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ber of one of the oldest royal families in a work upon Mexico* which goes far beyond Europe, and the lives of whose ancestors the scope of the present intervention, and form part of the public history of Europe. which gives a clear and solid exposition of Moreover he was not inexperienced in the the condition and history of the country from practical duties of government, and he had dis- the earliest times of which we have any charged those duties creditably and with knowledge down to the present day. Alability. We trust that in the wider and though warmly approving the motive which higher sphere of duty to which he is now led to the Napoleonic intervention in Mexico, called, the archduke will justify the best he nowhere shows the slightest trace of the expectations which have been formed of him. spirit of a partisan. He views everything Many difficulties will attend the outset of his clearly and dispassionately, and takes full career, although they are not such as should account of the difficulties which beset this daunt any monarch of ordinary resolution attempt to establish a stable Mexican emand intelligence. He is a foreigner; he en- pire. ters Mexico escorted by a foreign army; and foreign troops will for several years remain to support his throne. But he does not come as a conqueror. He does not seek to destroy the past, but to restore it. He succeeds to a blank in the annals of Mexico, and he will seek to make his reign a continuation of the prosperity which preceded that blank, and to raise the country to a higher position in the world than it ever enjoyed before. A brilliant future is before him if he prove equal to the occasion. It is in his power to leave behind him a distinguished name in history,—to found a great empire, and to restore to the civilized world one of its portions which had relapsed into misery and barbarism.

The greatest danger which besets the new empire manifestly arises from the ill-will with which the Americans of the United States will regard an undertaking which has for its object to rob them of their prey. Either the new Mexican empire must be established on solid foundations before the termination of the civil war in the United States, or the project will run a great risk of failure. The provinces of Sonora and Lower California, especially, with their rich mines, will tempt the cupidity of the Americans in California; and these provinces lie so remote from the capital, and the means of communication with them are so extremely defective, that the Mexican Government will have much difficulty in defending them in the event of their being attacked. In order to secure her northwestern provinces, adjoining the Pacific, from attack, Mexico must have a fleet, or else obtain the assistance of a naval squadron from France. If the civil war in the United States terminates, as it seems likely to do, in a permanent disruption of the Union, the Mexican Government may find support in one or other of the rival sections into which its colossal neighbor will break

While thus carrying out his "Mexican idea" with admirable circumspection, the Emperor of the French took care that the importance and true character of his design should be generally known. No man knows better than he the power which a policy derives from the support of public opinion. He wished to get the moral sense of Europe on his side, and to prove to France that the "idea" was one which was worthy of a great nation which aspires to be the up. But this is a very doubtful support to leader of civilization. He intrusted the task of exposition to one of his senators whose character for impartiality is as well known as his high intellectual powers, and who enjoys a celebrity greater than any which can be conferred by the favor of courts. Michel Chevalier is the ablest political economist on the Continent; he is a man of facts, and of sound and careful reasoning; so that he was eminently fitted to be an expositor of the imperial policy upon whose judgment and integrity the public could rely. He has produced

rely upon; and if the Mexicans are wise, they will act as men who know they are enjoying a breathing-time, and that erelong they must confide in their own energies to defend their territories and maintain their independence.

As regards the immediate difficulties which surround the new government, M. Chevalier evidently considers that the most serious is

Chevalier, Senator, and Member of the Institute of *"Mexico, Ancient and Modern." By M. Michel France.

trade. A railway from Vera Cruz to the capital will probably be the first great public work undertaken by the new government; and in the execution of this work, foreign capital and enterprise will doubtless be drawn into the country. The mines of the precious

that which may arise from the conduct of the pope,-from the policy of the very Church which the emperor takes under his special protection. In order to regenerate Mexico, says M. Chevalier, it is indispensable that the government should secularize and take into its own management the immense prop-metals will likewise engage the eager attenerty of the Church; by which means the finances of the State would be placed on a prosperous footing, without really impairing the resources of the clerical body. But the pope has hitherto shown himself strongly opposed to any such project; and M. Chevalier states that the influence of the clergy is so great among the Mexicans that no government can secure an adequate amount of popularity which sets itself in opposition to the head of the Church. Is, then, the pope to make the required concession, or is the new emperor to find himself surrounded by disaffection, arising from the great influence of the clergy over the minds of the people? Before embarking for his new empire, the archduke visited Rome to obtain the benediction of the pope, and also doubtless to endeavor to procure a favorable settlement of this important question. We have not heard that the archduke succeeded in the latter and more important part of his mission. He got a blessing on his voyage, but, probably, a non possumus as regards all else.

