unhappy Prince had provoked and justly incurred his misfortunes. Nor would the Duke, or any other English Minister, however strained the notions he might entertain of legitimacy, have presumed to propose the quixotic plan of refusing to acknowledge Louis Philippe. England, therefore, from principle, and the Netherlands, as much from fear as principle, manifested no reluctance in renewing their amicable relations with France. Austria, Prussia, and Spain were less prompt in doing so; but they, like some of the minor States, did not feel bold enough, either individually or collectively, to defy the revolutionary spirit, which if duly provoked, seemed as capable now, as it was thirty years -before, of sending out its armed missionaries to preach a fearful doctrine of liberty and conquest in every corner of Europe. Russia made a stand against the dangerous example of popular right taking to itself the companionship of popular might; but the domestic troubles of the Czar compelled him also to temporize, and at last acknowledge the new Government when he could no longer help doing it. France herself, with the democratic vigor of a national effort, speedily armed her population and assumed the attitude of defensive energy suited to her new position; and while professing an earnest desire to preserve peace, prepared herself to encounter the hazards of war without reluctance or apprehension.

All Europe now stood in fearful and anxious expectation, filled

with well founded dread lest the diffusion of the sentiment of freedom and national independence from France to other countries should kindle up intestine commotion and foreign war from one end of Europe to the other. It is not surprising that Sovereigns, whose whole rule was a series of usurpations such as that which had just hurled Charles X. from his throne, and who held their authority only by the tenure of conquest or successful oppression of their natural subjects, should begin to feel a terrible looking forward to judgment, when they heard the lesson of popular strength and popular vengeance, which the barricades of Paris proclaimed to every subject of misrule throughout the civilized world.

They saw that France had reopened a school of liberty for the teaching of nations. The Marseilles Hymn had again become classic verse, chanted by every voice and seemingly sacred to every heart, where but a few weeks before to lisp its name would have been sedition. The Reveil du Peuple rang once more through France, arousing her myriads like a trumpet The tricolored flag, which had waved in triumph over so many well fought and hard won fields of battle, was unfurled again, and flung abroad to the breeze as the standard of a martial people, full of enthusiasm and ardor, and proud to avow those forbidden tenets of national independence, which European princes would gladly keep confined to these wilds of America. What wonder

that Nicholas, or Frederick William, or Francis of Austria, or William of Nassau should have trembled in the inmost recesses of their palaces? For they saw France again revolutionary, revived, regenerate, snapping asunder the chains which had been fastened upon her at Waterloo like Sampson escaping from the toils of Dalilah, and standing up in her strength as an armed knight ready to do battle against all challengers.

It comes not within the scope and compass of our present purpose to follow the effects of the Revolution at home or abroad. The repetition of the barricades of Paris in Brussels, the troubles in Italy, the revolt of the heroic Poles, the discussion of constitutional reform in England,-these and other kindred topics belong to the history of another year. We leave the French with the form and conditions of Government which their leaders had chosen for them, entering upon the agitated career of freedom under better auspices than in the old time. The whole field of political disquisition was now open to her writers and her speakers. With them, it was no longer a dispute of ordinances, or double vote, or censorships, and still less of Villèle or Polignac, those ministerial bugbears, which had so long been used to frighten men withal. These were trivial questions which had passed away forever, and yielded place to more stirring matters, as the rushing tempest clears off the

mists that hover about the lower sky. It ceased to be a consideration simply of the now comparatively trifling inquiry, of what dynasty should sit on the throne of Saint Louis. In the development of the principle, which was now the basis of the public law of the French, that neither divine communication to a favored individual or family, nor transmission by hereditary succession, nor prescription, nor concession from the head of the church, nor consecration by his legates and bishops, was the legitimate source of power, but that it flowed only from the supreme will of the People; and in the consideration whether the defence of their own institutions did not require them to anticipate the formation of a hostile league of crowned heads, and to propagating the faith of liberty as it were in partibus infidelium, so as to raise up beforehand an adversary league of the governed millions for their reciprocal protection against the governing few;—in such deep and all comprehensive subjects of interest was the rife mind of France now absorbed, to the exclusion of every meaner thing. To the French there had commenced a period of daring speculation, of bold purpose, of brilliant promise: to all but the French, a period of vehement agitation and uncontrolable solicitude. The meteor star of revolution had arisen to pour forth its stormy light upon the nations: but what presumptuous gazer could presume to calculate its orbit?

