Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches Part 4

Thiers threw his whole soul into his speeches--not merely as to their preparation, but as to their revision and publication. According to the Imperial system, no independent reports of speeches in the Chambers were allowed to appear in print. The official stenographers noted down in full each day's debate, and the whole was published next day in the "Moniteur Universel." These reports professed to give every word and syllable of the speeches--every whisper of interruption. Sometimes, therefore, the "Moniteur" came out with twenty of its columns filled up with the dull maunderings of some provincial blockhead, for whom servility and money had secured an official candidature. Besides these stupendous reports, the Government furnished a somewhat condensed version, in which the twenty-column speech was reduced say to a dozen columns. Either of these reports the public journals might take, but none other; and no journal must alter or condense by the omission of a line or the subst.i.tution of a word the text thus officially furnished.

When Thiers had spent the whole day in delivering a speech, he was accustomed to spend the whole night in reading over and correcting the proof-sheets of the official report. The venerable orator would hurry home when the sitting was over, change his clothes, get into his arm-chair before his desk, and set to work at the proof-sheets according as they came. Over these he would toil with the minute and patient inspection of a watchmaker or a lapidary, reading this or that pa.s.sage many times, until he had satisfied himself that no error remained and that no turn of expression could well be improved. Before this task was done, the night had probably long faded and the early sun was already lighting Paris; but when the Corps Legislatif came to a.s.semble at noon, the inexhaustible septuagenarian was at his post again. That evening he would be found, the central figure of a group, in some salon, scattering his brilliant sayings and acrid sarcasms around him, and in all probability exercising his humor at the expense of the Imperial Ministers, the Empire, and even the Emperor himself. After 1866 he was exuberant in his _bons mots_ about the humiliation of the Imperial Cabinet by Prussia. "Bismarck," he once declared, "is the best supporter of the French Government. He keeps it always in its place by first boxing it on one ear and then maintaining the equilibrium by boxing it on the other."

If one could have been present at the recent interviews between Count Bismarck and M. Thiers, he would doubtless have enjoyed a curious and edifying intellectual treat. Bismarck is a man of imperturbable good humor; Thiers a man of imperturbable self-conceit. Thiers has a tongue which never lacks a word, and that the most expressive word. Bismarck has a rare gift of shrewd satirical humor, and of phrases that stick to public memory. Each man would have regarded the other as a worthy antagonist in a duel of words. Neither would care to waste much time in lofty sentiment and grandiose appeals. Each would thoroughly understand that his best motto would be, "_A corsaire, corsaire et demi_." Bismarck would find in Thiers no feather-headed Benedetti; a.s.suredly, Thiers would favor Bismarck with none of Jules Favre's sighs and tears, and bravado and choking emotions. Thiers would have the greater part of the talk, that is certain; but Bismarck would probably contrive to compress a good deal of meaning and significance into his curt interjected sentences. Thiers a.s.suredly must have long since worn out any freshness of surprise or thrilling emotion of any kind at the political convulsions of France. To him even the spectacle of the standard of Prussia hoisted on the pinnacles of Versailles could hardly have been an overpowering wonder. He had seen the soldiers of Prussia picketed in Paris; he could remember when a fickle Parisian populace, weary of war, had thronged into the streets to applaud the entrance of the conquering Czar of Russia. He had seen the Bourbon restored, and had helped to overthrow him. He had been twice the chief Minister of that Louis Philippe of Orleans, who in his youth had had to save the Princess his sister by carrying her off in her night-gown, without time to throw a shawl around her, and whose long years of exile had led him, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Danton, to the throne of France at last.

He had helped towards the downfall of that same King his master, and had striven vainly at the end to stand between him and his fate. He had seen a second Republic rise and sink; he had now become the envoy of a third Republic. He had refused to serve an Imperial Napoleon, although his own teaching and preaching had been among the most effective agencies in debauching the mind and heart of the nation, and thus rendering a second Empire possible. People say M. Thiers has no feelings, and I shall not venture to contradict them--I have often heard the statement from those who know better than I can pretend to do. It would have been personally unfortunate for him in his interview with Count von Bismarck if he had been burthened with feelings. For he must surely in such a case have felt bitterly the consciousness that the misfortunes which had fallen on his country were in great measure the fruit of his own doctrines and his own labors. If the public conscience of France had not been seared and hardened against all sentiment of obligation to international principle, where French glory and French aggrandizement were concerned; if France had not learned to believe that no foreign nation had any rights which she was bound to respect; if she had not been saturated with the conviction that every benefit to a neighbor was an injury to herself; if she had not accepted these views as articles of national faith, and followed them out wherever she could to their uttermost consequences, then M. Thiers might be said to have written and spoken and lived in vain.

It is probable that a new career presents itself as a possibility to the indomitable energy, and, as many would say, the insatiable ambition of M. Thiers. Certainly, there seems not the faintest indication that the veteran believes himself to lag superfluous on the stage. It is likely that he rushed into the recent peace negotiations with the hope of playing over again the part so skilfully played by Talleyrand at the time of the Congress of Vienna, by virtue of which France obtained so much advantage which might hardly have been expected, and Germany got so little of what she might naturally have looked for. I certainly shall not venture to say whether M. Thiers may not even yet have an important official career before him. His recent enterprises and expeditions give evidence enough that he has nerve and physique for any undertaking likely to attract him, and I see no reason to doubt that his intellect is as fresh and active as it was thirty years ago. Thiers deserves nothing but honor for the unconquerable energy and courage which refuse to yield to years, and will not acknowledge the triumph of time. He would deserve far greater honor still if we could regard him as a disinterested patriot; highest honor of all if his principles were as wise and just as his ambition was unselfish. But charity itself could hardly hope to reconcile the facts of M. Thiers's long and varied career with any theory ascribing to the man himself a pure and disinterested purpose. That a statesman has changed his opinions is often his highest glory, if, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone, he has thereby grown into the light and the right. Nor is a change of views necessarily a reproach to a politician, even though he may have retrograded or gone wrong. But the man who is invariably a pa.s.sionate liberal when out of office, and a severe conservative when in power; who makes it a regular practice to have one set of opinions while he leads the opposition, and another when he has succeeded in mounting to the lead of a ministry; such a man cannot possibly hope to obtain for such systematic alternations the credit of even a capricious and fantastic sincerity. No one who knows anything of M. Thiers would consent thus to exalt his heart at the expense of his head. When the late Lord Cardigan was, rightly or wrongly, accused of having returned rather too quickly from the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, his lords.h.i.+p, among other things, alleged that his horse had run away with him. A bitter critic thereupon declared that Lord Cardigan could not be allowed thus unfairly to depreciate his consummate horsemans.h.i.+p, I am afraid we cannot allow M. Thiers's intelligence and shrewdness to be unjustly depreciated by the a.s.sumption that his political tergiversations were the result of meaningless caprice.

