The events of 1848 furnished to Louis Napoleon the place whereon to stand, whence to move the French world.  He must have lived and died an exile, but for the Revolution of February.  The ability with which he profited by events suffices to show that he is entitled to be considered a great man as well as a great sovereign.  That he had been born in the purple, and that he bore a great name, and that through the occurrence of several deaths he had become the legitimate heir of Napoleon, were favorable circumstances, and helped not a little to promote his purpose; but they could not alone have made him Emperor of the French, and the world’s arbiter.  There must have been extraordinary talent in the man who aspired as he did, or he would have failed as completely in 1848 as he had failed in 1836 and in 1840.  But the real power of the man came out as soon as he found a standing-place.  Previously to 1848, he could act only as a criminal in seeking his proper place, as he believed it to be.  He had first to conquer before he could attempt to govern,—­and to conquer, too, with the means of his enemy.  All this was changed in 1848.  Then he was safe in France, as he had been in England, and began the political race on equal terms with such men as Cavaignac and Ledru-Rollin.  That he soon passed far ahead of them was, perhaps, as much due to circumstances as to his political abilities.  The name of Bonaparte was associated with the idea of the restoration of order and prosperity, and this helped him with that large class of persons, embracing both rich men and poor men, who not only believe that “order is Heaven’s first law,” but that under certain conditions it is the supreme law, for the maintenance of which all other laws are to be set aside and disregarded.  These men, whose organ and exponent was M. Cesar Romieu, who called so loudly for cannon to put down the revolutionists,—­“even if it should come from Russia!”—­and whose type of perfection is the churchyard, were all fanatical supporters of “the coming man,” and they assisted him along the course with all their might and strength.  No matter how swiftly he drove, his chariot-wheels seemed to them to tarry.  The very arguments that were made use of to induce other men to act against the rising Bonaparte were those which had the most effect in binding them to his cause.  He would establish a cannonarchy, would he?  Well, a cannonarchy was exactly what they desired, provided its powers should be directed, not against foreign monarchs, but against domestic Republicans.  That a government of which he should be the head would disregard the constitution, would shackle the press, would limit speech, and would suppress the Assembly, was an argument in his favor, that, to their minds, was irresistible.  Had they thought of the Russian War, and of the Italian War, and of the extinction of the Pope’s temporal power, and of the liberal home-policy that was adopted in 1860, as things possible to occur, Louis Napoleon