of mischievous journalists; discontented shopkeepers, whose suffrages are obtained by the promise of brisker commerce under a new condition of things; the large middle class always in terror of socialism, which might rob them of their cherished luxuries. There are two great powers diminished under republican government—the aristocracy and the Church. These are working together to overthrow what they regard as a common enemy, and any means are welcome to them, whether foul or fair. Hence we see a marquis who has denied his order, an atheist and blasphemer who has shocked every religious and aristocratic conviction, and wounded every decent French susceptibility by pen and speech, M. Henri Rochefort, the leading light of the present agitation, a man who has heaped obloquy and contempt on French generals in days gone by, now the honoured mouthpiece of the army, fighting, with his usual weapons, the battle of the Church and the aristocracy. Devout Catholics will say to-day of the man whose name some years ago they could not bring themselves to mention: _C’est un bien brave homme_ (“Such an honest fellow!”) and well-born ladies of unimpeachable morals and manners will spend their halfpennies on the _Intransigeant_, in which this amiable gentleman exhales his patriotic wrath. A more singular union has never been celebrated even in France, land of incongruous contracts and odd proximities, than that between M. Henri Rochefort and the army of France, the Church, and the aristocracy. The attitude of the army to-day may be traced to the two parties in the land already mentioned, through its commanders and officers, who naturally belong to either or both. The officers who are not well born—and they are many—would fain conceal the circumstance in a snobbish democracy, and, as a consequence, adopt with exaggerated fervour the prejudices of the class to which they desire to be admitted. For there are no partisans of aristocratic privilege so impassioned and so silly, as the middle class, who ape their ways and espouse their cause through snobbishness. It is upon the weakness of this class that the nobles of France are playing so recklessly. Every second officer calls himself a count, or viscount, and is accepted as such with joy in provincial circles and by wealthy parvenus. I should be sorry to deny the respectability of honest religious convictions, but Catholicism at the present hour in France is too much a question of fashion and politics to inspire respect. Men who, to my knowledge, believe in nothing, make a point of ostentatiously attending religious services and simulating attitudes of advanced piety, because they think it “good form,” and that it will give them tone in the eyes of their neighbours. They are well aware that they cannot hope to place Philip of Orleans on an unstable throne, being too cognisant of the fact that that singular pretender is held in light esteem even by his followers and would be far from welcome