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[A recent work from the English press, entitled "Conversations with Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire, from 1860 to 1863," by the late Nassau William Senior, affords a mine of material of an historic and personal character. These volumes are supplementary to two preceding journals published in 1878, bearing a somewhat similar title. Mr. Senior was Master in Chancery, Professor of Political Economy, a corresponding member of the Institute of France, and author of numerous treatises and essays. He had, it seems, unusual opportunities for intimacy with his famous French contemporaries, which include such distinguished persons as Thiers, Guizot, Prince Napoleon, Barrot, Changarnier, Rénan, Mérimée, Cousin, Lamartine, Montalembert, Trochu, and numerous other persons of political or social importance, among which were the Confederate Slidell, and the American Minister Dayton. The conversations largely relate to the history of France in her domestic perplexities and foreign embroilments, from August, 1860, to May, 1863, shortly after which time Mr. Senior contracted the illness that terminated in his death in the following year. His journals have been edited by his daughter, Mrs. M. C. M. Simpson. "Their style and matter," remarks the " Saturday Review," "display the highest point of perfection in a branch of literature which he may almost be said to have invented. Only long practice combined with natural aptitude rendered it possible to report, in good English and with a substantial accuracy which is proved by internal evidence, long conversations conducted in French. In estimating the value of the statements and opinions which Mr. Senior has recorded, it is necessary to remember that they were all intended for future publication. The interlocutors trusted, with good reason, in Mr. Senior's discretion that they would not be compromised with the Government or with contemporaries whom they might criticise; but they knew that they were speaking to a more or less remote public audience, and that Mr. Senior's long head was, as Mrs. Thrale said of Boswell, equivalent to short-hand. The only doubt which could arise as to Mr. Senior's accuracy and fidelity might be suggested by the vigor, the fullness, and the VOL. VIII.-25

occasional brilliancy of the different speakers. It seems too true that French conversation twenty years ago was much better than English conversation at the present day. The superiority can not be attributed to the language, because Mr. Senior writes in thoroughly idiomatic English. In some instances he may perhaps have pruned away redundancies or added force to the original phrases; but his own style in speech or writing was rather solid and weighty than epigrammatic. No man was less inclined to antithesis or paradox, though he never hesitated to avow opinions which might be novel, and therefore unpopular. The merits of the French contributors to his collection are their own, and they are also responsible for an incidental defect which is common to them all. Some of their number discharge with credit that part of the prophetic function which consists in the enunciation of sound principles and suggestive warnings; but, in the sense in which a prophet is so called because he predicts future events, the oracles are all equally deceptive. It is true that almost all Mr. Senior's Parisian friends, differing widely among themselves, agreed in hatred and professed contempt for Celui-ci, as they designated the Emperor. Some of them foretold his overthrow through the errors of his domestic administration, and many as the result of his foreign policy; but they were all equally certain that his power would be of short duration. A war with Prussia was a contingency which was often mentioned as probable, but it seems not to have occurred to any distinguished Frenchman that France might possibly be defeated. Again and again Mr. Senior was assured that the Church, the army, the middle class, and the workmen were bitterly hostile to the Empire; yet, seven years after the latest conversation recorded, seven millions of Frenchmen, forming an overwhelming majority of the total number of voters, supported the Emperor against all the sections of the opposition. A ruinously unsuccessful war, which had been in its origin wholly unnecessary, fulfilled by an accident the vaticinations in which it had never been included as one of the probable causes of the fall of the Empire. Unfulfilled prophecies, though they may have been of little

use when they were delivered, afterward furnish valuable materials for the history of opinion. As in the former installments of the journals, Mrs. Simpson has edited the work with judgment and ability. The notes in which she gives biographical accounts of some of the less known personages of the dialogues are instructive and judiciously concise. Mr. Senior, though he is ordinarily content to leave his interlocutors to speak, takes in these volumes a less infrequent part in the discussions, always representing, where it was often wanted, the element of skeptical good sense; yet he seldom intervenes except for the purpose of eliciting explanations or of recalling attention to matters which had been overlooked. Having proposed to himself a definite object, he adhered to his plan with a self-denying and artistic consistency. Few writers of equal ability and accomplishment would be content to efface themselves so habitually, with the result of preserving a dramatic unity of design."

