VII--_The Midnight of Europe_


Among the minor crimes of England may be classed the shallow criticism
and easy abandonment of Napoleon III. The Victorian English had a very
bad habit of being influenced by words and at the same time pretending
to despise them. They would build their whole historical philosophy upon
two or three titles, and then refuse to get even the titles right. The
solid Victorian Englishman, with his whiskers and his Parliamentary
vote, was quite content to say that Louis Napoleon and William of
Prussia both became Emperors--by which he meant autocrats. His whiskers
would have bristled with rage and he would have stormed at you for
hair-splitting and "lingo," if you had answered that William was German
Emperor, while Napoleon was not French Emperor, but only Emperor of the
French. What could such mere order of the words matter? Yet the same
Victorian would have been even more indignant if he had been asked to
be satisfied with an Art Master, when he had advertised for a Master of
Arts. His irritation would have increased if the Art Master had promised
him a sea-piece and had brought him a piece of the sea; or if, during
the decoration of his house, the same aesthetic humourist had undertaken
to procure some Indian Red and had produced a Red Indian.

The Englishman would not see that if there was only a verbal difference
between the French Emperor and the Emperor of the French, so, if it came
to that, it was a verbal difference between the Emperor and the
Republic, or even between a Parliament and no Parliament. For him an
Emperor meant merely despotism; he had not yet learned that a Parliament
may mean merely oligarchy. He did not know that the English people would