The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-28 00:00:00

legislilte on all subjects whatever, in the common
territor,:es of the United States, and I certainly

shall never, directly or indirectly, give my vote to '
establish or sanction. slavery in such territories, or
anywhere else in the world." This is the grand j
point of contention between the two great parties,
and if the Republicans be firm on this point they
will attain their great object. They are' masters
of the situation," for if secession be completed,
they are so much the stronger side that they will
take the territories into their own hands,
whether the South likes or not. But if it
be finally renounced, slavery limited, as it
must be, to the States where it now
will in time be overpowered by surrounding free-
dom, or die out of itself.

Whether Mr. SEWARD'S speech will produce
much effect remains to be seen. The President
recommends the old Missouri compromise; Mr.
SEWARD, only what we have just seen. At
present, neither proposals will be accepted by
either party, and corrupting and enfeebling as the
vicious principles of the South must even be on
the North, if accepted by it, we begin to think
that peaceful secession may be the best thing for
the only part of America, in which England feels
any social and political interest—the Free States.

Intellect, we all know, is in France under the
ban of the iron despotism of the Imperial Govern-
ment. It has been thus ever since the overthrow
of the Republic of February. The Tribune was
broken up and burnt as effectually by the coup
d'etat as ever was that throne of LOUIS PHILIPPE
which, in the early spring of 1848, was torn '
f;:oln its dais in the Tuileries, and carried in
trio spn auwn the Boulevards by the insurgent
DemoeleY
. And not only was the French Tri-
bune virtually destroyed as an institution
ago by that dominant BONAPARTE
ten long yea."l3
of our age, N„-ho has been since then reigning
but the French Press under
there as Severeigant
the same inexorable regime has been put under
grim and gagging pad-
lock and key, under tielock of the Imperial censorship.
With a Free Press ouogelves and the most
perfect liberty of Speech as well as of printing
—we have been looking on, all this while, not
without emotion, not without profound sympathy,
at the painful contrast presented to view in both
these particulars by the condition of our Gallic
neighbours. During ten years that condition has
to all intents and purposes remained identi-
cally the same. It is the same at this
present moment—undiminished, unrelaxed, un-
mitigated. During ten years France has been,
France still is, altogether without a living litera-
ture. Her journalists, once so powerful, have
lapsed into comparative insignificance. Her orators
have remained dumb all this while almost unin-
terruptedly. If a voice has been heard for a brief
interval now and then from the Tribune of the
Imperial Chambers, it has been that of one of the
liveried Senators or of the Count DE MORNY
(uterine brother of his MAJESTY)
their President.
Has a hybrid literary success been achieved for a
moment at rare intervals—it has been some flippant
prose-pasquinade from the pen of M. EDMOND
ABOUT, in which sarcasm has merged into
scurrility, in which pleasantry has been
exaggerated into caricature ; or, on the other
hand, it has been some honeyed effusion of
elaborated loyalty authenticate! with the
timbre of the Imperial Government, and signed by
the pensioned and decorated Count DE LA. GUER-
RONIERE.

'We are not alluding to facts in any way
merely surmised or vaguely rumoured—we are
writing about what has all this while been matter
of absolute notoriety. And while such and such
only has been the "situation" in Paris, throughout
France, for ten long years—how have the great
literary celebrities of France been all this while
occupied ? Is not that also matter of equal noto-
riety all over Europe ? Don't we all know that
during the last few years of his life the voice of
BERANGER was completely hushed as a chan-
sonnier t Moreover—how many years is it now
during which M. DE LAMARTINE has been strug-
gling in noble obscurity against apparently
interminable pecuniary misfortunes, without
the heart to give to the world another
of those great products of his poetic imagination
which originally won for him his resplendent repu-
tation ? True, it is, no doubt, that the historic mas-
terpiece of M. TRIERS has in the meanwhile been
gradually approaching its completion volume by
volume, until the last volume is now actually upon
the eve of its appearance. But then the very
nature of that great work sufficiently explains how
it has come to be continued thus exceptionally
—is it not the literary and political apotheosis of
NAPOLEON the GREAT, is it not consequently
thereby the extenuation, and, still more, the glorifi-
cation of Bonapartism ? Yet simultaneously with
the unrolling by M. TITTERS thus uninterruptedly
of the magnificent historic scroll of his an-
nals of the Consulate and the Empire
under NAPOLEON, under the NAPOLEON—how
has it been with others of his contemporaries ?
Say with the most popular class of all among them,
with the class the most generally read, the gay
romance writers, the feuilletonists. Ah, well with
them—how has it been ? Did not EUGENE SUE
die in exile with all the romance taken out of
him ? Has not ALEIANDRE DUMAS been striving
almost in desperation one might conjecture, to
keep his hand "in" as a public writer by editing
a little journal at Naples, and seeing through the
press the romantic narrative of Gen. GARIBALDI'S
autobiography ? Another famous writer of France
—not a mere ephemeral novelist either, like the
Gallic Alexandre le Grand, whose greatest mas-
terpieces of fiction, such as that wonderful " Monte
Cristo," can scarcely be regarded as literature
—Another celebrated author of France, an
author in every way far beyond DUMAS
pere et fils together an author great at once
as a Romancist, as a Poet, and as a Dramatist—
a gorgeous romancist, an exquisite poet, a play-
wright of lofty and impassioned genius—who will
not recognise him under those truthful designa-
tion ? Yes—there is yet unmentioned that great
man of letters—there is VICTOR HUGO. And is it
not familiar to us all how long he, too, has been in
exile, eating his heart out in the Island of Jersey ?
M. DE MONTALMIDERT, without doubt, has once
or twice ventured to break through the general
silence, and, through the unambitious medium
of a luminous pamphlet, not unworthy of him as
a Liberal or as a Christian—but he has
paid the penalty of his rashness in a
state prosecution, in an adverse verdict,
and worst of all in an Imperial pardon ! Another
European writer and orator of France has yet to
be particularised—one whose voice has long been
hushed, whose pen has chiefly during these ten
years past been busy for the London publishers
—in a word, there is M. GulzoT, latterly con-
tenting himself with °editing historico-political
treatises upon our English Statesmen, coming down
as recently in his survey as Sir ROBERT PEEL, and
going as far back as His Highness OLITER CROM-
WELL. Later, however, than this—M. GUIZOT has
been penning the Memoirs of his Own
Times, recounting in them his personal recollec-