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A SQUARE MAN.
All through the summer of 1851--a year to be marked for all time in the minds of historians, not in red, but in black letters--the war of politics tossed France hither and thither.
There were, at this time, five parties contending for mastery.

Should one of these appear for the moment to be about to make itself secure in power, the other four would at once unite to tear the common adversary from his unstable position.

Of these parties, only two were of real cohesion: the Legitimists and the Bonapartists.

The Socialists, the Moderate Republicans, and the Orleanists were too closely allied in the past to be friendly in the present.