do as soon as they find out that the game is in the | And though all wild and tangled, falls her heavy soldiers' hands. M. Thiers is here in London, negotiating, it is said, an arrangement between all the candidate monarchies of France. Our opinion is that M. Thiers is in this endeavoring to combine influences that have neither force nor future. M. Thiers' friends have placed France in the power of the army; and as soon as that army gets a chief, and feels that it has one, that chief, call him king. general, president, or emperor, will be master of the country. M. Thiers will be as powerless before him as ever Sieyes was before Bonaparte ; and the Bourbon and Bonaparte claims, even though united, will be like so much chaff before the wind of popular acclamation. THE LADY ALICE. I. silk-brown hair; Though from her eyes the brightness, from her cheeks the bloom, has fled; They know their Lady Alice, the Darling of the Dead. With silence, in her own old room the fainting form they lay; Where all things stand unaltered since the night she fled away; But who shall bring to life again her father from the clay? But who shall give her back again her heart of that old day? Dickens' Household Words. ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG LADY ENDEAVORING TO EMIGRATE TO AMERICA.-An interesting story is told by the Glasgow Saturday Post, of the adventures of a young lady, Miss Mary Brown, daughter of a gentleman lately dead, and from whom her WHAT doth the Lady Alice so late on the turret-brother, who had been disinherited, and turned cab stair, Without a lamp to light her but the diamond in her hair; When every arching passage overflows with shallow gloom, And dreams float through the castle, into every silent room? They stop. The long line closes up, like some gigantic worm: A driver, was in the habit of extorting money : Having friends in America, she determined to emigrate, and took her passage by the " City of Glasgow" steamer, which left on Tuesday. Her brother, disappointed and vexed at her intended departure, formed a scheme to detain her. trumpery claim was reared up, and a meditatione fuge warrant applied for. He sneaked on board the vessel, and caused his sister to be apprehended. Violence was resorted to, and she was dragged on shore, and, refusing to listen to her friends' proposals for letting her off, she was carried before Sheriff Bell. The sheriff, after hearing the case, detected the trick, and dismissed the case. She left the sheriff's office and met her friends; she was now freed from her tormentors. A new dilemma now arose. The vessel had sailed-Miss Brown's passage was paid, and all her luggage on board. To overtake the vessel seemed hopeless, but still she was resolved to make the attempt. Hiring a cab, she drove to the Greenock Railway station, and finding a train on the point of starting, was speedily conveyed to Greenock. Fresh misfortunes seemed to arise the "City of Glasgow" steamer had arrival of the train, and was seen slowly steaming passed Greenock nearly half an hour before the past Gourock. A Gourock steamer was leaving the quay, and Miss Brown went on board of it. The Gourock steamer was rapidly overhauling the huge City of Glasgow," when all on a sudden the latter was seen to "bout ship," and steam towards Greenock. The cause of this sudden change arose from an accident which happened to the oil cistern on board. A steam tug was despatched to Greenock for a fresh supply of oil, and hence the delay which proved so fortunate for the persecuted orphan. Taking a small boat, Miss Brown was rowed towards the vessel, and received on board amid the cheers of the passengers. A new matter of consternation now arose; the captain, thinking she would not get away, had landed all her luggage at 66 A shape is standing in the path; a wan and ghost-Greenock, and there was no hope of getting it. like form; Which gazes fixedly, nor moves; nor utters any sound; Then, like a statue built of snow, falls lifeless to the ground. And though her clothes are ragged, and though her feet are bare; Further vexation was put an end to by the return of the tug carrying the oil, with all Miss Brown's luggage on board. Certain friends at Greenock had seen her luggage on the quay, and forwarded it with the tug. Thus were all further impediments happily got over. POETRY.-The Little Girl's Lament, 155.- In Memoriam, 167.-The Count of Flanders, 188.The Sower to his Seed; Trial, 189.-The Lady Alice, 191. SHORT ARTICLES.-Affection of Animals, 157.-Hunting the Wren, 174.-Adventures of an Emigrant Young Lady, 191. NEW BOOKS.-The Conquest of Canada, 166.-Gallery of Illustrious Americans, 171.-Reginald Hastings, 178.- Past, Present, and Future of the French Republic, 187. TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangemen day, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Brom-in all parts of North America, for increasing the circulafield sts., Boston; Price 12 cents a number, or six dollars tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commission a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselve thankfully received and promptly attended to. To in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be subject with any agent who will send us undoubted referaddressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows. 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Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the Englis language, but this, by its mense extent and comprehension, includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmos expansion of the present age, J Q ADAMS LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 324.