Ere this, the new emperor will have landed at Vera Cruz, amid salvos of artillery, and will have commenced his royal progress to the capital. On the way, he will have abundant evidence of the fallen condition of the country; and when the magnificent valley of Anahuac opens upon him, he will see how ample are the triumphs which await him if he succeeds in his mission. Doubtless his first act will be to assemble a council of the notables, the leading men in the country, to ascertain from them the wants of the nation, and to obtain their co-operation in the measures requisite to re-organize the state and regenerate the people. Order must first be established, and the administrative system put upon an efficient footing. The work of regeneration will necessarily be a slow one, and years must elapse before much progress can be made in awaking the energies and developing the resources of the country. Mexico is almost roadless, and the cost and difficulty of transport at present are serious obstacles to the development of the export

tion of the government, as the most promising of all the immediate resources of the State. Two-thirds of all the silver circulating in the world has been produced from the mines of Mexico. Nevertheless, the mineral wealth of the country can hardly be said to have yet been explored; and probably Humboldt was right in his conjecture, that if the mines of Mexico be adequately worked, Europe will again be inundated with silver as in the sixteenth century. In any case we may expect that, ere-long, the produce of the Mexican mines will, to a great extent, redress the balance of the precious metals, and prevent any derangement in the relative value of gold and silver by adding largely to the supplies of the latter metal. Let us hope also that, as soon as the finances of the State permit, the emperor will seek to restore his capital—the noblest city which the Spaniards ever built in the New World-to its former splendor, and make it worthy of its magnificent site, which is hardly rivalled, and certainly not surpassed, by any in the world. Let him do in some degree for Mexico what Napoleon has accomplished for Paris. Let him employ the crowds of beggars which disfigure the streets in works of embellishment and public utility,

thereby arousing them to a life of honest industry, and at the same time making his renovated capital a beautiful and stately symbol of the happy change which in like manner, we trust, will be accomplished in the country at large.

If the new emperor has difficulties to encounter, he has also many advantages. Although a stranger, a majority of the people will receive him as a monarch of their own choice, and the remainder will readily acquiesce in the new regime. He has no native rivals: there is no old sovereignty to be overborne,—no old traditions of government to be encountered and supplanted. He is the first monarch after chaos. He succeeds to a long interregnum of anarchy which constitutes a mere blank in the history of the country. His throne will be raised upon ruins which are not of his making,-upon the debris of

a power which had crumbled into the dust half a century before his arrival. The founding of his empire is like building a city upon the site of another which had long perished, and with which the new one does not enter into rivalry, but simply replaces. England wishes him good-speed. And among the strange events of the future it may possibly happen that the House of Hapsburg may be the head of a great and flourishing empire in the New World after the original empire in Europe has been broken into pieces.

The intervention in Mexico is a remarkable episode in the policy of Napoleon III., and as such will not fail to attract the regard of future historians. It is a task as novel as it is honorable for a monarch to attempt the regeneration of a country other than his own, to carry civilization and prosperity into a region of the globe where they have fallen into decay, even though he undertook the task primarily with a view to his own interests. To raise a country thrice as large as France from a state of chronic desolation,-to pierce it with railways, to reconstruct the old watercourses of irrigation, to re-open the rich mines, and to make the waste places blossom with flowers and fruits and useful plants, is certainly a noble design. And still nobler is it, to rescue a population of eight millions from anarchy, demoralization, and suffering, and to restore to them, in better fashion than they ever had before, the protection of the State and the benefactions of the Church. Lawlessness and rapine, wastefulness and oppression, no public virtue and no private enterprise, such has been the condition of Mexico for many years. Napoleon, it is true, does not undertake to remedy these evils himself; but he has made a beginning, he has taken the first step, which is proverbially so difficult. He has placed the Mexicans on a vantage-ground which they could not have

obtained for themselves, and he gives to them a government temporarily aided by his troops, recognized by the powers of Europe, and possessing a fair amount of credit in other countries, by which the work of regenerating the moral and material condition of Mexico may be carried out. He has cleared away the old obstructions; he has founded the new empire; and whatever be the ultimate results of his enterprise, he has thereby added fresh laurels to his renown, which are all the more honorable since they are voted to him by the world at large.

