the Popes, and the Italian republics; it was continued by Louis XIV., and is acknowledged by the public law of Europe, in the treaty of Utrecht and the treaties of Vienna.

The suzerainty of Monaco had been one of the objects of contention between France and Spain during the great rivalry of the sixteenth century. In the fourteenth century the reigning Grimaldi family closely associated themselves with France. They shed their blood gallantly on its behalf on the fatal day of Crecy, an assistance which the French repaid at a memorable siege of Monaco by the fleet of Genoa. In the contention between Charles V. and Francis I. the superior diplomacy of Charles secured Monaco to himself, and on one occasion he is reported, by a flattering legend, to have declared the whole of the inhabitants elevated to the noblesse. The Prince of Monaco was loaded by Charles Quint with important titles and estates. The French tradition, however, continued strong. Honoré II., when quite a young man, made up his mind to renounce the Spanish alliance for the French. The Duc d'Angoulême, who then administered Provence, is supposed to have had a great deal to do in persuading the Prince to this step. In 1641, by a coup d'état, Honoré chased away the Spaniards. The real contriver of the whole affair was, doubtless, Cardinal Richelieu, ever eager to abuse the house of Austria. A French garrison was admitted, and the new situation of things confirmed by treaty. All the domains of the Grimaldi family in Lombardy and Naples were, of course, confiscated by their estranged friends. Louis XIII. amply indemnified him for all these losses. He made him baron, count, seigneur, marquis; erected the dukedom of Valentinois in his favour, and his title from Monaco ran' Highness, by the grace of God.' Following the precedent of Richelieu, the Regent Anne of Austria and Mazarin gave Honoré some important privileges, and loaded him with honours when he visited the French court. He had an only son, who was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun. Be

fore his death he had married and left a heir, Louis. The child had been baptized with circumstances of extraordinary splendour; the young king of France, after whom he was named, and Anne of Austria, being the god-parents. Honoré II. concentrated all his affections on his grandson, and in his will besought him never to waver in his loyalty to France. The historians of the principality draw a parallel between this prince and Louis XIV. This reminds us of what the concierge of the palace of Monaco told Addison, that though all Europe had been in flames, the king of France and the prince, his master, had always maintained a good understanding.

Louis, two years before he came to his princedom, married, in 1660, Charlotte Catherine de Gramont. The lady had unfortunately been too much mixed up with the intrigues of the court of France, and is said to have solaced the king in the interregnum that prevailed between La Vallière and de Montespan. This is the prince who, even more than his successor, is the object of St. Simon's persistent dislike and misrepresentation. St. Simon makes no mention of the considerable claims which this prince possesses to the character of an enlightened jurist. The marriages of his son and daughter are duly commented on by Dangeau and St. Simon. The daughter, who was thirty-four or thirty-five, and looked it, married the Duc d'Uzes, a lad of eighteen, and died a few years afterwards. The son married Marie de Lorraine. There is a great deal of ugly scandal in the family annals about this time, and perhaps we had better quickly pass it by. When the enormous mass of the inedited papers of St. Simon are published they will perhaps throw further and more favourable light upon the different matters. Louis was a great stickler for his rights and privileges, but there hardly appears a foundation for the common statement that he died of chagrin, because his Monaco dignities were not fully conceded. He always caused it to be distinctly understood that anything he did as

peer of France was not to invalidate anything he might do as prince of Monaco. When Le Grand Monarque offered him the order of the Saint Esprit he inquired whether he should take it as duke or prince. Indeed, the court appears to have been torn with jealousy and faction concerning the amphibious character of the celebrated courtier. The prince accepted the appointment of French ambassador to Rome. But the questions of etiquette which M. de Monaco raised-he would never forget the prince in the ambassador-made himself and all around him miserable. He demanded that he should be called Monseigneur in all letters addressed to him from his government. Louis XIV. decided the point against him. The independent princes of Germany did not receive the title of Monseigneur, and this would rule the case. public entry into Rome was marked with excessive luxury and prodigality. He assumed airs of superiority for his private rank. He demanded that the other ambassadors should style him Highness,' and to those who refused this he also refused the title of Excellency.' He omitted the customary profession of courtesy at the conclusion of his letters. He contrived to make a retreat from Rome under circumstances of great grandeur and dignity. The creditors of this worthless Prince Vaïni had papal sbirri in pursuit of him even into the palace where the prince of Monaco was. The

