerned. Here it is in our hands in a Berlin reprint, and it exists also in a German translation. And yet it does not seem to us that there is much in it to force it on public attention, independently of the rank of its author and the attempt of the French Government to suppress it. We do not apprehend that the facts it states are new, or put before its readers in a new light. In one respect it is worthy of its author-namely, in its clear straightforwardness and its moderate and gentlemanly- tone, considering the great provocations to bitterness which the Orleans family have received from the reigning dynasty of France. It is, however, suggestive of many thoughts in European politics, and reminds us that the younger branch of the Bourbons are not willing to retire as yet from the world's arena as practically obsolete, in imitation perhaps of the example of the elder. To talk and lecture and write, is considered one of the functions of a leading man of the nineteenth century, and it seems to be tacitly acknowledged by great men in general, that in whatever other way they may be before the public, they are not therefore excusable in wrapping their thoughts and actions in the cloak of taciturnity. Even Napoleon III. himself, by some accounted the William the Silent of this generation, has said

on a hundred occasions-and, some indeed add, unsaid also what he has done and is going to do, and the reasons for which he adopts this and that line of policy; so that, after all, his attributed silence is only relative, as consisting in a contrast to the excessive talkativeness of other individuals. The elder branch of the Bourbons, in its unbending scorn of the age in which it lived, or in its incapacity to keep pace with it, seems to have disappeared for ever from the public eye, and to be quietly drifting to that limbo of oblivion prepared for Bourbons and Popes, and all such institutions of the past as are incapable of assuming a character which fit them to the present. But when a prince of the younger branch presides at literary dinners, and condescends to make use of the press as an instrument of attack against his political enemies, he evidently wishes to make it understood that the vitality of the hollow parent tree has departed into the sucker, and the sucker may have yet several generations of life before it. We cannot shut our eyes to the parallel of the Stuarts. The dynasty had become so tough that it would not yield to external change; but a collateral dynasty, partly sprung from the same root, is flourishing at present on the throne of England. The Royal Oak of England has perished at Boscobel, but there is a vigorous tree still in the prime of arborescent life, on which an inscription records that it sprang from one of the acorns of the original tree,

"Wherein the royal Charles abode Until the paths were dim. "

If the House of Orleans accept the omen, it would appear to throw a cheerful light on their future destinies. Like the elder branch of the Bourbons, they were expelled by a revolution; but the Revolution of 1848 differed from that of 1830 in this, that it was the expression of a sudden, unreasoning, and unreasonable gust of popular passion,

and not the mere outburst of the long-gathering elements of dissolution and destruction. Or was the Revolution of 1848 the mere completion of that of 1830? Democracy had endeavoured to listen to reason for eighteen years, and, knowing from experience what its own excesses had produced before, had stopped for that interval in mid career, until the removal of some slight check precipitated the consummation.

It would be doing but scant justice to the House of Orleans not to recognise the fact that, whatever their personal merits or demerits, they were driven from power by a most impertinent and purposeless revolution. Whether they observed the standard of political innocence that the Duc d'Aumale claims for them, must depend on the truth or falsehood of the allegation that Louis Philippe was, in some degree, implicated in a conspiracy which was the lever of the popular rising that drove Charles X. from his throne. Certainly, as far as subsequent events are concerned, they were, as the Duc d'Aumale observes, far more sinned against than sinning.

"While the chief of your dynasty (I borrow his own words) was expiating at Ham, by an imprisonment of six years, his reckless defiance of (sa temerité contre) the laws of his country, he made use without restriction of his civic rights, and freely criticised in the public prints the Government which he had begun attacking by open force. My situation is very different, and I do not lay claim to any such privileges. Banished from my country without having done violence to any law, without having deserved my lot by any fault, I am only known to France as having been educated under her standard, and having faithfully served her up to the day when I was violently separated from her. But has this exile caused me to forfeit the most natural and sacred right of all, that of defending my family when pub

licly insulted, and with it the past of France? This injurious attack, which a power so strong, and which inspires in you so much confidence, has endorsed, propagated, placarded on all the walls, can my answer follow it, and produce itself in conformity to the laws, on the very soil of my country? I wish to make the experiment. If this does not succeed as I wish, and if, in contempt of the simplest notions of justice and honour, you stifle my voice in France, with so fair a cause to plead, it will at least have some echo in Europe, and reach the heart of honest people in every country."

