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    patriotism exacts from a man even the sacrifice of his reputation . By doing a little wrong , Cavaignac might , perhaps , have done a great right . He had tut to insist , whilst the vast mass of middle classes were huddling , affrighted , under his wing for shelter , that the clause of the proposed Constitution which so reasonably gave the election of the President to the Assembly , should be discussed and voted at once . After that , theorists and lawyers might have disputed as they pleased about the details . But every one was at that time in favour Of a certain pedantic formality —every one but that silent , and meditative pretender , and those boisterous sectaries whose activity had just been stamped out by the iron heel of the African General . ' Time for reaction was allowed . The very men who had executed the acts of rigour which had renewed popular hatred , shrank from that hatred , and did their best to make the chief of the executive power the scapegoat of the day . His fall was a concession to the ninety thousand disarmed Socialists—disarmed , but still terrible—the only men . sufficiently earnest to be ready at any time to risk their lives in the streets for their opinions . All this has since been seen through ; and the name of Cavaignac , though it did not excite universal affection , was becoming gradually more popular . As the Journal des Debats acknowledges , ' hopes' had begun to cluster around it . The fact is , that although it is considered puerile to think of any immediate termination of the present regime- — there being no means of execution , and no sufficient motive that has not been in operation six years—yet all reflecting persons contemplate the possibility of a change at some period more or leas distant . That a sort of date exists in their minds may be inferred from the fact that no reference to this change has been made -without some reference to the name of Cayaignac—an older man than the

    present incumbent of the throne . But it would be a mistake to suppose that he was , with or without his knowledge , the head even of a tacit conspiracy . Only , every one felt certain that in case of any accident requiring the presence of a new dictator—a sudden malady , an assassination , an emeute—his neighbour would almost to a certainty , in the first moment of alarm and disorder—unless a mere promoter of disorder—call for General Cavaignac , at least as a temporary expedient . No matter what followed . There was no fear that he would force the country into a direction which it disliked . He would merely sit sword in hand at the head of affairs , and compel all parties to discuss their pretensions and count their numbers without any appeal to violence . Gradually , therefore , by the mere force of circumstances , Cavaignac , whether leading a quietlife in his modest apartment of the Rue de Londres , or spending an hour or so in the studio of Ida friend Jeakbow—where it waa the etiquette never to provoke him to talk of public affairs—or engaged in building outhouses , or laying down drains on his new eBtate of Ourne , without intrigue , without active ambition , without relations more than those of a mere private gentleman ,, almost against his will—so sweet at that period of life had become the duties and the privileges of home , the society of an admiring and charming wife , of a promising little boy—amidst all this repose , Cavaigkao , wo say , was rising to the position of a necessary mediator when the necessary crisis should come . No wonder , therefore , that every step he took was watchod with jealous eyes from the Tuileries ; no wonder that the Paris elections wore considered in the light of an insolent bravado . 13 ub what could bo done against a man who was gathering the sympathies of a nation around him , whilst scorning

    to put his whole soul into shooting snipea- in his fields ? He fell , and died a 3 rapidly as he might on the field of battle at the head of a column . There was no connexion between his death and the position he had gradually ass limed . Perhaps in the depths of that great heart there may have been some secret anxiety , some regret for the past , some hope or fear for the future , at which we can only guess . When we hear talk of so many great political leaders and soldiers of civil war dying from aneurisms and not from grape-shot , we refuse to accept mere material explanations , and laugh at science which tells us tliat there is no such thing as a broken heart . However , such speculations cannot lead to much now . The General died as soon as-they had carried him from the garden to the house . Then followed an incident which can scarcely be surpassed for dramatic interest . The young widow , having obtained , or not , due authorization—it matters little—accompanied by a neighbour and her infant son , set out to carr y the body to Paris . They wrapped him in his cloak , and placed him in the corner of his carriage as if asleep ; and so , during the whole clay , they journeyed , now by road and now by rail ; and with that rigid face always before her , Madame Cavaignac went on to Paris . It was daylight when they arrived : but no one knew wbafc had happened , and no one was in the streets . The corpse of the General had been laid out twenty-tour hours at least before the news was generally known . M . Jeanrok , one of the oldest and most energetic friends of the deceased , was instantly summoned , and entrusted with the task of making the necessary preparations : — MM . GOTJDCHATJX , VAULABEIiLE , DE FoiSSY , Guinabd , and Bastide were summoned , and came in at various hours of the night . It is

