uld have been written about Haman, or Heliogabalus, or King John,
or Queen Elizabeth, as much as about poor Louis Napoleon; they bear no
trace of any comprehension of his quite interesting aims, and his quite
comprehensible contempt for the fat-souled senatorial politicians. And
if a real revolutionist like Hugo did not do justice to the
revolutionary element in Caesarism, it need hardly be said that a rather
Primrose League Tory like Tennyson did not. Kinglake's curiously acrid
insistence upon the _Coup d'etat_ is, I fear, only an indulgence in one
of the least pleasing pleasures of our national pen and press, and one
which afterwards altogether ran away with us over the Dreyfus case. It
is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people's sins.
If this came easy to an Englishman like Kinglake, it came, of course,
still easier to a German like Queen Victoria's husband and even to
Queen Victoria herself, who was naturally influenced by him. But in so
far as the sensible masses of the English nation took any interest in
the matter, it is probable that they sympathised with Palmerston, who
was as popular as the Prince Consort was unpopular. The black mark
against Louis Napoleon's name until now, has simply been Sedan; and it
is our whole purpose to-day to turn Sedan into an interlude. If it is
not an interlude, it will be the end of the world. But we have sworn to
make an end of that ending: warring on until, if only by a purgatory of
the nations and the mountainous annihilation of men, the story of the
world ends well.

There are, as it were, valleys of history quite close to us, but hidden
by the closer hills. One, as we have seen, is that fold in the soft
Surrey hills where Cobbett sleeps with his still-born English
Revolution. Another is under that height called The Spy of Italy, where
a new Napoleon brought back the golden eagles against the black eagles
of Austria. Yet that French adventure in support of the Italian
insurrection was very important; we are only beginning to understand
its importance. It was a defiance to the German Reaction and 1870 was a
sort of revenge for it, just as the Balkan victory was a defiance to the
German Reaction and 1914 was the attempted revenge for it. It is true
that the French liberation of Italy was incomplete, the problem of the
Papal States, for instance, being untouched by the Peace of Villafranca.
The volcanic but fruitful spirit of Italy had already produced that
w