So far as it has gone, the intervention has been successful, and the Napoleonic idea has a good prospect of being fully realized. Meanwhile two important ends have been attained. The expedition has paid its expenses: the cost of the intervention is to be refunded to France by the new government, which likewise takes upon itself the charge of maintaining the French troops which are to be left in Mexico. The enterprise, moreover, has successfully engaged the thoughts of the French people during a period when the emperor found it advisable to remain at peace in Europe. France is still in a condition in which the stimulus of military action abroad is requisite to keep her quiescent at home. The emperor's Mexican idea has served this purpose as well as others. And Europe has been thankful that the French have been amused otherwise than at her expense. But the Mexican idea, so far as regards the direct action of France, is now at an end; and looking at the circumstances of Europe as well as at the fact that the empe ror's hands are again free, we think the Continental powers may now feel as King John did when, at the close of the tournament at Ashby de la Zouch, he received the brief but significant warning, "The devil has got loose."

From The Edinburgh Review.

1. The Queen's English: Stray Notes on
Speaking and Spelling. By Henry Al-
ford, D. D., Dean of Canterbury.
don and Cambridge: 1864.

Lon

2. Modern English Literature: its Blemishes and Defects. By Henry H. Breen, Esq., F. S. A. London: 1857.

putants cannot do better than elect them joint standing referees of all their bets,past, present, and future.

Certain it is that, owing to various causes, some of which we shall presently mention, peril of permanent defilement; and any duly the well of pure sound English is in great qualified person who has a chance of being listened to can hardly do a better service to DISCUSSIONS on small points of grammar, literature than by writing such books as spelling, and pronunciation are very frequent those before us. The need of such monitors in these islands, though not, perhaps, among is pretty obvious when we read even in a those persons whose education and pursuits royal speech that "the territories which have qualified them to treat such subjects to have hitherto been under the sway of the the greatest advantage. Officers in the army King of Denmark should continue so to reand navy, sporting men, and attorneys' clerks main." They must, however, be practical: seem to be particularly addicted to these dis-doctrinaires and theorists are not wanted. putations, which (generally speaking) are To state clearly what words and expressions characterized rather by the loudness than the are, or are not, good English is useful inforrelevancy of the arguments and illustrations, mation; to investigate the causes which have and are terminated by a bet which is never led to the adoption of this or that word or decided. Men of literary tastes and habits expression, is an interesting branch of the touch these matters more rarely; partly, no history of the language; to protest against doubt, for the same reason that the rules of new words or forms which are not wanted, etiquette are not often discussed among well- or which have not been coined in the true bred people; partly also, perhaps, from a mint, is almost a duty, while they are yet fear of being thought pedantic triflers, who new, and are still only in the hands of the attach undue importance to insignificant conceited pretenders who have introduced questions because they are incapable of tak- them; but beyond that it is vain to go. ing an interest in exalted themes; and of the People who write essays to prove that though few who are both qualified and willing to a word in fact means one thing, it ought to assume the office of public teachers, the ma- mean another, or that though all well-edujority, unfortunately, are people with crotch-cated Englishmen do conspire to use this exets, who take aversion to particular words and phrases, and employ themselves on the vain and unprofitable task of proving that the English language ought to be something different from what it is.

