has been obliged by the discretions of official business to keep for years from conversation on the sayings and doings of his "experiences," feels overwhelmed by the load until he gets rid of it in the shape of memoirs. There is of course a share of vanity in the importance which he thus attaches to them; but he does so, not alone because they refer principally to himself, but because he thinks they must be likewise interesting or instructive to the public: and this social destination redeems the weakness or the vice of vanity.

On the other hand, the explanation which the French themselves give of their memoir-writing, falls substantially within the terms of the same solution of sociability. For this spirit of self-infusion with the life and confidence of the community is the effect only of complete equality-of democracy; and democracy implies a relatively high intelligence and civilization.

A confirmation of the connexion is the fact, that great advances in the direction of liberality have all been followed by a rage for memoirs. Such was the case in England after both her revolutions, of which the largest portion of the history has been recorded in the shape of memoirs. Our own American revolution presents a fuller, as more forward, instance, of which the histories continue still to be conglomerates of memoirs, or of biographies which are but memoirs in their application to third parties. The correspondence of both these personal and popular modes of writing with the progress and the prevalence of social equalization is proved directly by their growing vogue in the most democratic of communities; for, in this country, have we not everybody's memoirs or biography, down to those of retired showmen?

The same phenomenon, but in a duly higher sphere, followed each of the three principal revolutions of France. The calm succeeding the first and greatest was filled with memoirs and biographies, to the exclusion, almost total, of the higher sorts of publications. It is the philosophic explanation of the absence in the first Empire of that only "illustration" which Europe's master failed to supply, the illustration of creative literature and philosophy. But these are things not to be called forth by pecuniary or potential patronage, but by the stimulating presence of an appreciative public; and the public of the first Empire, being almost wholly and merely popular, it could appreciate only memoirs-that is, particulars and personalities. The Restoration, on the contrary, produced at once a blaze of genius, because the public then addressed was the returned aristocracy. Thus quite spontaneous, when we have the clue, is the solution of these two great questions, which still con

tinue, in France itself, to be considered mystical and contradictory. The "despotism" of Napoleon would serve the purpose of a certain party, to explain the intellectual barrenness of his reign; but that an equal despotism should produce an opposite effect cannot be swallowed by the logic of even political partisanship. The social law may be expressed, in fine, in this familiar formula: In proportion as the popular masses attain to influence upon public opinion, which is the first and most conspicuous consequence of all progressive revolutions, the corresponding publications proceed both from and to the memory, as being the simplest productive faculty of the mind; and in proportion as the reading public are, on the other hand, repurified, by "restoration" of the instructed classes or by education of the popular masses, the works of intellect ascend progressively along the series of creative faculties, imagination, reflection, reason.

Accordingly, and to return to our historical indications, the revolution of July, too, brought back the memoirs, the professors, and the journalists. The visitation now succeeding the repetition of 1848, though duly milder from the restriction on these two last classes of propagandists, is spreading recently into a mania of memoirwriting. Nothing else (excepting pamphlets about the war) appears at Paris. The most prolific of the romancers fall back on memory from imagination. The famous Alexander Dumas has lately published his precious memoirs, and, episodically, everybody else's. George Sand recounts more modestly her more instructive or suggestive "life," which, by the way, seems very different from what the world had imagined. Even Dr. Veron, a retired journalist, has favoured Paris with his memoirs-which is as low, we see, as things go here, as Veron had been also showman: with the distinction, however, in honour of the two American parallels, that the French humbug had been a man of education.

Returning upward, the standard writers and the stanchest statesmen are all for memoirs. The philosopher Cousin is writing memoirs of female saints; and, from being Coryphæus of skepticism, is turned continuator of Alban Butler. Another dabbler in philosophy has just propounded a complete system, which he makes himself the centre of, and calls the "Memoirs of his Times;" a thing, however, in which he differs from the great majority of his predecessors only in the probably unconscious candour of his title. M. Villemain, the former Minister of Public Instruction under Louis Philippe, can do no better than give us volumes of his "Souvenirs." And the grave Guizot quits in turn, his lucubrations upon English history to publish penitential memoirs of his late lamented

administration. What wonder, then, that the most variously-experienced as well as oldest, the most voluminous and the most versatile of French jurists and politicians, the most fidgety and witty and vainglorious of living Frenchmen should have bethought him, amid this rage, to write his Memoirs?

M. Dupin was in public life for something over half a century. For thirty years he was at the bar, for twenty years upon the bench; and, simultaneously, he was for most of the time an active politician, in opposition or in office with all parties and all governments. An acute spectator, behind the curtain, of the rise and fall of three dynasties, it was however only in 1830 that his official career commenced. Nor did it close upon the downfall of his patron, Louis Philippe; M. Dupin, it will be remembered, became republican in 1848, and was even speaker of the constituent assembly-which adds the passage of a fourth and democratic dynasty to his experience. He even made, it is said, advances to the succeeding and present régime. But Louis Napoleon's stern contempt for political cameleons, even when they take his own hue, gave a deaf ear to these advances; and so Dupin took the occasion of the confiscation of the Orleans property, of which he was head agent, to quit the magistracy and the public stage. What will give zest and credibility to his disclosures through this long experience is, that he seeks not to dissemble these shocking variations, and merely answers, quite professionally, that he kept throughout to his first profession-that of advocating all causes alike for cash.

