Alfred de Rosann — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 139 he never asserts “that all is perfect’? on his native soil; he will fight for it—he will praise it—and at the same time he will confess the perfections or admit the superiority of certain laws, habits, or systems, preva- lent or existing in other climes. The Frenchman ar- gues with warmth, energy, and action; but he does not forget the rules of logic, or the dictates of reason: the Englishman contents himself by sayTig “It is so, because he knows it—”’ and fancies he has destroyed the whole fabric of controversy erected by his op- ponent. While the horses were being harnessed to the car- riage, De Rosann amused himself with a Paris daily paper that was lying upon the table in the coffee-room of the inn. It was the Constitutionnel over which he thus accidentally cast his eyes; and an article, wherein this celebrated journal* endeavoured to refute the assertions of an opposition contemporary, imme- diately rivetted our hero’s attention to the subject. Subtle and plausible as were the arguments made use of by the Constitulionnel, the severe truths it at- tempted to contradict were but too palpable to the meanest capacity. ‘The opposition paper totally ex- posed the rash measures practised by the existing ministry, and hinted broadly at the probable result. It was evident, according to the exposure thus made of many of the impolitic schemes of Polignac and his associates in office, that the throne of the royal Bour- bons was tottering, that the ery of an enslaved nation would shortly alarm the imprudent Charles in his palace at St. Cloud, and that the public feeling was labouring under a strong excitement. De Rosann sighed when he reflected how another popular tumult might again prepare consular seats for new Robes- pierres, Dantons, and a host of petty tyrants—he feared lest the head of the hydra being cut off, a mul- ** A year after the establishment of the Constitutionnel, its cir- culation amounted to the almost incredible number of twenty- eight thousand per diem. At the present moment, It is scarcely twelve. COPMICLOO© KS) (E@)