M. Thiers is one of the most gifted men of his day. But he is not, in my judgment, a great man. He wants altogether the grand and stable qualities of principle and judgment which are needed to const.i.tute political greatness. His statesmans.h.i.+p is a sort of policy belonging apparently to the school of the Lower Empire; a Byzantine blending of intrigue and impudence. He has never had the faculty of reading the signs of the times, or of understanding that to-day is not necessarily like yesterday. But for the wonderful gifts of the man, there would seem to be something positively childish in the egotism which could believe that it lay in the power of France to maintain, despite of destiny, the petty princes of Germany and Italy, to arrange the political conditions of England, and prescribe to the United States how far their principle of internal cohesion should reach. Victor Hugo is undoubtedly an egotistic Frenchman. Some of his recent utterances have been foolish and ridiculous. But the folly has been that of a great soul; the folly has consisted in appealing, out of all time and place, to sublime and impracticable sentiments of human brotherhood and love which ought to influence all human souls, but do not and probably never will. Far different is the egotism of Thiers. It is the egotism of selfishness, arrogance, and craft. In a sublime world, Victor Hugo's appeals would cease to be ridiculous; but the n.o.bler the world, the more ign.o.ble would seem the doctrines and the policy of Thiers. My own admiration of Thiers extends only to his skill as a debater and his marvellous intellectual vitality. The man who, despite the most disheartening disadvantages of presence, voice, and manner, is yet the most fascinating political debater of his time, the man who at seventy-three years of age can go up in a balloon in quest of a new career, must surely command some interest and admiration, let critical wisdom preach to us never so wisely. But the best days will have arisen for France when such a political character and such a literary career as those of M. Thiers shall have become an anachronism and an impossibility.

PRINCE NAPOLEON.

Some few years ago, seven or eight perhaps, a certain sensation was created among artists, and journalists, and literary men, and connoisseurs, and critics, by one of Flandrin's best portraits.

Undoubtedly, the portrait was an admirable likeness; no one who had ever seen the original could deny or question that; but yet there was an air, a character, a certain depth of idealized expression about it which seemed to present the subject in a new light, and threw one into a kind of doubt as to whether he had ever truly understood the original before.

Either the painter had unduly glorified his sitter, or the sitter had impressed upon the artist a true idea of his character and intellect which had never before been revealed to the public at large. The portrait was that of a man of middle age, with a smooth, broad, thoughtful brow, a character of command about the finely-formed, somewhat sensuous lips; chin and nose beautifully moulded, in fact what ladies who write novels would call "chiselled;" a face degenerating a little into mere flesh, but still dignified and imposing. Everywhere over the face there was a tone of dissatisfaction, of disappointment, of sullenness mingling strangely with the sensuous characteristics, and conveying somehow the idea of great power and daring ambition unduly repressed by outward conditions, or rendered barren by inward defects, or actually frustrated by failure and fate. "A Caesar out of employment!"

exclaimed a celebrated French author and critic. So much there was of the Caesar in the face that no school-boy, no Miss in her teens could have even glanced at it without saying, "That is the face of a Bonaparte!" Were not the features a little too ma.s.sive, it might have pa.s.sed for an admirable likeness of the victor of Austerlitz; or, at all events, of the Napoleon of Leipzig or the Hundred Days. Probably any ordinary observer would at once have set it down as a portrait of the great Napoleon, and never thought there could be any doubt about the matter. It was, in fact, the likeness of Napoleon-Jerome, son of the rattle-pate King of Westphalia--Prince Napoleon, as he is ordinarily called, the Plon-plon whom soldiers jeer at, the "Red Prince" whom priests and Legitimists denounce, the cousin of the Emperor of the French, the son-in-law of the King of Italy.

It was only somewhere about, or a little before the time of the Flandrin portrait, that Prince Napoleon had the honor of becoming a mystery in the eyes of the public. Up to 1860, his character was quite settled in public estimation, just as that of Louis Napoleon had been up to the time of the _coup d'etat_. Public opinion generally settles the characters of conspicuous men at first by the intuitive process--the most delightful and easy method possible, dispensing, as it does, with any necessity for studying the subject, or even knowing anything at all about it. When the intuitive process has once adjusted a man's character, it is not easy to get people to believe in any other adjustment. Still, there are some remarkable instances of a change in popular opinion. The case of Louis Napoleon, the Emperor, is one ill.u.s.tration; that of Prince Napoleon, his cousin, is another, not so remarkable, certainly, but still quite worthy of some attention.

Prince Napoleon had been before the world more or less since he appeared as representative of Corsica, in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly of 1848. He was made conspicuous, in a negative sort of way, by having had no hand in the _coup d'etat_, or having even opposed it, although he did not scruple to profit by its success and enjoy its golden advantages. He had a command in the Crimean war; he was sent into Tuscany during the Italian campaign. All that time public opinion in Europe was unanimous about him. He was a sensualist, a coward, an imbecile, and a blockhead.

He was a fat, stupid, muddle-headed Heliogabalus. Dulness, cowardice, and profligacy were his princ.i.p.al, perhaps his only characteristics.

When the young Clotilde, of Savoy, was given to him for a wife, a positive cry of wonder and disgust went up from every country of Europe.

In good truth, it was a scandalous thing to marry a young and innocent girl to a man nearly as old as her father; and who, undoubtedly, had been a _mauvais sujet_, and had led a life of dissipation so far. But Europe cried aloud as if three out of every four princely alliances were not made on the same principle and endowed with the same character. Had the Princess Clotilde been affianced to a hog or a gorilla, there could hardly have been greater wonder and horror expressed, so clear was the public mind about the stupidity and brutality of Prince Napoleon.