In the first series of extracts that follow we have brought together from different parts of the two volumes, but from different speakers, numerous opinions, predictions, and anecdotes referring to the late Emperor.]

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

CORCELLE*-Louis Napoleon believes himself to be the type of the French nation. He thinks that his feelings and wishes are also theirs. To a considerable extent he is right; the great majority of the French are eager for war, and glory, and conquest, and extension of territory. These feelings, originally excited by Louis XIV., exaggerated by Napoleon, and kept alive, or rather resuscitated, by the Opposition in their blind eagerness to discredit Louis Philippe, have taken possession of the uneducated and ill-educated masses. In no mind are they stronger than in that of Louis Napoleon; that is the secret of what is called his knowledge of the French character. He knows it, because it is his own. He

thinks, with truth, that those masses prefer the Bonaparte policy to that of the Bourbons, war to peace, intimidation to conciliation, glory to prosperity, equality to liberty, and he is anxious to show himself a Bonaparte. But he is dilatory and irresolute; he is easily checked, easily turned aside; he is alarmed by the attitude of Europe; and I really believe that his present wish is to sit down under his laurels and enjoy uncontrolled

* Count François de Corcelle shared the opinions of Tocqueville before the Revolution of 1848, but after that time his ardent Catholicism drew him nearer to Montalembert. In 1849 he represented France at the Vatican, and assisted the Pope in restoring the Papal Government. It was said that Pius IX. entreated him to re

main, and be his Prime Minister; but M. de Corcelle

refused to forsake his own country. After the FrancoGerman war he again became ambassador to the Vatican. He has now entirely given up public life.

expenditure, shameless adulation, and all the vulgar pleasures of mind and body. But events seem to be preparing which, whether he like it or not, will force him to action.

[In some instances the names of distinguished men are suppressed, being indicated by letters only.]

A. B. C. I know, too, that one of his inmost feelings is hatred of the Pope. As a Carbonaro, he hates him. As a revolutionist, he hates him. He hates him for having refused the Sacre. He hates him as the possessor of a spiritual power which his own temporal power can not break or elude. His ambition, or rather his vanity, is beyond all description, beyond all comparison, except among the Cæsars. He is a mixture of Augustus and Nero-as anxious for power as Augustus, as anxious for admiration as Nero. He would like, like Augustus, to be Pontifex Maximus, as well as Imperator; and, like Nero, to be the first of fluteplayers. Hence his jealousy of all eminence. If he heard that a great dancer had come to Paris, his first idea would be to rival him; and, if he thought that he could do so, he would like to collect all Paris in the Place Vendôme, and ex

hibit his activity and grace from the top of the Column. I have no doubt that one of his motives for wishing to merge all Italy in Sardinia is his jealousy of Garibaldi. Garibaldi is more picturesque than he is, a better soldier, a greater conqueror. He hopes that when Italy is quiet under a real king, a man born in the purple, Garibaldi's role will be over.

I asked Changarnier his opinion as to the courage of Louis Napoleon.

Changarnier. It is great in theory, small in practice. He forms schemes to which great personal danger is incidental. But when the danger comes he quails before it.

At Strasbourg, when the regiment on which he depended refused its support, he ran, and was found in a state of abject terror, hiding under a carriage. In the Boulogne attempt, when he had got half way across the Channel, he became alarmed, and wished to turn back. The people about him called for champagne, and kept him to his purpose by making him half drunk. As he approached the town, and no friends appeared, his alarm returned. The first troops that met him were under the command of a sensible old officer, who, when he saw the strange procession, accompanied by the tame eagle, and was told that Louis Napoleon was at its head, instead of joining him, summoned him to surrender.

Vaudreuil had said that at Strasbourg Louis Napoleon had not dared even to fire a pistol in his own defense. Louis Napoleon recollected this mot, kept a pistol in his hand, and fired at

the officer; but his hand shook so that, though the man was not five paces off, he missed him and wounded a poor cook, who in his white apron was standing at a door to see what was going on. Louis Napoleon turned, ran toward the sea, and got into a boat. A boat from the shore pulled after him. He gave himself up, begged them not to hurt him, and said that he had 200,000 francs in his pocket, which he would give to them. He was landed, and begged M. Adam, the Maire, to take the 200,000 francs.