pression, they ought to use that, are simply bores. The question whether any word or phrase is or is not good English is strictly a question of fact. We are a little apt to fall into a narrow and erroneous tone of criticism Under these circumstances, the public ought from the circumstance that we have most of to be much obliged to Dean Alford and Mr. us received our first notions of grammar in Breen for the useful and entertaining works connection with a dead language. For Latin above named; the former being (as its au- and Greek there are fixed standards of puthor informs us) a collection, "in a consid-rity; at any rate, conceivable standards, erably altered form," of papers originally though scholars may dispute as to where used as lectures at Canterbury, and after- the line shall be drawn; but for a living wards published in the widely circulated language there is, and can be, no standard periodical entitled Good Words." That but the usage of educated men. The elewe should entirely agree with every one of gance, accuracy, and propriety of the lanthe opinions expressed by these writers, is guage in use among a people depend mainly not to be expected; but on the whole, they on the preservation of a pure standard of will be found trustworthy guides on sundry speech at the bar, in the pulpit, in parliadoubtful questions, and just prosecutors, ment, and as far as possible by the principal judges, and executioners of numerous com- newspapers,-though the jargon of the daily mon errors and vulgarisms in spoken and press unhappily acts more commonly in the written English; in short, the aforesaid dis-opposite direction. Our dean says, in the

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concluding paragraph of his book, with | classes and not of the illiterate and the vul

great good sense,

"These stray notes on spelling and speaking have been written more as contributions to discussion than as attempts to decide in doubtful cases. The decision of matters such as those which I have treated is not made by any one man or set of men; cannot be brought about by strong writing, or vehement assertion but depends on influences wider than any one man's view, and taking longer to operate than the life of any one generation. It depends on the direction and deviations of the currents of a nation's thoughts, and the influence exercised on words by events beyond man's control. Grammarians and rhetoricians may set bounds to language; but usage will break over in spite of them. And I have ventured to think that he may

do some service who, instead of standing and protesting where this has been the case, observes, and points out to others, the existing phenomena, and the probable account to be given of them.”

gar. A conflict is always going on between the written and the spoken language of a country,-because it is written by the more cultivated few, it is spoken by the less cultivated many. Those who write labor, on the whole, to preserve the traditions and fences of the language; those who speak to break them down. Hence in colonies or dependencies, where classical standards are unknown, and literature itself is degraded to the lowest forms of the newspaper, the corruption of the language is far more rapid than with us; but these slang and cant phrases of Americans and Australians tend to find their way back to England, and more than one of the most questionable innovations of the day might be traced to base usages of this nature. Again, we cannot admit the authority of usage, when it is clearly opposed to the very principles of language. There is, we fear, ample authority, amongst writers of the presStrange to say, however (or rather, not ent day, for the use of the word "supplestrange at all), the author of these just and ment," not as a noun substantive, which is sensible observations is not entirely without its proper meaning, but as a verb active in his own little prejudices,-cannot entirely the sense of to supply what is deficient, to help feeling that certain words have no busi- complete. We have seen it used of late years ness to be English, though he can hardly by prelates and judges, who ought to have deny that they are. Thus he says that the abhorred such a solecism; nay, we will even expression, "a superior man," is an odious confess, so infectious has it become, that it way of speaking, which, if "followed out as has, once or twice, crept, notwithstanding our a precedent, cannot but vulgarize and dete- utmost vigilance, into these pages. Supriorate our language." Yet he would be the plement" is by its form the thing added or first to point out (in any case but his own) supplied, not the act of supplying it. You that it is no argument against the admissi- might just as well say that instead of apbility of a phrase to say that it does not al-pending another page to your book, you low of being" followed out as a precedent." intend to appendix it. He would not object to speak of "falling in love," because we may not say that we fall in hate." But any stick, as the proverb goes, will serve to beat a dog. If authors with crotchets would but examine a page of the first book that comes to hand, and say candidly how many words and sentences in it would stand the test of the kind of criticism which they are in the habit of applying to their own "favorite aversions," we are persuaded that many an unprofitable tirade might be saved.

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But although we admit the force of usage, which is continually legalizing expressions before unknown, or proscribing expressions once familiar to our forefathers, we are entitled to claim that these innovations should be governed by the usage of the educated

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We have already hinted that men of superior education are sometimes deterred from instructing the public in the right use of their language by the fear of being thought triflers. But," says the dean, "the language of a people is no trifle."

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"The national mind is reflected in the

If it

national speech. If the way in which men
express their thoughts is slipshod and mean,
it will be very difficult for their thoughts
themselves to escape being the same.
is high-flown and bombastic, a character for
national simplicity and truthfulness, we may
nation must be (and it has ever been so in
be sure, cannot be long maintained. That
history) not far from rapid decline, and from
being degraded from its former glory. Every
important feature in a people's language is
reflected in its character and history.

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