Certainly, if one looked a little deeper than mere public opinion, he would have found, even then, that here and there some men, not quite incapable of judging, did not accept the popular estimate of the Emperor's cousin. All through the memorable progress of the Congress of Paris--out of which sprang Italy--we find, by the doc.u.ments subsequently made public, that Cavour was in close and frequent consultation with Prince Napoleon. Once we find Cavour saying that Prince Napoleon complains of his slowness, his too great moderation, and thinks he could serve the cause better by a little more boldness. "Perhaps he is right,"

says Cavour, in words to that effect; "but I fear I lack his force of character, his daringness of purpose." Richard Cobden makes the acquaintance of Prince Napoleon, and is surprised and delighted with his advanced opinions on the subject of free trade; and deliberately describes him (I heard Cobden use the words) as "one of the best informed, if not the very best informed, of all the public men of Europe." Kinglake observes the Prince during the Crimean campaign--where Napoleon-Jerome got his reputation for cowardice and his nick-name of Plon-plon--and finds in him a genius very like that of his uncle, the great Napoleon, especially a wonderful power of distinguis.h.i.+ng at a glance between the essentials and the accidentals of any question or situation--and any one who has ever studied politics and public men will know how rare a faculty that is--and finally declares that he sees no reason to believe him inferior in courage to the conqueror of Marengo!

Edmond About, not a very dull personage, and not quite given up to panegyric, bursts into a strain of almost lyrical enthusiasm about the wit, the brilliancy, the culture, the daring ambition of Prince Napoleon, and declares that the Prince is kept as much out of the way as possible, because a man endowed with a soul of such unresting energy, and the face of the great Emperor, is too formidable a personage to be seen hanging about the steps of a throne. To close this string of ill.u.s.trations, Prince Napoleon is in somewhat frequent and confidential intercourse with Michel Chevalier, a man not likely to cultivate the society of heavy blockheads and dullards, even though these might happen to wear princely coronets. Clearly, public opinion here was even more directly at odds than it often is with the opinion of some whom we may call experts; and the difference was so great that there seemed no possible way of reconciling the two. A man may be a profligate and yet a man of genius, and even a patriot; but one cannot be a profligate blockhead and a man of genius, a Cloten and an Alcibiades, a Caesar and a Pyrgopolinices at once.

It was in the early part of 1861 that Prince Napoleon contributed something of his own spontaneous motion to help in the solution of the enigma. That was the year when the Emperor removed the restriction which prevented both Chambers of the Legislature from freely debating the address, and the press from fully reporting the discussions. There was a remarkable debate in the Senate, ranging over a great variety of domestic and foreign questions, and one most memorable event of the debate was the brilliant, powerful and exhaustive oration delivered, with splendid energy and rhetorical effect, by Prince Napoleon. _Mon ane parle et meme il parle bien_, declares the astonished Joan, in Voltaire's scandalous poem, "La Pucelle." Perhaps there was something of a similar wonder mingled with the burst of genuine admiration which went up first from Paris, then from France, and finally from Europe and America, when that magnificent democratic manifesto came to be read.

Certainly, I remember no single speech which, during my time, created anything like the same sensation in Europe. For it took the outer world wholly by surprise. It was not a case like that of the sensation lately created by the florid and fervid eloquence of the young Spanish orator, Castellar. In this latter case the public were surprised and delighted to find that there was a master of thrilling rhetoric alive, and arrayed on the side of democratic freedom, of whose very existence most persons had been previously ignorant. But, in the case of Prince Napoleon, the surprise was, that a man whom the public had long known, and always set down as a stupid sensualist, should suddenly, and without any previous warning, turn out a great orator, whose eloquence had in it something so fresh, and genuine, and forcible that it recalled the memory of the most glorious days of the French Tribune. I write of this celebrated oration now only from recollection; and, of course, I did not hear it spoken. I say "of course," because the rules of the French Senate, unlike those of the Corps Legislatif, forbid the presence of any strangers during the debates. But those who heard it spoke enthusiastically of the force and freedom with which it was delivered; the sudden, impulsive fervor of occasional outbursts; and the wonderful readiness with which the speaker, when interrupted, as he was very frequently, pa.s.sed from one topic to another in order to dispose of the interruption, and replied to sudden challenge with even prompter repartee. No one could read the speech without admiring the extent and variety of the political knowledge it displayed; the prodigality of ill.u.s.tration it flung over every argument; the thrilling power of some of its rhetorical "phrases;"

the tone of sustained and pa.s.sionate eloquence which made itself heard all throughout; and, perhaps above all, that flexible, spontaneous readiness of language and resource to which every interruption, every interjected question only acted like a spur to a generous horse, calling forth new and greater, and wholly unexpected efforts. In the French Senate I need, perhaps, hardly tell my readers, it is the habit to allow the utmost license of interruption, and Prince Napoleon's audacious onslaught on the reactionists and the _parti pretre_ called out even an unusual amount of impatient utterance. Those who interrupted took little by their motion. The energetic Prince tossed off his a.s.sailants as a bull flings the dogs away on the points of his horns. "Our principles are not yours," scornfully exclaims a Legitimist n.o.bleman--the late Marquis de la Rochejaquelein, if I remember rightly. "Your principles are not ours!" vehemently replies the orator. "No, nor are your antecedents ours. Our pride is that our fathers fell on the battle-field resisting the foreign invaders whom your fathers brought in for the subjugation of France!" The speech is studded with sudden replies equally fervid and telling. Indeed, the whole material of the oration is rich, strong, and genuine. There seems to be in the eloquence of the French Chambers, of late, a certain want of freshness and natural power.

I do not speak of Berryer--he had no such want. But Thiers--by far the ablest living debater who speaks only from preparation--with all his wonderful science and skill as an artist in debate, appears to be always somewhat artificial and elaborate. Jules Favre, with his exquisitely modulated tones, and his unrivalled choice of words, hardly ever appears to me to rise to that height where the orator, lost in his subject, compels his hearers to lose themselves also in it. Now, I cannot help thinking that the two or three really great speeches made by Prince Napoleon had in them more of the native fibre, force and pa.s.sion of oratory than those of almost any Frenchman since the days of Mirabeau.

However that may be, the effect wrought on the public mind was unmistakable. Plon-plon had startled Europe. He entered the palace of the Luxembourg on that memorable day without any repute but that of a dullard and a sensualist; he came out of it a recognized orator. I have been told that he lay back in his open carriage and smoked his cigar, as he drove home from the Senate, to all appearance the same indolent, sullen, heavy apathetic personage whom all Paris had previously known and despised.