It will be curious to peruse his Memoirs at the epoch of the republic, and learn the plottings to draw the democrats into the interest of the Orleanists. This, with all the properly political department of his experience, is reserved for the forthcoming volumes of the publication. The present are confined exclusively to his professional career. But having held a leading position as advocate at the French bar for twenty years of social turmoil and political reaction, he was employed in all the celebrated causes of that stirring period; and there are several of sufficient interest, political and even romantic, to be made more intimately known to foreign readers. As to the purely civil and professional portion of the Memoirs, any notice of them would concern only the gentlemen of the bar; and to this fraction of our readers we can spare room but for a few statistics, which may suggest to them the lore and labour of a leading advocate in Europe.

The civil causes in which M. Dupin either pleaded or gave counsel amounted, in the period mentioned, to over four thousand. The manuscript collection of his "consultations" alone, that

is to say, his written opinions or rather arguments, compose some twenty folio volumes, each from seven to eight hundred pages. In addition, the printed briefs, to be distributed to the judges in cases which he argued orally, make a collection of twenty-two volumes! M. Dupin has besides published books or pamphlets upon most subjects within the sphere of jurisprudence and even politics. He has even written one of them in Latin. It is true, indeed, that they are all short, as befits the temperament of the writer, constitutionally barred from keeping long to any subject. But they are granted to be sound and erudite, as far as such a feat is possible to a man utterly devoid of philosophic principle. It should be added to the labours and the merits of M. Dupin, that he is the self-retained and standing advocate of the "Gallican Church."

We now proceed to a running notice of a few of his "Causes Célèbres," upon the personages or the incidents of which the Memoirs throw some new light. As some of the principal had their occasion in the well-known episode of the Cent-Jours, or the return of Napoleon from Elba, the public memoirs of our author commence with 1815, and some particulars of the last moments of the Empire. He remarks that at the Restoration, the Bourbons were so little known to even persons of the age and position of himself, then a prominent lawyer, that most of them were ignorant of the names and titles of these princes. Pamphlets and proclamations were required to remind the people that Louis Stanislaus Xavier, at first Count of Provence, then Count of Lille, entitling himself Louis XVIII., emigrant of 1792, was brother of Louis XVI., immolated in 1793; and that Count d'Artois, who was the first to emigrate, was the brother of King Louis XVIII. A trait remarkably characteristic of the obliviousness of the French people, or more familiarly the levity imputed to the Celtic race.

The Napoleonic restoration aforesaid of the hundred days, was the occasion of the maiden entrance of M. Dupin upon the stage of politics. The sinking emperor on his return made a concession to liberalism by the "Act Additional" to the "Constitutions of the Empire." By this amendment the Senate was transformed into a Chamber of Peers, to be appointed, however, by the emperor himself, and the Corps Législative into a Chamber of Representatives, who were to be elected by the people. M. Dupin was made a representative at the resulting general election.

He owns, however, with a modesty for which he is not very famous, that the competition for election was not crowded; but he does so to bring in the reason, which fully compensates his amour

propre, to wit, the difficulty of the position at that crisis. He accepted, notwithstanding, upon the rule of conduct above ascribed to him: "An advocate, I did not deem myself changing profession or ministry, I only considered myself as having a cause additional to defend the cause of my country."

The new cause he set accordingly to plead at once in professional fashion. Napoleon, seeking to secure to himself the fickle faith of the new Chambers, required the members to take an oath of fidelity. But our bustling barrister objected that there was no authority for this requirement in the constitutional "bond," and that the form, if insisted on, should be in virtue of an express law. M. Dupin proposed, moreover, a gencral revision of the imperial constitution, even as amended, and with the purpose, now avowed, of forcing Napoleon to abdicate again. He denies, however, what the French historians of the epoch have imputed to him, that he laboured for the substitution of the then Duke of Orleans. He wished, he says, only that the nation should be left free to choose its king; free not only from foreign influence, but even from legislative nomination. So far was he, it seems, from offering a new candidate for royalty, that an interrupter asked M. Dupin "Why he did not propose a republic?" To which the wit, with his habitual promptitude, responded, by a line of Corneille :

"Le pire des Etats est l'Etat populaire."

An axiom, adds the author, since abundantly verified;-referring, no doubt, to 1848. And yet he took an active part, and even an office in this popular government. But he did it, we should remember, in his professional capacity, and as an advocate who undertakes a bad cause to make the most of it.

The same event of the return of Napoleon from Elba, which gave commencement to the parliamentary career of M. Dupin, produced him also some of the most glorious of his professional clients. It is known that several generals of the Empire, who had retained office on the first restoration of the Bourbons, and had broken faith to join Napoleon upon his landing upon French soil, were excluded, by the final restoration, from the general amnesty which had been stipulated by the army and the city of Paris with the Allies, whose obligations were of course imperative upon the princes they placed in power. Nevertheless, one of the first measures of the reaction was an ordinance directing the arrest and the trial by councils of war of all the generals placed in the circumstances stated. All of them who did not take to exile, were tried accordingly and punished,

Democracy is the worst of governments.