THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 xxxvii 



not immediately proclaim the Republic and red flag. He said he 

 could not yield to the citizens of Paris alone, that the whole 

 country must be consulted, that he chose the tricolour, for it 

 had followed and accompanied the triumphs of France all over 

 the world, and that the red flag had only been dipped in the 

 blood of the citizens. For sixty hours he has been quieting 

 the people : he is at the head of everything. Don't be pre- 

 judiced, Frank, by what you see in the papers. The French 

 have acted nobly, splendidly ; there has been no brutality, 

 plundering, or stealing. ... I did not like the French before ; 

 but in this respect they are the finest people in the world. I 

 am so glad to have been here.' 



And there one could wish to stop with this apotheosis of 

 liberty and order read with the generous enthusiasm of a boy ; 

 but as the reader knows, it was but the first act of the piece. 

 The letters, vivid as they are, written as they were by a hand 

 trembling with fear and excitement, yet do injustice, in their 

 boyishness of tone, to the profound effect produced. At the 

 sound of these songs and shot of cannon, the boy's mind awoke. 

 He dated his own appreciation of the art of acting from the day 

 when he saw and heard Rachel recite the ' Marseillaise ' at the 

 Francais, the tricolor in her arms. What is still more strange, 

 he had been up to then invincibly indifferent to music, insomuch 

 that he could not distinguish ' God save the Queen ' from 

 ' Bonnie Dundee ; ' and now, to the chanting of the mob, he 

 amazed his family by learning and singing ' Mourir pour la 

 Patrie.' But the letters, though they prepare the mind for no 

 such revolution in the boy's tastes and feelings, are yet full of 

 entertaining traits. Let the reader note Fleeming's eagerness 

 to influence his friend Frank, an incipient Tory (no less) as 

 further history displayed ; his unconscious indifference to his 

 father and devotion to his mother, betrayed in so many signi- 

 ficant expressions and omissions ; the sense of dignity of this 

 diminutive ' person resident on the spot,' who was so happy 

 as to escape insult ; and the strange picture of the household 

 father, mother, son, and even poor Aunt Anna all day in 



