foreign parts, leaving his family to take care of themselves. "The cholera is in Florence," said a frightened Italian in a railroad car, "and I'm getting out of its way; but I don't believe there is any danger, for I've left my wife and children!" So doubtless the illustrious prince believed there was no peril that poor Clotilde couldn't very safely confront alone.
One reason there is for believing in the possibility of Napoleon's resuscitation—Can the French get along without him for a while? May it not be said of him as Iago says of Othello—
"That for their souls
Another of his fathom they have none,
To lead their business: in which regard,
Though they do hate him as they do hell's pains.
Yet for the necessity of present life,
They must show out a flag and sign of love"?
Is there a possibility of success for any other government which at present could be established? Can a republic maintain itself with so dense, excitable and ignorant a population as that of France? Judging from the past, the answer would decidedly be in the negative. And if that population has been so enervated and imbruted as the enemies of Napoleon declare it has been by his rule, is it better fitted now than formerly for self-government? Where the majority is to govern, and that majority is essentially ignorant and corrupt, can there be any probability of its possessing liberty and order? The believer in that peradventure must exclaim, "Credo quia impossibile." As to the renewal of Bourbonism or Orleanism in the persons of any of their existing princes, it would be as hopeless an experiment as sowing seeds in the ocean. There is no soil in which they can ever take root again. As we say in our own elegant phraseology, they are "played out." It would not be at all surprising if the surrender of Napoleon was prompted by the idea of letting his adversaries at home have their own way for a while, so as to demonstrate their utter incompetency for the task they have assumed—in other words, to give them rope enough to hang themselves withal. Well aware that his ignominious failure as a military chief had destroyed his influence for the nonce, he may have given himself up in order to shine by his absence—to convince his quondam subjects that if they cannot love him for himself, they must tolerate him as a necessary evil. And what more fickle than popular feeling?—a destructive hurricane at one moment, an auspicious zephyr the next—a breeze from heaven or a blast from hell. Let some Antony get the ear of the Parisian populace, and Cæsarism, which is now so poor that none will do it reverence, will excite the stones to mutiny against those who have laid it low. "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas;" and since Napoleon couldn't die, as he informed King William, at the head of his army, he may live to fight another day at the head of his people.
How to educate the great majority of a dense population to the capability of self-government is, and will long be, the question. There is so little time for the hewers of wood and drawers of water in a crowded community to be intellectually and morally developed for the duties of republicanism that those who are anxious to promote the greatest good of the greatest number may well be pardoned if they behold a greater chance of organized anarchy than republican order in the democratic doings of the day among the masses of Europe. The best things in themselves, in the words of Lord Bacon, are the worst in perversion, and there is but one step from liberty to license—a step so easy and so tempting that only well-trained reason can refrain. It is a terrible thing for a people to know its strength without knowing how to use it.
There is not much gossip just now to be found either in or about Paris. Even the Charivari finds no food for fun par le temps qui court. Instead of its usual mirth-moving woodcut, it gives its patrons such pictures as this: A young sharpshooter, in new uniform, looks imploringly at the personification of France, and ejaculates, "I have no gun." With energetic gesture France points to a Prussian soldier taking aim at them with his needler, and cries,
