With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir, likewise, and, bearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. ‘The Empire was the best of empires,’ cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a man with a proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who averred that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather. Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very _bad leather_. The hides are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an extract from his first chapter, ‘On Governments in General:’-- ‘I speak it with regret, I can see but two Governments, at this day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations of the East and the West march, without hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single individual, the other under liberty. ‘Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task of peopling and civilising that immense territory which stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in practice the old adage, _Laissez faire, laissez passer_, in order to favour that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of America to the west.