been equal to the occasion. It has often been said that this defiant attitude of France was unnecessary, and that she had no enemies in Europe save those of her own imagination and creation. That belief, at least, has been dissipated by the present war, as well as by the animus displayed by Prussia throughout the conflict. There, far away in the heart of Germany, these many years, has lain that old hatred of France, like a serpent waiting for the moment to come when it might pour out all its venom on its foe. Had it been otherwise, Germany would never have shown herself so relentless; she would have been satisfied with something short of the utter ruin of France. Above all things, be it remembered, the Emperor Napoleon, though he has of necessity made many foreign wars, ever showed himself moderate and generous in the hour of triumph. In the Crimean War he was the first to propose that the war should cease. He was content with the fall of Sebastopol, and peace was concluded by the Allies with Russia very much against the inclination of England. It was said, we know, that France could not support the exhaustion caused by the continuance of the war; but, in our opinion, the real reason of its cessation was the Emperor's aversion to reduce a great nation to extremities merely because she had taken up arms against him. His method of making war was to remember that, though his adversary were now his enemy, the day might come when he might wish for him as his friend. It cannot be said that the relations between France and Russia have been worse since than they were before the Crimean War. Again, in the Austrian campaign, the Peace of Villafranca followed fast on the crowning battle of Solferino, and Austria was grateful to the French Emperor after her defeat. There are charities and generosities even in war, and the Emperor Napoleon never showed himself vindictive even when the shout of victory was ringing in his ears. It was part of his policy to be generous to the vanquished, and it is only to be regretted that the Prussians have not learnt the art of war in the same gentle school. Here, in England, we should never forget that France had an old enemy, whom the force of circumstances, no less than the fortune of war, had made the special foeman of the Napoleon dynasty. That enemy was England. How often have we not heard the cry, 'Perfidious Albion!' raised in France? and how often has not the politic action of Napoleon III. hushed that angry outcry? Even at a time when he personally might have been most exasperated against us, when Orsini and a band of Italian assassins almost effected their dastardly attempt on the life of the French Em peror, peror, his keen appreciation of the general friendliness of England towards France, and his determination not to destroy the kindly feeling to which he owed so much, alone prevented the people, maddened by the inflammatory address of those French colonels who implored the Emperor to seek and root out that band of murderers in their island lair, from rushing to war with England, and thus bringing down on both nations incalculable calamity. In the midst, then, of his warlike triumphs, the Emperor Napoleon has shown himself generous, politic, and pacific; and if he made war, he has made it rather in obedience to inevitable necessity and to the tendencies of the French nation than to satisfy his own ambition. Again, when the French object that the Imperial system was so wasteful and expensive, they forget the nature of the case. They welcomed an Empire-a tyranny, if you will--with applause, because they saw in it a relief from internal discord and a means of restoring public prosperity. But how could the Empire do all this without being wasteful and prodigal? Trade was to be restored; but how was this possible in such a nation as France without a brilliant Court at the Tuileries? and how could there be such a Court at the Tuileries without a large Civil List? The price of diamonds fell, after the fall of Louis Philippe, all over Europe, because after the Revolution in 1848 there were no more jewelled boxes to be given away, no State balls, and no magnificent toilets; but with the Empire and the Emperor's marriage diamonds began to sparkle again at the Tuileries, and the precious stones quickly recovered their former value. But, besides the trade of Paris-which, as our readers know, only means the rapid production and sale of those thousand pretty nicknacks called articles de Paris-the Empire had undertaken a far more serious obligation. This was the duty of providing labour and food for the workmen of Paris, whose employment had sunk to nothing under the philosophic Republican rule. In early times, when the mantle of a king was supposed to cover something sacred and divine, all national prosperity, and, by converse, all public calamities, were ascribed and attributed by the popular voice to the conduct of the king himself. If his armies were victorious in battle, Heaven smiled on the sovereign; if they were defeated, then it regarded him with a frown. If the crops were good, it was because the nation had a good king; if there were drought or flood, and the harvest failed, it was all the king's fault, and a pious and indignant people visited the distress of the land on the person of their ruler. The case is scarcely different in modern times, though peoples have ceased to burn or immolate their monarchs to avert the the wrath of the gods. In this nineteenth century-the era of constitutional government-the ruler who aims at being a tyrant does so at the peril of his head. The Emperor Napoleon, unfortunately, could not begin by being constitutional. He was driven to tyranny by the incapacity which the French nation have ever shown to govern themselves. He was no merciless Czar or autocrat, however: far from it. He was as constitutional as he dared to be, but still he was, in its best sense, a tyrant. With the tyranny he had also accepted the old obligation of providing the mob of Paris with work, lest that same proletariate should one day rise and turn and rend him. This consideration alone would account for a great part of the expense of the Emperor's system. He spent millions of money in France, but he spent it on and for the people. He saved nothing for himself, and quitted the country a poor man. On Paris alone-that imperial and ungrateful city, which now melts his statues into cannon and hurls down his busts into the streets-what vast sums of money have not been spent in reconstructions and improvements? It was the boast of Augustus that he had found Rome brick and left her marble. Much the same might be said of Napoleon III. and Paris. That great innovator, the