manner, is that
which every victorious party must experience, not only from those whom
it has defeated, but from the world at large. This is one of the items
in the details of the heavy price which the victors must pay for their
victory, no matter where it is won, or what the character of the contest
the issue of which it has decided. Men worship success, but they worship
it much after the fashion that some savage tribes worship the gods
created by their own hands, tearing and rending at one time the images
that at another had been objects of their most abject devotion.

If we judge the conduct of Louis Napoleon by reference only to Napoleon
III., we shall not be inclined to condemn it. His rule has not been a
perfect one, but it has been the best that France has known for fifty
years, not only for the French themselves, but for foreign peoples. He
has lifted France out of that slough in which she had floundered under
both branches of the Bourbons, and he has done so without being guilty
of any act of injustice toward other nations. The greatness of the
France of Napoleon I. was unpleasingly associated with the idea of the
degradation of neighboring countries, which implied the ultimate fall of
the Empire, as it could not be expected that Russians and Germans would
be governed from Paris. Independence is what every people strong enough
to vindicate its rights will have; and hence the men at St. Petersburg
and Vienna and Berlin were certain to act against the men of Paris
at the first favorable opportunity that should present itself. Their
dependent state was an unnatural state, and when the reaction came, the
torrent swept all before it. The fall of Napoleon I. was the consequence
of the manner in which he rose to the greatest height ever achieved by
a man in modern days. Napoleon III., whose power is really greater than
that of his uncle, has incurred the enmity of no foreign people. He
has led his armies into no European capital city, and he has levied no
foreign contributions. When it was in his power to dictate terms to
Russia, he astonished men, and even made them angry, by the extent of
his moderation. His abrupt pause in his career of Italian success, no
matter what the motive of it, enabled Austria to retire from a war in
which she had found nothing but defeat, with the air of a victor. The
only additions he has made to the territory of France--Savoy, Nice, and
Monaco--were obtained by the fair consent of all tho