present could gather round her, and in the absence of nearly every needed instrument for the work. With antecedents in her history-with monuments on her soil-with arrangements in her social structure—with elements in her national character - which seemed peremptorily to forbid and exclude republicanism, she endeavoured to construct a republic, and seemed resolved to be satisfied with nothing else. With no honest, high-minded, or venerated statesmen, standing out like beacon-lights among the multitude, whom all were emulous to love, honour, and obey, she was called upon to undertake a work which only the loftiest intellects, operating upon the most trusting and submissive people, could satisfactorily accomplish. She set herself to rival and surpass, in their most difficult achievements, nations that differed from her in nearly every element of their national life. With a pervading military spirit—with a standing force of nearly half a million, and an armed and trained population amounting to two millions more with a centralised despotic bureaucracy with Versailles and the Tuilleries ever recalling the regal magnificence of former days-with an excitable temper, an uncommercial spirit, and a subdivided soil-she is endeavouring to imitate and exceed that political liberty, and hoping successfully to manage those democratic institutions, which have been the slow and laborious acquisitions of Britain, with her municipal habits and her liberal nobility; of America, with her long-trained faculty of self-government, her boundless and teeming territory, and her universally

diffused material well-being; of Switzerland, with her mountainous regions and her historic education; and of Norway, with her simple, hardy, and religious population, and her barren and untempting soil.

Let us look a little more closely into a few of those peculiarities in the national character and circumstances, which appear to render the present struggles of the French after a constitution at once stable and democratic, so difficult if not so hopeless.

And, first, as to RACE. Races of men, like individuals, have their distinct type, their peculiar genius, which is the product of their origin, their physiological organisation, their climate, and the development of civilisation through which they have passed,-which is, in fact, their inheritance from ancient times. Few European nations are of pure blood; almost all contain several elements, and are the more sound and vigorous for the admixture. The French and the English have in common something of the Norman and something of the Teutonic blood; but in England the prevailing element is the Saxon sub-variety of the Teutonic; in France the prevailing element is the Gallic sub-variety of the Celtic. From our Norman conquerors we derive that intellectual activity, that high resolve, those habits of conquest and command, so characteristic of our upper ranks, and which have spread by intermarriage through all classes. From our German forefathers we inherit our phlegm, our steadiness, our domestic habitudes, and our unhappy addiction to spirituous liquors.

The predominance of Frank and Norman blood gave to the old aristocracy of France those generous and noble qualities which so long distinguished the class; but since it was submerged in the great deluge which desolated the closing years of the last century, the Celtic element which pervades the great mass of the people has shone forth paramount and nearly unmodified. Now, the Teuton and the Celt have characteristics and capacities wholly dissimilar. According to the masterly analysis of our first ethnographical authority, M. Gustaf Kombst, the distinctive marks of the former are slowness but accuracy of perception, a just, deep, and penetrating, but not quick or brilliant intellect. The distinctive peculiarities of the Celt, on the contrary, are quickness of perception, readiness of combination, wit, and fertility of resource. The passion of the Celt is for national power and grandeur; that of the Teuton for personal freedom and self-rule. The Teuton is hospitable, but unsocial and reserved; the Celt is immoderately fond of society, of amusement, and of glory. The one is provident and cautious; the other impetuous and rash. The one values his own life, and respects that of others; the other sets little value upon either. Respect for women is the characteristic of the Teuton; passion for women the characteristic of the Celt.1 The latter is intemperate in love; the former is intemperate in wine. The fancy of the one is sensuous; that of the

1 Dr Kombst remarks, as a constant fact, the existence of Foundling Hospitals among Celtic nations, and their absence among those of Teutonic origin.

other ideal.

Lastly, the religious element presents diverse manifestations in the two races ;-in the Celt there is a latent tendency towards polytheism, while the Teuton displays a decided preference for monotheistic views;—Romanism retains an almost unshaken hold over the former; Protestantism has achieved its victories exclusively among the latter.

Now, these distinctions are not fancies of our own, derived from a glance at France, Germany, and England, under their present phases; they are taken on the authority of a philosopher, whose conclusions are the result of long study, and of the widest range of observation. The general accuracy of the delineation will be generally acknowledged, and can scarcely fail to impress us with the improbability that institutions which are indigenous among one of these great divisions of humanity should flourish and survive when they are transplanted into the other. Self-government, and the forms and appliances of political freedom, are plants of native growth in England and America; they are only delicate and valuable exotics in France. These national discrepancies manifest themselves in public life in a thousand daily forms. The Englishman is practical, business-like, and averse to change; his imagination, though powerful, is not easily excited; his views and aims are positive, unideal, and distinct. The Frenchman is ambitious, restless, and excitable - aspiring after the perfect; passionné pour l'inconnu; prone to "la récherche de l'absolu;" constantly, as Lamartine says, wrecking his chance or his possession of the good

"par l'impatience du mieux." The Englishman, in his political movements, knows exactly what he wants; his object is definite, and is generally even the recovery of something that has been lost, the abolition of some excrescence or abuse, the recurrence to some venerated precedent. The Frenchman is commonly aroused by the vague desire of something new, something vast, something magnificent; he prefers to fly to evils that he knows not of, rather than to bear those with which he is familiar. His golden age beckons to him out of the untried and unrealised future; ours is placed almost as baselessly, but far less dangerously, in the historic past. The Frenchman is given to scientific definitions and theories in politics; the Englishman turns on all such things a lazy and contemptuous glance. The former draws up formal declarations of the rights of man, but has an imperfect understanding of his own, and is apt to overlook those of others; the latter never descants on his rights, but exercises them daily as a matter of course, and defends them stoutly when attacked. The one is confident in his own opinion, though he be almost alone in his adhesion to it; the other has always a secret misgiving that he is wrong when he does not agree with the majority, All these are so many criteria of the possession of that "political instinct," that native aptitude for administrative business, the defect of which in the French people has hitherto rendered all their attempts at a working constitution so abortive,

Next, as to RELIGION,-the absence of which as a