Adam said that he would take care of them, but, with business-like habits, chose to count them first. It was lucky for him, for, when they were counted in the presence of the crowd, there were found to be only 120,000. These 120,000 francs, when he was on his trial before the Peers, he claimed, and the cruel government of Louis Philippe let him have them.

if you take the land on which the peasant feeds his cow-you will create more paupers than you will relieve. And how do you intend that the paupers shall cultivate these lands? Who is to supply them with capital? Who is to supply them with industry and with skill ? "

"Well," he replied, "what is to be done? How am I to provide for the poor?"

"You are not," I said, "to provide for them at all. All that you have to do is, to give them peace at home and abroad, and they will provide for themselves. This is not a brilliant policy; it produces no sudden results, but it is a safe one; and, if you follow it, you will go down to posterity as one of the benefactors of France."

Senior. Do you believe that his Italian policy is a deep-laid scheme in order to have a pretense for taking the Rhine?

Barrot. I do not. I do not believe that any

He hates He would

Senior. Did he not show courage at Ma- of his schemes are deep-laid. I do not believe genta? that he has any Italian policy. He hates the Austrians and the Pope. He is not sorry, perhaps, to see them upset. He hates the King of Sardinia too, but is afraid to stop him. Garibaldi, but he fears him still more. like to extend our frontiers to the Rhine. It would remove the stain on the Bonapartes, that they lost all that the Republicans had gained. But I do not believe that he sees his way. In fact, he does not see, he feels. He is a man in the dark, il tâtonne.

Changarnier. He never crossed the Ticino. He was smoking in a house during the whole time. At Solferino he did not move or give an order, but he smoked fifty-three cigars. We know this, as he always carries with him little boxes, each of which contains fifty cigars. One was quite exhausted, and three had been taken out of the other. Once a spent ball came near him, but that is the only occasion on which he could be considered as under fire. I saw a letter from one of the Cent Suisses to his mother. "You need be under no anxiety," he said, "about me. I am with the Emperor, and therefore out of danger." In fact, none of them were ever hit.

Barrot. I hear that he has now become haughty, irritable, and inaccessible: that was not his character when I knew him. He was then mild, accessible, and always ready to listen. So little effect was generally produced by one's arguments that I sometimes doubted whether he really heard them. When he made me his Minister, he sent for me, and said that he wished to talk over with me his system of government. I said that nothing could be more satisfactory to

me.

"When a man," he said, "is at the head of such a nation as this, he is bound to do great things."

I bowed.

I called on Madame Cornu,* and found there M. Maury, of the Academy of Inscriptions. He is assisting Louis Napoleon in his work on Julius Cæsar. I asked after its progress.

Maury. Much is finished, and the materials for the rest are collected. He is still on his introduction, and is now at the times of the Gracchi. But some subsequent portions are completed, particularly the story of Catiline.

Madame Cornu. Catiline was always one of his favorites. He maintains that Cicero and Sallust were unjust to him. At one time he almost thought him a patriot incompris, until he found that he had pillaged Africa as governor, and escaped condemnation only by being defended by Cicero.

Maury. He says, with truth, that if Catiline had been, as Cicero makes him out, a mere rob

"You have read," he said, "my book on pau- ber, who wished to burn and pillage Rome, he perism?"

I was forced to admit that I had not.

"I will give you, then," he said, "an outline of it. I propose to take all the common lands, and to divide them among the poor families which want relief."

"In the first place," I answered, "you have no right to take them; and, if you do take them

* Madame Cornu was the wife of an eminent artist. Her mother was dame de compagnie to Hortense, exQueen of Holland. She was bred up as a sister with Louis Napoleon, visited him every year during his imprisonment at Ham, and corrected his writings. She continued devoted to him until the coup d'état, when she broke with him, and, in spite of his persistent advances, would not be reconciled to him for nearly twelve years. She died before the war of 1870.

would have raised the slaves. The Emperor treats him as the leader of a political party-an extreme one, a mischievous one, but not a band of robbers and assassins.

measure from the higher classes of the foreigners among whom he resided, did him harm in many ways. It is wonderful that it did not spoil his manners. He was saved, perhaps, by having

Senior. Is the Emperor still absorbed in his always before him so admirable a model as his literary work?

