apoleonic champagne to a
change of views; or are they tired of a sham Republic, and willing to take
instead a sham Empire; or have they grown political economists, with new
appreciation of government stability, and a long-sighted eagerness to
secure tranquillity? Or, is not the humbler truth too patent, that their
opinions herd together by a kind of brute sympathy, and are acted upon by
splendor--whether of crime or of munificence; and, moreover, is it not too
clear that those five hundred thousand men who prop the new dynasty with
bayonets, are without any sort of what we call moral education, and rush
to every issue like herds of wild bison--guided solely by instinct?

And would not a little of that sort of education which sets up
school-houses, and spreads newspapers, and books, and Harper's Magazines
like dew over the length and the breadth of our land, do more toward the
healing of that sick French nation, than the prettiest device of
Constitution, or the hugest five-sous bath-house? Ah, well-a-day, we shall
have little hope for _la belle France_, UNTIL HER ARMY SHOWS INTELLIGENCE,
and HER STATESMEN HONESTY.

We can hardly give this current topic the go-by, without bringing to our
reader's eye a happy summing up of suppositions in the columns of Punch,
and if our listener will only read Congressional for Parliamentary, and
the _Bentons_ and the _Casses_ for the _Grahames_ and the _Gladstones_, he
may form a very accurate idea of a _Napoleon-Mr.-Fillmore_.

Suppose the head of the Executive, or the Minister for the time being,
were to take it into his head one morning to abolish the Houses of
Parliament.--Suppose some of the members elected by large constituencies
were to think it a duty to go and take their seats, and were to be met at
the doors by swords and bayonets, and were to be wounded and taken off to
prison for the attempt.--Suppose the Minister, having been harassed by a
few Parliamentary debates and discussions, were to send off to Newgate or
the House of Correction a few of the most eminent members of the
Opposition, such as the Disraelis, the Grahames, the Gladstones, the
Barings, and a sprinkling of the Humes, the Wakleys, the Walmsleys, the
Cobdens, and the Brights.--Suppose the press having been found not to agree
with the policy of the Minister, he were to peremptorily stop the
publication of the _Times_, _Herald_, _Chronicle_, _Post_, _Advertiser_,
_Daily News_, _Globe_, &c., &c., and limit the or