The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-26
THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR.

From the London Saturday Reuiew.
The first impression made upon untravelled
experience by tropical landscape of pre-
eminent beauty, such as the harbor of Rio,
is, How picture-like! how unnatural! The
conditions of judgment are in like manner
reversed when we survey as whole some
strange life or some exceptional and startling
chapter of history. A work or character Of
fiction is credited with merit as being lifelike,
that is, when 1t fits into our ordinary expe-
rience but mans life and career is judged
to be especially valuable or instructive if we
can only say of it that it has all the elements
of romance, that it is full of dramatic interest,
and presents the most picturesque surprises,
contrasts, or condolences, or that it con-
veys moral, or points what we
call some great lesson, or brings out
the award of righteous Nemesis in the way
of retaliation or compensation. No doubt
the fall of the French Emperor will suggest,
or is suggesting, all sorts of parallels, moral
lessons, analogies, political sermons, and the
rest of it. Nor can it be denied that good
deal may be fairly said in this direction, and
that the life of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is
a very illustrative one. But in analysing the
character of the man we may on either side
make many mistakes. We may attribute too
much of the recent history of Europe to him
personally; but it would be great error to
take the other extreme and find out all of
sudden that we had for all these years and
years been laboring under a mistake, and
that the great mystery-man and deep con-
spirator and dark subtle intriguer was after
all a mere windbag and delusion. If nothing
is so succe ssful as success, nothing is so dis
astrous, in estimating character, as failure.
The Judgment is paralyzed equally by
superhuman triumph or a superhuman break
down. The dethroned Emperor is neither
the swinder and adventurer of Mr.. Kinglake,
nor the realization of Machiavelli's Prince;
and probably, when his history can be fairly
written, he will neither stand so high nor so
low in the worlds annals as his contempo-
rarles have placed him.
AS far as his moral nature is concerned,
Louis Napoleon must be credited with a con-
stitutional strength of will and a definite,
though not dignifed, self-reliance. Under
other conditions, and with another sort of
education, Louis Napoleon might have been
fanatic; and in a sense he was fanatic
that is, he had those elements of character
which, with superior gifts, 60 to the making
of Cromwell or Mahomet or Napoleon
the Great. He believed in something deep
and abiding which presented itself as Star,
or a Mission, or Fate, or Destiny, or
something which it was ordained for him to
do. Constitutionally cold, morose, and per-
haps timorous he lacked what alone can en-
noble fatalism, the fire of fanaticism. He
believed in his star, but he did not sur
render himself to the enthusiasm which car
ries the fanatic through. He was destined
to do something; but he chose for himself
the path of cunning, intrigue, conspiracy,
and double-dealiDg. 1t may be that his last
campaign was the true reflection of his life
long character. He really believed that it
was his mission to humble Germany, and
that war was his policy; he thoroughly be-
lieved in this, but then some constitutional
weakness, some secret terror and mistrust,
kept him back from action at the supreme
moment of fate. Most likely his early life
was against him. His youth was that of a
dreamer of dreams His first book was enti-
tied Re0eries POIitiQues-and it was some
years before he got to his Idees NapO-
le0niennes and it was not till
after these maunderings and speculations
that he took up the active part of life in his
Boulogne expedition of 1910. What made
the Second Empire was not the personal aud
individual energy, not the persevering ambi-
tion, not the keen-sighted, far-reaching,
subtle policy of Louis Napoleon, but circum-
stances over which he personally exercised
little control, and to the existence of which
ne contributed nothing, but which he had
Sufiiciant euunino To turn To his own mr.