s opinion should be received with the utmost caution;
for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and
partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir
likewise, and, hearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one
may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. "The empire was the
best of empires," cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly,
the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would
convince a man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers
a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed that,
for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty,
and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.

Let us examine some of the Prince's article. If we may be allowed humbly
to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for
those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover,
and in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides are poor, small, unsound
slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not
particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the
conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an
extract from his first chapter, "on governments in general:"--

"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this day,
which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are
the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old
world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European
centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations
of the East and the West, march without hesitation, towards perfection;
the one under the will of a single individual, the other under liberty.

"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task
of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which stretches from
the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator.
The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto
been called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez faire,
laissez passer, in order to favor that irresistible instinct which
pushes the people of America to the west.

"In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued tha