his successive ministries, to conciliate them, have been unavailing, and the government, in its own defence it must be admitted, though not for the good of the people, was compelled to adopt measures for controlling and counteracting the increasing and threatening influence of its inveterate enemies. The principal of these measures relates to the education of the young men preparing for the church, and its object is to place all diocesan religious schools (petits seminaires), like all the other schools in the country, under the controul of the royal university. Villemain, as minister for public instruction, prepared and proposed a law for that purpose, which was readily assented to by the subservient Chamber of Peers, but which occasioned such a burst of indignation, on the part of the bishops and the clergy, and led to such violent controversy, that its discussion in the House of Deputies was adjourned from the last to the present

session.

Previous to the opening of the Chambers, Villemain had to consult with the king about the introduction of the law into the House of Deputies. The minister, after his warfare with the bishops, considering his honour as at stake, and relying upon the king's obstinacy in his own plans, was determined to press the adoption of the measure, in the lower house, without any concession to the clerical body. Contrary to his expectations, he found the king in a different disposition, and a warm discussion ensued. The irascibility to which his majesty always was subject has, of late years, increased to such a point, that the least contradiction puts him into a passion, and, in this state, he does not minutely weigh the expressions he makes use of, unless it be to render them still more haughty and provoking. After all, this may be proper treatment for the members of his present cabinet, and especially for the one in question, who, in April, 1814, on the place Vendôme, publicly seized the stirrups and kissed the boots of the Emperor Alexander, proclaiming him at the same time the saviour of the country!

We are bound, however, to admit that the king must have carried his practice to a great extremity, since a man of the temper of Villemain, a character stamped with thirty-three years subserviency under every successive government, could not help resenting the insult, and rejoining in terms so illsounding to the royal ears, that the master interrupted him in these terms: Allons donc! vous êtes fou.'

Most of our readers are aware that the legitimate kings of France had the gift of curing the scurvy, by merely touching the sufferer, and saying: 'Le Roi te touche; Dieu te guèrisse! The king of the Barricades, it appears, has another but more awful gift; for, no sooner had the words escaped from his mouth,

than madness had seized the minister, who, losing sight of the king, and imagining that he was 'tête a tête' with a Jesuit, rushed upon him, seized him by the neckcloth, and was doing his best to strangle him, when, at the cries of the king, officers of his household entered and liberated him from the grasp of the madman, who, cleverly enough for a person in his situation, escaped from the palace, ran to the lunatic asylum where his wife is confined, and being led to her apartment by the doctor, fell into her arms, and said that the Jesuits had ruined him; that he had just had a personal encounter with the very worst of them, whom, had it not been for his assistants, he would have annihilated; but he was overpowered. What will become of you, my poor wife? what will become of our children? Jesuits never forgive! we are all undone!' &c. &c.

The doctor, a clever man, immediately saw that, instead of one patient he was likely to have two, and hesitated if he should not immediately order a private room and a strait waistcoat: but, the thought that the huge, unclean, and unintelligent mass in human form he had before him, was a minister, a Grand Maître,' stopped him, and he ordered two servants to take a hackney coach, and see the madman home to his ministerial residence, which orders were instantly and respectfully obeyed. Immediately after the doctor repaired to the palace, and reported the scene which he had witnessed.

The news of such an event spread all over Paris, and its propagation soon alarmed the Thuileries more than the event itself, and all the ministers were speedily assembled at the palace, to consider what was to be done under such circumstances. The king, already informed of all the particulars that had been circulated, in the first moments of general emotion, thought it best, in his vaunted clemency, to forget every thing except the averred madness of Villemain, and condescended to order those of his household who had witnessed the facts, to lose all recollection of them, and be silent until the official account was regularly and formally issued. There being no doubt about the lunacy of the absent colleague, a family predisposition to it was easily established. One of his youngest brothers, a scholar of the imperial Lycée, (now college Louis le Grand), hung himself in a cell where he had been placed under arrest. Another, afterwards an officer of artillery, committed so many acts of folly, that, in 1823, he was sent to the colonies, through the influence of his brother, then a legitimist, to get rid of him. Furthermore, incipient insanity, so far back as 1827, was proved against Villemain himself, by the publication of a romance, entitled, LASCARIS: therefore it was agreed that the fact of the lunacy should be officially admitted, with suitable expressions of regret

at the loss of the invaluable services of such a man, and of hope that his recovery would soon enable him to render new services to the state. Nay more, the better to secure and hasten the complete cure of the unfortunate Grand Maître, the king resolved to grant him a pension of fifteen thousand francs a year, and, with his customary liberality, ordered the council to prepare and propose a law for making this pension payable by the people.

But a most important point remained unsettled; that is to say, the immediate cause, and the circumstances which attended the outburst of madness. The witnesses of the facts, in the first impulse of wonder and indignation, had been so indiscreet as to give all the particulars, which had soon spread over Paris, on such authority, and with such effect, that an official denial was considered as likely to be unsuccessful, and even to be more injurious than the report itself. Thanks to the wisdom evinced by the king, in ordering his attendants to forget all that occurred in their presence, as he himself had resolved to do, though they were not required to be silent, the constitutional government was extricated from this embarrassing situation. On the day after the event, twenty different and contradictory versions were so industriously circulated, that even the best knowing began to doubt, not merely the accuracy of the reports, but also the truth of the fact itself, of Villemain being mad. This disposition of the public was another difficulty for the ministers, particularly at the opening of the legislative session; but fortunately, Villemain came to their assistance, and set the matter at rest, by jumping out of a window, without in the least injuring himself, in an attempt to escape from his ministerial residence, where, he declared, that Jesuits were threatening to poison or murder him.

