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LUCIEN BONAPARTE, PRINCE OF CANINO, AND FRIEDRICH VON RAUMER, profesSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, AT BERLIN.

Does the reader ask what these two names have to do with each other? What possible connexion can subsist between the revolutionist, the democratic Prince, the republican brother of that great military usurper who turned a republic into an empire, and the loyalissimus Professor of History, &c., at the Berlin University? These are fair and reasonable questions, which we might be perplexed to answer satisfactorily, had we not, in the years of our youth, of our inquisitive idleness, attended some few courses of natural philosophy. From our recollection of the physical experiments we then witnessed, we derive the explanation of the obscure metaphysical impulse that induced the combination, which is this: We apprehend that the names or individualities in question, appear in conjunction, actuated by the same principle upon which bodies, in opposite states of electricity-positive and negative, vitreous and resinous, or whatever be the proper terms in these days of ever changing nomenclature irresistibly attract each other. If we keep clear of those commonplace contrasts, the idiot and the genius, the honest man and the knave, &c., where shall we find any more striking than that presented by Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, and Professor Von Raumer?

The Prince-for we, who are neitheir republicans nor equalitarians, whether the equality be that of licentious anarchy, or of slavery under despotism, must needs give precedency to the princely title, more especially when the precedency of talent accords with that of not birth, but created social station.-The Prince, then, born a petty Corsican noble, was, as he himself has told us, a boyish democrat; and, although the horrors of the French Revolution speedily disgusted him with democracy, he remained-to us, who saw him indistinctly looming in the distance, through the bewildering mists of blood, a very prosopopoeia of Ja

cobinisn-he remained really a sturdy republican, through all the allurements of power tempting him during his brother's empire-which empire, despite his opposition thereto, he still affects to regard and justify as a mere temporary dictatorship, necessary to make an end of the Revolution and its woes- —through, what might be harder to resist, a seemingly ardent love for that imperial brother's person, admiration of his genius, and proud delight in his triumphs; and his brother's fall having, naturally enough, generated no love of legitimacy, he remains a conscientious republican to the present day. Yet this republican Bonaparte frankly declares, both in his memoirs,* and in a pamphlet,t published last year, that, upon visiting, or rather residing in England, he discovered a constitutional monarchy to be nearly the best of republics. Not a constitutional monarchy after the fashion of that of the Barricades, where the antagonist principles of monarchy and democracy being placed in the lists for a combat à l'outrance, one or the other must gain a decided victory, but our English, old-fashioned, Magna Charta-constitutional monarchy, wherein a powerful hereditary peerage balances and controls alike the crown and an elective House of Commons; which Lucien Bonaparte considers to form the true and proper republican institutions, such as they must be, to encircle, temper, and support a kingly

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Mémoires de Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino. 8vo. London: 1836. Reponse de Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino, aux Mémoires du General Lamarque. Imprimé par Schulze, Poland Street, 1835.

adopted through good report and evil report, through temptation and persecution, and preserving through the whole, even to an age but too often hard and cold, the feelings of human nature and of early family affection.

Turn we now, although we have not by any means done with his republican Imperial Highness, to his opposite pole, the Berlin Professor.

Friedrich Von Raumer is, we apprehend, best known in this country by those letters upon England, upon the social condition and political institutions of the English nation,* which Mrs Sarah Austin has translated for the benefit of such of her countrymen, as not knowing, need to be made acquainted with themselves. No small portion of the mass, we apprehend, therefore, will be entitled to claim her services, and we trust equally able and willing to remunerate them. But had these letters upon England been all Herr Von Raumer had written, had we known him only as a loyal Prussian legitimatist, queerly metamorphosed into an English Radical, of a surety we should never have devoted even these few lines to commemorate his mistakes and misrepresentations; nor, even had the contrast he offers to Lucien Bonaparte provoked a smile, as it occurred to us, should we have dreamed of placing his name side by side with that of the really able Prince. But Raumer is more than an observer of England through the spectacles or the eyes of Mrs Austin and the Whig Ministry. He is a diligent, lucid, and judicious historian, and, as such, necessarily attracts our attention, professing ourselves, as we do, zealous lovers of history.

