French army, when in 1823 it entered Spain, went over to the Spanish constitutionalists, and was condemned to death by a council of war at Perpignan. This decree, however, was revised by a council of war at Toulouse, and M. Carrel, owing it is said, to the private friendship of some of the judges, was acquitted. Upon this M. Carrel came to Paris, and engaged in the conduct of "the American Review," a publication now extinct, and which in its title explains the principles that this young man then entertained, and has since announced with so remarkable a talent. tall, and handsome, with a countenance agreeable but severe, and manners somewhat haughty and brusque, with the air rather of a man of war than a man of letters, M. Carrel is a singular exemplification of the great extension of that military influence to which I elsewhere alluded, and which distinguishes the journalist of France from any of his literary contemporaries. Pale, In correspondence with his person, M. Carrel's style is stern and simple, but there is an ardour and a glow in that simplicity, which affects you the more deeply from its total freedom from affectation. M. Carrel makes no secret of his republicanism, and dreams of placing the constitution of the United-States, taken from the weird banks of the St. Laurence, and the strange mountains of Pensylvania, amidst the manners of the Champs-Elysées and the Boulevards. Of all visions this is the most virtuous and the most wild. If France arrive at a republic it neither will nor can be the republic of America. You cannot blot out the history, nor change the character, nor alter the situation of a country. And the history of France, and the character of France, and the situation of France, are all different from the history, and the character, and the situation of America. Tell me the constitution of America suits the people of America, and you tell me that it does not suit the people of France!—If a republic take place in France, it will be a military and a literary republic, as that of America is destined to be a peaceful and a commercial one. But though I differ from the opinions, I admire the character of this honest and remarkable man.* Up to the time of its too boldly hoisting the republican flag, the National was frequently honored by contributions from the able pen of M. Odillon Barrot; M. Well, therefore can I conceive that there is in France, a party to which the editor of the National is an angel of light and wisdom-a political Apollo-and many, indeed, were those who used to prostrate themselves in the bureaucratic temple, where at 2 o'clock he responded to the faithful! Then and there it was that all phrases and opinions were unscrupulously sacrificed to his presiding veto; while the most ardent republicans, such is the force of character and ability, bowed down with pleasure to this Napoleon of the press, and clung to an absolute and voluntary dictatorship. When M. Carrel assumed the direction of the National, he published the following singular and distinctive paragraph: "La responsabilité du National pèse en entier, dès ce jour, sur ma seule téte; si quelqu'un s'oubliait en invectives au sujet de cette feuille, il trouverait à qui parler." Was I not right when I said the great journalist of France had assumed the place of the Arago still occasionally writes for it, and M. St. Beuve, an author of a very peculiar style,—every sentence is so minutely chiselled, every thought so minutely developed, -added until very lately by the talent and reputation of his literary articles, to the weight and popularity of this journal. great Lord? Is not this rather the defiance of a chivalric noble, than what we should call the puff of a newspaper editor? Why then say there is nothing in the character of a people, or tell me that I am light and frivolous, if I venture through its various ramifications to track it out? The dullest critic cannot despise me for the comparisons I have sometimes made, so much as I slight and despise those, who deem that the past is separate from the present-who consider that the destiny of a nation depends wholly upon its immediate and material interests-wanting the philosophy which they condemn the want of and incapable of enlarging their dim intelligence to the view of those moral, but not inferior causes which have descended to us, an unavoidable heritage from far distant generations !* What the Gazette is to the Quotidienne, and the Constitutionnel to the National-the National is to the Tribune. * Le Bon Sens, a republican paper, not long established and at present not widely circulated, is written notwithstanding, with very great ability, and contains in MM. Cauchois Lemaire, l'Herminier and M. C. Didier, most able and eloquent contributors. |