ensure that they shall be educated. And offered to the Empire. Then their only the education of French peasants and arti- end was to destroy something that was sans at which M. Gambetta aims is two- positively and wholly bad. Now their obfold. They are, in the first place, to have all the advantages which the high place of France in the world of science ought to give them. Physical truths are for them to be the initiation into political truths. And then they are to have a military education. Every Frenchman is to be taught to fight for his country, and no one is to be held worthy of participating in the high function of helping to govern France who has not proved his willingness and ability to fight for her, as well as his apprehension of a certain amount of scientific truths. All lesser views are for the moment to be thrown into the background. Decentralization, as M. Gambetta said, is an excellent thing, but he had not time to dwell on it. He has only one goal before him, one dream that haunts him, and that is the rescuing of France from its dense ignorance. Some day or other Frenchmen may be fit to think of winning back Alsace and Lorraine. But for the present they must not heed matters that are too great for them. The only thought that should now occupy their minds is the consideration how, by the acquirement of the rudiments of science and of the habits of drill, they may make themselves worthy to be citizens of a French Republic.

ject is to preserve and to guide to a better and larger end, something that is good in itself. M. Gambetta offers himself as the friend - the stern, strong-minded, but affectionate friend of M. Thiers. The Republic exists, and M. Thiers presides over it, and M. Gambetta will watch over the Republic and M. Thiers. It is true that parties exist in France and in the French Assembly the aims and beliefs of which are incompatible with the mainte nance of a Republic. The Legitimists and the Imperialists are undoubtedly not to be coaxed into being good Repulicans. But what is the line which Republicans ought to adopt towards them? It is to dispel the ignorance on which the hostile parties habitually trade. The peasants are to be taught that the Legitimists would gladly restore primogeniture, and they are to be cured of the nonsensical belief, now so largely affecting them, that the First Napoleon was the incarnation of the glorious Revolution, the author of the subdivision of land, and the creator of the Code which unhappily bears his name. They will then see that it was the Republic that originally gave them all they most cherish, as it is the Republic that can alone now give them that wide and vigorous system of education for the lack of which they have so All this was spoken with an earnestness long been deprived of the golden fruits and force which inspired the conviction which the Republic bears in its bosom. that the speaker only spoke after having But it is a great proof of his good sense thoroughly thought over what he was say- that M. Gambetta takes care to nip in the ing. Perhaps it was not very original to bud the natural hope his admirers might say that French peasants and artizans are entertain, that they are themselves desdensely ignorant; and it is at least in ac- tined to have the actual conduct of affairs cordance with views prevalent among a in France. It is, he points out, quite as large number of French politicians that M. great an aim to work indirectly through Gambetta should have pronounced in fa- others as directly by oneself. There will, vour of connecting popular education he foresees, be a great many half-hearted with the teaching of physical science and Republicans in any Assembly that in the with military training. What is really next few years France is likely to elect. remarkable is that the clearness and fer- The great thing is to be staunch in oppovour with which he has grasped these doc- sition to bad principles, but to be very intrines should have enabled him to mark dulgent and conciliatory towards mistaken out a clear, consistent, and practical course men. If Legitimists and Imperialists can for the party he claims to lead. He finds be got to serve the Republic, every occathe Republic established. He finds it pos- sion, he thinks, should be used of employsessed of the power of borrowing milliards, ing their services. All that true Republiand of suppressing a revolt which, as he cans should think of is not their personal says, would have upset ten monarchies. glory or the sweets of power, but the adA Republican Government, and, what is vancement of education. The rate of more, a strong Republican Government, progress will, he knows, be slow, and the is in existence, and with such a Govern- disappointments many; but true Republiment he can co-operate. He and his cans must learn to be quite content if only friends will be in the Opposition, but it they can see Frenchmen learning every will not be an opposition such as they day to be wiser men and better soldiers.