Professor Raumer first became known to us as the diligent writer of a voluminous and valuable history of the Hohenstauffen or Swabian emperors. Upon the laborious research, the critical acumen, and the general historical talent displayed in this performance, it is needless for us to enlarge. It is a work of too great magnitude to be incidentally discussed; and its merits and defects have long

since been made known to the British public by two elaborate critiqueswritten, as we have understood, by critics totally unconnected with each other; the first in the pages of the Foreign Quarterly Review, the other, some years later, in those of the Quarterly Review. The only point connected with this history that we, at present, feel ourselves called upon to notice, is the conservative, or rather legitimatist character which it every where discovers. The first of the two reviewers alluded to, has observed that Raumer is one of the very few modern historians who favour the Ghibellines; and he does this, not only with regard to Germany, where the question lay only between rival families, or, at most, between the empire and the Papal See; but with regard to Italy, where even we, who profess ourselves Ghibellines, must acknowledge that it bore the appearance of lying between liberty, or at least independence, and a foreign yoke. We say bore the appearance, because we think with the reviewer, that, inasmuch as the German Emperors were, or claimed to be Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and were certainly the regular and lawful successors of Charlemagne, Italy was not only an integral, but the essential part of their empire, Germany being the accessary. Still, the fact being that those Emperors were Germans, who, with the exception of Frederick II., and, perhaps, of his father Henry VI., resided almost entirely in their native Germany, visiting Italy only in pomp, to receive the Imperial crown, or in arms to assert their authority, the feudal and federal connexion of the Peninsula with the empire bore, to superficial observers, the character of subjugation to a foreign yoke. Guelph insurrection of the Lombard cities against Frederic Barbarossa was, in many respects, analagous to that of the Anglo-Americans against the distant mother country; it was the insurrection of conscious strength, deemed, in the case of the Lombards somewhat rashly, equal to the maintenance of independence against a remote sove

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England im Jahre 1835. Von Friedrich Von Raumer. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin: 1835. Raumer's England in 1835. Translated by S. Austin and E. Lloyd. 3 vols. 12mo. London: 1836.

+ Geschichte der Hohenstauffen und ihrer Zeit. their Times.) By F. Von Raumer. 6 vols. 8vo.

(History of the Hohenstauffens and Leipzig: 1825.

reign. As such remote sovereign must, in the nature of things, govern his more distant subjects less paternally, less judiciously than those immediately under his own eye-especially in early times of imperfect communication-the insurgents had plausible if not sufficient grounds to allege in their justification. And thus, although it be mere schoolboy declamation to revile the two Frederics as ambitious and usurping conquerors, it is very natural that enthusiastic lovers of liberty should sionately embrace the Guelph cause, the cause of fair and polished Italy, against barbarous Germans.

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Raumer in his history, on the contrary, pleaded the cause of lawful sovereignty against insurgents for liberty and independence. Now, whatever such conduct might have implied in a politician, we viewed it only as the conduct of a man of letters, and as such it appeared to us, in the midst of the march of intellect, of schoolmasters abroad, of la jeune France, of das junge Deutschland, and what not, as a remarkable instance of moral courage, and we enquired who this bold advocate of legitimate authority might be. We learned that Friedrich Ludwig George Von Raumer was a Prussian of noble family, who had been destined and trained for official life, for the career of a statesman, had early merited and obtained the good opinion of his superiors; had held various small posts; and was so favoured by Prince Hardenberg, that he received him into his family, as well as office, in order to fit him for the highest stations, and that his passion for historical studies had induced him to abandon these flattering prospects, and solicit, in lieu of a ministerial portfolio in reversion, and some under-secretaryship in possession, the appointment of professor of history at the University of Breslau, which university he has since quitted for that of Berlin. We likewise learned that the King of Prussia, with a truly royal patronage of learning, when Raumer's historical labours require that he should travel in search of information, not only gives him leave of absence from his professional duties,

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but defrays the expense of his journey.

