to the palace of his fathers.

With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a legislator,
a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew
speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be
disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous
code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it,
and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast
public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or
exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that
were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to
show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.
As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to
confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily
than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting
parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a
steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
further, and live more at ease than under any other form of government.
Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices;
Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord
Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles
for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing [Greek text
omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but alas! not so: if the despotic
Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge
that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized world
is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less
capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be
recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his
admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing
it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually,
and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame.
We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor,
the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a
mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,
pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor
than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the
Emperor Napoleon II. "L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" sh