se who had any right
to be consulted on the changes that were made. We find nothing in his
conduct that betrays any desire to humiliate his contemporaries, and a
superiority to vulgar ideas of what constitutes triumph that is
almost without a parallel. No man was ever treated more insolently by
hereditary sovereigns, from Czar and Kaiser and King to petty German
princelings; and this insolence he has never repaid in kind, nor sought
to repay in any manner. He has foregone occasions for vengeance that
legitimate monarchs would have turned to the fullest account for the
gratification of their hatred. He has, apparently, none of that vanity
which led Napoleon I. to be pleased with having his antechamber full of
kings whose hearts were brimful of hatred of their lord and master.
If he were to have an Erfurt Congress, it would be as plain and
unostentatious an affair as that of his uncle was superficially grand
and striking. He seems perpetually to have before his mind's eye what
the Greeks called _the envy of the gods_, the divine Nemesis, to which
he daily makes sacrifice. He is the most prosperous of men, but he is
determined not to be prosperity's spoiled child. If the truth were
known, it would probably be found that he has not a single personal
enemy among the monarchs, all of whom would, as politicians, be glad
to witness his fall. In their secret hearts they say that "Monsieur
Bonaparte is a well-behaved man, to whom they could wish well in any
other part than that which he prefers to hold." Their predecessors hated
Napoleon I. personally, and with intense bitterness, which accounts for
the readiness with which they took parts in the hunting of the eagle,
and for the rancor with which they treated him when his turn came to
drain the cup of humiliation to the very dregs. The dislike felt for
Napoleon III. is simply political, and such dislike is not incompatible
with liberality in judgment and generosity of action. Should it be his
fortune to fall, there would be no St. Helena provided for him.

The domestic rule of the Emperor of the French will bear comparison
with that of any monarch which that people have ever had. It is not
faultless, but it is as little open to criticism of a just nature as
that of any European sovereign, and with reference to the changed
position of sovereigns. We are not to compare Napoleon III. with Louis
XIV., that sublime and ridiculous egotist, who seems never to have had a
human feeling,