These details, at once so characteristic of the enthusiasic Teutonic nature, and so strikingly discrepant, as well from old German feudalism as from continental passion for office, certainly did not lessen our interest in the noble historian, and we looked with confident desire for more fruits of his diligence. Some few publications of his appeared, we believe, from time to time, which did not reach us, but the year 1831 gave birth to two works, which we eagerly sought. These were two sets of letters from Paris, the one relative to the dead, the other to the living.*

The former of these sets of letters, which though last published-in fact written after the Professor's return to Berlin-we mention first, both because it was the first of the two that we saw, and because it constitutes a part of his historical labours, and is known to the English public, as translated by Lord Francis Egerton, under the title of "Illustrations of the History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." Of these historical letters it will, therefore, suffice to observe generally, that they contain the fruits of Raumer's researches in the Parisian libraries, materials upon which to form, or by which to rectify historical opinions, but which, to our old-fashioned notions, would have been more fitly, though perhaps less lucratively, incorporated in the notes or appendix to Raumer's history, now in course of publication, for the sake of which he sought them, than in this independent form. In these Berlin letters, however, we still find, as far as the nature of the anomalous composition, or rather compilation, admits, the same ultraconservative disposition to defend all lawfully constituted authorities against insurrection and innovation, which first attracted our notice. Thus the historian has discovered and published documents justifying Philip II. of Spain from the accusation, under which he had long laboured, of having poisoned his eldest son and his third wife. This eldest son, begging pardon of all the poets who have sung

Briefe aus Paris zur Erläuterung der Geschichte der 16 und 17 Jahrhunderts. 2 Leipzig, 1831. Briefe aus Paris im Jahre 1830. 2 bde. Leipzig, 1831.

unaccompanied by any intimation of distaste or disapprobation.

the virtues and mourned the fate of Don Carlos, from Otway, Schiller, and Alfieri, down to their latest suc- Still Raumer was evidently supcessor, our tragical Home Secretary, ported under this slight attack of the appears to have been, if not actually liberalist epidemic by innate habitual an idiot or a maniac, a youth whose German sound sense and right feelpassions were extravagant and un- ing. He saw the faults of both parbridled to a degree so nearly approach- ties, of the opposition and the people, ing to frenzy, as clearly made it the as well as those of the Government. duty of the king, if he could not cure He condemned and ridiculed the him, to exclude him from the succes- Brussels parody of the Parisian Three sion, for the sake of the millions of Days-he laughed at the arrogance subjects who might otherwise have of the Belgians, who, always subjectbeen the victims of his follies and vices. ed to a foreign yoke, always intolerant Don Carlos further appears to have Catholics, affected to look down upon died in confinement of a fever brought the long self-emancipated Protestant, on by his own intemperance. If all-tolerant Dutch, as slaves, tyrants, Philip II. were jealous of his French and bigots. He saw that, not in Queen, it must surely have been with Prussia only, but every where, the some one more captivating in mind spirit is more important than the form and body than her stepson. of a government.. Nay, he even carried this monarchical opinion too far, at least for us, who incline to think that moderately free forms may gradually generate a free spirit. We shall extract a few passages to this effect from the Paris letters, partly as an apology for our own individual foible for an author who could write the letters from England, and partly as a contrast to, and a sort of correc tive of some of the absurdities which actually astounded us as we perused those English letters. In a letter, dated March 13, 1830, he says, speaking of the King of the then undivided Netherlands, not without truth perhaps, but somewhat reminding us of the well-known professional defensive suggestions of the tanner, woolstapler, &c. of the besieged town.

The second set of Parisian Letters, entitled "Letters from Paris in 1830," professes to be a collection of the letters written by Herr Von Raumer to his family and friends, communicating to them his opinions relative to the manners, literature, theatres, philosophy, religion, and politics of the French metropolis, as he found them, during a residence of five months, four of which immediately preceded the notorious, if not glorious, Three Days, during which days he was absent upon an excursion.

