EUVRES DE P. L. COURIER.-Paris. Firmin Didot Frères, 1862. SPECIAL interest attaches at the present moment to all that bears on the maintenance of our friendly relations with France. The death of a minister, whose main care for years has been to foster to the utmost a mutual kindness, has set all Europe a-wondering whether his friendly policy will still be continued, or whether his successor will evoke again the old spirit of jealousy and hate from the deep to which it has been nigh consigned. The task which Lord Palmerston undertook, when in 1851 he was foremost to recognise in the present Emperor of the French the man for the time, was no easy Misunderstanding he had to face on all sides. From the Englishman, that hasty judgment from foregone conceptions, that self-complacent insular habit of looking at everything through British spectacles, which John Bull delights in: on the other side of the Channel that national one-sided egotism (opiniâtreté,) which equally marks Jacques Bonhomme. Truly strong partition walls to be broken down! and it were diffiwhich is the stronger. Results I think point to one. cult to say the latter, and this perhaps agrees with what one would a priori expect; an intelligent Englishman is generally willing to grant the possibility of excellence in institutions other than his own, VOL. V. B |