Maury. As much as ever. To-day when I entered he was dictating a portion of it. He thinks much more about it than about Italy. He does not like the theatre, excepting sometimes farces that amuse him. He cares little for society. His delight is to get to his study, put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and work at his his

tory.

Senior. What sort of a scholar is he? Maury. In Latin, far above the average of educated Frenchmen; perhaps on a par with educated Englishmen: he reads it without difficulty.

mother. But it made him somewhat of a parvenu

what you would call a tuft-hunter. He looked up to people of high rank with a mixture of admiration, envy, and dislike. The more difficult he found it to get into their society, the more he disliked them and the more he courted them. I had an odd proof in myself of his fondness for mere titles. I had been at a German court, where they proposed to make me a dame d'honneur. "Impossible," I answered, "for I am not

noble."

"But," they replied, "we will make you no

ble."

When I told this to Louis Napoleon he said:

We continued to talk about Louis Napoleon "Why did you not accept? You might have afafter Maury had left us.

Madame Cornu showed me a vase of jade, taken from the palace of Peking, which he sent to her the day before yesterday. It came without the cover. This morning Thelin, the Emperor's servant, who managed his escape from Ham, brought her the cover. "The Emperor," he said, "spent all yesterday in looking for it."

terward given up the office, and kept your nobility." I could not make him understand my contempt for such artificial nobility.

The great progress in political knowledge made by the higher classes of the French between 1815 and 1848 was lost to him. When we met in 1826, after three years of absence, I was struck with his backwardness as to all political matters. While I had been learning he had been stationary. The works of his uncle, and the conversation of his mother and of her friends, all old imperialists, formed his political education. He learned something in Italy which was bad, and in Switzerland which was good, and more in England, the country that he likes best.

Madame Cornu. Louis Napoleon is a strange being. One who did not know him would think that he had enough to do without wasting a day in looking for the cover of a vase. But it is just like him. His mind wants keeping. A trifle close to his eyes hides from him the largest object at a distance. I have no doubt that what Thelin said was true, and that he did spend three During his adult life he has taken a little from or four hours yesterday hunting for the cover of every country in which he has resided, except that vase. He wished to send it to me, and for from France. In France he has never lived, exthe time that wish absorbed him. cept as a child, a prisoner, or a sovereign. It Senior. What are your relations with him will seem a paradox to you that it is to his want now?

Madame Cornu. We do not meet, but we correspond. I am his intermédiaire with many of the German literati. I get for him information for his books, as I did when he was at Ham for his book on artillery.

We lived together from our births till I was about fourteen and he was about eighteen. During the first seven years of this time he was surrounded by all the splendor of a court. During the last eight he was in Germany, looked down on by the Germans-who would scarcely admit the Bonapartes to be gentry, and would call him Monsieur Bonaparte-and seeing nobody but his mother and her suite. Afterward he lived in Italy and in Switzerland, among Italians or Swiss, but never with French people.

His long exclusion from the society of the higher classes of his countrymen, and in a great

cess.

of sympathy with the feelings of the higher classes in France, and to dislike or ignorance of their opinions, that I attribute much of his sucHis opinions and feelings are those of the French people from 1799 to 1812, as they were fashioned by Napoleon during his thirteen years of despotism, war, and victory. Now, those opinions and feelings, all modified or abandoned by our higher classes, are still those of the multitude. They despise parliamentary government, despise the Pope, despise the priests, delight in profuse expenditure, delight in war, hold the Rhine to be our rightful frontier, and that it is our duty to seize all that is within it, and have no notion of any foreign policy except one of aggression and domination. The people and he, therefore, perfectly agree. It is not that he has learned their sentiments-how could he in prison or in exile?—but that they are his own.