One notable effect of this famous speech was the reply which a certain pa.s.sage in it drew from Louis Philippe's son, the Duc d'Aumale. Prince Napoleon had indulged in a bitter sneer or two against former dynasties, and the Duc d'Aumale, a man of great culture and ability, took up the quarrel fiercely. The Duke a.s.sailed Prince Napoleon in one of the keenest, most biting pamphlets which the political controversy of our day has produced. Among other things, the Duke replied to a supposed imputation on the weakness of Louis Philippe by admitting, frankly, that the _bourgeois_ King had not dealt with enemies, when in his power, as a Bonaparte would have done. "_Et tenez_, Prince," wrote the Duke, "the only time when the word of a Bonaparte may be believed is when he avows that he will never spare a defenceless enemy." The pamphlet bristled with points equally sharp and envenomed. But the Duc d'Aumale was not content with written rejoinder. He sent a challenge to the Prince, and in serious earnest. The Prince, it need hardly be said, did not accept the challenge.

Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his greatness, and be staged to the show Against a sworder!

Our Caesar, though not "high-battled," was by no means likely to consent to be "staged against a sworder." The Emperor hastened to prevent any disastrous consequences, by insisting that the Prince must not accept the challenge--and there was no duel. People winked and sneered a good deal. It is said that the martial King Victor Emmanuel grumbled and chafed at his son-in-law; but there was no fight. Let me say, for my own part, that I think Prince Napoleon was quite right in not accepting the challenge, and that I do not believe him to be wanting in personal courage.

From that moment, Prince Napoleon became a conspicuous figure in European politics, and when any great question arose, men turned anxiously toward him, curious to know what he would do or say. In three or four successive sessions he spoke in the Senate, and even with the impression of the first surprise still strong on the public mind, the speeches preserved abundantly the reputation which the earliest of them had so suddenly created. He might be the _enfant terrible_ of the Bonaparte family; he might be utterly wanting in statesmans.h.i.+p; he might be insincere; he might be physically a coward; but all the world now admitted him to be an orator, and, in his way, a man of genius.

Then it became known to the public, all at once, that the Prince, whatever his failings, had some rare gifts besides that of eloquence. He was undoubtedly a man of exquisite taste in all things artistic; he had an intelligent and liberal knowledge of practical science; he had a great faculty of organization; he was a keen humorist and wit. He loved the society of artists, and journalists, and literary men; he a.s.sociated with them _en bon camarade_, and he could talk with each upon his own subject; his _bon mots_ soon began to circulate far and wide. He was a patron of Revolution. In the innermost privacy of the Palais Royal men like Mieroslawski, the Polish Red Revolutionist, men like General Turr, unfolded and discussed their plans. Prince Gortschakoff, in his despatches at the time of the Polish Rebellion, distinctly pointed to the palace of Prince Napoleon as the headquarters of the insurrection.

The "Red Prince" grew to be one of the mysterious figures in European policy. Was he in league with his cousin, the Emperor--or was he his cousin's enemy? Did he hope, on the strength of that Bonaparte face, and his secret league with Democracy, to mount one day from the steps of the throne to the throne itself? Between him and the succession to that throne intervened only the life of one frail boy. Was Prince Napoleon preparing for the day when he might play the part of a Gloster (without the smothering), and, pus.h.i.+ng the boy aside, succeed to the crown of the great Emperor whom in face he so strikingly resembled?

At last came the celebrated Ajaccio speech. The Emperor had gone to visit Algeria; the Prince went to deliver an oration at the inauguration of a monument to Napoleon I., at Ajaccio. The speech was, in brief, a powerful, pa.s.sionate denunciation of Austria, and the principles which Austria represented before Sadowa taught her a lesson of tardy wisdom.

Viewed as the exposition of a professor of history, one might fairly acknowledge the Prince's speech to have ill.u.s.trated eloquently some solid and stern truths, which Europe would have done well even then to consider deeply. Subsequent events have justified and illuminated many of what then seemed the most startling utterances of the orator.

Austria, for example, practically admits, by her present policy, the justice of much that Prince Napoleon pleaded against her. But as the speech of the Emperor's cousin; of one who stood in near order of succession to the throne; of one who had only just been raised to an office in the State so high that in the absence of the sovereign it made him seem the sovereign's proper representative, it was undoubtedly a piece of marvellous indiscretion. Europe stood amazed at its outspoken audacity. The Emperor could not overlook it; and he publicly repudiated it. Prince Napoleon resigned his public offices--including that of President of the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, which undertaking suffered sadly from lack of his organizing capacity and his admirable taste and judgment--and the Imperial orator of Democracy disappeared from the public stage as suddenly, and amid as much tumult, as he had entered upon it.

Prince Napoleon has, indeed, been taken into favor since by his Imperial cousin, and has been sent on one or two missions, more or less important or mysterious; but he has never, from the date of the Ajaccio speech up to the present moment, played any important part as a public man. He is not, however, "played out." His energy, his ambition, his ability, will a.s.suredly bring him prominently before the public again. Let us, meanwhile, endeavor to set before the readers of THE GALAXY a fair and true picture of the man, free alike from the exaggerated proportions which wondering _quid nuncs_ or parasites attribute to him, and from the distortions of unfriendly painters. Exaggeration of both kinds apart, Prince Napoleon is really one of the most remarkable figures on the present stage of French history. He is, at least, a man of great possibilities. Let us try to ascertain fairly what he is, and what are his chances for the future.

Born of a hair-brained, eccentric, adventure-seeking, negligent, selfish father, Prince Napoleon had little of the advantages of a home education. His boyhood, his youth, were pa.s.sed in a vagrant kind of way, ranging from country to country, from court to court. He started in life with great natural talents, a strong tendency to something not very unlike rowdyism, an immense ambition, an almost equally vast indolence, a deep and genuine love of arts, letters, and luxury, an eccentric, fitful temper, and a predominant pride in that relations.h.i.+p to the great Emperor which is so plainly stamped upon his face. Without entering into any questions of current scandal, everybody must know that Napoleon III.

has nothing of the Bonaparte in his face, a fact on which Prince Napoleon, in his earlier and wilder days, was not always very slow to comment. Indolence, love of luxury, and a capricious temper have, perhaps, been the chief enemies which have hitherto prevented the latter from fulfilling any high ambition. It would be affectation to ignore the fact that Prince Napoleon flung many years away in mere dissipation.

Stories are told in Paris which would represent him almost as a Vitellius or an Egalite in profligacy--stories some of which simply transcend belief by their very monstrosity. Even to this day, to this hour, it is the firm conviction of the general public that the Emperor's cousin is steeped to the lips in sensuality. Now, rejecting, of course, a huge ma.s.s of this scandal, it is certain that Prince Napoleon was, for a long time, a downright _mauvais sujet_; it is by no means certain that he has, even at his present mature age, discarded all his evil habits.

