The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-10-10 00:00:00

A SKETCH OF THE EMPRESS
EUGENIE.

This month's Fraser contains a brief but very in-
teresting sketch of the Empress Eugenie, written by
her husband, Louis Napoleon. The sketch was con
tributed to one of the Impend l newspapers published
at Paris when the second Empire was at the height of
its prosperity. Every word was written in the Em-
peror's autograph, and the manuscript was found at
the Tuileries shortly after the catastrophe of Sedan
had installed the Provisional Republican Government
in power. Among other things the Emperor mentions
a curious incident in Eugenie's life, which has not
been published. Always interested in the unfortunate,
it seems she nourished a secret sympathy for the l'rince
who was imprisoned at Ham, and who was after-
wards destined to raise her to the. Throne of France.
She urged her mother, the Countess of Montijo, to
carry to the captive such consolation as was possible,
and the latter, it is said, had decided to undertake the
pilgrimage, when her intention was suddenly frus-
trated. Eugenie, it appears, was, when relieved from
the cares of State, a diligent and a serious student.
There was no economical or financial question to which
she was a stranger. She was accustomed to discuss the
most difficult problems with learned men. Litera-
ture, history, and art were the common subjects of
her conversation. Surrounded by a select circle, it
was her custom, in these days, to engage with
equal facility in the most elevated subjects of
discussion, or the most familar questions of in-
terest. The freshness of her powers of perception—
the strength, even the boldness of her opinions, in
the mind of the Emperor, both impressed and
captivated her hearers. He says her mode of ex-
pressing herself was occasionally incorrect, but was
full of life and colour. With astonishing powers of
exactness in speaking on common affairs, she on
matters of State or morality rose to a pitch of real
eloquence. Pious without being bigoted, well-
informed without being pedantic, she talked on all
subjects with great unconstraint. She perhaps was,
he adds, too fond of discussion. Very sprightly in her
nature, she often let herself be carried away by her
feelings, which had often excited enmities against her.
but her exaggerations had always for their foundation
the love of good. Such is the opinion the Emperor
Napoleon W. entertained of his wife, and expressed
in the heyday of his power and popularity. The docu-
ment is an historical curiosity.

The London School Board are keeping the police
magistrates well employed. It is stated that the prosecutions
of patents for not sending their children to school have
averaged from thirty to forty a week during the last month
at Bow-street police court alone.
The Excise duty on gold and silver plate in the year
ended the 31st of March was £38,272 lla fid.
The death is announced of Bryan Wallace Proctor,
who wrote poetry under the psuedonym of 'harry Corn-
wall " lie was born in 1789, and educated, along with
Byron, at Barrow At an early age he studied law, and was
ultimately called to the bar, ile held for many years a
commissionership of lunacy, which he resigned in 1881.
Mr. Proctor's (laughter, Adelaide Anne, who died la 1864,
was well-known Iti a poetess,