Senior called on me a day or two ago, just returned from Paris, where he has been living and conversing with all the notabilities (principally of the Liberal party), and he tells me there is but one opinion amongst them, that this Empire cannot last, and they only differ as to the time it may last. Most of them think it will be short. Thiers gives it only a year, Duchâtel alone thinks it will go on for some years. The unpopularity of Louis Napoleon increases and his discredit likewise, and as soon as the unpopularity shall extend to the army, it will be all over with him. The Opposition which has sprung up, which has increased rapidly and will increase still more in the Corps Législatif, is deemed to be very important and significant, and they think it will be impossible for him to go on with such a body so constituted and disposed, and he will have to decide upon suffering the embarrassment it will cause him, or having recourse to a _coup d'état_, a measure which would be hazardous. There are no fresh adhesions to the Court beyond the half dozen men of rank or name who have already joined it, and who are hated and despised for having done so. While such is the opinion of the people of mark at Paris, they are nevertheless sensible of the danger which would accompany a counter revolution, and of the uncertainty of what might follow, what influences might prevail, and what form of government be adopted; but they seem generally to think that while in the first instance there would be a succession of provisional arrangements and fleeting transitory governments, it would end in the restoration of the monarchy under Henri V., but that this would not take place by the acceptance and triumph of any divine hereditary right, but must be adopted by the nation and ratified by a national vote. [Footnote 1: A Bill was before Parliament which would have excluded the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons, he being the only Judge who could sit there. The Judge of the Admiralty Court had already been excluded. Macaulay opposed the Bill with such force and eloquence that he changed the opinion of the House, and defeated the measure. An unusual occurrence.]