His temper is much against him. People habitually contrast the unvarying courtesy and self-control of the Emperor with the occasional brusqueness, and even rudeness, of the Prince. True that Prince Napoleon can be frankly and warmly familiar with his intimates, and even that, like Prince Hal, he sometimes encourages a degree of familiarity which hardly tends to mutual respect. But the outer world cannot always rely on him. He can be undiplomatically rough and hot, and he has a gift of biting jest which is perhaps one of the most dangerous qualities a statesman can cultivate. Then there is a personal restlessness about him which even princes cannot afford safely to indulge. He has hardly ever had any official position a.s.signed to him which he did not sometime or other scornfully abandon on the spur of some sudden impulse. The Madrid emba.s.sy in former days, the Algerian administration, the Crimean command--these and other offices he only accepted to resign. He has wandered more widely over the face of the earth than any other living prince--probably than any other prince that ever lived. It used to be humorously said of him that he was qualifying to become a teacher of geography, in the event of fortune once more driving the race of Bonaparte into exile and obscurity. What port is there that has not sheltered his wandering yacht? He has pleasant dwellings enough to induce a man to stay at home. His Palais Royal is one of the most elegant and tasteful abodes belonging to a European prince. The stranger in Paris who is fortunate enough to obtain admission to it--and, indeed, admission is easy to procure--must be sadly wanting in taste if he does not admire the treasures of art and _vertu_ which are laid up there, and the easy, graceful manner of their arrangement. Nothing of the air of the show-place is breathed there; no rules, no conditions, no watchful, d.o.g.g.i.ng lacqueys or sentinels make the visitor uncomfortable. Once admitted, the stranger goes where he will, and admires and examines what he pleases. He finds there curiosities and relics, medals and statues, bronzes and stones from every land in which history or romance takes any interest; he gazes on the latest artistic successes--Dore's magnificent lights and shadows, Gerome's audacious nudities; he observes autograph collections of value inestimable; he notices that on the tables, here and there, lie the newest triumphs or sensations of literature--the poem that every one is just talking of, the play that fills the theatres, George Sand's last novel, Renan's new volume, Taine's freshest criticism: he is impressed everywhere with the conviction that he is in the house of a man of high culture and active intellect, who keeps up with the progress of the world in arts, and letters, and politics. Then there was, until lately, the famous Pompeiian Palace, in one of the avenues of the Champs Elysees, which ranked among the curiosities of Paris, but which Prince Napoleon has at last chosen, or been compelled, to sell. On the Swiss sh.o.r.e of the lake of Geneva, one of the most remarkable objects that attract the eye of the tourist who steams from Geneva to Lausanne, is La Bergerie, the palace of Prince Napoleon. But the owner of these palaces spends little of his time in them. His wife, the Princess Clotilde, stays at home and delights in her children, and shows them with pride to her visitors, while her restless husband is steaming in and out of the ports of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, or the Baltic. Prince Napoleon has not found his place yet, say Edmond About and other admirers--when he does he will settle firmly to it. He is a restless, unmanageable idler and scamp, say his enemies--unstable as water, he shall not excel. Meanwhile years go by, and Prince Napoleon has long left even the latest verge of youth behind him; and he is only a possibility as yet, and is popular with no political party in France.

Strange that this avowed and ostentatious Democrat, this eloquent, powerful spokesman of French Radicalism, is not popular even with Democrats and Red Republicans. They do not trust him. They cannot understand how he can honestly extend one hand to Democracy, while in the other he receives the magnificent revenues a.s.signed to him by Despotism. One might have thought that nothing would be more easy than for this man, with his daring, his ambition, his brilliant talents, his commanding eloquence, his democratic principles, and his Napoleon face, to make himself the idol of French Democracy. Yet he has utterly failed to do so. As a politician, he has almost invariably upheld the rightful cause, and accurately foretold the course of events. He believed in the possibility of Italy's resurrection long before there was any idea of his becoming son-in-law to a King of Italy; he has been one of the most earnest friends of the cause of Poland; he saw long ago what every one sees now, that the fall of the Austrian system was an absolute necessity to the progress of Europe; he was a steady supporter of the American Union, and when it was the fas.h.i.+on in France, as in England, to regard the independence of the Southern Confederacy as all but an accomplished fact, he remained firm in the conviction that the North was destined to triumph. With all his characteristic recklessness and impetuosity, he has many times shown a cool and penetrating judgment, hardly surpa.s.sed by that of any other European statesman. Yet the undeniable fact remains, that his opinion carries with it comparatively little weight, and that no party recognizes him as a leader.

Is he insincere? Most people say he is. They say that, with all his professions of democratic faith, he delights in his princely rank and his princely revenues; that he is selfish, grasping, luxurious, arrogant and deceitful. The army despises him; the populace do not trust him.

Now, for myself, I do not accept this view of the character of Prince Napoleon. I think he is a sincere Democrat, a genuine lover of liberty and progress. But I think, at the same time, that he is cursed with some of the vices of Alcibiades, and some of the vices of Mirabeau; that he has the habitual indolence almost of a Vendome, with Vendome's occasional outbursts of sudden energy; that a love of luxury, and a restlessness of character, and fretfulness of temper stand in his way, and are his enemies. I doubt whether he will ever play a great historical part, whether he ever will do much more than he has done. His character wants that backbone of earnest, strong simplicity and faith, without which even the most brilliant talents can hardly achieve political greatness. He will probably rank in history among the Might-Have-Beens. a.s.suredly, he has in him the capacity to play a great part. In knowledge and culture, he is far, indeed, superior to his uncle, Napoleon I.; in justice of political conviction, he is a long way in advance of his cousin, Napoleon III. Taken for all in all, he is the most lavishly gifted of the race of the Bonapartes--and what a part in the cause of civilization and liberty might not be played by a Bonaparte endowed with genius and culture, and faithful to high and true convictions! But the time seems going by, if not gone by, when even admirers could expect to see Prince Napoleon play such a part. Probably the disturbing, distracting vein of unconquerable levity so conspicuous in the character of his father, is the marplot of the son's career, too.