-3 AUGUST, 1850. From Fraser's Magazine. DIPLOMACY, DIPLOMATISTS, AND DIPLOMATIC SERVANTS OF ENGLAND. Mornays, the De la Boderies, and the Barillons of former days; but talk to us of the foreign policy of England and France; of their moral, material, and trading interests; of the number of Two centuries, or two centuries and a half ago, their armies and of their fleets; of their means of the science of diplomacy, more especially in Ger- aggression and of defence; of the spirit and volimany, consisted in deciphering and translating tion of their people; of the bent and inclination charters, diplomas, and ancient treaties; in dis- of their representative and public assemblies; of tinguishing between muniments and acts disputa- their revenue, taxation and public expenditure; ble, doubtful, fabricated, partially false, interpo- of their commerce; inland navigation; system of lated, or altogether forged. For the last seventy banking, of currency, of trade; and of intercomor eighty years, however, and more especially munication, whether by roads, canals, or railways; since the epoch of the first French Revolution, and then we shall understand what you mean by circumstances and events have nearly laid bare to the antiquated word diplomacy, foreign affairs, the general public-pioneers and all; at all public laws of Europe, and that which French events, to the intelligent and instructed public statesmen of the olden time called la science des the minute particulars and details, if not the secret ambassadeurs. springs, of negotiations and events, which in the time of Charles V. and of Philip II.-which, in the reign of our own Elizabeth and James; and in France, in the reign of Henry IV., Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and even so late as the reign of Louis XV.-were studiously concealed from the eyes of the million by the exclusiveness, the rigidity, and the secrecy of statesmen and politicians of the elder school. But For the modern Englishman or Frenchman unbred to the craft would contend that diplomacy no longer is, or at least no longer ought to be, what it was formerly considered-a knowledge of pacts and of treaties, and of the interpretation put upon these pacts and treaties by congresses, either of ministers or of crowned heads. No doubt it is necessary to the accomplished diplomatist, as indeed it is to the well-informed statesman, politiThese days are now happily past, even in the cian, gentleman, or scholar, to know the bearing case of civilized despotisms; or, as the Spaniards of great treaties, the number, real force and value say, speaking of the ministry of Zea Bermudez, of land and sea forces of a country, the disposition of a despotismo illustrado. Since 1783 or 1784 in and genius of a people, and the inclinations of her France, and indeed antecedently, men have yearned sovereigns, statesmen, and leading minds. for simplicity and straightforwardness in the con- since rail and steam have almost annihilated time duct of public affairs, and have sought to find that and space, the interests of European nations have frankness, that directness and plain common-sense been considerably altered and modified; and since view of things which one is accustomed to meet the Congress of Vienna, which may be called the in the ordinary relations between man and man. last settlement of Europe, wonderful changes have It was all very well, in the days of Père Mabillon, been silently taking place in most European states. and among the brethren of the Congrégation de We do not mean to say that in all times and in all St. Maur, for men of profound learning, like the circumstances the interests of a people have not authors of the great work L'Art de Vérifier les varied with circumstances, or that these interests, Dates, to make a scholastic mystery of the science or, if you will, passions, have not been limited of charters and treaties, and to write a learned and controlled by the text and spirit of public law, work on the subject like the Diplomatique of the by written or verbal conventions regulating bounlearned Champenois, published, if we remember daries, modes of succession, &c. Yet since the rightly, somewhere about 1660: but now the man first French Revolution-or, in other words, withwho in England or France would talk of the sci- in the last sixty years, and more especially within ence of diplomacy as a mystery would be laughed the last twenty years he must have been an inat for his pains; and every commis voyageur of observant man who has not remarked that the old France, and every smart bagman of England trav-canons of public law have been weakened, elling either in the soft goods or the hardware been less appealed to by publicists and politicians; line, would say, Talk not to us of diplomacy as and that the settlement of Europe as fixed at the understood by the Cecils and Walsinghams, by the Congress of Vienna by no means stands now on Dudley Digges, the Carletons, the Winwoods, the the same foundation as it stood anteriorly to 1830, Carews, the Edmundes, the Nauntons, the An- much less does it stand on the same foundation on thony Bacons, the Sir Thomas Bodleys, and the which it stood anteriorly to February, 1848. PrinSir Henry Wootons; by the D'Ossats, the Jean- ciples, opinions, and interests have changed; nins, the Sullys, the Villerois, the Du Plessis public opinion and public feeling have changed have throughout the whole of Europe, as the events of | Every sane man will agree with De Martens in the last twenty-seven months too abundantly and thinking it ought, also, to be the end and object too loudly testify. How vain, then, the attempt to collect and to string together in one work the different pretensions which have so long exercised and fatigued the diplomacy of Europe! What could be more ridiculous than the publication of such a tableau in A. D. 1850? It would but reveal the ambition of princes and the