of the people.  He had made his seat on the throne secure for a time, and his name was immortal.  The great mass of the people and his Government were behind him, and he made use of this to his own advantage.  Napoleon’s dying wish is to be consummated.  “The blind hatred of kings” is relaxed; they are no longer afraid of his mortal remains; they see, and see correctly, that if they continue to “pursue his blood” he will be “avenged, nay, but, perchance, cruelly avenged.”  The old and the new generation of Frenchmen clamour that as much as may be of the stigma that rests upon them shall be removed, threatening reprisals if it be not quickly done.  The British Government diplomatically, and with almost comic celerity, gravely drop “the General Bonaparte” and style their dead captive “the Emperor Napoleon.”

Louis Philippe, overwhelmed with the greatness of the dead monarch, bursts forth in eloquent praise of this so-called “usurper” of other days.  He was not only an Emperor and a King, but the legitimate sovereign of his country.  No ordinary sepulture is to be his—­it is to be an august sepulture, a silent sacred spot which those who respect glory, genius, and greatness may visit in “reverential tranquillity.”  Henceforth, by Royal Proclamation, history is to know him as an Emperor and a King.  He is to have a tomb as durable as his memory, and his tomb and fame are to belong to his country for evermore.  The legitimate heir of Napoleon’s glory is the author of one of the finest panegyrics that has ever been written; a political move, if you will, but none the less the document is glowing with the artistic phrasing that appeals to the perceptions of an emotional race.

But the real sincerity was obviously not so much in the author of the document as in the great masses, who were intoxicated with the desire to have the remains of their great hero brought home to the people he had loved so well.  It may easily be imagined how superfluously the French King and his Government patted each other on the back in self-adoration for the act of funereal restoration which they took credit for having instituted.  If they took too much credit it was only natural.  But not an item of what is their due should be taken from them.  The world must be grateful to whoever took a part in so noble a deed.  At the same time the world will not exonerate the two official contracting parties from being exactly free from interested motives.  The one desired to maintain domestic harmony, and this could only be assured by recalling the days of their nation’s glory; and the other, i.e., the British Government, had their eye on some Eastern business which Palmerston desired to go smoothly, and so the dead Emperor was made the medium of tranquillity, and, it may be, expediency, in both cases.