After all, Prince Napoleon is perhaps more of an Antony than a Caesar--was not Antony, too, an orator, a wit, a lover of art and letters, a lover of luxury and free companions.h.i.+p, and woman? Doubtless Prince Napoleon will emerge again, some time and somehow, from his present condition of comparative obscurity. Any day, any crisis, any sudden impulse may bring him up to the front again. But I doubt whether the dynasty of the Bonapartes, the cause of democratic freedom, the destinies of France, will be influenced much for good or evil, by this man of rare and varied gifts--of almost measureless possibilities--the restless, reckless, eloquent, brilliant Imperial Democrat of the Palais Royal, and Red Republican of the Empire--the long misunderstood and yet scarcely comprehended Prince Napoleon.

THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE.

There used to be a story current in London, which I dare say is not true, to the effect that her gracious Majesty Queen Victoria once demurred to the Prince and Princess of Wales showing themselves too freely in society, and asked them angrily whether they meant to make themselves "as common as the Cambridges."

Certainly the Duke of Cambridge and his sister the Princess Mary, now Princess of Teck, were for a long time, if not exactly "common," if not precisely popular, the most social, the most easily approached, and the most often seen in public pageantry of all members of the royal family.

The Princess Mary might perhaps fairly be called popular. The people liked her fine, winsome face, her plump and buxom form. If she has not a kindly, warm, and generous heart, then surely physiognomy is no index of character. But the Duke of Cambridge, although very commonly seen in public, and ready to give his presence and his support to almost any philanthropic meeting and inst.i.tution which can claim to be fas.h.i.+onable, never seems to have attained any degree of popularity. Like his father, who enjoyed the repute of being the worst after-dinner speaker who ever opened his mouth, the Duke of Cambridge is to be found acting as chairman of some public banquet once a week on an average during the London season. He is president or patron of no end of public charities and other inst.i.tutions. Yet the people do not seem to care anything about him, or even to like him. His appearance is not in his favor. He is handsome in a certain sense, but he is heavy, stolid, sensual-looking, and even gross in form and face. He has indeed nearly all the peculiarities of physiognomy which specially belong to the most typical members of the Guelph family, and there is, moreover, despite the obesity which usually suggests careless good-humor, something sinister or secret in his expression not pleasant to look upon. He seems to be a man of respectable average abilities. He is not a remarkably bad speaker. I think when he addresses the House of Lords, which he does rarely, or a public meeting or dinner-party, which he does often, he acquits himself rather better than the ordinary county member of Parliament. Judging by his apparent mental capacity and his style as a speaker, he ought to be rather popular than otherwise in England, for the English people like respectable mediocrity and not talent in their princes. "He is so respectable and such an a.s.s," says Thackeray speaking of somebody, "that I positively wonder he didn't get on in England." The Duke of Cambridge is so respectable (in intellectual capacity) and so dull that I positively wonder he has not been popular in England. But popular he never has been. No such clamorous detestation follows him as used to pursue the late Duke of c.u.mberland, subsequently King of Hanover. No such accusations have been made against him as were familiarly pressed against the Duke of York. Even against the living Prince of Wales there are charges made by common scandal more serious than any that are usually talked of in regard to the Duke of Cambridge.

But the English public likes the Duke as little as it could like any royal personage. England has lately been growing very jealous of the manner in which valuable appointments are heaped on members of the Queen's family. The Duke of Cambridge has long enjoyed some sinecure places of liberal revenue, and he holds one office of inestimable influence, for which he has never proved himself qualified, and for which common report declares him to be utterly disqualified. He is Commander-in-Chief of the British army; and that I believe to be his grand offence in the eyes of the British public. Many offences incident to his position are indeed charged upon him. It is said that he makes an unfair use, for purposes of favoritism, of the immense patronage which his office places at his disposal. Some years ago scandal used to charge him with advancing men out of the same motive which induced the Marquis of Steyne to obtain an appointment for Colonel Rawdon Crawley. The private life of the Duke is said to have been immoral, and unluckily for him it so happened that some of his closest friends and favorites became now and then involved in scandals of which the law courts had to take cognizance. But had none of these things been so, or been said, I think the Duke of Cambridge would have lacked popularity just as much as he does. The English people are silently angry with him, mainly because he is an anachronism--a man raised to the most influential public appointment the sovereign can bestow, for no other reason than because he is a member of the royal family. The Duke of Cambridge in the office of Commander-in-Chief is an anachronism at the head of an anomaly. The system is unfit for the army or the country; the man is incompetent to manage any military system, good or bad. As the question of army reorganization, now under debate in England, has a grand political importance, transcending by far its utmost possible military import, and as the position of the Duke of Cambridge is one of the peculiar and typical anomalies about to be abolished, it may surely interest American readers if I occupy a few pages in describing the man and the system.

Altering slightly the words of Bugeaud to Louis Philippe in 1848, this reorganization of the army in England is not a reform, but a revolution.

It strikes out the keystone from the arch of the fabric of English aristocracy.

The Duke of Cambridge is, as everybody knows, the first cousin of the Queen of England. He is about the same age as the Queen. When both were young it used to be said that he cherished hopes of becoming her husband. He is now himself one of the victims of the odious royal marriage act, which in England acknowledges as valid no marriage with a subject contracted by a member of the royal family without the consent of the sovereign. The Duke of Cambridge, it is well known, is privately married to a lady of respectable position and of character which has never been reproached, but whom, nevertheless, he cannot present to the world as his wife because the royal consent has not ratified the marriage. Many readers of THE GALAXY may perhaps remember that only four or five years ago there was some little commotion created in England by the report, never contradicted, that a princess of the royal house had set her heart upon marrying a young English n.o.bleman who loved her, and that the Queen utterly refused to give her consent. Much sympathy was felt for the princess, because, as she was not a daughter of the Queen and was not young enough to be reasonably expected to acknowledge the control of any relative, this rigorous exercise of a merely technical power seemed particularly unjust and odious. It will be seen, therefore, that the objections raised against the Duke and his position in England are not founded on the belief that he is himself as an individual inordinately favored by the sovereign; but on the obvious fact that place and power are given to him because he is a member of the reigning family. The Duke of Cambridge has never shown the slightest military talent, the faintest capacity for the business of war. In his only campaign he proved worse than useless, and more than once made a humiliating exhibition, not of cowardice, but of utter incapacity and flaccid nervelessness. His warmest admirer never ventured to pretend that the Duke was personally the best man to take the place of Commander-in-Chief. While he was constantly accused by rumor and sometimes by public insinuation of blundering, of obstinacy, of ignorance, of gross favoritism, no defence ever made for him, no eulogy ever p.r.o.nounced upon him, went the length of describing him as a well-qualified head of the military organization. His upholders and panegyrists were content with pleading virtually that he was by no means a bad sort of Commander-in-Chief; that he was not fairly responsible for this or that blunder or malversation; that on the whole there might have been men worse fitted than he for the place. The social vindication of the appointment was that which proved very naturally its worst offence in the eyes of the public--the fact that the sovereign and her family desired that the place should be given to the Duke of Cambridge, and that the ministers then in power either had not the courage or did not think it worth their while to resist the royal inclination.

