The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-05 00:00:00

N. LOUIS BtiINC AS A LECTURER.

If there be a true and imperishable alliance be-
ween two great) nations it is the alliance of their
noblest hearts and intellects, and we rejoice that
this alliance at least should be gaining ground on
both sides of the Channel, in spite of transient po-
litical misunderstandings. In France the language
and literature of England are now more studied
than ever, and many of the highest and most ac-
complished miads among our neighbours are en-
gaged, as jn a labour of love, in making the master-
pieces of our poets, philosophers and humorists,
familiar to French readers. Whilst the son of the
greatest French poet, Frangois Victor Hugo, is
translating Shakspeare with an admirable zeal,
enthusiasm, and patience; in England a brilliant
French historian is ennobling the sadden leisure of
his exile, and doing graceful homage to the lind of
his adoption, by writing and speaking the English
tongue with a polished ease, an idiomatic grace, and
a classical felicity which many of our owu most
practised and powerful writers are not ashamed to
admire. Among the many Frenchmen who from
time to time have sought a refuge on our shores
from political vicissitudes, M. Louis Blanc has con-
ciliated an uncommon share of English, sympathy
and esteem by the quiet dignity and the calm sim-
plicity of his life amongst us, and by the amiable
perseverance with which he has created for him-
self in England almost a second mother coun-
try and a second mother tonglie—the country
of freedom and the tongue" of freemen. No exile,
it may be supposed, ever had a heavier load of pre-
judice and misrepresentation to bear than M. Louis
Blanc when he first came here, and no one has ever
more successfully converted prejudice into liking,
and misrepresentation into warm regard. The truth
is that M. Louis Blanc, though as true a French-
man and' patriot as ever, is now, after twelve years'
residence in England, become so entirely one of
ours, that after reading an English volume from his
pen, and listening to an English lecture from his
lips, we can scarcely believe that he is not one of
ours by birth and race as he is by his stedfast at-
tachment, through good and evil report, to the
principles of right and justice which England holds
dear. Few among the vast audience which was
gathered together on Tuesday night in the Assem-
bly-rooms, St. John'-s-wood, would have been sur-
prised by a display of 'moving eloquence had the
lecture been delivered in the lecturer's own lan-
guage; nor would any reader of the " Histoire de
I)ix Ans," and the " Histoire de la Revolution
Francaise," have been content with any ordinary
gratification from a famous master of all the secrets
of style. But that a Frenchman should be able to
manipulate and mould at will a language, so pro-
foundly different in form and structure, in its am-
plitude and variety, as the English from the French,
and shot be able to combine with the energy and
abundan e the rugged force and deep emotion of
the one, the luminous precision, the sparkling terse-
ness, the impetuous vivacity, the point and piquancy
of the other—this is what we venture to say the
most em4dent and friendly admirers of the lecturer
never imagined. And yet this, and more than this,
was actually accomplished. The gratified astonish-
ment with which the audience received the first
sentence never for a moment languished, and from
the beginning to the end the lecture was listened to
in breathless and delighted silence, only broken as
often as the speaker paused by a burst of sympa-
thetic cheers.

The subject of the lecture, " The Mysterious
Personages and Agencies in France towards the end
of the Eighteenth Century," was happily selected.
In our own enfeebled days mysterious personages
and agencies of a milder sort are said to be extant
in a few privileged coteries; but the men of whom
M. Louis Blanc was to speak are better known as
the forerunners of a Great Tribulation with which
the world has not yet done ; and it was in glancing
at the society that danced, and dallied, and disbe-
lieved on the threshold of the Revolution, that the
lecturer, himself a son of the Revolution, carried
into power and cast into exile by the Revolution,
made•his audience feel the genius of France, with
all her splendid errors and aspirations. Clearness
and liveliness of narration, an epigrammatic turn,
and a quick dramatic instinct, are the usual charac-
ieristi,cs even of indifferent French writers ; but in
all these it is known that M. Louis Blanc excels,
and he adds the higher qualities of earnest feeling
and sincere faith in the nobler destinies of mankind.
It is this ardent scorn of baseness, and this heart-
felt human charity, that give to the lecturer's richly
modulated voice tones that thrill through an audi-
ence; and we may observe, by the way, that M.
Louis Blanc's elocution, the intonation and pitch
of the voice, the easy unembarrassed delivery,
accompanied at fitting moments by a slight spon-
taneous action, is a study for public speakers. In
his account of the " Convulsionnaires, and of the
Roscrucians, of the sempiternal Count St. Germain,
of St. Martin and Mesmer, and of the salons and
alcoves in which the sorcerers and necromancers
found their favourite adepts, the lecture brimmed,
over with anecdote and illustration. It was a pic-
ture in which the lights and shadows are distributed
with a cunning hand, and all the figures are in
keeping—flashes of wit lighting up a distance of
weighty and impressive thought. The sketch of
Cagliostro was a chef d'oeuvre of brilliant narration,
and the moral of his life and story was finely
pointed by a burst of moral indignation at the wor-
ship of success, at which the British audience
started
the resp"oliiiisie vea ge
ti Lys ti
ahsi
lung and cheered
of
remorse.
Bwuitt with allis
only fair to M. Louis Blanc to state that the lecture
was wholly free from any taint of political predi-
lections. It was the cultivated and informing talk
of a man of the world, a man of genius and a true
gentleman, on a subject which he knew by heart,
and in this consisted its rare and peculiar charm.
We have considered the first appearance of this
distinguished man as an English lecturer worthy of
something more than a passing, record, and it only,
retre,:ns for us to say that M. Louis Blanc was in-
troduced to-the audience in a few kindly and grace-
ful words of welcome by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, and
that among the noted celebrities present around the