rned on
sufferance, though on the whole he occupied an onerous position with
creditable success. A monarch who rules under the tender mercies of a
capricious people, and worse still, a capricious and not too
scrupulous monarchy of monarchs, is not to be envied, and this was
exactly the position of Louis Philippe. He was beset by the noisy
clamour of many factions, besides having to keep a shrewd eye on those
lofty men to whom he had to look with perpetual nervous tension for
the stability and endurance of his throne. He knew the heart of the
nation was centred on St. Helena, and that a wave of repentance was
passing over the land. The people wished to atone for the crime they
allowed to be committed in 1815.

Louis Philippe showed great wisdom and foresight. Nothing could have
been done with more suitable delicacy than the negotiations which
caused the British Government to consent to give the remains of the
Emperor up to the French. The air of importance and swagger put into
it by Lord Palmerston is supremely farcical, but then the whole
senseless blunder from beginning to end was a farce, which does not
redound to our credit. It is incredible that a nation so thickly
stocked with men of ability in every important department should have
had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and
officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive.
Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or
anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and
stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing
during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we
are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man
of genius in Europe but himself. The population of France who were
contemporary with him during his meteoric leadership remembered him as
a matchless reformer and an unconquerable warrior. Their devotion and
belief in his great gifts had sunk deeply into their being. A couple
of generations had come into existence from 1815 to 1840, but even to
those who knew him only as a captive, he was as much their Emperor and
their hero and martyr as he was to his contemporaries. The pride of
race, the glory of the Empire and of its great founder, was suckled
into them from the time of birth, and as they grew into manhood and
womanhood they became permeated with a passionate devotion to his
cause. They claimed that his deliverance to the