Thus M. Gambetta will take his seat in ceptional as that in which France found the Assembly not as a fierce partisan, or herself last autumn all ordinary rules are as an impracticable, irreconcilable adven- suspended. The first duty of the de facto turer, but as the patient, watchful guardian Government was to resist the invader by of great interests. That he will encounter every means in their power, and the only the most bitter opposition it is needless to thing they had to consider was what would say. No programme could possibly be most help them in doing so. If a council more distasteful to the clergy than that of war never fights, still less does an Aswhich he lays down. Scientific education sembly called together to discuss whether and military training are not among the it shall fight. The mere substitution of things blessed by the Syllabus. French- debate for action, and the suspension of men, as a rule, are very obstinate and very military preparations that necessarily entimid, and their old hatred of Republican-sues from this, are in themselves fatal to ism will not easily pass away. But at any vigorous operations in the field. To have rate M. Gambetta has carved out for him- called together the National Assembly self and those whom he leads a policy last autumn would have been to make which appeals loudly to the imagination submission inevitable, no matter what and the conscience of many of his coun- might have been the decision of the deputrymen, and which must inspire respect ties. And is it not a pedantic adherence even in those who may be ready to de- to the letter to deny that M. Gambetta nounce it as Utopian, visionary, or ill- was carrying out the national will, though founded. He comes into the Assembly as there had been no opportunity for a fora new power, not readily to be put down mal expression of it? What means had or ignored; and if he has but the requi- M. Gambetta of compelling a single resite tact and prudence and command over cruit to answer to his summons, or a sinhis more bitter and enthusiastic followers, gle commander to obey his orders? The he can scarcely fail to leave his impress on sole source of the absolute power he the Government he aids, or on the Assem- wielded for a time was the universal conbly which cannot escape from the consid-sciousness that he did but embody the eration of the aims which he pledges himself, if possible, to attain.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
GAMBETTA.

THE importance of M. Gambetta's return to parliamentary life has not been lessened by the undisguised alarm and dissatisfaction which it has excited in many quarters. A good deal of this alarm seems to be founded on a mistaken conception of M. Gambetta's character and position. The theory of many Englishmen and of some Frenchmen is that he is simply a Communist in sheep's clothing. "As red as it is safe to be in these times," an "International candidate," these and the like are the descriptions given of him by English correspondents, and even the well-informed "Parisian correspondent" of the Times says that, though he "has just loudly repudiated his friends of the Commune, he is nevertheless connected with them by his small liking for the expression of the national wish." This last charge implies a strange inability to make due allowance for circumstances. It is true that M. Gambetta continued the war without convoking a National Assembly to sanction his policy. But in a crisis so ex

national determination. The moment that determination faltered and peace came to be wished for even at the cost of dismemberment, his strength went from him and he became as another man. What concord, again, was there between M. Gambetta's passionate exaltation of the unity of France above every other consideration, and the equally passionate subordination of that unity to class aggrandizement which characterized the policy of the Commune? Nor should it be forgotten that the insurrection at Lyons, the success of which might have changed the whole course of events in France, was put down at the very outset by the energy of a prefect nominated by M. Gambetta, and understood to possess his confidence and to share his views.

Least of all is this unfavourable theory of M. Gambetta's policy borne out by his recent speech at Bordeaux. It is long since such sound constitutional philosophy has found a place in democratic oratory. There is no trace in it of that unrelenting hostility to any, even the least, departure from the precise position taken up by the speaker which has so embittered not only party divisions but party subdivisions in France. On the contrary, he declares himself ready to work with all men who will honestly support the de facto Republic, no matter what may be their political

From The Saturday Review. FROM FLORENCE TO ROME.

antecedents or their secret wishes. We | ticular institutions, but they are conservawish, he says, to present to the country tive as regards the general fabric of govthe spectacle of Republicans content to ernment. It argues great dullness or remain in opposition while the Govern- strong prejudice not to see the marked ment is carried on by Monarchists "con- distinction which separates the two poverted and forced by the cohesion of the sitions. Republican party and the legitimacy of the Republic to aid in the reforms it demands. Republicans, while severe in their adherence to principles, must be indulgent in their relation to persons, instead of as heretofore being exclusive with respect to persons, and inconsistent THE King of Italy has made his formal with respect to principles. They must be entry into Rome, and has been followed always ready to open the door to those thither by the representatives of the Euwho shall come over to their side, and to ropean Powers. All the business of the admit that men whom "exceptional social Italian Government will henceforward be position" hinders from being thorough carried on in the new capital. The revoconverts to Republicanism may yet sin-lution which has been so long in progress cerely accept it in practice. If this mod- is at last accomplished. The unity of eration has little resemblance to the lan- Italy is complete. Yet to an Italian guage of the Commune, M. Gambetta's patriot there must be something disheartdemonstration that the errors alike of the ening in the contrast between the early workman and of the peasant may be hopes and the late fruition. We hear of traced to their common ignorance of his- "indescribable enthusiasm" in the people tory and politics has even less. It is igno- at the sight of Victor Emmanuel, and of a rance that generates "unconscious and spontaneous illumination of the city, exmisguided multitudes, destroying every- ceeding in brightness any of the compulthing around them, and without respect sory illuminations which have from time even for the memorials of their traditions, to time been supposed to testify to_the because they cannot arrive at the satisfac-devotion of the Romans towards the Temtion of impossible desires, and therefore poral Power. But whatever may have avenge themselves by heaping up ruins." been the feelings of an excitable populaIt is ignorance again that leads the peas- tion, treated after a long interval of ant to confound the Revolution with the forced abstinence to the delights of a great First Napoleon, and to attribute to the spectacle, there seems to be little enough latter that admirable conquest of the enthusiasm in the Italian nation generally. soil" which he really owes to the former. Rome has come to them after all through That destructive disregard of the memo- the weakness of others, and though the rials of French traditions which M. Gam- substantial usefulness of the prize may not betta rightly sets down to ignorance, was be lessened by this fact, its sentimental exalted by the Commune into a noble and emotional value is not the same. iconoclasm which could not break too There was a time when the possession of completely with a past which deserved Rome seemed the essential condition of nothing but oblivion. The strong attach-national unity, when no sacrifice was too ment to property in land which he wishes great, no danger too formidable, to be ento see enlisted on the side of the Republic countered for this paramount object. But was denounced by the Commune as the on this there followed a time when Rome, worst enemy with which the Republic had instead of being the key to national unity, to contend. The truth is that those who became the symbol of national division. think M. Gambetta a Communist in dis- The steady progress of events has made it guise do not understand that between the the capital of Italy, but the most promipolitical Republican even of the most ex-nent names in that long chain of circumtreme views and the Socialist Republican stances are Aspromonte and Mentana. there is a great gulf fixed, whereas the To the Italian Government the possession differences between one political Republi- of Rome stands in something like the relacan and another are shaded off in infinite gradations. The aims of the Commune were essentially destructive. They waged war against the whole machinery of political action. The aims of men like M. Gambetta may be destructive as regards par

