ment of France--strengthened not only by the success of
the Exposition, by its great triumph at the elections, and by the
discomfiture of its enemies, but also by the conviction forced upon
parliamentary leaders that the country was weary of mere talk and
discord, and demanded harmony and action--now became the strongest
Government that France had enjoyed for a long time. The Republic
had passed the point of danger, the eighteenth year, which had
been the limit of every dynasty or form of government in France for
over a century. It rallied to itself men from the ranks of all its
former enemies, but its greatest victory was over the Monarchists.
The wreck of their cause by the alliance with a military adventurer
was a blunder in the eyes of one section of the Royalists; in the
eyes of another, it was a dishonor that amounted almost to a crime.

Boulanger had rallied to himself the clerical party in France by
the promise of a republic strong enough to protect the weak,--"a
republic that would concern itself with the interests of the people,
and be solicitous to preserve individual liberty in all its forms,
especially liberty of conscience, that liberty the most to be valued
of all,"[1] Such a republic it seems possible the Third Republic
may now become, especially since it is on all hands conceded that
there is a reaction in France in favor of religious liberty, for
those who are religious as well as for those who are "philosophers."

[Footnote 1: Speech at Tours.]

President Carnot has been an eminently respectable president. He
has committed no blunders, and if he has awakened little enthusiasm,
he has called forth no animosities. The worst that can be said of
him is embodied in caricatures, where he always appears ready to
serve some useful purpose, as a jointed wooden figure that can be
put to many a use.

The French army is now stronger and better disciplined, and more
full of determination to conquer, than any French army has ever
been before. But no ruler of France can be anxious to precipitate
a war with Germany; and judging from the present state of feeling
among the French, there appear to be no serious political breakers
ahead. Of course in France the unexpected is always to be expected,
and what a day may bring forth, nobody knows.

Sir Charles Dilke tells us that in 1887, when a friend of his was
going to France, he asked him to ascertain for him if General Boulanger
were a soldier, a mountebank, or an