Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves. In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in order that God's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly human and dramatic touch. Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power carried within it the seeds of destruction. It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable. [Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE]