Nepoleon The Third Review Of The Life, Character , And Policy

Front matter

NAPOLEON THE THIRD:

REVIEW

OF HIS

Preface

Tbs object of this volume is plain and direct. It is to describe, in their true colours, public events and personal conduct which, in former years, were the subjects of much misapprehension and prejudice.

Noble deeds, nobly performed, have in great measure dissipated the prejudice alluded to. Esteem and con¬ fidence are taking the place of the opposite sentiments, both with respect to the Emperor of the French and to the Nation which he so wisely governs. We can appreciate honour, courage, consistency. When these qualities have approved themselves through a career of unusual vicissitude, we are candid enough to re¬ cognise them, whoever be the men by whom they are displayed. And when it is made evident that friend¬ ship for us has been all through, as it still is, one of his ruling sentiments, we can hold out the hand of fellowship, and frankly accept that friendship, equally honourable to both parties.

If, through the influence of the Emperor, the feelings of England towards France have undergone a salutary change, those of our neighbours have, with regard to ourselves, experienced an equally wholesome altera¬ tion. It is moderate to affirm that history presents no example of two great nations passing so speedily, and

A 3 vi

PREFACE.

on grounds so reasonable and intelligible—on grounds, too, independent of political combinations—from cold¬ ness to confidence. The auspicious change is no transi¬ tory ebullition of feeling, no offspring of temporary circumstances: it is founded on the better knowledge of each other which, in England and France, has been produced by the policy and labours of Napoleon the Third.

In accomplishing this, he has conferred substantial service on mankind. For the effect of his policy embraces even a wider scope of view than that com¬ prised in the thorough reconciliation of the two nations which are the leaders and representatives of Christian civilisation. The most prominent passages of his career, as well as the position which the French Empire now occupies in Europe, shall be temperately considered in the following pages.

True though it be, that the character and principles of the Emperor are better understood than they were a few years back, it has appeared to the writer desirable to put forward, in a durable shape, a candid exposition of sundry points which are still the subjects of con¬ troversy, to clear up the obscurity which envelopes many circumstances, and to bring the whole life of Napoleon the Third fairly into review. As is elsewhere explained, it is intended in this work rather to eluci¬ date principles by reference to leading events, than to give a narrative of minute details; and the author trusts that this plan has been so carried out as to do justice to the great man who stands so honourably conspicuous amongst the sovereigns of Europe.

Contents

SECTION r.

General Remarks - Page 1

Section II. Chapter L

Birth, Exile, Childhood.—Education. — Life in Switzerland. — The Italian War. — The Gratitude and Clemency of Bang Louis Philippe - - - - - - -28

CHAPTER H

The second Sojourn in Switzerland. — Thoughts, Studies, Occupa¬ tions, and Aspirations - - - - - 89

CHAPTER HI

State of Prance in 1886.-— The Adventure of Strasburg. — Exposi¬ tion of Motives and Principles. — The compulsory Yoyage. — The Return. — The Calumny. — The Refutation. — Death of Queen Hortense.—Vindictive Proceedings of the French Government. — Reminiscences of Residence in England - - . 53

VIII

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

The Policy of the Empire as expounded by Prince Louis Napoleon. —Excerpta from “Les Idees N&poleoniennes.”—Protest against Sympathy with Socialist Conspiracies - Page 88

Chapter I

Hie Enterprise of Boulogne. — Objects and Plans. — Results, imme¬ diate and deferred. — The Trial. — Declaration of Principles. — The Judgment - - - - - 109

CHAPTER H

The Imprisonment. — Faith, Courage, and Endurance. — The dying Parent.—Paternal Solicitude and filial Reverence.— The Gage of Honour: its Rejection. — The Temptation: its Repulse - 129

Chapter I

View of the President’s Position. — His Labours for the Success of the Experiment of 1848. — The Factions in the Assembly.—Bourbonito Intrigues and Socialist Conspiracies. — Riotings in the Chamber.—Ferocious Avowals of the Reds.—Foreign and native Expressions of Opinion. — Pardons and Amnesties. — Clemency and Prndence. — Charities and Beneficences.—Louis Napoleon face to face with the Disaffected.—France and Italy.—The Roman ’Expedition.—Reflections on its Policy and Morality - Page 176

