Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/469

456 prophesy how long he will reign, and whether he will die an emperor, or an exile, or a disgraced adventurer, we may say confidently, that the end will be failure in one way or another. Ours is not an age in which a man can wade through blood to a throne without having to answer for his crime. Ours is not an age in which a man can stifle liberty among thirty millions of people who have known in their own experience what liberty is. Ours is not an age in which arms can give empire in Europe, or in which territories can be captured and held at the pleasure of any man. A singular conjunction of circumstances may prostrate the resistance of a nation, and give the despot a career longer or shorter; but it is too unnatural for permanency. That Louis Napoleon himself is, or has been, of this way of thinking, appears by his far-sighted preparation of an army and a seat of empire in Algeria, where he might retire in case of mischance, and whence he might trouble France and other countries at his own convenience. Meantime, he has indicated his career, while in France, by addressing himself to the old French foibles of military vanity and ambition of conquest. It is true we know not, and he perhaps knows not, how small or how large a proportion of the nation has that weak side. All that is known is, that the proportion is smaller by far than half a century ago, and continually lessening till he set himself to increase it. If that proportion is small, he will fail at home, by subjecting the people to sacrifices which they do not think the object worth. If the proportion is large—even as large as he would have it—he will fail by the resistance of the world outside of France. When he has proved to the world that his aims are incompatible with its peace and advancing civilisation, he will be removed from the seat of power like his predecessor. No man can now resist the tendencies of his age with ultimate success; and his chance is less than that of his predecessor by the lapse of half a century.

The question is the while, “What is it all for?” And this is a rational question.

The Monarch-Adventurer of old had a feasible object in view. Power was then a personal possession, an honour and glory, a state of wealth and privilege, which it is not now, and never can be again. An ambition which may look like that old one in every respect is still only pinchbeck beside the gold—the hobby-horse in presence of the warrior’s barb. It is so because the function of usurper is changed, and an adventurer no longer takes divine right by force, as it were, but only makes himself comfortable in another king’s house. Where there has once been parliamentary government there can never again be a usurping dynasty securely enthroned.

The Bonapartes can hardly therefore be called a Representative family: and if Louis Napoleon be regarded in that way at all, it can be only as showing how degenerate the type becomes when it is out of its proper place. His whole position and surroundings are (however wonderful in their way), in the first place—vulgar. The pervading egotism, and the inaptitude of them to the world and the men in it, render them vulgar to an extent which no temporary success can redeem.

This may show why the primeval seer would have been perplexed by such a phenomenon as a Monarch-Adventurer in the nineteenth century. The attributes of the personage are deteriorated or lost; and if his objects could be gained at his own heart’s desire, the human race would still disappoint him, for they would wonder—and more and more as time passed on—what he could be about; and, as for his ambition, what it was all for. .

account of a story-telling party in wound up by saying that “Mr. Lorquison excused himself from any recital because he knew not one.” This gentleman (generally full of anecdotes, but which on this occasion he seems to have kept to himself) called upon me two days after the merry meeting by the inn fire, and I at once showed him the passage, and taxed him with the decline of his conversational powers. After some little hesitation, he told me that I ought to have paid more attention to the final part of that paragraph, the commencement of which I have already quoted. On referring, I find it speaks of the quality of the punch.

“Just so,” said Mr. Lorquison, with a queer twinkle, “that accounts for my silence.”

The puzzled look on my face caused him to proceed.

“Why, you see, I do know a great many stories—good ’uns, too, and I had got up one in particular, ready for ’em on that night—only it wasn’t about unpleasant nights and that sort of thing—but whether ’twas the heat of the room, the turn of the stories, or the lateness of the hour, somehow or other my good story went clean out of my head. Mr. Selby told me afterwards that I had greatly amused the company—in what way I can’t distinctly recollect; all I know is, that the next morning I awoke with a splitting headache.”

My curiosity was roused. Did I know the story?

“Well,” said he, “I may have told you at some time or other; but I’ll give it you now if you like; only mind, if you’ve heard it before interrupt me.”

I gave him the required promise, and he thus began:

“I think you’re something of a gardener, are you not?” I admitted horticultural propensities in a small degree, and he continued. “then you’ll enjoy my story all the more. Well, my father was a great florist, en amateur, and used to take immense pleasure in the cultivation of a moderate sized garden attached to our suburban cottage in Islington. You seem surprised at my mentioning such a site for a cottage and garden, but I allude to the Islington as I knew it thirty years ago; when Newington ‘Green Lanes’ was a dangerous place after dark, and an inhabitant of Upper or Lower Clapton was considered a rustic.

“Numerous little cottages, with their neatly trimmed flowerbeds, were to be seen at Islington at the time of which I speak, and conspicuous among them all for artistic arrangement and plants of really great value was my father’s garden. How