The Press.
London, England, 1857-01-31 00:00:00

112

dorsing all the opinions of this writer, wo must
say that it is impossible to read the narrative
thus mainly composed of extracts from the
Emperor's writings when in retirement, when
in action, when defeated, when in prison,
when apparently most hopeless of success,
without conceiving a higher opinion of his
wonderful sagacity and firmness of purpose.
His conviction, very early formed, that the
empire of Napoleon must be restored in
France, never for an instant wavered. We are
compelled to acknowledge that he has reason
for his belief in his star, when we see through
what perils he has passed to his splendid
elevation. In no career of ancient or modern
times are the characters of Destiny or Provi
dence more clearly traced. His first public
peril was in 1831, when, with his elder
brother, he endeavoured to organise the rev olu-
tionary forces of Italy. His brother fell sick
and died at Faenza. The nosition of the
Prince, hemmed in by enemies, was full of
peril, but he succeededded in escaping in the dis-
guise of a servant. At this period he had no
thought of his own personal elevation. He
constantly referred to the young Duke of
Reichstadt as the head of the Imperial
Family. In his " Reveries Politives " (1832)
he expressed his conviction that k ranee would
never be content with less than the restora-
tion of the Empire, when " glory will crown
" liberty " :
For my own part, I think we can only arrive at the
desired result by a recombination of the two popular causes
of the day—that of Napoleon the Second, and that of the
Republic. The son of the great man, of the first Napoleon,
is the sole representative of the highest amount of glory, as
the Republic is the embodiment of the greatest amount of
national liberty. _ _

When it was supposed that he might have
married the young Queen of Portugal, Dona
Maria, he published a declaration that he
would never separate himself from France:—

It is due to myself to add that, in spite of the lively
interest which attaches to the destines of a people who
have but recently acquired their rights, I should refuse the
honour of sharing the throne of Portugal, shoall it
perchance happen that any persons should direct their
eyes to me with that view. . . . Persuaded as lam
that the great name which I bear will not always be
regarded by my fellow•countrymen as a ground of excln-
sioa, since that name recals to them fifteen years of
glory, I wait with composure in a hospitable and free
country until the time shall come when the nation shall
recal to its bosom those who in 1813 were expatriated
by the will of two hundred thousand strangers. This
hope of one day serving France, as a citizen and as a
soldier, fortifies my soul, and is worth, in my estimation,
all the thrones in the world.

He narrowly escaped with life from the Stras-
burg affair in 1836. After showing how near
he was to success, he relates :
In a minute I was surrounded by a triple row of bayonets,
and forced to draw my sabre to parry off the blows aimed
at me from every side. In another instant I should have
perished by French hands, when the cannoneers perceiving
my danger, charged, and carrying me off, placed me in
their ranks.

When taken prisoner, he desired that, as the
enterprise was his own, all the rigour of the
law should fall on him alone. Ile refused to
obtain his liberty by entering into any engage-
ment with the reigning dynasty. When he
wrote of his attempt a year later, he said :

Successful, I should have spared France the conflicts,
the troubles, the disorders, attendant upon a state of
general confusion, which I think must occur sooner or
later.

When in America, his mother, the Queen
Hortense, wrote to him in her fatal illness :
You will believe that in quittine, this world, I regret only
leaving yourself, and your fond affectionate disposition,
which alone has given any charm to my existence.
In 1838, when the power of Louis Philippe
seemed most firmly established, he replied to
the question, Where is the Napoleonite
party ?

The party is ncwhere, because my friends have not
mustered ; but the cause has partisans everywhere, from
the workshop of the artisan to the council•chamber of the
king, from the barrack of the soldier to the palace of the
marshal of France. . . . If one day the movements of
parties should overthrow the existing powers (and the
experience of the past fifty years authorises us in the
belief), and if accustomed as they have been for the last
thirty-three years to despise authority, they should under-
mine all the foundations of the social empire, then,
perhaps, the name of Napoleon may prove an anchor of
safety for all that is noble and truly useful in France.

