Year: 1873

nous strength of constitution, was due to former
sins against health, as the oblivion into
which he has entered in spite of the glitter Of
his position is the natural result of life
essentially sordid and selfish. His moral
qualities were not such as to attract the SYM
pathies Of men. His intellectual abilities were
not of an order to dazzle or captivate the
minds of those who could not approve his
acts. He remains nothing but Louis Napoleon,
some time Emperor of the French. Never has
there been a man more inferior to his acci-
dents.


If he were not Emperor he would be moth
ing. His friends have been criticised for
burying him in the Field MarshaPs uniform
which he wore at Sedan. But they did what
they could with the means at their DISPOSE
ton. The uniform was an important part Of
him. Twenty years ago, Victor Hugo said,
"In his quality of relation to the battle OF
Austerlitz, he dresses himself as General
of Division"


Pity and charity are as much misplaced in
estimating him now as they would have been
in palliating his iniquities while he lived.
after he falls, we may pity him." said Carl
baldi, after Montana. But there Is no case
for compassiOn. His life was an easy and
pleasant one. He was dreamy adVen-
turer, happy in his visions, before by
fantastic chance and shameful crime, he
became Emperor. His moral nature was so
torpid that he probably never suffered a
sleepless hour for his perjury and treason to
the State, and his murder of men with more
sensitive consciences than his own. He COM
mitted his great crimes for power, and money,
and soft living. He got them all. AS
time wore on, he wearied out the
hot Indignation of honest people. His
run of good luck seemed to condone every
thing. The Faubourg st. German gradu-
ally melted to him, Talleyrand, Latour
dAuvergre, Gramont and Moustier, and
their like, carrying shields from the crusades,
Joined his service, and trained with his Corsl-
cans and his jockeys. Men of genius did
the work of the Government and let
him have the credit of it. Haussmann
built the new Paris and was sacrificed
by his master. Morny and the Pereires pro-
jected vast industrial speculations. While the
bubbles swelled their iridescence frightened
the palace; when they burst, the speculators
were bankrupt and the Emperor lost nothing.


He gave himself airs of wisdom, and
as long as he was silent there were
people who believed him. He never spoke
without compromising himself He liked to
be considered a Sphinx. AS long as he was
surrounded by that clever and unscrupulOus
Ring who made the Coup d'Etat, he succeeded
well enough in concealing from the world his
lack of purpose But when they were in their
graves and he had fallen into the hands OF the
Empress and her fatterers like Gramont
and Leb9uf, his stale riddle was soon guessed.
Yet even then he probably felt his disgrace
less than other men. He still made phrases
and apparently enjoyed them. He justified
himself in the old wOrdy way at Wilhelms-
h0he and when he got away to England began
to take real comfort in life again. He fiattered
himself with the thought that NJ. Thiers's spies
" we're continually watching him." and blandly
asserted his innocence of conspiracy. This no
doubt was true. He was always more a
dreamer than plotter lie relied on other
men to do his conspiring and on luck to put
him in the way of winning. SO he waited
calmly at Chiselhurst for summons to
France, and when Death came, swift and
pangess at the last it put an end to a life as
happy as that of the average of good men.


We are aware this is not the conventional
way of pointing moral. This man did little
good and much harm in his life If men must
be divided into good and bad, this was GER
tainly bad one. Yet by following evil he
gained splendors, wealth, and ease, a brilliant,
and, on the whole, a happy life. But
the thing best worth the ambition of
men of thought and conscience is not success,
not even mere happiness. An honest life, in
which good shall be always attempted, even
if it be not attained, is better than any career,
however conspicuous, based on dishonesty or
fraud, and there are few men 80 corrupt that
they do not in their hearts believe this. But
life like this was rendered impossible to Louis
Bonaparte by the circumstances of his birth and
his moral conformation. The germ of false
hood that poisoned his nature was that he had
q better right to rule France than she had to
rule herself. This conviction, nourished in an
Unbalanced conscience, and favored by q
marvellous conjunction of accidents, was the
cause of all the trouble. He could not
refuse to commit the crimes by which
he was to profit. Success, as he conceived
it, he certainly attained. But his punishment
was that he was unable to imagine anything
better than the reign which opened in perjury


and murder and ended in humiliation and


defeat, throne surrounded by Adventures


and grave besieged by curious COckneys


We do not fear for the lesson which the


future will draw from the story.