R16 LIFN OF GORDEN. [cust

1860. humour, they might be worth your buying. Besides the
#1. 88. interest we all have in knowing what has been passing
through such a brain for the last thirty years, the style of
his composition is a model worth studying. Baron Bunsen
who is here, tells me, apropos of his style, that De Tocqueville,
 who died lately at Cannes, and who was no friend of the
Emperor’s, declared that Louis Napoleon was the only maz
living who could write ‘ monumental French.’ It is, [
suppose, the consciousness of the possession of this talent,
so greatly appreciated in France, which leads him to come
so frequently before the public in print; for if he be taciturn
in oral communications, the quality assuredly does not attach to
his pen . . . But when we have praised his style, we have
expressed the best that can be said of his volumes. Most
assuredly we cannot endorse all that he says as a political
economist, as the enclosed extract will show. There are
some curious historical chapters upon the progress of
artillery, a subject to which he seems to have devoted much
study, and which now possesses great interest. But the
chief charm of his works is in the absolute perfection of the
style of his occasional addresses, extending over a series of
years. That one in particular announcing his intended
marriage as a parvenu, and giving his reasons for making
choice of a private individual for his wife, is the mosb
striking of all for the ingenuity and boldness of his argument,
 and the beauty of its composition. I must say I
sought in vain for traces of that spirit of vindictiveness
towards England which politicians of the Horsman schoo)
tell us, with so much solemn mysteriousness, pervades his
writings. The whole tone of his works seem to me to be
so singularly forbearing and magnanimous towards the
implacable and successful enemy of his great idol, the first
Bonaparte ; he treats the whole matter with so much philosophy
 when referring to the death struggle between France