His

prince pointed out that as he was there it was the palace of an ambassador, and they must retire. As this was not done at once the gentlemen of his suite drew their swords and repulsed them. Hereupon some of the sbirri fired, and several of the prince's company were wounded. The affair made a great noise at Rome. The prince, thinking the papal government slow in offering satisfaction, with great éclat withdrew from Rome. The sacred college was obliged to write a letter of apology to the king of France. They were avenged. The prince died in consequence of attending an audience of the pope, when he was

not in a fit state of health to leave his house.

In his successor, Antoine, the direct line of the Grimaldi family threatened to become extinct. It was this prince who constructed the fortifications at the expense of France, and he was largely concerned in the last disastrous wars of the reign. But this small sovereign was fully absorbed in the fate of his line. He had daughters only, and his brother was in holy orders, and died an archbishop. He lived unhappily with his wife, who did. not care for her husband, and found Monaco insupportably dull after the gaieties of Paris. The general plan was, that the eldest daughter should make some great match and her husband be placed in the succession. Father and mother quarrelled about the young lady, who was placed in a convent till matters could be arranged. The girl declined: Dangeau tells us, that she would not sign any marriage treaty which her mother had not signed first, and madame was not likely to sign anything to please monsieur. The

mother was not even allowed to see her daughter, but she came to Paris, when she found, to her great mortification, that Paris had forgotten the charming Mdlle. d'Armagnacand upset the proposed alliance with M. de Roney. Eventually, a marriage was arranged with the son of de Matignon, of a renowned and ancient house, though vilified by St. Simon, dating back earlier than the Crusades. The case was a peculiar one, and arranged in a manner so favourable to M. de Monaco, that St. Simon is quite enraged. The prince required a good deal. had his creditors, and wanted ready money from his intended son-inlaw to satisfy them. This son-inlaw must be of noble birth, and yet be willing to relinquish his name, family, liveries, and arms, for those of the Grimaldi family. Then he must charge himself with a dower for the two younger sisters of his wife, and also satisfy any claim which the Abbé de Monaco might prefer. Another condition might arise; after all, it was possible that the Prince de Monaco might have

He

a son, and. then this married daughter must lose all the great advantages she was to bring to her husband. The prince certainly drove a hard bargain for his daughter. But then he was able to offer a great deal. His son-inlaw would become a sort of sovereign. Louis XIV. was willing to re-erect in his favour the vast duchy of Valentinois, which had been limited to heirs male. Directly upon the marriage, the son-in-law was to become Duc de Valentinois, and was to retain this title for his life, even if the Prince of Monaco should really have a son. Such was the annoyance which St. Simon considers monstrous, and that Louis must have been in his dotage to have permitted it. When St. Simon speaks of the Prince and Louis XIV. he does not appear to be aware of the great services which this mouse had rendered to this lion.

The marriage came off. The dreaded child did not put in an appearance. Antoine was gathered to his fathers in the course of years. And then the Matignon-Grimaldi dynasty succeeded. The first prince of the new line was the son of the heiress. He lived to see the tree of liberty planted in his little dominion, and died in Paris, 1795. A fair daughter-in-law lost her head by the guillotine in the days of Robespierre. First came a popular emoute, and subsequently the little territory was annexed to France. One or two of the natives attained to great distinction in the wars of the Revolution, and one of them, Baron Bosio, gained a European fame as an artist. The palace was first made an hospital for the wounded, and afterwards un dépôt de mendicité.' In a single instance only did Monaco directly attain any experience in the war. An English frigate made an attack on the place, having heard that it had been made a store for arms and ammunition. The

English exploded a quantity of gunpowder, which unfortunately killed many women and children who had incautiously crowded to the spot.*

*For most of the facts see M. Matinier's valuable monogram, Monaco et ses Princes.' Two vols. 1862.

