If Louis Napoleon had had good sense and moral principle enough to imitate Charlemagne, he might have confirmed his dynasty, established France in solid power and prosperity, and earned true glory as a benefactor of Christendom. But he was not “of the seed of those men by whom salvation was brought to Israel.” He aspired to imitate Cæsar and Napoleon without possessing their genius. He imitated the profligacy of Cæsar in his youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in his old age. His early vices avenged themselves in the pain and disease which unmanned and incapacitated him for action in the last eventful crisis of his career. His criminal alliance with Carbonari and conspirators in his youth entangled him afterwards in a mesh which he had not courage, even if he had the wish, to break. By his alliance with the Turk he prepared an enemy in Russia, who became one principal cause of his final downfall and the humiliation of France, while he gained nothing beyond a momentary prestige of glory for his army. By his Italian campaign, and his subsequent support of Prussia against Austria, he weakened the power which would otherwise have befriended France in her dire distress; and he built up a kingdom which abandoned and betrayed him, at the cost of incurring the malediction which falls on all betrayers and oppressors of the Holy See. By his greed of territory in annexing Savoy he alienated for ever his former ally, England. By the war above alluded to and his miserable Mexican _fiasco_ he used up the splendid army of France, and was found _minus habens_ when the day of destiny came on him unprepared. He deliberately fostered the military and political increase of Prussia, and then madly dragged down upon France that terrible power which, having first outwitted, in the second place crushed him.