THE LAST TEN YEAKS. 345 



family ties, and the sacredness of marriage will remain. One 

 must know how to wait when .one is not more than eighty. 

 In the midst of these tumultuous agitations I am more than 

 ever filled with a zest for work and literary distinction. 

 Illusions even are not without a useful purpose. There is no 

 illusion, however, in the sweet consolation I have derived from 

 the fact that my oldest and most illustrious friend l has been 

 able to preserve the beauty and grandeur of his noble character 

 when elevated to the summit of human greatness.' Deeply was 

 he affected by the bloody scenes enacted by the victorious 

 party in Vienna : ' What frightful bloodshed ! ' he exclaims to 

 Curtius, ' how murders have multiplied since the martyrdom of 

 Lichnowski ! Shame on our German Fatherland ! And now 

 we have the telegraphic announcement that the President of 

 the Republic is not to be elected by the vote of the Assembly, 

 but by the voice of the people. From such a course the worst 

 results may be apprehended.' 



He had soon the grief of seeing in his beloved France the 

 wild course of affairs again hurrying, as he had formerly de- 

 scribed it in 1830, on the return road to tyranny ; and in his own 

 country he lived to see the fruits of the Revolution, both good 

 and bad alike, swept away ere they had time to ripen by the 

 storm of the reactionary movement. From his own words, we 

 have seen how strong his desire was that some energetic steps 

 should be at once taken by the Government to repress anarchy ; 

 but he was deeply grieved and humiliated that the supreme 

 power, after having gained courage for such a course, failed to 

 persevere in it, and allowed the reactionary movement to in- 

 crease with accelerating speed from day to day. In his letters 

 he sorrowfully brings the dates 1849 and 1789 repeatedly into 

 j uxtaposition. ' During those distressing years of reaction public 

 feeling seems to become ungovernable, and every newspaper is 

 stained with blood.' 2 The conduct of the German governments 

 filled him with disgust, 'for, boldly disregarding the engagements 

 into which they had entered, they wallowed, as the Red Repub- 

 licans had done, in deeds of fiendish atrocity.' The retrograde 

 movements in Prussia appeared to him doubly dangerous, from 



1 Arago. z ' Briefe an Varnhagen/ No. 136. 