tion in which the question of the Ballot stands to the Liberal party in this country. They have been irresistibly drawn towards it, but the attraction has been the force rather of old watchwords than of actual necessities. The conclusiveness of the de

monstration that Naples, Turin, and "indecent pictures will glitter, and filthy Venice can never be governed except from ditties be chanted by dissolute troopers Rome has been a good deal damaged by the fact that they have for some years past been fairly well governed from Florence, and no reasonable person will suppose that the Royal House is any the safer because it will in future share with the Pope the hatred felt by a certain class of Republicans for any non-Republican Government which claims Rome for its seat. But though there may be danger in fulfilling a destiny from which the bloom has been brushed off, there would have been equal danger in leaving it unfulfilled. The same men who are ready to fight against Victor Emmanuel because he reigns at Rome would have been quite as ready to fight against him if he had been content to reign anywhere else. They may hold that the genius of Rome is outraged by the presence of a king within her walls; but they would have equally resented the insult of a King of Italy thinking it consistent with his pretensions to remain for ever outside them.

Yet the difficulties which the Italian Government has to contend with in Rome are not the less serious because to confront them was the only means of escape from another set of dangers in their rear. In the first place, there is the temper of the population. In ordinary cases it is an advantage of monarchical government that the sovereign is placed above the party passions of his subjects, and by that means raises the Executive to something like the same level. But in Rome the Sovereign and the Executive are only the representatives of the victorious faction, and consequently they concentrate on themselves all the hatred which a defeated minority can feel for the revolution that has dispossessed it. The language in which the Italian Government is spoken of by the adherents of the Pope recalls that of the Jacobite libels on the Government of William III. Even when softened by distance, their feelings find expression in descriptions of Victor Emmanuel as "the Sovereign of broken troth and unbridled passions, the Sovereign with the morality of a Mussulman and the conscience of a mosstrooper," in characterizing his entry into Rome as the signal triumph of the worst cause, personified by the worst mau, in Europe," and 'in predictions that for a time... cries of blasphemy will resound" in the basilicas, "Christian practices will be interdicted as completely as if some old Pagan Emperor sat in the city of the Casars," on the walls of sacred monuments

