All this has hindered me from following my first impulse of thanking you for your letter immediately.
How beautiful Paris is, and how I agree with you, as we both did with dear Miss Mitford, on the subject of Louis Napoleon.

I approve of him _exactly because_ I am a democrat, and not at all for an exceptional reason.

I hold that the most democratical government in Europe is out and out the French Government (which doesn't exclude the absolutist element, far from it); but who in England understands this?
and that the representative man of France, the incarnate republic, is the man Louis Napoleon?
An extraordinary man he is.

I never was a Buonapartist, though the legend of the First Napoleon has wrung tears from me before now, and I was very sorry when Louis Napoleon was elected instead of Cavaignac.
At the _coup d'etat_ I was not sorry.

And since then I have believed in him more and more.
So far in sympathy.