The Empress then has of late years faded a little out of political life. I think it may be taken for granted that although she is a quick, clever woman, with talents far beyond the mere inventing of bonnets and petticoats, she is not gifted with any political genius, not qualified to see quickly into the heart of a difficult question, not endowed with the capacity to surmount a great crisis. I have never heard anything which induces me to think that Eugénie's intellect and power would count for much in the chances of the dynasty should Louis Napoleon die while his son is yet a boy. Like Louis Napoleon himself, she was twice misjudged: first when people set her down as an empty-headed coquette, and next when they cried her up as a woman with a genius for government. So far as one may venture to predict, I think she would not prove strong enough for the place, if evil fortune should throw upon her the task of preserving the throne for her boy. Recent events seem to me to prove that the imperial system is less strong and more shaky than most of us would have supposed six months ago. I for one do fully believe that the recent disturbances are the genuine indications of a profound and bitter popular discontent. I beg the readers of THE GALAXY to be very cautious how they form an estimate of the situation from the correspondence and editorial articles of the London press. If the "Times" believes Bonapartism safe and strong in Paris, I have only to remark that the "Times" believed the same, almost up to the bitter end, of Bonapartism in Mexico. There are very few London journals which can be trusted where the politics of France are concerned. Not that the journals are bribed; everybody knowing anything of the London press knows how absurd the idea of such bribery is; but that all London Philistinism (and Philistinism does a good deal of the writing for the London papers) considers it genteel and respectable, and the right sort of thing generally, to go in for the Empire and sneer at revolution. I have read with no little wonder many of the comments of the London, and indeed some of the New York journals, on Henri Rochefort and his colleagues. One would think that in order to prove a certain revolutionary movement powerless and contemptible, you had only to show that its leaders were themselves contemptible and disreputable persons. Some of the journals here and in London write as if the Empire must be safe because the satire of the "Lanterne" and the "Marseillaise" seems to them coarse and witless, and because they have heard that Henri Rochefort is an insincere man, of doubtful courage and tainted moral character. One longs to ask whether the "Père Duchesne" and the "Vieux Cordelier" were publications fit to be read in the drawing-rooms of virtuous families; whether Mirabeau's private character was quite blameless; whether Marat and Hébert had led reputable lives; whether Camille Desmoulins was habitually received into the highest circles;