CHAPTER IL

Legislative Elections.—Wise Forbearance of the President. — In¬ creasing Impracticability of the Assembly.—Anti-British Intrigues. —Fidelity of the President to friendly Relations with England.— Provincial Tour.—Enthusiastic Reception.—Position and Pre¬ tensions of General Changamier. —Persistent Slanders against the Chief of the State - - - - - - 196

CHAPTER HL

Anomalous State of Parties in 1851. — The Changarnier Bubble exploded.—The u Fusion * Negotiations between the Buurbonites. —Inefficiency of the Constitution.—National Demand for its Revision; and for the Abolition of the Electoral Disfranchise¬ ment Law. — Cordial Sympathy between the President and the People. — Audacity of the Anti-Social Faction. —Imminence of Anarchy and Blood ..... 223

CHAPTER IV.

Tactics of the Orleanists. — The « Perfide Albion ” Cry.— Dignified Attitude of the President—Infatuation of the Royalist Partisans. —Reactionary Consultations at Wiesbaden and Claremont 237

X

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V.

Faction iu France compared with Faction in England and America. — The Contrast defined. — The Constitution of 1848. — Conduct of the President analysed by an Englishman. — Duty and Obliga¬ tion : the Substance ? or the Letter ? Page 247

Section V. The Second Presidency.— The Empire

CHAPTER L

The Second of December. —The Justice, Necessity, and Success of the Change. — The Emeute. — The Nation's Verdict - 258

Chapter II

The Constitution of 1852.—Objects and Labours of the Head of the State.—Vigorous Prosecution of energetic Measures. — Pros¬ perity reappearing. — Trade and Enterprise reviving. — Specific Memorandum on the Orleans Appropriations.—A Fraud defeated.

— A painful Duty fulfilled - 268

CHAPTER m.

Public Sentiment in 1852.—Satisfaction with the Present alloyed by Fear for the Future. —Petitions and Memorials for the Con¬ solidation of the Executive Power.—The President in the Depart¬ ments. — The Return to Paris. — Universal Call for the Empire.

— The National Vote. — The Inauguration. — The Imperial

Marriage.—The Choice of Wisdom and Affection - - 282

Chapter IV

The War with Russia.—Faith and Loyalty of the Emperor of^the French. — The true cc Cordial Understanding.” — Orleanist Emis¬ saries at the Court of St. Petersburg. — The National Loans. — Unparalleled Manifestations of Popular Confidence.—M. Berryor’s amusing Episode. — The Vienna Conferences of 1855 - 298

CONTENTS#

XI

Chapter V

The Imperial Visit to England. — British Feeling towards the Em¬ peror. — Source and Basis of our Esteem. — The Paris Exhibition of 1855.— The Triumph of Peace in War.—Our Queen’s Visit of Friendship to the Emperor, the Empress, and the French People. — The Emir Abd-el-Kader.— Strength, Reality, and Durability of the Anglo-French Alliance. — The Emperor’s Address to the Legislature.—Policy of the Western Powers.—Result of the Con¬ ferences of 1856. —Peace, just and honourable.—British Testi¬ mony.—Birth of the Imperial Prince—The Emotions of France re-echoed by England - Page 314

Chapter VI

Reflections on the Past, Meditations on the Future, of Napoleon the Third. — State of France at the Close of the War. — The In¬ evitable Condition of National Greatness. —Unity of France and England in the Interests of Mankind ... 349

Section VI

The Era of Peace.—Opinions in England on the People and Go¬ vernment of France.—The Inundations - 354

APPENDICES.

Appendix A. —The Treaty of Peace ... 395

Appendix B. — The Constitution .... 419

NAPOLEON THE THIRD

Section I. Gbn3xux Bshabks

The task which I propose to myself is one not to be hastily undertaken, or lightly dealt with. It is that of setting forth, in the language of truthful fidelity, the character, as indicated in the career and astonishing fortunes, of one who has marked himself pre-eminently as the Man of this Our Age.

^ Bom and cradled in Imperial splendour, his sponsors the great Emperor, and an Empress, the daughter of a long line of Caesars; reared under the tutelage of a mother gifted, beautiful, and good, in vicissitude, danger, and exile; educated in the hardy instruc¬ tive school of adversity; sojourner by turns in many different countries ; driven hither and thither through the terror with which dynastic combinations were filled by the sound of a great name; subject, alike in youth and manhood, to misconception and mis¬ representation, the present Emperor of the French has maintained, with a constancy and consistency of which history scarcely furnishes us with a parallel, the characteristics which distinguish him, and with equal

B

GENERAL REMARKS.

constancy lias adhered to the faith and principles which inspired him from his youth. At the period, for example, when he was peculiarly the object of hostility and in¬ sult by the power then reigning in France, his inextin¬ guishable love of country, his confidence in her destinies, his self-identification with her honour and her fortunes, were as entire and as explicitly avowed, as when, free from all influences save her own sentiments and convic¬ tions, she chose him for her foremost man. At a time when his prospect of revisiting his country seemed ut¬ terly extinct to every one save himself, his conduct was governed by a regard for her as ruling and complete as if there had not existed edicts, proclamations, and treaties, declaring his connection with her at an end for ever.

The instances in which this feeling was exemplified, are almost literally innumerable. One or two may be here glanced at. His position with respect to France was discouraging indeed—the very name of Bonaparte was proscribed from her soil—when, in answer to in¬ quiries, proceeding from more quarters than one, as to his willingness to share the throne of the young Queen of Portugal*, he at once replied negatively, on the express ground that his acceptance of that eleva¬ tion would interfere* with his undivided allegiance to France. Upon several occasions, whilst residing in Switzerland, a similar sentiment was elicited. Under all circumstances the expression of his heart's strongest wish pointed to residence in France upon any honour¬ able terms. That was an object which no pressure, no temptation, ever succeeded in inducing him to relin¬ quish, f

* Queen Dona Maria, lately deceased.

t Perhaps the coldly selfish policy of King Lonis Philippe, in sternly rejecting the entreaty of the young soldier for permission

GENERAL REMARKS.

When, after confinement for years in the gloomy solitude of Ham, offers were made of immediate libera¬ tion on condition that he should give pledges sepa¬ rating him from his hopes for France, he resolutely refused the condition. At that time his situation ap¬ peared in all respects that of a prisoner for life. He had been several years in confinement, one of the chief solaces of his solitude being the composition of books still shadowing forth his undying attachment to France. And there was a peculiar motive, superadded to the in¬ stinctive love of liberty, making release, even for a brief interval, an object doubly dear to him. It was to visit the bed of a dying parent. With one in whom filial reverence has always been a prominent trait, this motive must have been very powerful. It was so. He went the length of preferring repeated requests to the King for permission to perform this sacred -duty, and then return to his prison. He pledged his word of honour, that, at any moment when called on, he would return, a resigned if not a willing prisoner. But this was a pledge of the description appreciated only by men of generosity, and Louis Philippe was scarcely a generous man. The result was, that, firmly fixed in his resolu¬ tion to give no pledge compromising his duty to France, or hampering his course' during that future into which, taking subsequent events into account, we now know that he looked with astonishing per¬ spicacity, the prisoner remained until released by means independent of the generosity, or humanity, or to reside in and serve his country, was, after all, a mistaken one. The harsh tone of his dealin^Srith Queen Hortense and the young Napoleon was, at all events, the reverse of grateful, considering that the mother and sister of the u Citizen King* had been under weighty personal obligations to the generosity of Napoleon the-First

GENERAL REMARKS.

gratitude of the Sing. The release was, in fact, effected through an instrumentality which vividly illustrated one of those qualities which the present Emperor shares with Napoleon the First—that of attaching to himself the devoted affection and regard of all who have any personal communication with him. The magnanimous conduct of Dr. Conneau will form a touching page in history.

Unshaken persistency of political opinion, both as to the facts, the necessities, and the interests of the future, has formed another of the prominent characteristics of Napoleon the Third. Under no circumstances did he swerve from the assertion of the Imperial souvenirs— from the belief, from the avowal of the belief, that with these were bound up the true hopes, the true glory and welfare of France.

It is four-and-twenty years ago since the death of the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon the First. Four-and-twenty years ago the present Emperor was a very young man — an exile—member of a family lying under sentence of perpetual banishment. King Louis Philippe was daily rising in power and success. Some time before the death of the Duke of Reich-, stadt, the young Prince Louis Napoleon wrote and published a book in which he contrasted the purity of administration, the social and material improvements, the encouragement of art, science, and general know¬ ledge, the legal reforms (unparalleled in the history of jurisprudence for extent and completeness), the ad¬ vance in every department of useful enterprise and industry, the colossal public works of utility to the whole empire, the financial economy even in the midst of gigantic warfare, and the other marking features of the Imperial epoch, with the corruption, the stag¬ nation, and humiliation of the period succeeding it.

