Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/396

 moreover, a firm and decided will of his own. We thought it a hazardous experiment on the part of French Republicans, for Louis held a craze on the subject of his uncle's "ideas," and the craze had sufficient "method" to induce us to believe that he was the last man who would have been selected to fill the presidential chair. As a refugee in England, we had given him small credit for sagacity; and as an emperor and a man, history has already said of him that he was cunning, unreliable, and thoroughly unscrupulous. Although a comparison between the two men is impossible, there was at least this similarity between the two Napoleons, that both were indebted for their elevation to the imperial purple to a revolution; here, however, all resemblance ceased. The first Napoleon relied upon himself alone, while Louis was advised by counsellors and adventurers wiser and more unscrupulous than himself, and who were prepared to back his fortunes with a view of advancing their own. At the close of 1851, Europe was electrified by the unexpected and dastardly blow delivered by these men, and by means of a "great crime," the history of which has been so graphically related by Victor Hugo, Louis Napoleon, Prince President of the Republic, found himself master of the destinies of France. The event is referred to by John Leech in the cartoon of France is Tranquil!!! which she cannot well fail to be, seeing that we find her bound hand and foot; a chain-shot fastened to her foot, and a sentry menacing her with his bayonet. The next volume shows us the Prince President in the act of being measured by his military tailor, while he offers money to his cast-off mistress Liberté, her mother (France) looking indignantly on. Immediately behind, a priest (in allusion to the support which the Papal party were receiving from this "eldest son of the Church") helps himself from a plate of money which stands by the President's side; the floor is littered with miscellaneous articles,—bayonets, knapsacks, imperial and other crowns, crosses of the legion of honour, the code Napoleon,—and, in reference to Louis's craze on the subject of his uncle and his "ideas," one of Napoleon's old boots. On a stool stands a bust of the first Napoleon, and on a chair to the right a roll of "Imperial purple."