The Grimaldi family saw their little principality blotted out of the map of Europe, and, at one time, little thought that their small sovereignty, a strange remnant of the feudal system, would be revived, and, so to speak, fossilized for ages, for the inspection of the curious who would examine into the reliques of the mediæval age. Talleyrand quietly scribbled, et le Prince de Monaco rentrover dans ses états,' on the bottom of one of the pages of one of the treaties of Vienna. The wily diplomatist had his own good secret reasons. The sentence was allowed to stand, and perhaps was scarcely scrutinized. On his way to take possession of his dominions, the restored prince encountered at Cannes no less a person than Napoleon himself, on his way from Elba. He dexterously extricated himself from an awkward invitation to accompany the great man to Paris, and then hastened to give information to the Sardinian government of what he had just witnessed in Provence. To the great disgust of the people, an English garrison suddenly came to Monaco and occupied it. In the new order of things, Monaco was placed under the suzerainty of Sardinia. The government of Honoré V. lasted twenty-five years, and is a most complete example, on a small scale, of the effects of tyranny after the ancient Greek or mediæval Italian model. Lui, prince, il agissait,' says M. Abel Rendu, whose history is a most amusing contrast to the court history of M. Braine, 'envers ses malheureux gouvernés comme le lord d'Angleterre envers ses tenanciers d'islande.' It is very remarkable that this cruel and oppressive prince prided himself upon being a philanthropist. While he was doing his best to impoverish his people and make them miserable, he was forming schemes on his Norman estates for the abolition of pauperism. He also published a little work on this subject, and so he added to the Supplement to Horace Walpole's Catalogue. On his marble tomb, in one of the chapels of the church of Monaco, is the inscription, 'Ci git qui voulut faire le bien.' We are

all familiar with the phrase respecting such good intentions. He ruled his country with a rod of iron. Some of the details of his overlegislation are as ridiculous as they must have been fraught with harmfulness and irritation. The prince constituted for himself a monopoly of flour, and no bread was to be bought in his dominions that was not of Serene baking. Any sandwiches which travellers might bring with them were remorselessly seized at the custom-house. The state miller bought up the inferior grain which the police of Genoa did not allow to be sold. Any ship that brought any proscribed foreign bread to any port of the prince had its cargo confiscated. Every baker was obliged to keep a register of the quantity of bad bread sold to each family, and domiciliary visits of police were made to those families who were not thought to have bought enough. Similar monopolies prevailed with respect to other articles. The justice administered in his tribunals was of as bad quality as the loaves. There was also an 'Etat Civil des bestiaux,' and a native was obliged to make a formal registration of the birth of every animal, with a declaration of its sex, and also to give in a regular certificate of such death. We believe that this is a unique absurdity in the annals of civic tyranny. The retribution for all this misgovernment, as is generally the case, fell on his successor and brother, Florestan. When the present Pope inaugurated a new era of revolution, the principality of Monaco caught the flame. A constitutional government was demanded, and conceded. Soon the tyranny of the mob made itself felt in acts of violence and revolt. The prince brought complaints against his subjects to the Tuileries. Louis Philippe felt that the prince was hardly treated, and M. Guizot was in favour of giving him material assistance. But in a few months came the revolution of February, and Guizot and his master were powerless.

It became an open question whether Mentone and Roquebrune should be free cities under the Sar

dinian protectorate, or be in totality annexed to Sardinia. Prince Florestan died in 1856, and was succeeded by the present prince, who took the title of Charles III. In the Conference held at Paris preceding the treaty of that year, the Austrian plenipotentiary adroitly urged, that the occupation of the Monaco territory of Mentone and Roccabruna by Sardinian troops rested on exactly the same ground as the occupation of Rome by French troops. In 1859 the people of Mentone got up a manifestation, and attempted to revolutionize Monaco, which, under all alternations, had clung faithfully to its hereditary lord. That attack was repulsed, and the same year was definitely to adjust the prolonged era of civic troubles. When Nice was ceded to Savoy, Mentone and Roquebrune would be geographically implied by such a cession, and politically also, inasmuch as they had virtually become Sardinian. The political right might not be perfectly clear as a matter of public law, but the Emperor of the French had a show of right sufficient for his purpose, and it would have been impossible to argue with the master of three hundred legions. I think that the transaction which ensued, which has been somewhat obscure for most English readers of politics, reflects the highest credit upon the Emperor Napoleon, and on the national morality. Prince Charles of Monaco possessed a claim on his two revolted towns. But it was a claim which, practically, he would find it impossible to enforce. But, whatever it might be, it was decided that the claim should be considered and satisfied. A minister plenipotentiary was nominated on the part of the Emperor, and a minister plenipotentiary on the part of the Prince of Monaco. There is something of moral sublimity in the fact: this mighty emperor and this petty prince, this nation of forty millions and this little population of twelve thousand, meeting on terms of perfect equity and equality. An indemnity of four millions of francs was paid to the prince, in pursuance of the treaty of Roquebrune, and other articles were signed, of

