Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/29

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Signs of Times.
23

all non-Democratic Frenchmen are unpatriotic in keeping out of their range altogether, instead of strengthening the hands of the present Republican Government by ungrudgingly accepting what some dare term an established Republic. In short, we are told that all non-Republican Frenchmen are out of the political arena altogether. It may be the case that a large number of so-called Republicans to-day follow in the track of the Republic; these are ignorant or apathetic men who to-morrow will cry down the sitting gods of October, 1882. These patriots are neither "fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring;" but for these men to be anything and everything, to be nothing, in fact, has not hitherto been regarded as a mark of superiority in France as well as in England. Intelligent politicians and wise patriots in France know besides, and teach their sons to remember, that the very first condition of politics is that a man must accept the onward movement which it implies, but never at the expense of their conscience. These men should be said waiting; but they have not become isolated from politics, and they indeed are not outsiders. Their notions about truth and Ues, about justice and theft, practically keep them from moving; the fact is, they will not stir because they will not move in a wrong direction,' in a direction offensive to the most rudimentary, to the wise and superior dictates of their conscience. But the old French spirit and the old French patriotism is all alive along the Monarchical lines, and will at no distant date rule France once more.

For our purpose we have thought it worth while to add a few notes for which we are indebted to eminent, influential Frenchmen just now "sur la brèche" in Paris, battling hard for the better welfare of Christian and Monarchical France: MM. François Beslay, A. de Céséna, Edouard Hervé, de Kérohant, Léon Lavedan, etc. These Publicists, seeing the miserable state of things in France, feel the possibility of a higher and happier state and they strive for its attainment. It is true that disappointment has followed^ and again may follow their disappointment,—

"Ye build! ye build! but ye enter not in,
 Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin;
 From the land of promise ye fade and die,
 Ere its verdure gleams forth on your wearied eye."