In France, a Government is always at the mercy of any one bold enough to lead the assault. The attempt may seem often a “forlorn hope”--it rarely is so in reality. The love of vagrancy is not so inherent in the Yankee as is the destructive passion in the Frenchman’s heart; but it is there, less from any pleasure in demolition than in the opportunity thus. offered for reconstruction. Mirabeau, Rousseau, Fournier, La Mennais, are the social architects of French predilection, and many a clearance has been made to begin the edifice, and many have perished in laying the foundations, which never rose above the earth, but which ere long we may again witness undertaken with new and bolder hands than ever.
Events that once took centuries for their accomplishment, are now the work of days or weeks. Steam seems to have communicated its impetuosity to mind as well as matter, and ere many years pass over how few of the traces of Old Europe will remain, as our fathers knew them?
I have scarcely entered a foreign city, for the last few years, without detecting the rapid working of those changes. Old families sinking into decay and neglect--time-honoured titles regarded as things that “once were.” Their very homes, the palaces, associated with incidents of deep historic interests, converted into hôtels or “_Pensionnats_.”
The very last time I strolled through Paris, I loitered to the “_Quartier_” which, in my young ambition, I regarded with all the reverence the pilgrim yields to Mecca. I remembered the first “_soirée_” in which I was presented, having dined at the Embassy, and being taken in the evening, by the Ambassador, that I might be introduced to the Machiavel of his craft, Prince Talleyrand. Even yet I feel the hot blush which mantled in my cheek as I was passing, with very scant ceremony, the round-shouldered little old man who stood in the very doorway, his wide black coat, far too large for his figure, and his white hair, trimly brushed back from his massive temples.
It did not need the warning voice of my introducer, hastily calling my name, to make my sense of shame a perfect agony. “Monsieur Templeton, Monsieur le Prince,” said the Ambassador; “the young gentleman of whom I spoke;” and he added, in a tone inaudible to me, something about my career and some mention of my relatives.