    an interesting fact that no hired bauds were employed to put tlie General in his coffin . His friends performed that last duty for him ; and one of them wrapped his head in linen cloths . It would be indiscreet to paint their emotion now , and to describe the scenes of grief that took place . But it is impossible not tonotice thatthere was something heroic in the tone of all who came from that house during those days . All the women of the C avaignac family have been famous for a sort of ltoman heroism ; and the young wife and mother , who now mourns the loss of her hope and that of France , from the beginning to the end of this sad catastrophe has acted in . a manner which only a Plutarch could fittingly record . France must now wait for a new reputation to rise up ; although , while Colonel Chabras lives , the place of Cavaignao is not entirely empty . Though the Orleanists may have consented to widen their programme , and though most moderate " . Republicans may have persuaded themselves that any government would be good which would grant liberty of speech and free elections , yet the vast mass of the nation has not yet been reached by these new ideas and conventions . The death of Cavaignac and the speculations to which it lias given rise will reveal to mnny for the first time the existence of a Liberal party , which increases without conspiring , which has no absolute doctrines and no watchword , which is scarcely conscious of its own importance , and whicli , indeed , has as yet but a negative influence . If any of its mombers aro to bo found in tho army , except in exile , they cannot boast of much moral courage Literary men , artists , merchants , bankers , even stock-jobbers , followed tho funeral car to tho Moiitmnrtre Cemetery between tho doublo line of soldiers ; but not one ainglo uniform —an unprecedented occurrence—was seen in tho wholo column .

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    A . MILL WALL ILLUSTRATION . It is reported that , on Tuesday evening last , a Junior Lord of tho Admiralty fell into ecstasies . He had been to Miliwall ami had seen the Leviathan hitch . lie went home , met his friends at dinner , and said , in exulting claret tones , " Who'll ever say another word about the Transit ? " In tho exultation of the moment , the Junior Lord even made up his mind to write and nsk Mr . W . S . Lindsay whether ho had not given up his notion about private enterprise . Indeed , some of the public departments were illuminated—not with gas or wax lights , but with tho irridoscence ol official grins , and every departmental backbone was erected in an attitude of triumph . Already wo catch an echo from tho next session of Parliament . " The honourable gentleman says , that if precautions had been used , tho mutiny could not have spread so dangerously , but I ask the honourable gcntlomaii , who is so fond of sneering at tho administrative measures of the Government , whether he u'ns presont at tho attempted launch ot t » o Leviathan ? Were not precaut ions t aken , and was not tlie experiment a failure ? " ' tho bnelc benches cheer . It was democracy that broke down on Tuesday a fternoon , cogs and taoklo breaking ; with it . That it ) to « li y > navvies could not do tho duty of engineers ,

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    1070 THE LEADER . TNo . 398 , November 7 . lftft *

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    THE LEVIATHAN . And there-is that Xeviathan ! ia said no more of the monster of the Ocean but of the monster of Miliwall . There was something pathetic in the blank dejection visible on the faces of that noble army of workmen on the dreary November morning when the Birr Ship , just ; like a horse too sharply bitted * obstinately declined to go one way or tlio other , ' like a thing of life . ' So true it is , as M . Bauinet observes , that while Mature obeys her own ordinances without effort or resistance , she is apt to resent man ' s arbitrary laws , or to obey them with groans and convulsions of resentment . On Tuesday last Nature ; did her part of the work to everybody ' s satisfaction ; the tide flowed up . to the very keel of the ship quite caressingly ; and , in accordance with a natural law , when the shi p was started down an incline she went , as our Yankee cousins would say , ' slick enough . ' But when man ' s mechanism pulled her up on her haunches with a bit severer than Chutney ' s , she protested most effectually against this sudden check to her inclinations , and stuck fast . The failure of vast enterprises from the sli ghtest accidents is an old story ; the truth perhaps being that these accidents are what a theologian would call sins of omission , and mostly , of the preventible order . In the prosent case every luxury of .. precaution was employed that the boldest engineering science , tempered by calculations at once the most liberal and the most exact could devise to prevent the 33 ig Ship from launching herself , and in that single respect the success was complete . The great fear appears to have been lest bv her own mere motion she should break loose

    like an infant . Hetic . itles from her cradle , scatter her chains like serpents from , her path , convert a thick-sown acre or two of working men and sightseers into clay and stubble , walk through or over half a . dozen lighters , and as many steamers crowded with Cockneys , and byway of a concluding tableau , make a run on the opposite Bank and dig up I ) eptford by the roots . The American language alone could do justice to the harrowing spectacle so successfully prevented from coming off last Tuesday , to the bitter disappointment of that atrocious Old Man who went every nicfht to see the lion cat Van AMBUiian .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 7, 1857, page 1070, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2216/page/14/