But most of them could have been written about Haman, or Heliogabalus, or King John, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as about poor Louis Napoleon; they bear no trace of any comprehension of his quite interesting aims, and his quite comprehensible contempt for the fat-souled senatorial politicians.

And if a real revolutionist like Hugo did not do justice to the revolutionary element in Caesarism, it need hardly be said that a rather Primrose League Tory like Tennyson did not.

Kinglake's curiously acrid insistence upon the _Coup d'etat_ is, I fear, only an indulgence in one of the least pleasing pleasures of our national pen and press, and one which afterwards altogether ran away with us over the Dreyfus case.

It is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people's sins.
If this came easy to an Englishman like Kinglake, it came, of course, still easier to a German like Queen Victoria's husband and even to Queen Victoria herself, who was naturally influenced by him.

But in so far as the sensible masses of the English nation took any interest in the matter, it is probable that they sympathised with Palmerston, who was as popular as the Prince Consort was unpopular.