GENERAL REMARKS.

Proceeding with his illustrations, he showed that almost everything really good, useful, progressive, national, tolerated after 1815 and not abandoned in 1830, was a remnant or offshoot from the era of the Empire. Indeed this was a fact that required little argumen¬ tative demonstration, but only a spirit bold and candid enough to proclaim it.

These preliminaries were but the steps to a conclu¬ sion in which the Prince laid down the proposition that a return to the Imperial system was the great thing needful to the welfare of France; and he avowed his conviction that the elevation of the son of Napoleon the Great to the Imperial throne would be a measure identified with the best interests of France and of Europe.

As in this introductoiy section it is my intention to glance at some passages in the life of Napoleon the Third which have been subjects of outrageous perver¬ sion and misconstruction, I wish to fix the reader’s attention upon points which tend to elucidate truth, and to dissipate mistakes partly the result of ignorance, but partly, too, of malice. In the work to which I have just referred—a work written at a time when every impulse of mere personal ambition would have dictated a sort of junction with those parties in France who were op¬ posed to monarchy in any shape, and when nothing appeared less likely to politicians of all schools than the restoration of the Imperial dynasty,—in a book written under such circumstances, Prince Napoleon avowed his conviction, as emphatically as he has ever since avowed it, that a vigorous government administered under an Imperial head, under the heir of Napoleon the Great, was that best adapted to the genius of the French people. This he did in the face of a thousand tempta¬ tions to adopt a contrary tone, when numerous and not

GBKEBAL REMARKS.

powerless parties were ready to join him in any endea¬ vour to excite insurrection in France under a watch¬ word recalling the name of Napoleon, and at the same time excluding the principle of monarchy. An empire founded on the votes of the people, destined to renew in its integrity the grand policy of the Imperial system— this was ever the object of his aspirations; and he pointed to the descendant of the Great Emperor, afei the individual around whom the sympathies of the nation would gather most naturally, most fervently and unani¬ mously, in order to give reality and success to that aspiration.

The wonderful consistency of the man, his immov¬ able fidelity to a great guiding principle, accompanied him through every phasis of his chequered life. During his forced sojourn in America, some years after the publication of the work just mentioned, he declared that his object in making the attempt which led to his voyage to the New World, was to “ spare France conflicts and blood,” to spare her the otherwise inevitable ordeal of another sanguinary revolution. How perfectly was this view of coming probabilities realised 1 The dy¬ nasty of 1830 lingered on for a while longer—the future Emperor was transported to a distant country. Louis Philippe continued surrounding himself with fancied securities, “ strengthening his position,” as he imagined, by family alliances, by courting influences some of which were notoriously opposed to the honour and interests of the country which he governed; yet his government could not stand , because it was based upon another foundation than the hearts and convic¬ tions of the people. The “ conflicts and the blood” came; and the king who had sought to reign by craft, by bribery, and legerdemain, was driven with ignominy from tbe throne.

GENERAL REMARKS.

In the several essays of which Napoleon the Third is author, embracing a great variety of topics, mili¬ tary, political, social, scientific, his appreciation of the importance of works of internal improvement, of measures for promoting industry, and for ameliorating the social and domestic condition of the people, is every¬ where conspicuous. This latter is a subject of which he especially loved to treat; and his sincerity has been evi¬ denced by the number and extent of the undertakings of national utility which, notwithstanding the distracting influence of a great war, have been set on foot since his accession to power.