This conception found fuller expression in
the celebrated " Idees Napoleoniennes," pub
lished while ho was residing in England in
1839. He proved the sincerity of his convic•

THE PRESS:

tions by the Boulogne expedition in 1840
His defence on his trial was a noble intellec-
tual effort. He concluded :

Representing a political cause, T cannot accept a political
tribunal as the judge of my intentions and my acts.
Nobody will be imposed on by your forms. In the struggle
which is taking place there will be but one conqueror;
one vanquished. It you are in the ranks of the conqueror,
I cannot expect justice at your hands, and I will not accept
your generosity.
His six years' imprisonment in the fortress
of Ham were borne without repining. He
wrote to a lady in England, "With the name
" I bear, I must either be in the seclusion of
" the dungeon, or the brightness of power "
Not even his desire to see his dying father
could tempt him to give a pledge of submis-
sion to the reigning Government. " The path
" of honour," he said, " is narrow and slippery,
" and there is but a hair's breadth between
" the firm ground and the abyss." A quota-
tation from a French writer effectively con-
trasts the escape from Ham of Louis Na-
poleon, and from the Tuileries of Louis
Philippe:—

. -
On the 26th of May, 1846, a man of marked features,
with a clouded and melancholy brow, with a deep and
thoughtful look, with a stiff gait, and attired like a labourer,
descended the staircase of the fortress, crossed the prison-
yard with a steady step, passed through the ranks of sol-
diery, went by the sentinels, and in an instant reached the
country adjacent to St. Quentin. This man was Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor.
On the 24th of February, 1848, another personage
escaped clandestinely, not from a prison but from a palace,
and entered a hackney-coach on the Place de la Revolution,
the spot where Louis XVI. had perished on the scaffold.
He hastened away, a fugitive wanderer, in a disguise not
much unlike that put on by the prisoner of Ham, to find a
small vessel to convey him to England. This man was
Louie Philippe d'Orleana, King of the French.

His conviction of the great part reserved for
him was strengthened by the perils he had
escaped :
A few days after his arrival in England he went to see
his cousin, Lady Douglas (a princess of Baden). " Well,"
said the young princess to him, "at last you are free.
Will you now be quiet? Will yon lay aside those fallacies
which have cost you so dear, and the cruel delusions of
those dreams which have brought such misery on those
who love you." "My dear cousin," replied the late pri-
soner of 11am, "1 do not belong to myself—l belong to
my name and to my country. It is because my fortune
has twice betrayed me that my destiny is nearer its accom-
plishment. I bide my time."
To the same lady (now Duchess of Hamilton)
he said, in the first days of the revolution of
1848, when the name of Bonaparte was re-
ceived with taunts and obloquy—

Before the year is out I shall direct the Government of
France.

On the 10th of December his prediction was
fulfilled.

Some space is devoted in this volume to an
examination of the Emperor's conduct in
relation to the coup-d'etat. It is justified
on account of the necessities of the time. The
author says :

I have conversed with many of our countrymen who were
residing in Paris at that critical period; and the over•
whelming preponderance of their opinion is to the effect
that, but for the conception ani success of the masterly
stroke of statesmanship which received the name of the
conp-d'etat, order, society, property, would within a few
weeks have bean overthrown.

We find some just reflections on the diffi-
culties which the Emperor experienced in
steadily carrying out his policy of an English
alliance :

It is scarcely possible to grasp an adequate conception
of the difficulties wherewith the Emperor had to contend
in consummating the policy which he has laid down as the
rule of his government, including as one of its prominent
features the interchange of good sill and good offices be•
tween England and France. In preceding sections the
reader has seen how pertinacious') the former prejudices
of the Parisian populace have been fanned by the leaders
and organs of a party which stiles itself the supporter of
order, but which has not scrupled to lend itself to the ex•
citement of disorder—to every incendiary device by which
it was imagined that the position of the President, and
afterwards that of the Emperor, could be shaken—to every
stratagem that held out the possibility of damaging him
in the regards of the people of France. Amongst these
devices the appeal to anti• British passions has been a
favourite card, and been played through all the moods and
tenses of unscrupulous dexterity ; but vigilance and firm•
ness, supported by public approbation, made the game a
losing one, and each move of the ingenious agitators left
them in a worse position.

