The monotony, the want of color, and the petty domestic citizens’ life of America would be even more intolerable in the home of the “love of the spectacular,” of vanity, fashion, and novelties.  Indeed, the passion for decorations flourishes nowhere so much as in France.  Perhaps, with the exception of August Wilhelm Schlegel, there is not a woman in Germany so fond of gay ribbons as the French; even the heroes of July, who fought for freedom and equality, afterward wore blue ribbons to distinguish themselves from the rest of the people.  Yet, if I on this account doubt the success of a republic in Europe, it still cannot be denied that everything is leading to one; that the republican respect for law in place of veneration of royal personages is showing itself among the better classes, and that the Opposition, just as it played at comedy for fifteen years with a king, is now continuing the same game with royalty itself, and that consequently a republic may be for a short time, at least, the end of the song.  The Carlists are aiding this movement, since they regard it as a necessary phase which will enable them to reestablish the absolute monarchy of the elder branch; therefore they now bear themselves like the most zealous republicans.  Even Chateaubriand praises the Republic, calls himself a Republican from inclination, fraternizes with Marrast, and receives the accolade from Beranger.  The Gazette—­the hypocritical Gazette de France—­now yearns for republican state forms, universal franchise, primary meetings, et cetera.  It is amusing to see how these disguised priestlings now play the bully-braggart in the language of Sans-culottism, how fiercely they coquet with the red Jacobin cap, yet are ever and anon afflicted with the thought that they might forgetfully have put on in its place the red cap of a prelate; they take for an instant from their heads their borrowed covering and show the tonsure unto all the world.  Such men as these now believe that they may insult Lafayette, and it serves as an agreeable relaxation from the sour republicanism, the compulsory liberty, which they must assume.

But let deluded friends and hypocritical enemies say what they will, Lafayette is, after Robespierre, the purest character of the French Revolution, and, next to Napoleon, its most popular hero.  Napoleon and Lafayette are the two names which now bloom most beautifully in France.  Truly their fame is each of a different kind.  The latter fought for peace, not victory; the former rather for the laurel wreath than for that of oak leaves.  It would indeed be ridiculous to measure the greatness of the two heroes with the same metre, and put one on the pedestal of the other, even as it would be absurd to set the statue of Lafayette on the Vendome column—­that monument made of the cannon conquered on so many fields of battle, the sight of which, as Barbier sings, no French mother can endure.  On this bronze column place Napoleon, the man of iron, here, as in life, standing on his fame, earned by cannon, rising in terrible isolation to the clouds, so that every ambitious soldier, when he beholds him, the unattainable one, there on high, may have his heart humbled and healed of the vain love of celebrity, and thus this colossal column of metal, as a lightning conductor of conquering heroism, will do much for the cause of peace in Europe.