It is odd that the French are doing badly. The country is fairly prosperous, there is no war of classes, no apparent revolutionary feeling, yet distrust and doubt as to the future seem universal. It almost looks as if revolutions had driven the better sort of men out of public life. I cannot believe that their colonial craze will last long. There is, in all Europe, no country to which colonies are so entirely useless; for the French never emigrate and seldom even travel; and to send conscripts to tropical settlements cannot be popular with the peasantry. As to The Club--I am quite in favour of Huxley's admission; but have we only one vacancy? Would not any possible opposition to him be disarmed, if he were brought in, not singly, but as one of two or three? We must talk over candidates when we meet.... Poor old Owen cannot, in the course of nature, last long. [Footnote: He lived, however, for another ten years, dying at the age of eighty-eight in 1892.] Huxley would be his natural heir; more than the Archbishop's. _To Lord Derby_ _Foxholes, December 27th_.--To return to what you say of France. Do you not think that a democratic republic, in which every citizen is striving to get all he can for his vote at the expense of the State, necessarily becomes the most rapacious and corrupt form of government? It is this which has raised the budgets of France for 1883 to 122 millions sterling; and if you add the communal expense, to 154 millions. It is this which compels them to persist in a reckless expenditure, and to invent new modes of spending money and creating places by absurd expeditions abroad. The system there, as you say, drives every man of honour and honesty out of political life, and substitutes for them adventurers and idiots. The evil will become more intolerable still, and there will come another revolution, probably at first violent in form and ultimately put down by force. This is a melancholy forecast, but it is that of all the persons in France whose judgement is of value. As to The Club--we had better not propose Huxley while Owen is amongst us. But we have several octogenarians--Overstone, Henry Taylor; and as for the lower grade of septuagenarians, they are numerous; but I will say nothing of them, as I shall shortly join that body. Altogether The Club presents a respectable array of years, and tends to longevity. I should like an engineer, if we could catch an agreeable one. What would you say to Sir Henry Loch? Few men have seen more of the world--in India, China, the Crimea, down to the Isle of Man; and I think him vastly agreeable. However, we can talk this over when we meet. CHAPTER XXI THE FRENCH ROYALISTS