Political considerations apart, one can only wish her well. Her face is one which ought to smile sweetly and gracefully through history. If fate and France will endure the Bonapartes for another generation or so, there will be some consolation to gallant and romantic souls in the thought that thereby this gracious, queenly woman will be allowed to make a happy end of her brilliant, not untroubled life. Thus far we may, in summing up her career, describe her, first, as a bright, vivacious young coquette, with a dash of the adventuress about her, ranging the world in search of a husband; then a woman suddenly and surprisingly raised to the dazzling rank of an Empress, and a little bewildered by the change; then a splendid leader of the world's fashion, magnificently frivolous and heedless; then a political _intrigante_, the supreme patroness of Ultramontanism; and now a quiet, queenly mother, verging toward that kind of devoteeism in which some satirical person declares that coquetry in France is sure to end. She is not a woman to make any deep impression on history. She has neither gifts enough nor faults enough. As a politician she has been a failure, and perhaps worse than a failure; but she has been fortunate enough to escape from all public responsibility for her mistakes, and may get quietly into history as merely an intelligent, good-natured, and beautiful woman. Posterity will probably see her and appreciate her sufficiently in her portrait by Winterhalter: a name, a vague memory, and a smooth fair picture with bright complexion, shining hair, and noble shoulders, alone carrying down to other times the history of the Third Napoleon's wife. Only great misfortunes could redeem her from this destiny of half oblivion; and history has names enough that are burnt by misfortune into eternal memory, and may well spare hers. One great claim she has to a liberal construction of her character: her personal enemies are those who do not know her well; her intimates seem to be always her friends. She has one good quality, which her husband with all his faults likewise possesses: she has never in her imperial splendor forgotten or neglected or been ashamed of old acquaintances and friends. I have heard scores of anecdotes from people who know her well--I have heard one such anecdote since I began writing this article--which prove her to be entirely above the mean and vulgar weakness of the _parvenu_, who shrinks in her magnificence from any acquaintanceship or association likely to remind her of less brilliant days. Taken on the whole, the Empress Eugénie is better than her fortunes and her surroundings might have made her. She is, I think, a woman much more deserving of respect than Josephine Beauharnais, whose misfortunes, joined with the quiet pathetic dignity of her retirement and her later years, have made the world forget the levities, frivolities, and follies of her earlier life. She has shown a