The Duke, if he never proved himself much of a soldier, had at least opportunity enough to learn all the ordinary business of his profession.

He actually is, and always has been, a professional soldier--not nominally an officer, as the late Prince Albert was, or as the Prince of Wales is, or as the Princess Victoria (Crown Princess of Prussia) may be said for that matter to be, the lady holding, I believe, an appointment as colonel of some regiment, and being doubtless just as well acquainted with her regimental duties as her fat and heavy brother. The Duke of Cambridge was made a colonel at the age of eighteen, and he did the ordinary barrack and garrison duties of his place. He used when young to be rather popular in garrison towns. In Dublin, for example, I think Prince George of Cambridge, as he was then called, was followed with glances of admiration by many hundred pairs of bright eyes. On the death of his father (whose after-dinner eloquence used to afford "Punch" a constant subject for mirth) Prince George became in 1850 Duke of Cambridge. He holds some appointments which I presume are sinecures to him; among the rest he is keeper of some of the royal parks (I don't know the precise t.i.tle of his office), and the name of "George" may be seen appended to edicts inscribed on various placards on the trees and gates near Buckingham Palace. Nothing in particular was known about him as a soldier until the Crimean war. Indeed, up to that time there had been for many years as little chance for an English officer to prove his capacity as there was for a West Point man to show what he was worth in the period between the Mexican war and the attack on Fort Sumter. When the Crimean war broke out the Duke was appointed to the command of the first division of the army sent against the Russians. I believe it is beyond all doubt that he proved himself unfit for the business of war.

He "lost his head," people say; he could not stand the sights and sounds of the battle-field. It required on one occasion--at Inkerman, I believe--the prompt and sharp interference of the late Lord Clyde, then Sir Colin Campbell, to prevent his Royal Highness from making a sad mess of his command. It is not likely that he wanted personal courage--few princes do; but his nerves gave way, and as he could be of no further use to anybody he was induced to return home. France and England each sent a fat prince, cousin of the reigning sovereign, to the Crimean war, and each prince rather suddenly came home again with the invidious whispers of the malign unpleasantly criticising his retreat from the field. After the Duke's return the corporation of Liverpool gave him (why, no man could well say) a grand triumphal entry, and I remember that an irreverent and cynical member of one of the local boards suggested that among the devices exhibited in honor of the ill.u.s.trious visitor, a white feather would be an appropriate emblem. There the Duke's active military career began and ended. He had not distinguished himself. Perhaps he had not disgraced himself; perhaps it was really only ill-health which prevented him from proving himself as genuine a warrior as his relative, the Crown Prince of Prussia. But the English people only saw that the Duke went out to the war and very quickly came back again. Julius Caesar or the First Napoleon or General Sherman might have had to do the same thing under the same circ.u.mstances; but then these more lucky soldiers did not have to do it, and therefore were able to prove their military capacity. One thing very certain is, that without such good fortune and such proof of capacity neither Caesar, Napoleon, nor Sherman would ever have been made commander-in-chief, and therein again they were unlike the Duke of Cambridge. For it was not long after the Duke's return home that on the death or resignation (I don't now quite remember which) of Viscount Hardinge, our heavy "George"

was made Commander-in-Chief of the British army. I venture to think that, taking all the conditions of the time and the appointment into consideration, no more unreasonable, no more unjustifiable instance of military promotion was ever seen in England.

For observe, that the worst thing about the appointment of the Duke of Cambridge is not that an incompetent person obtains by virtue of his rank the highest military position in the State. If this were all, there might be just the same thing said of almost every other European country--indeed, of almost every other country. The King of Prussia was Commander-in-Chief of the armies of North Germany, but no one supposed that he was really competent to discharge all the duties of such a position. Abraham Lincoln was Commander-in-Chief of the Federal army, by virtue of his office of President; but no one supposed that his military knowledge and capacity would ever have recommended him to such a post.

The appointment in each case was only nominal, and as a matter of political convenience and propriety. It did not seem wise or even safe that the supreme military authority should be formally intrusted to any one but the ruler or the President. It was thoroughly understood that the duties of the office were discharged by some professional expert, for whose work the King or the President was responsible to the nation.

But the office of Commander-in-Chief of the English army is something quite different from this. It is understood to be a genuine office, the occupant actually doing the work and having the authority. In the lifetime of the Duke of Wellington the country had the services of the very best Commander-in-Chief England could have selected. The sound and wise principle which dictated that appointment is really the principle on which the office is based in England. The Commander-in-Chief is not regarded, as on the Continent, in the light of an ornamental president of a great bureau whose duties are done by others, but as the most efficient military officer, the man best qualified to do the work.

Marlborough was Commander-in-Chief, and so was Schomberg, and so was General Seymour Conway. When in 1828 the Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister, and therefore resigned the command of the army, Lord Hill was placed at the head of military affairs. The Duke of Wellington resumed the command in 1842 and held it to his death, when it was given to Viscount Hardinge, a capable man. The t.i.tle of the office was not, I believe, actually "Commander-in-Chief," but "General Commanding-in-Chief." It was, if I remember rightly, owing to the disasters arising out of military mismanagement in the Crimea, that the changes were made which created a distinct Secretary of War and gave to the office of Commander-in-Chief its present t.i.tle. Therefore it will be seen that the intrusting the command of the army to the Duke of Cambridge is not even justifiable on the ground that it follows an old established custom. It is, on the contrary, an innovation, and one which ill.u.s.trates the worst possible principle. There is nothing to be said for it. No necessity justified or even excused it. When Viscount Hardinge died, if the principle adopted in his case--that of appointing the best man to the place--had been still in favor, there were many military generals in England, any one of whom would have filled the office with efficiency and credit. But the superst.i.tion of rank prevailed. The Duke of Wellington is believed to have once recommended that on his death Prince Albert, the Queen's husband, should be created Commander-in-Chief. Ridiculous as the suggestion may seem, it would probably have been a far better arrangement than that which was more recently adopted. Prince Albert could hardly have been called a professional soldier at all; and this would have been greatly in his favor. For he would have filled the place merely as the King of Prussia does; he would have intrusted the actual duties to some qualified man, and being endowed with remarkable judgment, temper, and discretion, he would doubtless have found the right man for the work. But the Duke of Cambridge, as a professional soldier, although a very indifferent one, is expected to perform and does perform the duties of his office, after his own fas.h.i.+on. He is too high in rank to be openly rebuked, contradicted, or called to account; he is not high enough to be accepted as a mere official ornament or figurehead. He is too much of a professional general to become willingly the pupil and instrument of a more skilled subordinate; too little of a professional general to render his authority of any real value, or to be properly qualified for any high military position. So the Duke of Cambridge did actually direct the affairs of the army, interfered in everything, was supreme in everything, and I think it is not too much to say mismanaged everything.

