LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1890 All rights reserved PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890 by William Henry Hurlbert in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington P. 24, 11 lines from top, for rival read rural. P. 64, line 1, for de Royes read de Royer. P. 91, line 6 from top. M. Spuller, Prefect of the Somme in 1880, was the brother of the present Minister of Foreign Affa

As I have not wished to swell the bulk of this book by references, and as many statements made in it concerning men and things of the first Republic may seem to my readers to need verification, I subjoin a brief list of authorities consulted by me in this connection. It is incomplete, but will be found to cover every material point concerning the epoch to which it refers. Biré, E. La Légende des Girondins. Campardon, Emile . Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire à Paris d'après les Documents Originaux. Da

This volume is neither a diary nor a narrative. To have given it either of these forms, each of which has its obvious advantages, would have extended it beyond all reasonable limits. It is simply a selection from my very full memoranda of a series of visits paid to different parts of France during the year 1889. These visits would never have been made, had not my previous acquaintance with France and with French affairs, going back now—such as it is—to the early days of the Second Empire, given

Calais The men who, in 1790, brought about the formal division of France into departments, no doubt thereby facilitated the ephemeral transformation, in September 1792, of the ancient French monarchy into a French republic, 'one and indivisible.' But they also put their improvised republic thereby at the mercy of the marvellous Italian who blew its flimsy framework into shreds with his cannon in October 1795. In working out what George Sand calls 'the great practical joke' of the First Consulate

Boulogne Boulogne now, as in the days of Arthur Young, is surrounded with bright and pleasant villas and country houses, though many of the châteaux which Young was so much surprised to find inhabited by country gentlemen attending to their duties and living on their estates have disappeared. It is not only a larger and a more lively place than Calais; it is a more picturesque and a more interesting place. The old walls and ramparts of the upper town make such a striking contrast with the modern

Aire-sur-la-Lys It is a local tradition at Aire-sur-la-Lys that, about half a century ago, the good people of this ancient and picturesque town (which, like St.-Omer, remained a part of the Spanish dominions when all the rest of the Artois became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659) turned out with flags and music to welcome their mayor back from Paris, bringing the good news that the projected Northern railway should not pass through their territory, to disturb their settled trade. Thi

Aire-sur-la-Lys . My host at St.-Quentin being a councillor-general, his term of office expires with the elections fixed to take place on July 28. There is no reason in the nature of things why councillors-general should be elected on the same lines with deputies and senators. On the contrary, it would seem to be very desirable that local rather than national considerations should govern the election of such functionaries. But it has been found difficult, even in England and Wales, to keep natio

Amiens By turns English, French, and Burgundian, Upper Picardy, of which Amiens was the capital, became definitely French under the astute policy of Louis XI. The Calaisis and the Boulonnais, with Ponthieu and Vimieu, eventually constituted what was called Lower Picardy, and the whole province, divided under the Bourbons into the two 'generalities' of Amiens and Soissons, formed before 1789 one of the twelve great departments of the monarchy, and was brought under the domain of the Parliament of

Amiens Where party names are taken from persons, there we may be sure that the people are either losing, or have never had, the political instincts which alone can make popular government a government of law and order. The Englishmen who are readiest to proclaim themselves 'Gladstonians,' whatever may be their other merits, are hardly perhaps the most devoted champions either of the British constitution as it is, or of strictly constitutional reform. In France to-day, the Republican party is mad

St.-Gobain The short railway journey from Amiens on the Somme to La Fère on the Oise takes you through a country which, on a fine summer's morning, reminds one of the old Kentuckian description of an agricultural paradise—'tickle it with a hoe, and it laughs with a harvest.' As, in one direction, Picardy extends into the modern Department of the Pas-de-Calais, so in other directions it includes no inconsiderable part of the modern Departments of the Oise and of the Aisne. In this way it touches

Laon The lively little city of Chauny, standing in the heart of the rich and lovely valley of the Oise, the 'golden vale' of this part of France, has a history of its own of which I shall presently have something to say, and which throws some interesting light upon the general history of France. But Chauny owes its actual prosperity mainly to its connection with the Company of St.-Gobain. From a very early period in the annals of the company, the plate-glass made at St.-Gobain was sent across th

Laon It would be hard to find in France, or out of France, on a pleasant summer's day, a more charming drive than the highway which leads from Chauny, with its great modern industries and its lively, bustling people, to the little feudal town of Coucy-le-Château, perched upon its lofty hill and dominated by one of the grandest, if not, indeed, the grandest, of feudal fortress-homes. I do not know that Gargantua would now find the people of Chauny as entertaining as Rabelais tells us they were in

Laon The lofty hill on which the Sires de Coucy planted their chief fortress rises above the fields and forests of the Soissonnais as the Mont St.-Michel rises above the waves and the sands of the Norman coast. The narrow streets and quaint old houses of the little town of Coucy-le-Château are huddled around the outworks of the colossal castle, almost as closely as are the climbing streets and the terraced houses of St.-Michel around the martial monastery; and each of these two places is, in its

Valenciennes It says but little for what Texans call the 'sabe' of the municipal authorities of Valenciennes that this, which ought to be one of the most picturesque and attractive, is really one of the shabbiest historic towns of North-eastern France. The streets are ill-paved and ill-kept, the public buildings are untidy, and the whole place contrasts most unfavourably, from this point of view, with the rich and beautifully cultivated region through which you reach it by the railway from Douai

Lille Thanks to Louis XIV., French Flanders became politically French more than two centuries ago. But it still remains essentially Flemish. The land has a life and a language of its own, like Brittany or Alsace. The French Fleming is rarely as haughty in his assertion of his nationality as the French Breton; but when a Monsieur de Paris , or any other outer barbarian, comes upon a genuine Flamand flamingant , there is no more to be made of him than of a Breton bretonnant , standing calmly at ba

Reims No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and royal city of Reims. The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M. Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of all its significance. It would be to filch from the c

Val Richer . Perhaps the most striking illustration that can be given of the true nature of the contest now waging between the Third Republic and France, is the share taken in it by the family and the representatives of the great Protestant statesman, who, under Louis Philippe, laid down the lines in France of a truly free and liberal system of public education. In the matter of education France was undoubtedly thrown backward and not forward by the First Republic. The number of illiterates—that