The literary merit of the volume is but
slight. The author's faculty of admiration is
so great as to allow little room for the exercise
of his judgment. But the volume has value
for the citations strung together from the
Emperor's owu writings, and for the anec-

SATURDAY,

dotes collected concerning him. It is in the
speeches, and letters, and works of the Em-
peror that his character can be best read. It
is impossible to consider them, however curso-
rily, without being impressed with the eleva-
tion of soul and prophetic spirit they evince.

Bermuda ; a Colony, a Fortress, and a Prison.

By a Field Officer. London : Longmans.
THERE is much pleasant reading in this
volume. It gives a complete account of the
physical features of the Bermuda group,
traces their history, exhibits their present
state, and discusses the literary questions
associated with them. It is shown conclu-
sively that Shakespeare never could have
meant to make Bermuda the scene of his
Tempest ; but it is probable that he was struck
with the accounts of this region and its tem.
pests, and imagined such an island to be
situated in the Mediterranean, between Naples
and Tunis. The question whether Waller
ever visited Bermuda is minutely examined,
the author deciding the question in the nega-
tive. He reports, however, that a ring has
lately been found which is popularly believed
to be Waller's ring:—

It is a gold circle (which appears to have once con-
tained hair), terminating in two hands clasping a heart.
It is an ordinary and not very antique•looking ring.
Inside of it are roughly scratched the words, " Whose hair
I wear I loved dear." It is said, I know not how truly,
that the ring displays the arms of the Otway family, and
that Waller was connected with the latter. But I could
not learn why the son of a Waller and of a Hampden should
use the arms of the Otways.

An engraving of the ring would have been in-
teresting to many readers. The population of
Bermuda is increasing. It was 8,824 in 1841,
and 11,092 in 1851. The details of the Govern.
ment and of society are amusing.
We notice the volume chiefly, however, for
the information it affords on our convict sys-
tem. Bermuda is a prison, as well as a
fortress and a colony. Felons are transported
thither, are kept in confinement, and are
brought back to England to be set loose when
their terms of transportation (usually much
shortened) have expired. We read :

Transportation for life became limited usually to ten
years. Fourteen years meant, perhaps, six; ten meant
four; and seven three. By far the greater part of the
prisoners at Bermuda are still upon this footing.

We are told that Garrett, the perpetrator of
the famous gold-dust robbery, obtained his
liberty in 1853, his term of imprisonment
having been materially shortened by his
appearance of good conduct. He went to
Melbourne, was convicted of participating in a
great bank robbery, and sentenced to penal
servitude for ten years. This man was at
Bermuda when Kirwan, convicted of the
murder of his wife in Ireland, arrived a
prisoner. Garrett, who had formerly held the
position in Bermuda which Mr. Dorrit occu-
pied in Whitecross-street, waited on Kirwan
to say that he had been considered chief of the
convicts hitherto, but that he now yielded his
supremacy to the new visitor, as a criminal of
a much higher class. "It is said," writes the
author, " that Kirwan was highly indignant at
" this extraordinary compliment." That the
reader may judge of the number of convicts
annually returned to England from Bermuda,
we quote some of the author's figures :

The Pearl, a Bermudian barque, carried to England in her
second voyage, December, 1855, upwards of 210 returned
convicts. For this her owners received 1,0001. The
Castle Eden, an English vessel, brought out early last year
846 convicts. She took home again 176 convicts in
January, 1856. For this her owners were paid 5,0001.
sterling. On the Bth September, 1856, the Bermudian
barque, Sir George Seymour, started for England, with 160
more convicts. Thus it appears that in the coarse of last
year no less than 550 convicts returned from Bermuda
alone, to be let loose in England a few months after their
arrival. Probably not one of these men, however ill
behaved, had completed the full sentence passed upon him
by his judge, and the far greater part bad had their sen-
tences shortened by more then one•half.

Many of these liberated convicts would of
course return to their old haunts and practices,
and others, especiall• the aged, would throw
themselves on their parishes. This system of
sending out convicts, and bringing them back,
is evidently absurd. Transportation should
only be resorted to as a means of getting rid
of convicts altogether, which can never be
done by sending them to Bermuda, as the
territory is too small to absorb them. The

lik,