every vestige of an opposing force.  The present French emperor has adopted an altogether different course.  He has sought the friendship of England.  He has multiplied occasions of mutual action.  He has sedulously avoided occasions of offence.  Kinglake, in his “Crimean War,” intimates that Louis Napoleon desired this alliance with England and her noble Queen to cover up the terrible wrongs by which he had obtained his authority.  It is more likely far that he sought it in order that under its shadow he might build himself up to resistless power:  just as an oak planted beneath the shade of other trees grows to strength and majesty only to cut down its benefactors.

This proposal for alliance was unquestionably received by the English people at first with feelings akin to disgust.  The memory of the bad faith by which power had been won, of the wrongs and exile of the greatest statesmen and soldiers of France, and of the red carnage of the Boulevards, was too recent to make such a friendship attractive.  Though acceptance of it might be good policy, yet it could not be yielded without profound reluctance.  But soon this early sentiment gave way to something like pride.  It was so satisfactory to think that the allied powers were wellnigh irresistible; that they had only to speak and it must be done; that they could dictate terms to the world; that they could scourge back even the Russian despot, seeking to pour down his hordes from the icy North to more genial climes.  It is hardly surprising, then, that men came to congratulate themselves upon so favorable an alliance, and concluded to overlook the defect in his title in consideration of the solid benefits which the occupant of the French throne conferred.

But this feeling could not last.  When the people of England saw how inevitably Louis Napoleon reaped from every conflict some selfish advantage, how the Crimean War gave him all the prestige, and the Italian War the coveted province of Nice, they began to doubt his fair professions.  And this jealousy is fast deepening into fear.  The English people have an instinct of approaching danger.  Any one can see that the “entente cordiale” is not quite what it once was.  When a British Lord of Admiralty can rise in his place in Parliament, and, after alluding to the powerful and increasing naval force of France, add,—­“I say that any Ministry who did not act upon that statement, and did not at once set about putting the country in the position she ought to occupy in respect to her navy, would deserve to be sent to the Tower or penitentiary,”—­we may be sure that England has as much jealousy as trust, and perhaps quite as much alarm as either.