heiress is
often regarded as an adventurer, even though his ancestors have been
respectable and influential for four generations. Most successful men
owe their elevation to genius or patience or persistent industry rather
than to accidents or tricks. Louis Napoleon plodded and studied and
wrote for years with the ultimate aim of ruling France, even though he
"waded through slaughter to a throne;" and he would have deserved his
throne had he continued true to the principles he professed. What a name
he might have left had he been contented only to be President of a great
republic; for his elevation to the Presidency was legitimate, and even
after he became a despot he continued to be a high-bred gentleman in the
English sense, which is more than can be said of his uncle. No one has
ever denied that from first to last Louis Napoleon was courteous,
affable, gentle, patient, and kind, with a control over his feelings and
thoughts absolutely marvellous and unprecedented in a public man,--if we
except Disraeli. Nothing disturbed his serenity; very rarely was he seen
in a rage; he stooped and coaxed and flattered, even when he sent his
enemies to Cayenne.

The share taken by Napoleon III. in the affairs of Italy has already
been treated of, yet a look from that point of view may find place here.
The interference of Austria with the Italian States--not only her own
subjects there, but the independent States as well--has been called "a
standing menace to Europe." It was finally brought to a crisis of
conflict by the King of Sardinia, who had already provided himself with
a friend and ally in the French emperor; and when, on the 29th of April,
1859, Austria crossed the river Ticino in hostile array, the combined
French and Sardinian troops were ready to do battle. The campaign was
short, and everywhere disastrous to the Austrians; so that on July 6 an
armistice was concluded, and on July 12 the peace of Villa Franca ended
the war, with Lombardy ceded to Sardinia, while Nice and Savoy were the
reward of the French,--justifying by this addition to the territory and
glory of France the emperor's second war of prestige.

Louis Napoleon reached the culmination of his fame and of real or
supposed greatness--I mean his external power and grandeur, for I see no
evidence of real greatness except such as may be won by astuteness,
tact, cunning, and dissimulation--when he returned to Paris as the
conqueror of the Austrian armies. He was th