would be found ready to make such concessions as should lead to the indefinite postponement of hostilities. Those who reasoned from the mere occasion of the war were perfectly right, from their point of view. Unfortunately for their reputation for sagacity, their premises were entirely wrong, and hence the viciousness of their conclusion. If we would know the cause of the war, we must banish from our minds all that is said about the desire of Napoleon III for vengeance on the conquerors of his uncle, all that we are told of his sentimental wish for the elevation of the Italian people to a national position, and all that is predicated of his ambitious longings for the reconstruction of the First Empire. We must regard Napoleon III in the light of what he really is, namely, one of the greatest statesmen that ever lived, or we shall never be able to understand what are his purposes. We have nothing to do with his morals, but have to regard him only as the chief of France, pursuing the policy he believes best calculated to advance that country's interests, and doing so in strict accordance with her historical traditions, and in the same manner in which it was pursued by the ablest of the Valois kings, by Henry IV. and Sully, by Richelieu and Mazarin, by Louis XIV., by the chiefs of the First Republic, and by Napoleon I. He may be a good man or a bad man, but his character is entirely aside from the question, the nature and merits of which have no necessary connection with the nature and merits of the men engaged in effecting its solution. Let us examine the subject, and see if we cannot find an intelligent, reasonable cause for Napoleon's course of action, that shall harmonize with the duties, we might almost say the instincts, of a great French statesman. The examination will embrace nothing recondite, but we are confident it will show that the French Emperor is no Quixote, and that he has been forced into the war by the necessities of his situation, and by the very natural desire he feels to prevent France from being compelled to descend to a secondary place in the scale of European nations.