xercise their smiling, curling, and
sweet-smelling industries!

The monotony, the want of color, and the petty domestic citizens' life
of America would be even more intolerable in the home of the "love of
the spectacular," of vanity, fashion, and novelties. Indeed, the passion
for decorations flourishes nowhere so much as in France. Perhaps, with
the exception of August Wilhelm Schlegel, there is not a woman in
Germany so fond of gay ribbons as the French; even the heroes of July,
who fought for freedom and equality, afterward wore blue ribbons to
distinguish themselves from the rest of the people. Yet, if I on this
account doubt the success of a republic in Europe, it still cannot be
denied that everything is leading to one; that the republican respect
for law in place of veneration of royal personages is showing itself
among the better classes, and that the Opposition, just as it played at
comedy for fifteen years with a king, is now continuing the same game
with royalty itself, and that consequently a republic may be for a short
time, at least, the end of the song. The Carlists are aiding this
movement, since they regard it as a necessary phase which will enable
them to reestablish the absolute monarchy of the elder branch; therefore
they now bear themselves like the most zealous republicans. Even
Chateaubriand praises the Republic, calls himself a Republican from
inclination, fraternizes with Marrast, and receives the accolade from
Beranger. The _Gazette_--the hypocritical _Gazette de France_--now
yearns for republican state forms, universal franchise, primary
meetings, _et cetera_. It is amusing to see how these disguised
priestlings now play the bully-braggart in the language of
Sans-culottism, how fiercely they coquet with the red Jacobin cap, yet
are ever and anon afflicted with the thought that they might forgetfully
have put on in its place the red cap of a prelate; they take for an
instant from their heads their borrowed covering and show the tonsure
unto all the world. Such men as these now believe that they may insult
Lafayette, and it serves as an agreeable relaxation from the sour
republicanism, the compulsory liberty, which they must assume.

But let deluded friends and hypocritical enemies say what they will,
Lafayette is, after Robespierre, the purest character of the French
Revolution, and, next to Napoleon, its most popular hero. Napoleon and
Lafayette are the two names which now bloom most beautifu