Lord Clyde. When I was returning from India the Emperor wished to see me. His manner is very good, but perhaps not quite frank. His voice is low and pleasing, but somewhat artificial. We got on a subject on which a military man can seldom keep his temper. I called baggage le diable. He said that in Italy, marching on the chaussées raised high over the flooded rice-fields, his advance had sometimes been separated from his rear by baggage-wagons, which it was impossible to pass, or to get rid of in any way, unless they had been thrown off the chaussée into the water. He got almost excited by the recollection, and certainly his voice differed much from the subdued, equable tone with which he began.

Lord Clyde outstaid the rest of the party. Lord Clyde. My military friends tell me that the Emperor is popular in the army. He has done much for them, and only the higher officers know that he made great blunders, and exposed the army to great risks.

Senior. I am told that he never was really under fire.

Lord Clyde. That is not true. At Magenta he was under fire for some time. Viennois tells me that when, for want of the Piedmontese, on whom he reckoned, he was outnumbered, he was more calm than those around him. "At the worst," he said, “nous mourrons en soldat." The danger, perhaps, was still greater at Solferino.

with which the second class impel him, almost possess him. Between him, therefore, and the vast majority of his countrymen, there is perfect sympathy. They have the same prejudices, the same hates, and the same desires. But what sympathy can there be between him and you, except, indeed, your common dislike of the Pope? The Pope's is the oldest sovereignty in Europe. When Celui-ci has destroyed that, he will try to finish the destruction of the next oldest, the Roman Empire. Surely your countrymen can not intend to be his allies in that?

(April, 1862.) At Thiers's I found St.-Hilaire, Duvergier, Masson, and three or four others. I asked Thiers if he shared the general opinion that Louis Napoleon's prestige was diminishing. Thiers. It is gone; his reign as an absolute monarch is over. I told you six years ago that the amount of liberty which he left in the Constitution, like a young tree that has rooted itself in an old wall, would grow and extend until it burst the obstacles by which he thought he had confined it. His wars, one just, the other, though absurd, successful, diverted public attention, but now it is fixed on him. We have long seen the folly and weakness of his foreign policy. Now, he has himself told us that his domestic policy has been as mischievous, that he has wantonly ruined our manufactures, and, with a revenue twice as great as that of his uncle, has incurred a debt which will weigh us down until we shake it

I spent the evening at Montalembert's (April off by a bankruptcy. All this he has proclaimed 23, 1861).

Montalembert. I still find among your countrymen men who trust in the honor, or in the friendship, or at least in the good intentions, of Celui-ci, who still think that Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon can be permanently allied. I hope that they may remain at peace, for peace depends on mutual fear; but allies, except for some one special enterprise, such as the Russian war, they can not be. An alliance supposes some community of feelings and of purposes, and nothing can be more opposed to all your sentiments than his are. You are sober, pacific, traditional, legal, honest. He hates all law, all tradition, all established power, even all established opinions, all that is sober, and all that is honest. The world is governed by two classes of motives. One class is yours. It contains-reason, habit, honor, truth, fidelity, affection, generosity. The other class is his. It contains-passion, desire of change, vanity, hatred, selfishness, ambition, rapacity. His success is mainly owing to his absolute indifference to the first class of motives, and therefore his absolute freedom from the restraints which they impose, and the intensity

to Europe from the tribunes of the Senate and of the Corps Législatif.

Senior. Will he silence these tribunes? Thiers. If he does he must give us something in their place-le droit d'interpellation, for instance.

Senior. That seems to me to be the last thing he will give. For a man who generally has no plan, and, when he has one, conceals it, and plays the statesman en conspirateur, nothing could be more offensive than to be required to state precisely what it is that he intends to do.

Thiers. Some such concession, however, he must make. The country will not bear to return to the Constitution of 1852, under which the Chambers were to ignore politics. The next step will be to take his ministers from the Chambers, and that is parliamentary government.

Senior. And do you think that he will submit to that?

Thiers. I think that if he sees in time the necessity he will do so. His great merit- is, qu'il sait reculer. He is obstinate in his ends, but not in his means. But he may discover the real nature of his position too late. He may fall, as

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