highly honourable and considerate character, in reference to Monaco. This transaction has sometimes been ignorantly misrepresented, and the gloss cast upon it that the Prince of Monaco sold his territory to the Emperor. But the prince could not have helped himself. For years he had been without the slightest hold upon these towns, and the indemnity paid him by the Emperor was, in reality, an act of refined equity and kindness such as we very rarely meet with in the history of territorial transactions. Prince Charles III., although the treaties of Vienna ont cesse d'exister,' still continues, by virtue of those treaties, an independent prince, and, on paper at least, is a very great man indeed. I have just been looking over the list of his ministry; it is considerably larger than most lists of the English government, and occupies three printed pages; but then in England we do not take such formal count of the postman and the policeman.

I do not know how far the season 1863-64 may have succeeded with M. Blanc-only moderately well, I believe; and for my own part I should not mind if the man were well-nigh ruined. Still his boat and his omnibus were tolerably full, and when the railroad is accomplished, which is to run along the beach and join Nice to Genoa, M. François Blanc may really have built for himself a golden bridge when he is obliged to evacuate Homburg. It is observable that people play at roulette when comparatively small sums are staked, and not much is done at trente et quarante, or, to give the more usual name, rouge et noir, when the extravagance of the stakes is often something frightful. The last is played by cards alone; there is no longer wheel or ball; and the croupier's solitary cry is 'Rouge gagne, couleur page,' or the converse. Rouge et noir requires some skill, and is not the pure hazard of roulette. It is amusing to watch the air of superiority assumed by the croupiers of the former games. They are 'gentlemen,' and the others are only men' and 'fellows.' The reason is, that their salary is nearly

double, and they only receive their promotion to the more difficult game after years of probation at roulette. Now, the roulette table, in addition to its thirty-six numbers, has two zeros. At Homburg, M. Blanc only reserves one of the zeros to himself, but at Monaco he takes them both. The zero is the main source of profit to the bank, and it is really very wonderful how the ball, instead of dropping into any one of the thirtysix numbers, contrives to select the red or black zero. Visitors to Monaco, according to their tastes, when the omnibus has brought them gratis to the Plateau, select either the salon de lecture or the salon de jeu. Those who take the latter, though they may play for little, lose that little, and generally scramble back to Nice in a very dilapidated condition. The hotel is a very good one, and you may get a handsome dinner for a handsome price. A great many curious and very private histories belong to those who frequent this establishment of M. Blanc's-to the young gentlemen and ladies, who, not content with the Eden-like pleasures of wandering in groves of palm and myrtle beneath the most radiant of skies and the bluest of waters, have nice little dinners with plenty of champagne, and spend all their spare time in the interior of the Casino.

Some of them, perhaps, are as much M. Blanc's servants as the man in black or the men in blue and red. Are my friends aware of the institution of the Racoleur and the Racoleuse? These are very charming people, nice-mannered and nicely dressed, with considerable personal attractions and a pleasing vein of anecdotes, who have sold themselves, body and soul, to the interests of such establishments as this, and who will ruin the bodies and souls of many others. These are often people of high estate and high education, who have lapsed therefrom, and now draw a dishonourable subsistence from that gambling system by which they were originally destroyed. They often show an amount of polished ability which would do credit to a diplomatist, and of arduous exertion