misery of nations; it would be but a record of the dreams of ambition and of the spoils of conquest. Yet till the epoch of the first French Revolution, diplomatists loaded their memories with the provisions of treaties and conventions, and spoke a language which, in reference to the actual and work-a-day world in which we now live, and move, and have our being, would be deemed hallucinated or demented. After the thirty years' war the treaty of Westphalia became the base of the public law and of the peace of Europe. Its clauses, deemed unchangeable and eternal, were referred to in all subsequent treaties. But the coalition against Louis XIV. produced, at the end of the war of the succession, another and a different order of things, of which the Treaty of Utrecht was the symbol and the exponent. This treaty in its turn was modified by the treaty of Vienna of 1735; of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748; and most of all by the first partition of Poland, which took place in 1773; and by those subsequent partitions which produced, first the anarchy, and, secondly, directly tended to the annihilation of the nationality of that brave, chivalrous, but inconstant people. Thus it is that in more modern times diplomacy, or the science of the foreign relations of states, has been perpetually shifting, and that the art of negotiation, embracing as it does the entire system of interests arising out of the relations existing between nations, is perpetually undergoing modification and change. The chief modern writers on the diplomatic art are Germans, and these persevering and theoretic plodders have, as is their wont, overlaid their treatises with much crude speculation-with a great deal of the lumber of a useless learning-with much that is dry-with much that is dusty, effete, and outworn; yet, midst all the rubbish which has been carted into Leipsic during the last half-century by the Martens, the Sschmaltz, and others not necessary here to name, and which has been given to the public by the Mylius, the Brockhaus, the Dieterichs, the Ungers, the Leos, and other accoucheurs of prolific and ponderous authors, pregnant occasionally with monstrous and misshapen births, something, nevertheless, that is valuable, both in fact and in speculation, has occasionally issued from the literary womb of Allemania. For instance, all men are agreed with Charles de Martens that the most legitimate end of diplomacy is to provide for the peace and security of states-to prevent, by concession or explanation, the preparations for wars-and to terminate speedily hostilities should peace and unity be once interrupted. of diplomacy to facilitate relations and intercommunication among states by a reciprocity of commerce, and to seek to unite mankind as brothers and friends. It is agreed by all the text-writers, whether German, French, or Dutch, that the diplomacy of a nation should be neither mobile, Machiavelic, over-prompt, nor over-active; that it should be generally patient, passive, and, so to speak, expectative, unless where the subject matter is an exchange of friendliness or of good offices. This completely tallies with Talleyrand's instructions to a young, ardent, and able minister plenipotentiary, who was just about to enter for the first time on his functions-" Et sur-tout point de zèle, Monsieur." It will hence be concluded, that while it is the business of an able and honest diplomatist to obviate, by prompt and placable explanation, the necessity of war, it is also his duty to have ever in view the safety and dignity of the state of which he is a servant. As the principles of the science of which he is the minister, the upholder, and the exponent, have their source in international law, or that positive law of nations which forms the common law of every civilized people, he should be prepared to act openly by those rules which fix the rights, and prescribe the duties of states, whether in peace or in war. If it be important to civilized society that citizens should not be troubled in the possession of, or succession to, their estates-it imports not in a less degree to the general society of nations that they should uninterruptedly enjoy their limits, frontiers, privileges and dominion. As the general purpose of civil commerce or municipal law ought to be to prevent and obviate evils between individuals, so the purpose and intent of the law of nations, whose views are larger, and whose scope is more extensive, ought to be to reconcile differences and to prevent wars. Le Droit des Gens (says St. Real*) renferme les règles de la conduite des hommes consideré de peuple à peuple, en tant que formant la societé générale des nations, et une république dans laquelle chaque peuple n'est que comme une grande famille. should be based on the interest of communities, A perfect and honest diplomacy, therefore, and he is the best foreign minister who pursues, avoiding the extremes of inertness and mobility, the calm, even, yet ever watchful tenor of his way. The vain, the restless, the intriguing, the turbulent minister, must become the bane of his own country; and such a man does not, and, indeed, ought not to, obtain the confidence or esteem which are indispensable to insure the independence of foreign nations. In pursuing all the points and prosperity of Great Britaiħ, her internal wealth and external safety, a foreign minister, ambassador or envoy, can and ought, in any part of the world, to preserve his honor, his conscience * Science de Gouvernement, tom. i., p. 22. and his integrity-can be the excellent public | political, military, and social history of the powers servant of his sovereign, and the Integer vita with which the ambassador's nation comes into scelerisque purus of the Roman poet. The diplomatic career, thus