In these letters we could not but observe some little inconsistency in the writer's political opinions as they refer to the past or the present, to Ger many, perhaps we should say Prussia, and every other part of the habitable globe. Here we found that the historian who justified the most severe and arbitrary measures of Frederic Barbarossa, who considered the struggle of the Lombard cities for liberty and independence as rank rebellion, viewed his Gallic contemporaries with different eyes, reprobated, as blind and lawless obstinacy, Charles X.'s endeavours to maintain the ministers of his own choice, thought the French would have been justified in every measure of passive resistance, such as non-payment of taxes, and the like, and that they took a perhaps wiser, because more quickly decisive course, in the very active resistance of the Three Days. Nay, we found an obscure intimation of treachery towards his master on the part of Marmont,

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"June 22.-I believe that the false overweight, the immoderate irritability and restlessness of the democratic element in the legislature, can be lessened and cured only by giving a greater scope and influence to this same democratic element in its proper lower sphere. Municipal and provincial councils draw off the blood from the head, and again prepare it to return thither in due and moderated circulation. Extravagant as it may sound, I am convinced that, in France, the strengthening of this right democracy would produce a wholesome weakening of the diseased and dangerous democracy, and that all else is quackery, which will not effect the desired object."

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"August 7 (after the glorious days). -Some four hundred people, not rabble, mostly students and youths of that class, made their way into the Chamber of Deputies. They demanded, not merely the expulsion of the Villele Peers from the Chamber of Peers, but the abolition of the hereditary peerage, and of all privileges whatever. One party among the Deputies would gladly have employed force against these riotous reformers. But how can you on Friday punish as rioters the very persons whom on Tuesday you extolled as the deliverers of their country, as patterns for all nations and all times? What

is worse is that some of the Deputies sided with the four hundred politicians, and thus further encouraged them. Others argued against their views."

This is followed by such an antidemocratic argument, which, whether original or condensed from those of the more rational Deputies, it were superfluous to extract. We shall end these specimens of our historian's still remaining good sense, even whilst labouring under the revolutionary contagion in the years 1830 and 1831, with a passage that contains a sort of political confession of faith, as also what may be called a prophetic foresight of the results of the Three Glorious Days to French liberty, the writer of which we should never have conceived obnoxious to the Radical or Reform fever, at least to the degree to which he has since sickened of it. With respect to prescient apprehensions expressed, it will be remembered, that, even in 1832, when the book

was published, Louis Philippe was far from having attained to his present despotic power.

"Sept. 8.-Through their revolutions, for and by main force the French have reached the highest grade of legal institutions, and have triumphed over the absolutists of the school of main force. Should they, in the arrogance of victory, sink back into that region, the fault will be theirs, and will not fail of its punishment. But I deny that they have now, with all their thinking and doing, established themselves upon the pinnacle of social civilisation. That king and people can grow together, blending into one existence, that free gifts and sacrifices can be of greater worth than negative opposition, that the fructifying sun of love can and must shine upon the defensive pillar of law and right, these are things which, to them, appear incredible, impossible. Even the most judicious of the Doctrinaires would fain hammer their edifice together out of more tangible materials. Thus, in our father-land, the life and existence of king and people are actually established in a loftier, holier region. There, monarch and citizen-like husband and wife, parent and child, brothers, or sisters-ask not about their rights whilst love reigns. Yet it is true that should, which God forbid! our nation become seditious, or a king tyrannical, we might find that the legal element was inadequately deveveloped in our political life."

Who would not, from all this, have inferred, as we did, that, in the eyes of Professor Von Raumer, the mixture of chartered rights and constitutional feelings, such as it existed in this country before we were seized with the mania of improvement, would appear to be the true and just medium between French theory and German sentiment? But before we proceed either to speak of our disappointment in this respect, or further to trace our Professor's literary career, we feel tempted to say a word or two upon the party designation, Doctrinaire, respecting which, some of our readers may possibly be as much mistaken and perplexed as we ourselves were, French scholars as we fancy ourselves, until we were enlightened by a French friend. We had imagined that doctrinaire must answer to theorist ; and there we were in the right, but even

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