England! But a republic of kettle-drums and trumpets will never do with him; and if he were favoured with an interview with the pompous aspirant to the French presidency, it would probably end in his telling Louis Napoleon the homely truth--that he has nothing to be proud of, and had better eat and drink like other folk, and "define his position" as a candidate, if he don't want to find himself _used-up_, and sent on a long voyage up Salt River; which, you may not know, my Basil, is a Stygian stream, and the ancients called it Lethe. So much, then, for the _ultima ratio_ of illegitimate governments--the attempt to satisfy the demand for national dignity by pageants and by names, and to drown the outcries of natural discontent by the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbals. In vain did the sage Piedmontese foretell it all, like a Cassandra. "Man is prohibited," said that admirable Mentor, "from giving great names to things of which he is the author, and which he thinks great; but if he has proceeded legitimately, the vulgar names of things will be rendered illustrious, and become grand." How specially does England answer to the latter half of this maxim! and who can read the former without seeing France, in her fool's-cap, before his mental eye? De Maistre himself has instanced the revolutionary follies of Paris, and lashed them with unsparing severity. Whatever is national in England seems to have grown up, like her oaks, from deep and strong roots, and to stand, like them, immovable, They make their own associations, and dignify their own names. Everything is home-born, natural, and real. The Garter, the Wool-sack, Hyde Park, Epsom and Ascot--these things in France would be the _Legion of Honour_, the _Curule-chair_, the _Elysian fields_, the _Olympic games_! The veritable attempt was made to reinstitute, in the Champ-de-Mars, the sports of antiquity; and they received the pompous name of _Les jeux Olympiques_. De Maistre ridicules their nothingness, and adds that, when he saw a building erected and called the _Odéon_, he was sure that music was in its decline, and that the place would shortly be to let. In like manner, he says of the motto of Rousseau, with intense _naïvete_, "Does any man dare to write under his own portrait, _vitam impendere vero_? You may wager, without further information, fearlessly, that it is the likeness of a liar." How quick the human heart perceives what is thus put into words by a philosopher! It is in vain for France to think of covering her nakedness with a showy veil. The Empire was a glittering gauze, but how transparent! They saw one called Emperor and a second Charlemagne; and the Pope himself was there to give him a crown. But it was a meagre cheat. Poor Josephine never looked ridiculous before, but then she acted nonsense. The imperial robes were gorgeous, but they meant nothing on the Citizen Buonaparte. Everybody saw behind the scenes. They detected Talma in the strut of