uncle of the Emperor, who prided himself on the improvements which had so beautified his capital, would rub his eyes in amazement were he to return to life, and be puzzled to recognise the city. Whole quarters, covered of old with a network of squalid filthy lanes, have disappeared to make room for magnificent streets and spacious Boulevards. The enormous sums thus spent provided work for the poor, while they made Paris the thing of beauty that she is in this golden October sunlight, as the beleaguering hosts of the Prussians look down at her from their batteries at St. Cloud. Of course the Emperor's enemies affirm that all this building and beautifying was for the basest purposes. They were designed and carried out for strategic ends, that the Prætorian Guards of the dynasty might have space and scope to shoot down the opponents of the Empire. They rose as it were by magic, and like an exhalation from the earth, purely that there might be no more barricades, and that every street and court in Paris, together with their unruly inhabitants, might be reduced to one dead level of Imperial tyranny. But the friends of the Emperor will refuse to believe such idle inventions. It might as well be said that the new Boulevards were intended to further the ends of the Prussian invaders, because, if they once make their way within the circuit of the walls, they will find inside streets and open places, on which to deploy their troops, instead of narrow lanes and alleys, in which a heap of paving stones and an overturned Vol. 129.-No. 258. Ꮓ omnibus omnibus in ancient days were sufficient materials out of which to erect a barricade. We have mentioned these things to show that if the Imperial system was expensive, it was only because an Emperor in modern France is bound to be prodigal, and even wasteful, provided that the sums he squanders are lavished on the people, and, before all other cities in France, on Paris. But yet this very Paris, so critical and so full of taste; the city that despised the Bourbons because they had contracted penurious habits in their long and dreary exile, and which ridiculed poor Louis Philippe because he was so domestic, such a good husband and father, so exemplary in all the relations of life, that his rule sunk into that of a mere père de famille-this very Paris, whose fair face is reflected in the Seine with a glory undreamt of before the days of this latter Empire, is the first to turn against the man who has made her what she is, and to hate one who has overwhelmed her with benefits with a deadly hatred. To read the Republican papers, one would think that Louis Napoleon must have been one of the worst of tyrants-Tiberius, Commodus, and Heliogabalus all rolled into one. He was a cruel tyrant, a wretch, a coward. He surrendered at Sedan because he dared not risk his miserable life, though eyewitnesses worthy of all credit have declared that he exposed his life like the commonest soldier, and even pointed guns with his own hand. When he had surrendered, his first care was to compliment the King of Prussia on his victory, and to point out to the invader the weak points in the armour of Paris, and how the conqueror might best win his way into the capital. All this, and things still worse, which we should blush to repeat, have been said against the Emperor as though they were the simplest truths. In this respect the mob and press of Paris, almost without exception, have parodied the dregs of Rome and their utterances on the downfall of Sejanus-the only difference being that then it was an abandoned favourite, and now Cæsar himself, over whose fate the populace exulted. In all times and in all nations the fickle fawning nature of the mob comes out. Their keynote is still the same, whether it is heard on the banks of the Tiber or on those of the Seine. When a minister or an emperor falls it still cries, The Proletariate of Paris, just as much as the 'Turba Remi,' 'Sequitur fortunam, ut semper, et odit Damnatos.' Perhaps the day is not far distant, when the country has been wasted by war and decimated by internal dissensions, after the withdrawal of the enemy, this very populace, which now so blindly blindly clamours against the Emperor Napoleon, for no other reason than that he was unfortunate in a war undertaken at the bidding of the people, whose irritated feeling against Prussia rendered a war policy safer for the Empire than the preservation of peace, this very people, having tried all other combinations without success, may be glad to return to the rule of the only man, who, with all his faults, has proved himself able for nearly twenty years to restore the old respect felt by foreign nations for France; and, during the same period, to restrain the unruly temper of a people, which, however much it may have shown itself able to conquer other nations, has never proved itself capable of governing itself. But whatever France may think, Europe has but one interest in this fearful struggle-that it may speedily end; and that such a disgrace to modern civilisation as an internecine conflict between two races who are the champions of intellectual progress may cease at once and for ever. The triumph of either side would be no triumph to Europe if it left her reft of a hand or of an eye. But what are France and Germany but the hands and the eyes of Europe, one of which cannot be shorn off or plucked out without sore detriment and injury to the whole body politic? Our task is now done. We have traced this fatal war in its origin and consequences, without fear and without favour. All that remains is to pray that good counsel may prevail in France, and that Prussia may show some of that moderation, at the close of the struggle, of which she has shown herself so strangely wanting in its progress up to the present hour. She may still regain the sympathies which she has lost, by a policy of magnanimity, which will be all the more grateful because it will be utterly unexpected. In her hands. rest the issues of peace. Let her be generous and restore it to Europe, by sparing France that bitter humiliation which a loss of territory would inflict. ART. II. Life of Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston, with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence. By the Right Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B., M.P. Vols. I. and II. London, 1870. IT T sounds strange to say of a man who died in his eightysecond year that he died opportunely, neither too soon nor too late, for his fame. Yet this is strictly true of Lord Palmerston. If he had died at seventy, before his first Premiership, the place permanently assigned to him by history would be z 2 amongst |