t Don Quixote of Legitimacy, who sat so pathetically on
his winged Rosinante, whose sword was more shining than sharp, and who
shot only with costly pearls instead of good, piercing, leaden bullets.

In their irritation at the lamentable turn which events have taken, many
of the enthusiasts for freedom go so far as to slander Lafayette. How
far a man can go astray in this direction is shown by the book of
Belmontet, which is also an attack on the well-known pamphlet by
Chateaubriand, and in which the Republic is advocated with commendable
freedom. I would here cite the bitter passages against Lafayette
contained in this work, were they not on one side too spiteful, and on
the other connected with a defense of the Republic which is not suitable
to this journal. I therefore refer the reader to the work itself, and
especially to a chapter in it entitled "The Republic." One may there see
how evil fortune may make even the noblest men unjust.

I will not here find fault with the brilliant delusion of the
possibility of a republic in France. A royalist by inborn inclination, I
have now, in France, become one from conviction. For I am convinced that
the French could never tolerate any republic, neither according to the
constitution of Athens or of Sparta, nor, least of all, to that of the
United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their
constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere
folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in
our senile Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that
great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of
republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which
black broth was so vilely cooked that Attic wits declared it made men
despise life and defy death in battle? How could such a constitution
flourish in the very _foyer_ of gourmands, in the fatherland of Very, of
Vefour, and of Careme? This latter would certainly have thrown himself,
like Vatel, on his sword, as a Brutus of cookery and as the last
gastronome. Indeed, had Robespierre only introduced Spartan cookery, the
guillotine would have been quite superfluous, for then the last
aristocrats would have died of terror, or emigrated as soon as possible.
Poor Robespierre! you would introduce stern republicanism to Paris--to a
city in which one hundred and fifty thousand milliners and dressmakers,
and as many barbers and perfumers, e