It was remarked by persons who knew Paris of old, and who revisited the renowned capital whilst the Great Exhibition of 1855 was open, that in five years it had sprung into a new city. The remark was not altogether an exaggeration. The fact is, that from the year 1850 much more has been done to increase the beauty, the healthfulness, the salubrity of the city, than during five-and-thirty years- from 1815. In truth, not merely more, but incomparably more, has been effected in the shorter space of time than in the longer. Besides that works, some con¬ templated, some commenced, under the first Imperial reign, and afterwards suffered to fall into oblivion or into decay, have been vigorously proceeded with, many wholly new ones, founded on the present advanced state of sanitary science, have been undertaken, and promise to make Paris the most salubrious as well as the most beautiful of the great capitals of Europe. And it is not only in Paris that the process of im¬ provement has advanced. In remote departments the existence of an enlightened, vigorous, work-doing, example-setting administration is felt with salutary effect; and municipalities, shaking off the lethargy

GENERAL REMARKS.

in which these bodies were immersed during the regime of bureaucracy, are putting forth their energies, and redeeming their boundaries from the opprobrium of uncleanliness, inconvenience, and unhealthfulness. Marseilles itself is aroused to useful action in this parti¬ cular. Those who remember the city and harbour as they were in 1848, and who may happen to spend a day or two there in 1856, will recognise the difference, to their special comfort and safety. As respects the har¬ bour, Mf. Dickens, in some future edition of his latest work, will, I dare say, have much pleasure in sub¬ joining a note, containing his testimony that “they order things better ” there now. A similarly desirable impulse has been imparted to the minds and movements of the authorities in Lyons, Bordeaux, and, in short, all the towns and cities throughout France.

In truth, the local authorities, everywhere, have now something else and something better to think of than keeping a fragmentary section of electors in order, for the return of a convenient majority to the Chamber of Deputies. They have time for the performance of their proper work, and they perform it to their own credit and to the unspeakable advantage of the communities whose local affairs they regulate.

But it is not only with respect to works coming under the category of material improvements, that the present Emperor carries out on a noble scale the designs and principles which were enunciated by him when his position was that of an unwilling exile. The fine arts have received from him an amount of enlightened en¬ couragement which presents a gratifying contrast to the coldness, the neglect—the neglect approaching to humiliating insult—with which they were treated by successive kings. The painter, the sculptor, the archi¬ tect, stand honoured before the Imperial throne, and

GENERAL REMARKS.

their claims to respect are recognised as those of men whose pursuits are calculated to elevate the tastes and aspirations of the people. Himself, personally, a generous patron, the Emperor infuses a wise and discriminating liberality into every department of the administration—a liberality which is so far from being associated with extravagance, that, as is evident from the mode of its dispensation, it is founded on a convic¬ tion that the appropriation of a moderate portion of public money to works calculated to promote a taste for innocent and intellectual, in preference to sensual plea¬ sures, is a truly economical and useful expenditure.

Education — another leading topic of the writings of Napoleon the Third — education, of which so grand a plan was laid down by the councils of the first Na¬ poleon, receives a large share of the attention of the present Imperial government. It is treated, not as a mere instalment of a given literary routine, but as something intended to prepare young people for the honourable fulfilment of their duties in any position to which Providence may call them. I am here speaking of popular education in the ordinary acceptation of that term,—the education which is regarded as indispensable in the training of youth in the most humble station; and I really believe that in no country in Europe, Prussia not excepted, is the system of popular teaching more calculated to develope the capacities of the young than is that now existing in France. It is not a mere taxing of the memory; it is a system which natu¬ rally leads to the salutary exercise of the faculty of thinking, of reasoning, of reflecting upon foots and propositions. It is an education carried so far, that any one of ordinary intelligence may, upon the foun¬ dation of knowledge and intelligence created by it, attain, by his own exertions, a high degree of pro¬ ficiency in various branches of learning.

GENERAL REMARKS.

This great educational system is, like many of the noble institutions of France, a legacy of the Empire, and, as others of these institutions, it languished and decayed for nearly forty years, under the dynastic in¬ cubus which a policy I do not here stop to discuss im¬ posed on an indignant people. It is revived, it is being improved, extended, adapted to the new requirements and circumstances of our own time. Probably the day is not distant when an uneducated class will be a thing non-existent in France.

On the arrangements relating to the inculcation of the higher departments of knowledge, and the measures initiated and encouraged for the promotion of scien¬ tific progress, I do not deem it necessary to dwell in detail, inasmuch as these matters, attracting notice from time to time in the journals of the day, are pro¬ bably in some degree familiar to the reader. Suffice it to say, that they are on a scale commensurate with that noble scheme of improvement and advance, in all de¬ partments of humanising effort, which originated in .the genius of Napoleon the First, and has been worthily reproduced in the policy of the present Emperor.

