Year: 1873

want, exile. and every depressing vicissitude,
adhered TO his dream of throne at last but
there seems to us to be nothing in this par
ticularly remarkable or impressive. Thousands
of ordinary persons live in an abject penury
which is only relieved by their indomitable i'm
preston that sooner or later they may come into
a fortune. He who had once been the heir ap-
parent of the French throne, and who knew from
the history of bis own family the uncertain
temper of the French people, would have been
somewhat more than human, if he had not
anticipated in his manhood fulfllment Of the
hopes of his infancy. Probably there was no
banished Bourbon who did not dream as wildly
and "a confidently as this son of HOrtense.
He had a right to look for Revolution, and
when it came, he was quick to improve the
chances which it brought with it. 1t has al
ways seemed to us that his preliminary visions
of greatness were essentially common place If
not vulgar.


The revolution Of 1S4S and the expulsion of
the Orleans family gave him, as well as many
other needy men, an opportunity. When the
news came TO him in his garrett of the conyul-
sion in Paris he saw field for more substan-
tial adventures than those of Strasburg and
BoulOgne, and he fastened to occupy it.
France was the place for him. He who had
been Democrat in his bOybood, might now
carry his liberal notions to good market, and
sell them at royal price. He went, and, to
a certain extent, he succeeded; but we must
repeat that in his adventures, even when they
we're so brilliantly contaminated, we find
certain lack of historical dignity The events
are substantially small and uiheroic, and the
man grows no greater by his connection
with them. He plays not boldly for he
never was bOld) but unscrupulously; and
he is surrounded by gang of the
hungriest and the most desperate of French
men. From the very first, we see that
this man never attempts to go alone He
trades upon his name. He parades himself as
the child of destiny and of tradition. The
scepter is to be his, not by conquest, but by
inheritance At the best he can pretend to do
no more than revive the dusty glories of the
Empire, although these are precisely what
France needs the least. AS for his personal
character, it may be summed up briefly.
Conscience, to begin with, he has none. If
necessary he can lie, can cheat, can break his
personal word can be false to his most solemn
oaths. At the most mOmentous crisis of his
life when he gave the command by
which FIVE thousand men, women, and
children were butchered in the streets of
Paris, it is doubtful whether he was any
thing more than the tool of wretched and un-
scrupulous knaves-of ST. Arnaud and DE
Morney, of Persigny and of Fleury. When
he sent twenty-six thousand Frenchmen to
perish in Africa and in Cayenne, he was still
playing the game of his advisers as well as
his own. All along he seems to diStrust what
is truly respectable in France, for until the
time came when it was necessary for him to
propitiate the bourgeOisie, his main allies were
the soldiers and the scum of his capital. He
never meant in all his life what he said /;
neither when he talked with youthful feryOr
of the excellence of republicanism nor
when he swOre to rbe true to the
Presidency of the Republic; nor when he pro-
fessed to submit his own views to the will of
the French people, since at the moment when
his term of Office was about to expire, and
when he feared the success of a rival candi-
date, he took those bloody measures which,
through their terrible influence, made him
President for ten years, and finally Emperor.
After this his Plebiscite was mere mOckery
and an empty form. France was fairly fright
ened out of all opinion, and, i'll truth, out of
all ability to form one. The return of 7,500,
900 Yeas and of 65O,0OO Nays betrays the
whole scheme. The majority was altogether
too large. Considered as an expression of the
will of the people in our American
sense of the word, the poll was some
what more ludicrOus than the most
laughable of farces. Like every other feature
of this eventful history, it lacks the dignity
which commands for many dubious public
transactions certain degree of respect.
When the crown, through massacre and terror
and intimidation, had been secured, something
of the same want of dignity was to be OH
served in that search for a wife which the
Imperial Celebs instituted among the courts of
Europe and which ended in repulse and a
plebeian marriage. And, finally, 1t is hardly
to be disputed that the chief glOries of the
Second Empire are Of sOrdid and perishable
character. In war it did but little; in peace it
cultivated only the grosser arts, and in the
mad PURSUITS Of material prosperity, France
was made to forget alike the glories of war
and that intellectual power which once had
made her at least the arbiter of literary ele-
ganCe throughout Europe.


If the Emperor, however, still put his faith
in good fortune, he had some reason for the
weakness. At one time, all seemed to go well
with HIN. His alliance with England did
much to elevate him to a firm position among
the Powers of Europe, and if the Crimean
glores were not great they were at least re-
spectacle. Whatever may have been his mo-
tlves in entering upon the Italian war; he
added to the roll of French victories tie names
Of Solferino and Magenta. The peace of Viii
lafranca not only gave him increased territory,
but added somewhat to his prestige in Europe
The Emperor had now an opportunity of try
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