object of coming to a settlement satisfactory to both countries, and in a friendly and conciliatory spirit, that I had addressed to your Excellency the despatch of the 17th of October."

The details of the Khivan expedition belong to the foreign portion of our history, in which we have to deal with some events more stirring than those which have characterized the year at home.

FOREIGN HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

FRANCE.

Death of Napoleon III.-Bonapartists-Royalists-Jour d'Expiation-M. Thiers and the Committee of Thirty-Propositions of Tallon, Decazes, &c.-Speech of Thiers before Committee-Broglie Report-Letter of the Comte de Chambord to the Bishop of Orleans-Discussion in the Assembly on the Report-Speech of Thiers, March 4th-Bill passed-Treaty of Evacuation-Prince Napoleon's PetitionQuestion of the Lyons Contracts-Suppression of Central Municipality at LyonsQuarrel in the Assembly, and resignation of M. de Grévy-Paris Elections-M. de Barodet-M. Ranc elected for Lyons-Ministerial changes-Constitutional BillsInterpellation by the Right-Debate of May 24th-Defeat of the GovernmentResignation of M. Thiers-Marshal MacMahon President of the Republic.

THE year 1873 had reached its ninth day only-it was but three days since the Assembly had met after its Christmas recess-when the telegraphic wires flashed from Chiselhurst to Versailles the news that the ex-Emperor, Napoleon III., was no more. Just after the deputies had arrived by the mid-day train, M. Barthélemy de St. Hilaire appeared in the Salle des Pas Perdus, and announced the message which had been received at the Ministry of the Interior. It was said that the first despatch had been intended for M. Rouher, and had reached M. de Goulard's hands by mistake. "C'est affreux, c'est affreux!" cried the Bonapartist leader when the fact was proclaimed, and immediately, with the rest of his party, he quitted the Chamber. That evening many of them crossed the Channel, and pressed to pay their last homage to the remains of the once mighty potentate. The illness of Napoleon III. has been detailed in another portion of our volume. Unable longer to endure the cruel sufferings to which the malady he had borne about for years had subjected him—sufferings which had tended to cripple his energies during the closing years of the Empire, which had added to his weight of woe at Sedan, and had made the ignominious repose of Chiselhurst at last acceptable to him-he had called in the aid of surgery under new and hazardous conditions, and in spite of the skill of the best operators had sunk, after a few days of increased agony.

We cannot better represent the state of public feeling in France on this event than by quoting the opinions of some of the journals on different sides of politics.

The Pays said:"Let us rise. The Emperor is dead. Those who regretted that he had not fallen on the field of battle on the 1st of September, 1870, may rejoice, for his death is a consequence of Sedan. And you, Bonapartists, dry your tears, repress your sobs, and upstanding let us close our ranks around his son, repeating the old cry of the former French Monarchy-The Emperor is dead; long live the Empire!' It is well known that we have never sought for or desired the Imperial restoration until the country had been completely liberated from foreign occupation. Now, as about that period the Prince will enter into his twentieth year, and be at the age which qualifies him for a soldier, it appears to us that he may well be an Emperor."

The Liberté said: "It is all over. The legend of the great Emperor himself disappears. The child who weeps to-day beside the deathbed of his father has around him only a few devoted but powerless friends. He has no army, no noblesse, no clergy, nor any of the institutions which constituted the ancient monarchy, and which insured for it an existence during fourteen centuries. Let the Bonapartists consider well the situation in which they are placed by the unexpected death of the Emperor, and let their leaders decide whether the modest part of citizen of the Republic would not be preferable to that of a pretender in exile."

The Journal de Paris said:-"Heaven forbid that we should choose the present moment to write in a tone of insult, or even of bitterness, of the memory of the late Emperor. Compassion at this time throws into the shade every other feeling. It is not the man himself who is to be blamed for the faults which have been committed and the incalculable misfortunes which have followed from them. Personally he had great qualities. Those who knew him bear witness to the fact. He was generous and affable. On more than one subject he had liberal ideas, and more especially liberal aspirations. He was better than his Government. The true culprit was the system-that system of which his birth made him the representative, and to which there seems to be attached a kind of historical fatalism. We do not know what is in store for us in the future, but we know what the past has given us; and we cannot forget that, having had two returns of the Empire, and two Emperors differing very essentially from each other, we have had three invasions."

The Gazette de France said :-"The Emperor is dead, and with the Emperor the last traces of the Empire. We will not on this occasion recall the political actions of Napoleon III. For twenty years we have opposed him, and it would be necessary for us to take up day by day the history of a rule which, with the aid of Personal Government, has contrived, in opposition to the desires and interests of France, to establish the unity of Italy and of Germany, and to destroy the temporal power of the Holy See."