did not enter into any minute examination of the modifications of which this class of governments is susceptible. The status ante bellum, on the strength of which the Allies had fought and conquered, was good for the Prince but of no avail when applied to the People. It is true, the absurdity was not attempted of subjecting the hardy Swiss peasantry, who had retained at least a nominal independence in the worst of times, to the sway of sovereign princes, but the ancient renown of Venice and Genoa pleaded in vain for their renewed existence as separate States; and it could hardly be expected that, in taking from France some of the most valuable additions made to her territory by the Republican and Imperial Governments, it was intended to give places in the councils of Europe to the untitled burghers of Amsterdam, or to constitute into a republic those Austrian provinces, which had of old preferred despotism and the inquisition to independence, accompanied by religious toleration.

The well concerted plans of the adherents of the house of Orange had, indeed, in some degree relieved Metternich and Castlereagh and their worthy associates from the responsibility of proclaiming to the enterprising and industrious Hollanders that that system, under which their ancestors had immortalized themselves by an almost continued struggle of eighty years with the then most powerful State of Christendom, was gone forever.

But the change which the Government of Holland underwent in

substituting a king for an hereditary stadtholder and transferring to the sovereign the whole executive power, much of which had formerly been shared with the States General and the Provincial States, is far from constituting the most important matter connected with the construction of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

This State is truly and emphatically a creation of the Congress of Vienna, and as, from recent events, it is probable its two great divisions, which were disconnected prior to 1814, for nearly two centuries and a half, will hereafter form separate principalities, a brief reference to some of the causes which produced the marked dissimilarity between the people of Holland and Belgium may not, at this time, be without advantage.

Though the history of the Kingdom of the Netherlands fully shows that the influence of religion and present interest are more influential with nations than the recollection of a common origin, it is not unworthy of notice, that the northern section of the Kingdom, constituting the old Republic of the United Provinces, as well as Flanders and the western and maritime districts, was settled by inhabitants from Germany, while only the people between the Meuse and the Scheldt, denominated Walloons, belonged to the Gallic race. The territory of the latter, indeed, with a portion of France, formed one of the three parts of ancient Gaul, and is known by the name of Belgium in the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar.

In the contests of the fifth century between the Salians and the Saxons we have a prototype of the long wars which were to arise between France and England, and which, as has since so frequently happened, were then settled in the Low Countries.

In a subsequent age, even those Districts which had been enabled to escape the Roman yoke, were compelled to submit to the combined operations of Christianity and civilization; and when, about the commencement of the ninth century, Witikend, the last avenger of national independence, was converted to Christianity and became a noble of the of the Court of Charlemagne, the conquest of his country was consummated.

The same causes were everywhere attended with similar effects. The origin of the Italian Republics of the middle age and the resistance which the cities of Germany offered to the neigh boring barons present many analogous features. The despotism of the Franks led the Netherlanders to form those associations for mutual protection in the different towns, which are the foundation of many of their most valuable municipal rights, and which, under almost the same name of Guild or Guilder, are to be recognised as the basis of the English corporate Trades. Within a century from the death of Charlemagne these corporations had extended themselves over the whole of Flanders; and after the crusades had diminished the power of the Nobles and increased that of the People, we trace many examples

of the successful efforts of the burghers against the influence of feudality. The Courts of the Provinces, also, though acknowledging a nominal dependence on the Emperor, ruled without reference to the superior lord.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, the Government of the Netherlands was in a great measure concentrated in the houses of Burgundy and Bavaria, which were closely connected by intermarriages. Charles, the great grandfather of the illustrious monarch of that name, having under his domination an extent of territory, exceeding that of the late Kingdom of the Netherlands, conceived the idea of assuming the royal diadem, a project that, according to the views of those times, required the sanction of the Emperor, but in obtaining which he was defeated by his own arrogance.

The daughter and heiress of Charles married Maximilian of Austria. His son and daughter formed matrimonial connexions with the daughter and son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Arragon, an alliance which led to the connexion with Spain, a connexion which cost the Dutch two thirds of a century of protracted war and suffering, before their deliverance from all foreign sway was gloriously achieved.

The fruit of this marriage was the Emperor Charles Fifth, who was inaugurated Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders and Holland, and became, by other titles. and acquisitions, Sovereign of all the Netherlands almost at the same epoch that the principles of