Every reader will acknowledge in the tone of this exordium to the Orleans Manifesto either a studied moderation, as if it were written to conciliate Europe more than to excite France, or else an incapacity to put the case more strongly, which is a peculiarity of some minds and tempers, even when they have received the strongest provocation. Some men are capable of pleading any cause better than their own. If there is anything that stamps the house of Buonaparte with a character the reverse of chivalry and magnanimity, it is this very conduct of the reigning dynasty towards the Orleans family. The fault alleged by the Revolution against that family, as the cause of their fall, was, that Louis Philippe was ill-advised in not suffering the Reform Banquet to take place in 1848-a cause perfectly puerile for so great a consequence. The remote cause of Louis Philippe's fall may have been the premature death of the Duc d'Orleans, who may have possessed more firmness of character than the rest of the family evinced; but it was more specially a general family incapacity to cope with the exigencies of their position, and to hold the reins of government with a sufficiently firm hand, considering the peculiar constitution of the French nation. Eliot Warburton, in his Crescent and the Cross, remarks, that in the East, mildness in taking an

affront is sure to be taken for weakness, and justifies himself for striking an Arab over the face with his whip who spilled his bowl of milk with his spear. It is so with the impulsive and superficial French nature. The nepotism of Louis Phillippe in his later days-the Spanish marriages, in particularand the general official corruption which he had allowed to steal over public life in France, caused him to become unpopular in England, and our people to forget the general fairness and moderation of his government-qualities which generally find ready sympathy in Great Britain. It may be presumed, as the Duc d'Aumale complains, that the real faults of that government vis-à-vis of the French people, were those of a magnanimous or a pusillanimous weakness. The Orleans dynasty might have occupied the French throne now, if, in the first place, Louis Napoleon, instead of being confined in a place from which he could escape, had been summarily sent, when he was taken at Boulogne, to a bourne from which there is no return; and, in the second place, if the Orleans princes, instead of losing their spirits in the hour of trial, and running away from the helm, had ordered a few discharges of artillery on the sovereign people and the National Guard in 1848. The lesson had to be taught the French in 1851, by another and less scrupulous hand, that assaults on a government are not to be met as mildly as those on a private individual. It is only to be regretted that the fusillade of the Boulevards did not take place in defence of established order, instead of the aggression of the President on the so-called constitution of the Republic. The Duke hits the mark when he says: "As to his sons (those of Louis Philippe), you doubtless blame them for not having cannonaded the National Guard of Paris in 1848, or for not having endeavoured to bring back the army of Africa; for having, in a word, preferred exile to civil war, when they thought that France

might soon have need of the blood of all her children; and considered, besides, how far removed were minds used to the gentle movement of free government from the hard maxims and unmerciful proceedings which the corrupting spectacle of so many fortunate acts of violence has caused since that time to find their way into every heart!"

To Frenchmen of high Legitimist sentiments, it may seem almost like a divine retribution that the king who was set up by the Barricades should find himself awestruck and unable to act in the face of the same power when it chose to rear its head again; but if, as a believer in the principles of constitutional monarchy would assume, kings govern, not for their own good, but for the sake of the people, and embody in their persons, at all events, the divine right of the law, then it is inexcusable weakness for a monarch to abdicate at once, at the first summons from any rebellious power, however irregular, when one or two sharp blows struck at the right time would set all right again. And posterity, in judging those events, will be less severe on the old king than on the princes of the Orleans family, who, if they had it in their power, as we believe they had, to cannonade the National Guard, if not to bring back the Algerian army, were bound, not only by the duties of their position, but even by the voice of humanity to do so. Of course it is not a question of the physical courage of these princes; but there was certainly a failure, if not of moral courage, at least of that firmness of character which is indispensable to all command of others. Although it may be adopted as an extreme constitutional principle, that a ruler chosen by the people is to rule only during the pleasure of the people, yet, even putting the case so strongly, it would seem to be requisite that the people should find its expression in some organised constitutional body, such as a parliament of some sort or other, and not in the first posse of howling

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