This last act of decided lunacy was at once made known everywhere; and as it established that the predominant, if not the only character of the mental disease, was hatred and fear of Jesuits, every one naturally was anxious to ascertain what could have occasioned that hatred and fear, on the part of a minister of state, who had at his disposal the police, the gensdarmes, the king's attorneys, the general attorneys, the judges and the juries of the land. This anxiety was soon relieved; and the good people of Paris, and of the rest of France, were gravely and almost officially told, that the reading of the 'Wandering Jew' had done all the mischief. The moment this wonderful piece of news was promulgated, all the previous reports and rumours were obliterated from the public mind. Villemain himself would have been completely lost sight of, were it not that his madness was connected with the all-absorbing subject, ‘Le Juif Errant.' Nothing else was spoken of. 'Have you read the

'Juif Errant,' which disorganized the mind of our Grand Maître?' 'You must read the 'Juif Errant,'-'all must read the 'Juif Errant,' for a while supplanted the customary greeting of every one, on meeting with an acquaintance: Good morninghow do you do? Such being the case among our neighbours, it is clear that we could not avoid remarking on the Juif Errant' to the readers of the 'Eclectic.'

If our limits allowed us so to do, we should here claim attention to some new political questions arising from the facts admitted in Paris, and which, for aught we know, may soon occur here also, and endanger, if not the person of her most gracious Majesty, at least, the existence of her government. We must content ourselves with merely propounding them, in the hope that they may be taken up by some of our political philosophers, in want of a subject; nay, even by the author of Coningsby,' so well qualified to elucidate the following points:

1st. The superiority of romances, novels, and tales over history, in exhibiting the events and characters of our times. 2nd. Romances, novels, and tales, considered as a medium of government.

3rd. Romances, novels, and tales, considered as engines of opposition and of ministerial revolutions.

4th, and last, The superior fitness of romance and novel writers for the government of our own or any other country, on the now generally-admitted principle of expediency; that is to say, of finding out expedients in any given circumstances.

There is no inconsistency between this last proposition, and the fact stated in a preceding page, of incipient insanity being proved against Villemain, by his writing and publishing 'Lascaris; for, notwithstanding the title and the matter of the book, and the evident intention of rivaling the travels of Anacharsis, by Barthelemy, and the journey of Anténor in Greece, by Lantier, the few persons who ever read the book, could never range it under any category, except that of 'Livres ennuyeux ;' while the publisher, Ladvocat, placed it on the pile of 'unsaleable books,' where almost the whole edition was found by the assignees of his bankruptcy, two or three years afterwards; and sold as waste paper, with half the edition of the Life of Cromwell, by the same author.

Villemain himself, conscious of his failure, admitted that he was a bad hand at novel writing; and, not only never thought of again attempting it, but even began to feel and to express contempt and aversion for that special kind of literature; so much so, that, being asked one day by a lady, his opinion of Notre Dame de Paris, he answered, Je ne lis pas ces ordures !' (I do not read those dirty books.) How, then, did it occur that

the despiser of Victor Hugo should have made an exception in favour of Eugene Sue, and should have read the 'Juif Errant,' after his unqualified reprobation of 'Notre Dame'? This must be explained.

Our readers are not aware of the discredit into which the daily press of Paris has fallen. The inconsistency, the party prejudices, the unblushing corruption of all the newspapers, their neglect of general interests for coterie quarrels, have so disgusted the public, that very few care about them, except for the scanty news which they occasionally contain. A glance at this part of the paper is all they condescend to give; and as they can see all the newspapers for nothing at the coffee-houses, or for one penny, at the cabinets de lecture,' (reading-rooms,) established in almost every street in Paris, very few persons regularly take in a paper, as annual or even quarterly subscribers, except coffee-house or reading-room keepers. The consequence naturally has been a considerable decrease in the circulation of all the newspapers, an idea of which may be formed from the fact, that the twenty-eight thousand annual subscribers to the Constitutionel,' in 1829, had dropped down to three thousand, a few years ago;* whilst, at the same time, the circulation of other newspapers did not increase.

All the efforts of newspaper proprietors to raise the general circulation of their journals, literary critiques, verses, police and law reports, and even a considerable reduction in price, were of no avail. At last, one of the proprietors imagined that tales and novels might be more acceptable than his politics; that, if gentlemen were disinclined to waste their time on such reading, ladies would probably be less fastidious; and that, as they could not, without impropriety, frequent the coffee-houses or reading-rooms, to gratify their desire for startling emotions, they would induce their husbands or their parents to take an abonnement to the paper. This plan succeeded well enough with one (we think) la Presse, to induce other newspaper proprietors to follow the example; and, finally, the old Constitutionel' itself adopted the same course; taking care, in the mean while, to announce that the services of M. Eugene Sue had been engaged, at the price of one hundred thousand francs for a novel which he was then writing, and which would regularly appear in the Feuilleton. On the faith of this report, and judging of the value of the work, by the enormous sum said to have been paid for it, every reader of romances subscribed to the Consti

* In 1828, Lafitte bought one of the fifteen shares of the Constitutionel,' for Messrs. Cauchois-Lemaire, and Thiers, for which he paid 100,000 francs, (£4000,) and three years ago the whole paper was bought for £5000 sterling, by Veron, a compeer of Thiers.