population. I was prepared for his abandonment of the Emperor--even of
the Empress and the Regency. But how could I imagine that he, the man of
moderate politics, of Orleanistic leanings, the clever writer, the fine
talker, the chivalrous soldier, the religious Breton, could abandon
everything that was legal, everything that could save France against the
enemy, and Paris against civil discord; that he would connive at the
annihilation of the Senate, of the popular Assembly, of every form of
Government that could be recognised as legitimate at home or abroad,
accept service under men whose doctrines were opposed to all his
antecedents, all his professed opinions, and inaugurate a chaos under the
name of a Republic!"

INCOGNITO.--"How, indeed? How suppose that the National Assembly, just
elected by a majority of seven millions and a half, could be hurried into
a conjuring-bog, and reappear as the travesty of a Venetian oligarchy,
composed of half-a-dozen of its most unpopular members! The sole excuse
for Trochu is, that he deemed all other considerations insignificant
compared with the defence of Paris, and the united action of the nation
against the invaders. But if that were his honest desire in siding with
this monstrous usurpation of power, he did everything by which the desire
could be frustrated. Had there been any provisional body composed of men
known and esteemed, elected by the Chambers, supported by Trochu and the
troops at his back, there would have been a rallying-point for the
patriotism of the provinces; and in the wise suspense of any constitution
to succeed that Government until the enemy were chased from the field,
all partisans--Imperialists, Legitimists, Orleanists, Republicans--would
have equally adjourned their differences. But a democratic Republic,
proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in which sincere democratic
Republicans are a handful, in contempt of an Assembly chosen by the
country at large; headed by men in whom the provinces have no trust, and