The people followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was everywhere received as a messenger from God. They who could touch his garments esteemed themselves happy, and hair torn from the mule he rode was preserved as a holy relic. At his voice, differences in families were reconciled, the poor were succoured, and debauchery blushed at its excesses; nothing was talked of but the virtues of the eloquent cenobite; his austerities and his miracles were described, and his discourses were repeated to those who had not heard them, nor been edified by his presence.

He often met, in his journeys, with Christians from the East, who had been banished from their country, and wandered about Europe subsisting on charity. Peter the Hermit presented them to the people as living evidences of the barbarity of the infidels; and pointing to the rags with which they were clothed, he burst into torrents of invective against their oppressors and persecutors. At that sight the faithful felt by turns the most lively emotions of pity, and the fury of vengeance; all deploring in their hearts the miseries and disgrace of Jerusalem. The people raised their voices towards heaven to entreat God to deign to cast a look of pity upon his beloved city: some offered their riches, others their prayers,-all promised to lay down their lives for the deliverance of the holy places.

MICHAUD, "Histoire des Croisades."

AMERICAN SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE.

It is strange to see with what feverish ardour the Americans pursue their material welfare, and how

they appear constantly tormented by a vague dread lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it. A native of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die, and is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, but he holds nothing fast, and soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications...

At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, uneasy in the midst of abundance. The spectacle is, however, as old as the world; the novelty is to see a whole people furnish an example of it. . . .

...

When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any one of them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition, and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no common destiny. But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience. The same equality which allows every citizen to conceive these lofty hopes, renders all the citizens individually feeble. It circumscribes their powers on every side, while it gives freer scope to their desires. Not only are they restrained by their own weakness, bnt they are met at every step by immense obstacles, which they had not at first perceived. They have swept away the privileges of some of their fellow-creatures, which stood in their way; they have to encounter the competition of all. The barrier has changed its shape rather than its place. When men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track, it is very difficult for any one indi

vidual to get on fast, and to cleave a way through the homogeneous throng which surrounds and presses upon him. This constant strife between the wishes springing from the equality of conditions, and the means it supplies to satisfy them, harasses and wearies the mind.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE,

"De la Démocratie en Amérique."

RICHELIEU.

All the social ameliorations that could possibly be made applicable to his time were effected by Richelieu, whose intellect embraced everything, whose practical genius omitted nothing, while with a marvellous ability, he passed from generals to particulars, and from theory to practice. Conducting a multitude of affairs, both great and small, at the same time, and with the same zeal, everywhere present in person or in thought, he possessed, in an unique degree, universality and freedom of mind. Though a prince of the Roman Church, he was desirous that the clergy should be national; though a conqueror of the Calvinists, he struck the blow only at the rebellion, and respected the rights of conscience. Of noble birth, and imbued with the pride of his order, he acted as if he had received a commission to prepare the way for the reign of the Tiers-Etat. The ultimate aim of his domestic policy was that which aggrandized and tended to unclass the bourgeoisie-namely, the progress of commerce and literature, the encouragement both of manual and intellectual labour. Richelieu did not recognise below the Crown any

position equal to his own, save that of the writer or the thinker; he wished that a Chapelain or a Gombauld should converse with him on terms of equality. But while by grand commercial schemes and a noble literary institution he was multiplying places in the State, besides appointments in the courts, in favour of the commoners, he depressed below the level of an unlimited power the ancient liberties of the cities and provinces. Individual states, municipal constitutions, all that the countries annexed to the Crown had stipulated for as their rights, all that the bourgeoisie had created in its heroic days-he trod them all down lower than ever. This was not effected without sufferings to the people-sufferings unfortunately inevitable, but not the less acutely felt on this accountwhich accompanied, from crisis to crisis, the birth of our modern centralization.

With regard to the foreign policy of the great minister, this part of his work, which is not less admirable than the other, has, in addition, the singular merit of never having lost any of its virtue by the lapse of time or the revolutions of Europe-of being as vigorous and as national after two centuries as on its first day. It is the very policy which, since the fall of the Empire and the restoration of constitutional France, has not ceased to form, if I may use the expression, a part of the conscience of the country. The maintenance of independent nationalities, the enfranchisement of those which are oppressed, respect for the natural ties which form the community of race and of language, peace and friendship with the weak, war with the oppressors of general freedom and civilization, all those duties which our democratic liberalism imposes on itself, were implicitly com

prised in the plan of foreign policy which was dictated to a king, by a statesman whose ideal of domestic policy was absolute power.

AUGUSTIN THIERRY, " Histoire du Tiers-Etat."

THE ELOQUENCE OF IMAGERY.

There are several modes of acting powerfully upon public assemblies. The speaker may address himself, either to their logic, by the vigour and conclusiveness of his reasonings; or to their wit, by the vivacity and piquancy of his expressions, allusions, and repartees; or to their hearts, by the emotions of sensibility; or to their passions, by vehemence of invective; or to their imagination, by the splendour of rhetorical figures. But most frequently it is by means of figures of imagery, that eloquence produces its greatest effects. The prosopopæia of the warriors who fell at Marathon, by Demosthenes -the Roman citizens affixed to the infamous gibbet of Verres, by Cicero-the night, the terrible night when the death of Henrietta broke upon two kingdoms like a thunder-clap, by Bossuet-the avenging dust of Marius, the apostrophe of the bayonets and the Tarpeian rock, by Mirabeau-the "audacity, audacity, always audacity," by Danton-the Republic that, like Saturn, is devouring its own children, by Vergniaud-the voice of liberty re-echoed from the lakes and mountains, by O'Connell-the car which conveys the remains of Ireland to the grave, by Grattan-the turban which marks on the map the place of the Turkish empire, by Lamartine -Algeria, of which the fruit does not present itself,