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in the halls and passages of the Vatican." These quotations are taken from an influential Roman Catholic newspaper published in Dublin; and if this is the tone adopted by Irishmen who have other things to occupy them, what is likely to be the temper of men animated with the same sentiments who live in Rome itself? They are certain to miscontrue every act of the Italian Government, and to set down to the Government a variety of acts with which its only connexion will be the punishment of those who have been guilty of them. What is worse, this systematic perversion and exaggeration of what takes place in Rome will in the end inevitably tend to justify itself. Officials who are continually denounced as tyrants are naturally tempted to show that they can be what they are called. This difficulty is common to all Governments which reign by virtue of having deposed another Government. Wuat is not common to all such cases is the presence, the necessary and acknowledged presence, of the displaced sovereign in the capital itself. William III. suffered somewhat from the violence of Jacobite pamphleteers, but at all events his rival was well out of the way. He was not obliged to give Whitehall Palace up to James II., while he himself had to live at Kensington. Certainly, from the Papal point of view, Pius IX. has done well to remain in Rome. Nowhere else could he be such a thorn in the flesh to the King of Italy, nowhere else could he buffet him with so much certainty and so little effort. Anywhere else he might be forgotten unless he did something to keep himself in Victor Emmanuel's recollection. In Rome he need do nothing. No man can feel completely sovereign in Rome so long as the Vatican is inhabited by a pretender who cannot be expelled, and will not be conciliated. For the present, Victor Emmanuel is popular with his new subjects, but some day or other he will offend them, or be driven to tax them, which comes to much the same thing, and then they are sure to draw an injurious comparison between his rule and the Pope's. All subjects of a new Government do this, whether they have any reason for it or not; but with most subjects the operation of this law is modified by that other law "Out of sight out of mind." Here there will be no room for any such qualification. Pius IX. will still be in his old place, ready at any moment to accept the old homage.

counted during the lifetime of the present Pope, and the prospect of his successor being of a different mind in this matter is too remote- morally, if not chronologically - to be a profitable subject for speculation.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

A WORD TO GERMANY.

For the first time, again, the Italian Monarchy will find itself the principal object of the hostility of the Universal Republic. There has always been a considerable amount of Republican feeling in Italy, but hitherto it has been of a local and, speaking comparatively, moderate type. As long as the French Empire existed Napoleon III. was the chosen foe of the Republican who scorns the bonds of time and place. Now, however, Napoleon III. is beneath hatred, and though the universal Republic can have no love for the Gov- AFTER the profusion of advice offered ernment that has succeeded him in France, by our press to the French nation with there are reasons which will make it pru- regard to the policy which it promises to dent to break ground next time in a new make its own in the new period of peace, country. Its adherents have recently tried it is but fair that the German policy should conclusions in Paris, and found their likewise receive some consideration. In strength inferior to their needs. England has been talked of, but only, it seems, in those French journals which believe that some signal catastrophe must be reserved by Providence for the nation which has neither helped France nor surrendered the Communists. Germany has Republican elements within her frontier, but they will hardly care to assert themselves on the morrow of the Imperial triumph. Spain is so much less likely to influence Italy than to be influenced by Italy that it can have no claim to be preferred before it. Italy, by the known fondness for Republican institutions of many of her people, by the luke-warm opposition which would be offered by the Papal party to any movement which had in view the overthrow of the King's Government, and by the attraction exercised by the name of Rome on the devotees of that fanatical irreligion which seems to be the established creed of the Universal Republic, has the best possible title to be chosen as the theatre of the next outbreak. It remains to be seen how the Italian Government will acquit itself when thus enclosed between two fires.

her present unhappy condition, France, though no longer an active belligerent, was compelled sooner than her late adversary to apply herself to internal legislation, which to her became a question of vital necessity. For Germany, the peace practically only begins now, after the return of the bulk of her army. While half a million soldiers remained on foreign soil, sustained perforce by France, while negotiations were still pending, undecided questions and irritating conditions afforded opportunities for collision, and while a German military governor held supreme sway in the occupied provinces it could hardly be called peace. The 16th of June and the festivals following in its trail are the practical ratification of the treaty of the 10th of May. We are bound to appreciate the promptness and despatch with which Germany has-peace being once concluded cleared the invaded country of her troops; of the half-million men then in France only some hundred and twenty thousand remain now. But we fail to recognize in her other acts the fulfilment of the assurances and promises given us during the war. Germany has The most favourable chance that could been the first to criticize and condemn the befall Italy would be the double contin- warlike spirit, the thirst for military greatgency of the death of Pius IX. and the ness, and--as is believed-for revenge, election of a Pope who would co-operate traceable in the acts and legislation of M. with the King's Ministers in framing a com- Thiers. Still that same spirit is visible in promise between the rival pretensions of every act of the Government at Berlin. Church and State in Rome, and in fencing In former years, when our unceasing recit against the insecurity which must neces-ommendations of general disarmament sarily accompany any arrangement that gained us notoriety in the diplomatic has no other basis than a Parliamentary world, Prussia justified her military prepavote which may be rescinded in the follow-rations by the armaments of her western ing Session. The reasonable claims of neighbour. That such armaments and the the Roman Catholic body throughout the accompanying talk of war were likely in world need not be incompatible with the the end to result in war was never denied. political rights of the Italian people. Un- It was reasonable to imagine, therefore, fortunately they are certain to be so ac-'that the collapse of the French military