The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

(From the Times of this day.)

The condition of Journalism and the Legislature In
France enhances the interest of the two great orations
recently delivered in the " Academie." The nature and
the genius of the place, the character and previous ca-
reer of those who are admitted to a seat within its walls,
attach to the speeches of the members and their sponSors
an importance which is augmented by the silence of the
Tribune and the docility of the press. Forbidden, not
only by considerations of policy, but by the nature of
their own peculiar topics, to touch professedly upon the
topics of current politics, the Academicians are almost
unconsciously led into allusions which are not least
significant when they are at least premeditated. And
no occasion could be rendered so suggestive either of
contemporaneous allusion or retrospective analogy at the
election of a senator of Louis Philippe to replace, in the
reign of Louis Napoleon, the distitiguished author of
tte " History of the Fronde."
It
.was natural that the Due de Broglie should identify
his views with those of his predecessor, and should re-
cognise in that tangled medley of purposeless conflict and
resultless faction of which he was the historian all the
laws of the historic epic—a beginning, a middle, and an
end. It is consonant with the temper and the character
of the literary statesman. Moderate in his views, doc-
trinaire in his politics, and not less patriotic than phi-
lanthropic in his affections, the Due de Broglie would be
equally reluctant to impute to any generation of his
countrymen an unaccountable passion for au unmeaning
strife, or to condemn as wholly reckless a struggle which
at first probably was, and which lie must ever regard to
have been, an honest fight for rational liberty. And,
doubtless, this patriotic critici-m must have received un-
conscious but frequent confirmation from the parallel of
motives and passions which "tke Fronde" presents to
some other passages in French history. Indeed, to a
philosophic mind it would be difficult to probe the annals
of the former movement, to anatomise the conduct of
Cond4, Mazarin, and De Retz, to trace the progress of
their varied success, without falling almost involuntarily
into an examination of the causes, the motives, and the
conduct of that more notable revolution wherein figured
Roland, Mirabeau, Robespierre, St. Just, and one
greater than all these; and the judgment which had
once been pronounced upon the moral phenomena of the
former might in spirit, if not literally, be trasferred into
no
ilutisvics.:lsiefem.7lo‘narce le
a review of the second,—a prospect which would certainly
deter so hopeful and patriotic a critic as M. de Broglie
from pronouncing unfavourably on the first great organ-
ised popular uprising in the annals of modern France.
The truth is—and it is a truth which must have been
present to the candid minds not only of M. Nisard
and the Dna de Broglie, but also of many
among their audience—the national characteristics
which stirred the tempest of the Fronde roused
also the greater tempest of the revolutions of
1789 and 1848, and the came charaeteristice intervened
at either period to divert the directioa of the political
bur, icane in a cycle which their authors failed to foresee.
There may have been great intermediate changes be-
tween the two periods. The =sees may have become
more numerous, more combined, more educated, but the
moral impulse and moral peculiarities of the one move•
ment were the same as those of the others. That bitter,
a fate which no
eacn do n
sr
teiitnuotri remorseless
Constitutionalists
cl,79wohti c?te ultimately
d ,o o sn consolidate.t
; ~Aly au iita i.
prWhen,
,pour
rh alat
sneering,l
be-
trayedohgeicp caortlubal dinfeo, rte soefe ,
Parri:a intohe tr aayne da l theirhanc e.pr,-d whiche c ens eoo reso inn.
Franc eise,
sill, ednecyß rcoogullide j ruescti:)fgynai sneds
gporeldmeineraegfeoiosf
lee tl e pFr i
ia, oc)iipde.es
dine
lee maximes de notre droit public, invoqutS i even sagesse
et resolution dans Is Grande Caambre par lee vieux
magistrate, avec emportement dens lea enquetes par lee
jeunes conseillers,'
&c., he exhibits the sanguine tern
perament which, in another blinded
aee, the Giroediste
to their coming ruin. When again, he dwells upon that
worse period—" Cette epoque de; ambitions effrea4,s et
, des pretentious shusiim:iteg que dt'Sehaine la guerre civile,
cette epoque de ri valitee acharnees d'intrigues galantes