machinery which is played off against them. In other nations, at least, these sort of _tentatives_ would lead not to submission, but to indignation. It cannot be denied, however, that the French character has peculiar susceptibilities. France, like a modern coquet, may be fascinated once more by the courtly graces of discarded royalty; or, on the other hand, recollecting the malice and the impotence of which she was so long the victim, like Hellenore, entertained by the jolly satyrs, may wisely refuse to return to the cold and irksome embraces of the drivelling Malbecco. But our politician wishes all this not to be left to their own free will, but that we should interfere. We can easily believe it; ‘it was ever the fault of our English nation’ to wish to interfere with what did not concern them, for the very reason that they could interfere with comparative impunity. What is sport to them is death to others. The writer also draws a parallel, as if it were a feasible case, between Holland, Spain, and Germany throwing off a foreign yoke, and the French throwing off their own; in other words, submitting to a foreign one. We beg pardon of these acute discriminators. We know they have an answer. We leave them in possession of the nice distinction—between a foreign yoke, and a yoke imposed by foreigners! ‘This,’ says the writer in _The Times_, ‘is not a question of attachment to one dynasty or another, but a question of military enterprize between military adventurers.’ Does our speculator mean by this to confer the privileges of military adventurers, _en plein droit_, on the Emperor Alexander and the Crown Prince of Sweden? But whatever he means, it is clear that he is not consistent in what he says; for he has said just before, that the object of this so often repeated march to Paris is ‘to bring the Usurper to the block!’ Here, then, it is a question, not between contending generals, but between a usurper and a lawful monarch. So true it is that those who have most need of their assistance have the worst memories! ‘What,’ exclaims our enthusiast, ‘would there be to oppose such a general and such an army, aided by the unconquered Wellington,’ &c. First, ‘this is the very coinage of his brain.’ There’s no such general and no such army.