properly appreciated and honorably followed, is among the first in moral and political importance. The laws which govern the intercourse of nations are fixed and defined, and ought to have their sanction in a high morality. No nation can or ought to depart from these laws without ultimately compromising either its well-being or its existence. He most frequent intercommunication. To this varied knowledge, it is needless to state, the negotiator should join moderation, dexterity, temper and tact. An ambassador should be a man of learning, and a man of the world; a man of books, and a man of men; a man of the drawing-room, and a man of the counting-house; a preux chevalier, and a man of labor and of business. He should possess quick faculties, active powers of observation, and that which military men call the coup d'œil. L'intérêt des états (says Royer Collard) est tellement lié à l'observation de ces lois, qu'ils ne should be of urbane, pleasant, and affable manpeuvent presque jamais s'en écarter, dans des cir-ners; of cheerful temper, of good humor, and of constances graves sans compromettre leur propre good sense. He should know when and where conservation, ou au moins leur bien-etrê. Il se to yield, to retreat, or to advance; when to press trouve en Europe un assez grand nombre de puis- his suit strongly, or when merely gently to insinsances, égales en force et en richesses, toutes capa-uate it indirectly, and, as it were, by innuendo. bles de lutter contre la nation qui voudrait troubler He should know how to unbend and how to upl'ordre général, et toutes les fois qu'un peuple hold his dignity, or rather the dignity of his sovs'est montré manifestement injuste, il a été obligé de céder tôt ou tard devant la résistance des autres. ereign; for it is his business, in whatever quarter of the world he may be placed, to maintain the rights and dignities of his sovereign with vigor and effect. It is the union of these diverse, and yet not repugnant, qualities, that gives to an am It is in this sense, as the Count de Garden remarks, that this political equilibrium operates as a conservative principle in international law; and he might have added, operates also on the con-bassador prestige, ascendancy, and power over the sciences of ambassadors, of ministers, and of statesmen, whether at home or abroad. minds of others—that acquires for him that reputation of wisdom, straightforwardness and sagacity, which is the rarest and most valuable gift of How much, then, of the happiness and misery of mankind-how much in the lot of nations, maya statesman. One part of the science of diplomadepend on the combinations and conclusions of one great, one adroit, or one faithless and unprincipled mind in this science! In the early part of this century, see how the conduct and resolves of Pitt in our country, and the flexible, supple, adroit, and unprincipled tactics of Talleyrand, influenced for a time-and for a time not inconsiderable either the fate and fortunes of Europe! cy may be, by even a dull man, mastered without any wonderful difficulties. It is that positive, fundamental, and juridical portion of the study which may be found in books, in treatises—in the history of treaties and of wars-in treatises on international law-in memoirs, letters, and negotiations of ambassadors-in historical and statistical works concerning the states of Europe, the balance of power, and the science of politics generally. In more ancient times, embassies were, for the most part, occasional or temporary. But since the end of the sixteenth century, they have be- But the abstract, hypothetical, and variable come permanent in all the states of the great portions of the craft-or, if you will, of the European family. When one great power deter-science-depending on ten thousand varying and mined on fixing its envoy, or minister plenipoten- variable circumstances-depending on persons, tiary, in a capital, others soon followed the exam- passions, fancies, whims-caprices royal, national, ple. A new system of diplomacy was the result. parliamentary and personal, is above theory, and To the general stagnation, but occasional vehe- beyond the reach of books; and can only be mence and vigor, of the middle ages, succeeded learned by experience, by practice, and by the more animated, more vivacious, more patient, most perfect and intuitive tact. The traditional more persevering, and more peaceful struggles. political maxims, the character of the leading sovIn this respect the world has been a gainer. ereigns, statesmen, and public men in any given Since the establishment of permanent embassies, court, as well as the conduct of negotiations, may there has been infinitely more astuteness, subtlety, be acquired by study, by observation, by a resiand keenness displayed by ambassadors and minis-dence as secretary, as attaché; but who, unless a ters; but there have been fewer wars, fewer deeds man of real genius for his art-who, unless a man of violence and rapine, fewer unprovoked aggres- of real ability and talent, shall seize on, fix, and sions. turn to his purpose, the ever-mobile, the everThe qualifications required for the diplomatic varying phases of courts, of camps, of councils, career, we need hardly say, are many and various. of senators, of parliaments, and of public bodies? To a perfect knowledge of history and the law of No doubt there are certain great cardinal and nations, should be united a knowledge of the priv-leading principles with which the mind of every ileges and duties of diplomatic agents, an acquaint-aspirant should be stored. But the mere knowl ance with the conduct and management of nego-edge of principles, and of the history of the tiations, the physical and moral statistics, the science, can never alone make a great ambassador, |