The Français said :-"The man of our times who has undergone the most striking vicissitudes of fortune is no more. He has not

long survived his reverses. His mind was a strange compound of vague reminiscences and vague aspirations. He was at once a fatalist and a sceptic. He had a constitution which was Italian and yet Dutch. It may be asked if this phlegmatic utopist ever put to himself questions which no one ever asked him openly. Did he ever know exactly whether here below he discharged a mission or played a part? We shall afterwards reply to these questions. They have a serious interest for contemporary history."

We will add a few extracts from a feuilleton of the Temps, in which Madame Georges Sand eloquently sketched the character of the Emperor:-"This man has been styled chimerical, and the phrase is correct if by it is meant a brain nourished with chimeras, and still more accurate if it implies a being whose character is a riddle, the elements of which cannot be harmonized. For my own part, I shall give only the impression which he produced upon my mind. In the days of Ham, by his correspondence and other writings, he showed himself a young man without energy, dominated by a powerful dream, a dream conceived in infancy and kept alive by those who surrounded him, and to whose influence he submitted with the resignation of lassitude. Without real instruction, he showed great intelligence, and had the rudiments and even the flashes of genius, rather literary than philosophic, rather philosophic than political. Failing health, vitality tottering, unequal, and at times suspended by the reflux of emotions and stifled pain; yet no bitterness, no rancour, very little anger; too contemplative to be passionate; amiable, loving, made to be loved in private life; disinterested with regard to himself-see what formidable contrasts— capable of the greatest political crimes, because his notion of the rights of humanity differs from ours. The Napoleonic

Legend and the apprehensions of a Republic destitute of strength or union served the cause of the Empire, despite its own shameless proceedings. The Empire was proclaimed, I cannot say foundedits representative himself sapped its basis by accepting the tarnished shield which was offered him. Born an honest man, he procured himself to be carried in triumph by ambitious men who were devoid of all scruple. All that there was of impure in the French nation went to work for him, and rendered him a sharer in responsibility for all the wrongs committed or to be committed. And then he believed himself to be great and strong. He undertook great things which could not be carried out. A man with faulty principles, he governed a nation which was lacking in principles, and which accepted an ideal of romantic prosperity in the place of true civilization, success and chance in the place of right and justice. It was, therefore, by sentiment alone that it could be led, and he understood that fact at one instant when he wished to save Italy. He had not

sufficient confidence in its results, and fell at the first act. From that time his star began to pale, and he saw it no more. Perhaps he ceased to believe in it. Perhaps this member of the illuminati had become a sceptic. His understanding could not survive such a

transformation. He began to die during the Mexican war. France had accepted him too thoroughly-like him, it had become sceptical; it shared his decadence while hastening it. France found itself disorganized, anarchical, and devoid of self-consciousness. It cursed him to excess when it found itself lost; implacable rage preventing it from perceiving that it had been too dilatory to be dignified. He had as a private individual some good qualities. I have had an opportunity of perceiving in him truly sincere and generous characteristics. He had also a dream of French grandeur which did not belong to a sound understanding, but which was yet not that of a second-rate mind. Of a truth, France would be too much disgraced if she had submitted for twenty years to the will of a driveller working in his own interest. The fact is that she took this meteor for a star; this silent dreamer for an astute politician. Then when she saw him succumb under disasters which she should have foreseen and prevented, she took him for a coward. He was no coward; he had a cool courage; and I believe that he did not cling to life. He felt himself crushed; the illusion of his role was gone; perhaps he was weary of himself."

After the funeral at Chiselhurst, it was agreed in the councils of the assembled leaders of the party that the Empress and the Prince Napoleon should undertake the political guardianship of the Prince Imperial. "There will be no manifesto," it was said, "no proclamation. The policy of the deceased Emperor will be carried out by the first Prince of his blood and by the heroic widow who closed his eyes and received his last words. The young Prince will not bear the name of Napoleon IV. excepting in the hearts of his faithful adherents. He will call himself Prince Louis Napoleon, as his father did before France, by her eight millions of votes, set on his head the imperial crown."

Meanwhile across the Channel the Imperialists affected to be no way disheartened by the loss of their chief. One Emperor was dead, they said, but another had begun to reign. Napoleon IV. would be eighteen years old next year, the age fixed for his majority. No Regency need be nominated for him, for so long no doubt it might take to bring his Empire into readiness for his rule; but the time would surely come. Imperialism was a vital institution; it was la monarchie moderne, the only effective mode of government for France. Had not the death of Cæsar assured the Empire of Augustus?

Such confident boastings, however, found no echo for the present in the mass of the population. On the two other monarchical parties, the Legitimists and Orleanists, Napoleon's death had the effect of inclining them to approximation. A Fusion became again the talk of the day. Every supposed sign or utterance on the part of the leaders was eagerly noted.

The attempts which, ever since the first meeting of the Assembly at Bordeaux, had been made to bring about this mode of settling the rival claims of the two Bourbon houses had been rudely checked