He stood in the way of all useful reforms; he sheltered old abuses; he was as dictatorial as though he had the military genius of a Wellington or a Von Moltke; he was as independent of public opinion as the Mikado of j.a.pan. The kind of mistakes which were made and abuses which were committed under his administration were not such as to attract much of the attention or interest of the newspapers. In England the press, moreover, is not supposed to be at liberty to criticise princes. Of late some little efforts at daring innovation are made in this direction; but as a rule, unless a prince does something very wrong indeed, he is secure from any censure or even criticism on the part of the newspapers.

There was, besides, one great practical difficulty in the way of any one inclined to criticise the military administration of the Duke of Cambridge. The War Department in England had grown to be a kind of anomalous two-headed inst.i.tution. There is a Secretary of War, who sits in the House of Lords or the House of Commons, as the case may be, and whom every one can challenge, criticise, and censure as he pleases.

There is the Commander-in-Chief. Which of these two functionaries is the superior? The theory of course is that the Secretary of War is supreme; that he is responsible to Parliament, and that every official in the department is responsible to him. But everybody in England knows that this is not the actual case. There stands in Pall Mall, not far from the residence of the Prince of Wales, a plain business-like structure, with a statue of the late Lord Herbert of Lea (the Sidney Herbert of Crimean days) in front of it; and this is the War Office, where the Secretary of War is in power. But there is in Whitehall another building far better known to Londoners and strangers alike; an old-fas.h.i.+oned, unlovely, shabby-looking sort of barrack, with a clock in its shapeless cupola and two small arches in its front, in each of which enclosures sits all day a gigantic horseman in steel cuira.s.s and high jack-boots. The country visitor comes here to wonder at the size and the accoutrements of the splendid soldiers; the nursery-maid loves the spot, and gazes with open mouth and sparkling eyes at the athletic cavaliers, and too often, like Hylas sent with his urn to the fountain, "_proposito florem praetulit officio_," prefers looking at the gorgeous military carnation blazing before her to the duty of watching her infantile charge in the perambulator. This building is the famous "Horse Guards," where the Commander-in-Chief is enthroned. I suppose the theory of the thing was, that while the army system was to be shaped out and directed in the War Office, the actual details of practical administration were to be managed at the Horse Guards. But of late years the relations of the two departments appear to have got into an almost inextricable and hopeless muddle, so that no one can pretend to say where the responsibility of the War Office ends or the authority of the Horse Guards begins. The Duke of Cambridge, it is said, habitually acts upon his own authority and ignores the War Office altogether. Things are done by him of which the Secretary for War knows nothing until they are done. The late Sidney Herbert, a man devoted to the duties of the War Department, over which he presided for some years, once emphatically refused during a debate in the House of Commons to evade the responsibility of some step taken at the Horse Guards, by pleading that it was made without the knowledge of the War Office. He declared that he considered himself, as War Secretary, responsible to Parliament for everything done in any office of the War Department. But it was quite evident from the tone of his speech that the thing had been done without his knowledge or consent, and that if anybody but the Queen's cousin had done it there would have been a "row in the building." Now Sidney Herbert was an aristocrat of high rank, of splendid fortune, of unsurpa.s.sed social dignity and influence, of great political talents and reputation. If he then could not attempt to control and rebuke the Queen's cousin, how could such an attempt be expected from a man like Mr. Cardwell, the present War Secretary? Mr. Cardwell is a dull, steady-going, respectable man, who has no pretension to anything like the rank, social influence, or even popularity of Sidney Herbert. In fact, the War Secretaries stand sometimes in much the same relation toward the Duke of Cambridge that a New York judge occasionally holds toward one of the great leaders of the bar who pleads before him and is formally supposed to acknowledge his superior authority. The person holding the position nominally superior feels himself in reality quite "over-crowed," to use a Spenserian expression, by the influence, importance, and dignity of the other. Let any stranger in London who happens to be in the gallery of the House of Lords, observe the astonis.h.i.+ng deference with which even a pure-blooded marquis or earl of antique t.i.tle will receive the greeting of the Duke of Cambridge; and then say what chance there is of a War Secretary, who probably belongs to the middle or manufacturing cla.s.ses, venturing to dictate to or rebuke so tremendous a _magnifico_. Lately an audacious critic of the Duke has started up in the person of a clever, vivacious young member of Parliament, George Otto Trevelyan, son of one of the ablest Indian administrators and nephew of Lord Macaulay. Trevelyan once held, I think, some subordinate place in the War Department, and he has lately been horrifying the conservatism and veneration of English society by boldly making speeches in which he attacks the Queen's cousin, declares that the latter is an injury and nuisance to the army system, that he stands in the way of all improvement, and that he ought to be abolished. But although most people do profoundly and potently believe what this saucy Trevelyan says, yet his words find little echo in public debate, and his direct motions in the House of Commons have been unsuccessful. The Duke, I perceive, has lately, however, descended so far from his position of supreme dignity as to defend himself in a public speech, and to claim the merit of having always been a progressive and indeed rather daring army reformer. But I do not believe the English Government or Parliament would ever have ventured to take one step to lessen the Duke of Cambridge's power of doing harm to the military service, were it not for the pressure of events with which England had nothing directly to do, and which nevertheless have proved too strong for the resistance even of princes and of vested interests.

The practical dethronement of the Duke of Cambridge I hold to be as certain as any mortal event still in the future can well be declared.

The anomaly, the inconvenience, the degradation which English Governments and Parliaments would have endured forever if left to themselves, may be regarded as destined to be swept away by the same flood which overwhelmed the military organization of France, and washed the Bonapartes off the throne of the Tuileries. The Duke of Cambridge too had to surrender at Sedan.