In the development of the productive resources of the country and the industrial capacities of the people, the existing policy has employed itself not less vigorously, sagaciously, successfully. The results presented by the Pans Exhibition of 1855, when compared with those of our own Exhibition of 1851, showed a progress amongst our French neighbours, in the useful, mechanical, and manufacturing arts, which astonished all who had an opportunity of observing and comparing the two.* That this progress is in some measure due to the active and ingenious spirit of the French manufacturers, is un¬ questionable; but that it is likewise connected with

* Even more remarkable were the results of the late Agricultural Exhibition.

GENEBAIi REMARKS.

the interest taken by the Emperor himself in Brea¬ thing bearing on industrial prosperity, ■will scarcely be doubted by any one who knows in what relation the degree of progress attained between the two periods 1851 —1855, stands to that effected in any former period of equal length.

Not that great progress had not been made between 1815 and 1850. France, beyond all doubt, had ad¬ vanced very much in wealth, in commerce, in agricul¬ tural productiveness, and in many of the elements of national prosperity. But let us consider to what she was indebted for that advance. Ins the first place she had peace, that bounteous parent of wealth — peace, which she would have had long before 1815, had the wishes and solicitations of the first Napoleon been at¬ tended to by ourselves. Again, look to her commer¬ cial code; look to her laws relating to- those matters in which the prosperity, the confidence, the energy of traders and merchants are most immediately concerned. How for back can we trace them ? To the Empire 1 Some two or three years since, a convention or assembly met at Liverpool, composed chiefly of eminent com¬ mercial men, delegates from the Chambers of Commerce of the principal towns in the United Kingdom. The object was to consult on measures for the removal of the confusion and anomalies abounding in our mercan¬ tile laws; to abolish the mischievous absurdity of different sets of laws in different districts of the same kingdom, each not merely varying from, but often directly antagonistic to, the others ; to introduce something like intelligibility and consistency into our mercantile enactments; to put an end to the interminable prolixities of litigation; to obtain some definition of the boundaries of right and wrong, and some certainty that disputed questions should be decided by reference there¬ to, and not by quirks, quibbles, and worthless formulse,

GENERAL REMARKS.

puzzling even the practised ingenuity of lawyers; to put an end to a state of things in which, in the every¬ day transactions of business, it has been impossible for a man to be certain at any time whether he were acting legally or illegally, and whether the most innocent action of his might not turn out a violation of some obscure law or by-law, wholly unknown to him, but the slightest infraction of which would subject him to ruinous penalties.

And at this Convention, when remedies were pro¬ posed, when a model was looked for, on the plan of which (making allowances for the different habits and circumstances of different countries) a rational, in¬ telligible, economical code might be composed, the thoughts of the majority dwelt upon the system introduced into France under the auspices of Napo¬ leon the First. Previously to the Imperial epoch, the mercantile and eveiy other portion of the laws of France—or rather of the laws in France, for almost every district had its peculiar system or no-system— were in a state of chaotic complication, more barbarous, if possible, than our own. They are now plain, simple, adapted to the comprehension of every person of average capacity. Most true and just was the declaration of Lord Brougham, that if there were nothing else to render the memory of Napoleon illustrious, he would go honourably to posterity with his Code in his hand.

There is one feature in the conduct of the present Emperor, which has not been sufficiently noticed in any work I have met with, though, when considered in its bearings on the relations between England and France, it must be profoundly interesting to the people of both countries. It relates to the sentiments he has fre¬ quently expressed with regard to the British nation, and to the relations which ought to exist between the

GENERAL REMARKS.

two countries. Those sentiments have breathed amity, esteem, a conviction that mutual friendliness consti¬ tutes the interests of both. To him, beyond doubt, more than to any other man living, is due the downfall of that baleful prejudice of “natural enmity," which until recently formed part of the political creed of millions of good Frenchmen and Englishmen. Friend¬ ship, alliance, interchange of good offices,—these are the relations which he has repeatedly described as the true national policy for the governments on either ride of the Channel. For years resident amongst us, he learned to esteem us, without diminution of his ardent affection for his own country.

Thoughts of England—full of friendship and respect —seem to have been seldom absent from his mind, what¬ ever the circumstances which surrounded him. When confined in Ham, the memory of England was only secondary to incessant aspirations for the honour and happiness of France. In a letter to an English lady, written in January 1841, he says:—