While successes so great and bewildering were attending the arms of civilisation on the remote parts of the earth, a great and most disastrous convulsion was preparing in its heart. Paris, as in every age, was the centre of impulsion to the whole civilised world. Louis Philippe had a very difficult game to play, and he long played it with success; but no human ability could, with the disposition of the people, permanently maintain the government of the country. He aimed at being the Napoleon of Peace; and his great predecessor knew better than any one, and has said oftener, that he himself would have failed in the attempt. Louis Philippe owed his elevation to revolution; and he had the difficult, if not impossible, task to perform, _without foreign war_, of coercing its passions. Hardly was he seated on the throne, when he felt the necessity in deeds, if not in words, of disclaiming his origin. His whole reign was a continued painful and perilous conflict with the power which had created him, and at length he sank in this struggle. He had not the means of maintaining the conflict. A successful usurper, he could not appeal to traditionary influences; a revolutionary monarch, he was compelled to coerce the passions of revolution; a military chief, he was obliged to restrain the passions of the soldiers. They demanded war, and he was constrained to keep them at peace; they sighed for plunder, and he could only meet them with economy; they panted for glory, and his policy retained them in obscurity.