Kinglake’s description of “Prince Louis Bonaparte,” of his character, his accomplices, his policy, his crimes, is perhaps unequalled in historical literature; I know not where else to look for a vivisection so scientific and so merciless of a great potentate in the height of his power. With scrutiny polite, impartial, guarded, he lays bare the springs of a conscienceless nature and the secrets of a crime-driven career; while for the combination of precise simplicity with exhaustive synopsis, the masquerading of moral indignation in the guise of mocking laughter, the loathing of a gentleman for a scoundrel set to the measure not of indignation but of contempt, we must go back to the refined insolence, the ὕβρις πεπαιδευμένη, of Voltaire. He had well known Prince Napoleon in his London days, had been attracted by him as a curiosity—“a balloon man who had twice fallen from the skies and yet was still alive”—had divined the mental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks, had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterances of his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with him finally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman. {82} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of the mind of the first Napoleon, of the French people’s character, of the science by which law may lend itself to stratagem and become a weapon of deceit. The intellect of this strange being was subject to an uncertainty of judgment, issuing in ambiguity of enterprise, and giving an impression of well-kept secrecy, due often to the fact that divided by mental conflict he had no secret to tell. He understood truth, but under the pressure of strong motive would invariably deceive. He sometimes, out of curiosity, would listen to the voice of conscience, and could imitate neatly on occasion the scrupulous language of a man of honour; but the consideration that one of two courses was honest, and the other not, never entered into his motives for action. He was bold in forming plots, and skilful in conducting them; but in the hour of trial and under the confront of physical danger he was paralysed by constitutional timidity. His great aim in life was to be conspicuous—_digito monstrarier_—coupled with a theatric mania which made scenic effects and surprises essential to the eminence he craved.