all the others passed near enough
to shake it by their wind.

'A ship of eighty guns has now forty _canonniers_ and forty _maitres de
pieces_. All practical artillerymen, and even the able seamen, can point
a gun. Nelson's manoeuvre of breaking the line could not be used against
a French fleet, such as a French fleet is now. The leading ships would be
destroyed one after another, by the concentrated fire. Formerly our
officers dreaded a maritime war. They knew that defeat awaited them,
possibly death. Now they are confident, and eager to try their hands.'

In the evening L. took me into a corner, and we had a long conversation.

He had been reading my 'Athens Journal.'

'What struck me,' he said, 'in every page of it, was the resemblance of
King Otho to Louis Napoleon.'

'I see the resemblance,' I answered, 'but it is the resemblance of a
dwarf to a giant.'

'No,' he replied. 'Of a man five feet seven inches high to one five feet
eleven inches. There are not more than four inches between them. There is
the same cunning, the same coldness, the same vindictiveness, the same
silence, the same perseverance, the same unscrupulousness, the same
selfishness, the same anxiety to appear to do everything that is done,
and above all, the same determination to destroy, or to seduce by
corruption or by violence, every man and every institution favourable to
liberty, independence, or self-government. In one respect Otho had the
more difficult task. He found himself, in 1843, subject to a Constitution
carefully framed under the advice of England for the express purpose of
controlling him. He did not attempt to get rid of it by a _coup d'etat_,
or even to alter it, but cunningly and skilfully perverted it into an
instrument of despotism. Louis Napoleon destroyed the Constitution which
he found, and made a new one, copied from that which had been gradually
elaborated by his uncle, which as a restraint is intentionally powerless
and fraudulent.

'A man,' he continued, 'may acquire influence either by possessing in a
higher degree the qualities which belong to his country and to his time,
or by possessing those in which they are deficient.

'Wellington is an example of this first sort. His excellences were those
of an Englishman carried almost to perfection.

'Louis Napoleon belongs to the second. If his merits had been impetuous
courage, rapidity of ideas, quickness of decision, frankness, versatility
and resource, he would ha