of Augustus, so has the French imperial dynasty a better claim to be considered of the family of Beauharnais than of the family of Bonaparte.  This Caesarian game is a foolish one, and may be played to an ultimate loss.  Of the difference between France as she is and Rome as she was in the times of the first Caesars it is not necessary to say much, for it presents itself to every cultivated mind.  The Roman Empire was an aggregation of various nations, including the highest and lowest forms of human development then known, and stretching from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the forests of Germany to the deserts of Africa.  Over that vast and various collection of peoples a portion of Italy bore sway; and it was to break down the tyranny of that Italian rule that the Julian rule was created, and that the Republic was made to give way to the Empire.

The cause of the Caesars was the cause of the provincials against the Italians, of the masses in twenty lands against the aristocracy of but a part of one land, of many millions of sheep against a few select wolves.  The revolution that was effected through the agency of Julius and Octavius was necessary for the continuance of civilization, which was threatened with extinction through the plundering processes of proprietors and proconsuls.  The Roman Emperor was the shepherd, who, though he might shear his sheep close to their skins, and not unfrequently convert many of them into mutton, for his own profit or pleasure, would nevertheless protect them against the wolves.  He stood between the imperial race, of which he was himself the first member, and all the other races that were to be found in his extensive and diversified dominions.  The question that he settled was one of races, not merely one of parties and political principles.  What resemblance, then, can there be between the French Emperor and the Roman Imperator, or between the quarrel decided by the Napoleons and that which was decided by the first two Caesars?  There may be said to be some resemblance between them, from the fact that the French aristocracy, as a body, belong to the party that is hostile to the Bonapartes, and that it was the Roman aristocracy who were beaten at Pharsalia and politically destroyed at Philippi; but the nobility of France were ruined before the name of Bonaparte had been raised from obscurity, and the first Napoleon sought to please and to conciliate the remnants of that once brilliant order.  There can be no comparison made between the two aristocracies; as the Roman was one of the ablest and most ferocious bodies of men that the world has ever seen, and made a long and desperate fight for the maintenance of its power,—­while the French is effete, and it is difficult to believe that in the veins of its members runs the blood of the heroes of the days of the League, or even that of the Frondeurs.  Their political action reminds us of nothing but the playing of children; and the best of the leaders of the opposition to the