With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance farther, and live more at ease, than under any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing ἑρωτα μοὑνον, his natural Anacreontics. But, alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilised world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, that, since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. ‘Flying from steeple to steeple,’ the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise, perch for a while on the towers of Notre-Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II. ‘L’Empereur est mort, vive l’Empereur!’ shouted Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for old Lafayette and his ‘permanent’ representatives, a corporal with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.