Passages from the Past (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXIII FRANCE Emperor Louis Napoleon.?I knew his name first as a healer of my infant attack of chickenpox ! His action when he changed his title from that of President to that of Emperor of the French afforded plenty of material to The Illustrated London News to picture the events at Paris, and these drawings cheered my convalescence at Castle Howard. The conflicts at Paris especially were most excellently portrayed by that friend of one's youth. The firing by high-shakoed infantry upon the Republican and Radical populace gave us most absorbing excitement. Many people disapproved of these proceedings, but they made me distinctly better, and gave me an interest in the movements of the world to which my illness had made me a stranger. Long afterwards, Louis Napoleon's visit to England, and the kind reception given to him by our Queen, who admired the army which raised him to the headship of the Second Empire, and the beauty of his Spanish wife, the Empress Eugenie, made his career one that had muchfascination for English boys. The great Whig ladies did not like him, but they all acknowledged his charming manners and the grace of the Empress. He seemed at all events to be firmly seated in the affections of the French people,and his name was in itself a talisman. It revived the memory of the glories of their arms under the leadership of his uncle. " When France and England are good friends," said almost every one, " there will be peace, for we two together can induce Europe to follow where we lead." And when, a few years later, the alliance was made which made us and the Sardinians fight side by side with the French against Russian aggression, and the Crimean campaign was undertaken, the last murmurs against Napoleon seemed to have died out, and every boy knew not only...