the Emperor, were years ago carried in his city of Paris.  But what will be thought especially is, that he had something else to do than to split hairs in discussion of evidences; that he had something far better to say, more peremptory and to the point, and more literary besides, than to call M. Taine names, to hurl at him the epithets of “Entomologist, Materialist, Pessimist, Destroyer of Reputations, Iconoclast,” and to class him as a “deboulonneur” among those who, in 1871, pulled down the Colonne Vendome.

Not, undoubtedly, that M. Taine—­and we said so ourselves more than once with perfect freedom—­if spending much patience and conscientiousness in his search for documents, has always displayed as much critical spirit and discrimination in the use he made of them.  We cannot understand why in his ‘Napoleon’ he accepted the testimony of Bourrienne, for instance, any more than recently, in his ‘Revolution,’ that of George Duval, or again, in his ‘Ancien Regime,’ that of the notorious Soulavic.  M. Taine’s documents as a rule are not used by him as a foundation for his argument; no, he first takes his position, and then he consults his library, or he goes to the original records, with the hope of finding those documents that will support his reasoning.  But granting that, we must own that though different from M. Taine’s, Prince Napoleon’s historical method is not much better; that though in a different manner and in a different direction, it is neither less partial nor less passionate:  and here is a proof of it.

Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting “eight times” ’Bourrienne’s Memoirs,’ and then, letting his feelings loose, he takes advantage of the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne’s name.  Does he tell the truth or not? is he right at the bottom?  I do not know anything about it; I do not wish to know anything; I do not need it, since I know, from other sources, that ‘Bourrienne’s Memoirs’ are hardly less spurious than, say, the ‘Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequi’ or the ’Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan.’  But if these so-called ‘Memoirs’ are really not his, what has Bourrienne himself to do here? and suppose the former secretary of the First Consul to have been, instead of the shameless embezzler whom Prince Napoleon so fully and so uselessly describes to us, the most honest man in the world, would the ‘Memoirs’ be any more reliable, since it is a fact that he wrote nothing? ...

And now I cannot but wonder at the tone in which those who contradict M. Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself, condescend to tell him that he lacks that which would be needed in order to speak of Napoleon or the Revolution.  But who is it, then, that has what is needed in order to judge Napoleon?  Frederick the Great, or Catherine II., perhaps,—­as Napoleon himself desired, “his peers”; or in other words, those who, born as he was for war and government, can only admire, justify, and glorify themselves in him.  And who will judge the Revolution?  Danton. we suppose, or Robespierre,—­that is, the men who were the Revolution itself.  No:  the real judge will be the average opinion of men; the force that will create, modify, correct this average opinion, the historians will be; and among the historians of our time, in spite of Prince Napoleon, it will be M. Taine for a large share.