The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-10 00:00:00

CHRYSANTHEMUM SHOWS.

The Chrysanthemum will be again, for a short sea-
son, the subject of general admiration, and we shall
all feel that of late years we have been unjust to this
queen of the autumn. There is to be no great show
at the Crystal Palace—none at Kensington ; and
some of the once most flourishing local societies have
passed away, leaving " not a rack behind." No !
they have left in the minds of all who took part in
them some regrets that the chrysanthemum was
ever allowed to decline in popularity. A succession
of bad seasons was, no doubt, one great cause of the
decline of the societies, and the extinction of the
great exhibitions; but no doubt there is another
cause for the diminution of local interest in this
charming flower, and that is the want of a "con-
necting link" between one autumn and the next—
something to keep the members together as friends
and neighbours ; something to be done by them
"all the year round." What should that connecting
link be? A thousand plans might be suggested for
sustaining the interest and good-fellowship first en-
listed in the cause of a chrysanthemuni show. We can
think of none better than occasional meetings to hear
letures, read and discuss essays, compare notes of ex-
perience, and cultivate feelings of friendship. " Ah,"
says the curious reader," if you do all this, the idea
of a cry sant hemum society is at an end." Why should
that be? But suppose that is the case; if the
chrysanthemum society can be expanded into some-
thing better, why not expand it, and have the best
thing of the kind obtainable ? We confess we should
sooner support a gardener's society, having for one
of its objects to promote the culture of the chrysan-
themum, than a society devoted to the chrysanthe-
mum and " nothing more." We have seen in num-
berless instances that when the show was over the
enthusiasm it awakened cooled down. As the
season came round again it might
in
revive; but if in
thedid end
no t
etohme
eseuapsoton
ipt rods
fvoerao
rb
satda
no
dn
oe
r, as
d, a
nd IhBa6voi ,n igt
once fallen from its first estate, the society never re-
covered. Probably there are very few of our readers
who cannot testify from their own experience to
the truth of this view of the case. The remedy is
obvious. Instead of establishing societies for the
coarhferuynusioattnygthemum only, let the energies of the pro-
moters be bestowed in establishing societies for
mutual improvement among gardeners, giving the
chrysanthemum as large a place as posible in their pro-
gramme.arThenomwo
on!r
g sof youe onh haveor yf
otheco-operationn t
h e
sameni n
craft,
; t ofe r
there
thoughi s many a
bond w
theyh o
may have very various tastes and be very differently
occupied.lbannestead of a.few meetings at distant in-
tervals, it would be better to meet frequently ; and
goodifth er
is
might
some portion e o
lackbe b
ooiyof entertainment, much real
horticultural journals yfdaon
and theo n simplebooks gardening
of
a an, readingen e
articlesrat aloud unf
from
on on
ig
class not horticulturf
horticultural. Gardeners seem to be too
much given to the idea that when they meet they
must of necessity talk about d qar ening. The more
they can improve each other in the
pursuit of their
calling by means of associating together
g ogether the better ;
but it is sometimes pleasant and profitable to get
out of one's customary groove, and
give the mind
an entire change of entertainment. One of the
ancients talked about the pleasure of getting out of
one's body to think.' The idea applies to mankind
at large; we all want a change occasionally; and
we would as soon see a company of
gardeners
listening to a reading from a book of travels, his-
tory, general science, criticism, or humour, as Hs.
toning to a lecture by Mr. Pomologus on the pro-
perties of a crop of pears gathered from a ft
agstaff.
"Change of occupation is rest," says a proverb.
There is certainly no good reason to be found why
those who meet in the first.
instance
to exhibit h
_ ry
continue their meetings santhemums should not co
already
interest
the rest of the year, that the
. awakened may be kept alive, and directed to some
useful and agreeable purpose.--Gardeners' Weekly
[
Magazine and Floricultural Cabinet>

The revival of the unfavourable reports respect-
ing the state of General Garibaldi's health and
wound, even implying the necessity of amputation
and an invitation from Dr. Ripen and his col-
leagues to attend a consultation of doctors for the
purpose of determining what measures should be
adopted for the general's relief, induced the com-
mittee of gentlemen at whose instigation I first went
to Varignano to request ale to make another jour-
ney; and although the visit was undertaken at much
personal inconvenience, I felt it my duty to yield
to their solicitation, and accordingly, having re-
ceived on the 25th Oct. an intimation by telegraph
that the consultation was fixed for the 29th, I left
London en the morning of the 26th. Owing, how-
ever, to tempestuous weather, which prevented the
steamer from leaving harbour, I was unable (though
I travelled without intermission) to reach Spezzia
until after the consultation. I cannot, however, re-
gret my absence, as the large number of medical
men assembled rendered it less satisfactory than it
might otherwise have been. I saw the general on
the 30th Gctober, the day of my arrival at Spezzia,
where he occupied a suite of apartments on the first
floor of the Marine Hotel. I was present at the
afternoon dressing on that day, and on the follow-
ing one I made, in conjunction with Dr. Pirogoff,
the chief of the Medical Department of the Rus-
sian Army at Sebastopol, and perhaps the first
authority on gun-shot wounds in Europe, a careful,
quiet, and satisfactory examination into the state of
the general's wound and health. It should be stated
that on the day preceding the consultation M. Nela-
ton, an eminent Trench surgeon, examined the
wound with a prob?, and believed that he detected
a hard substance, vhich he declared to be the ball,
about an inch within its orifice. His recommenda-
tion was that the Pound should be enlarged gra-
dually, by means of tents of increasing size, by
which he anticipated that in the course of five or
six days the ball 3ould be readily removed by a
pair of forceps. On the 29th Oct., at the consulta-
tion, the question if amputation was proposed, dis-
cussed, and happily rejected. At the same time
M. Porta, the experienced and distinguished
surgeon of Pavia, reade a searching examination
with his little finger thrust forcibly and deeply
into the wound ; but, though ho turned the finger
round in every direction, no bullet could be de-
tected,ehowing that N. Nelaton was mistaken in sup-
posing that he felt the ball within an inch of the
orifice of the wound—in fact, the bullet has never
yet been felt by any one, nor has its presence and
whereabouts been determined by actual demonstra-
tion. M. Pirogoff :hought that the ball might be
lodged deeply in the lower joint of the greater and
lesser bones of the 'eg (the inferior tibio fibular ar-
ticulation), and he eased this opinion on the greater
width (three-quarters of an inch, measured by a pair
of callipers) between the ankles of the sound and of
the unsound foot ; but the puffy condition (oedema)
of the parts about the joint, caused probably by
the severe examination of the 29th, accounted to
my mind for the difference, and the most careful
examination and pressure with the fingers in
various situations about the articulation failed to
detect any hard substance, or to indicate the pre-
sence of matter, nor could any matter be extruded
from the wound by pressure at the supposed site of
the projectile. Up to the present time therefore
(though it would be presumptuous of me to declare
the impossibility of the bullet being in the leg), I
see no reason to change my first opinion, agreeing
as it did with the result of M. Porta's examination
on the 4th of September, only six days after the
injury, and confirmed as it was by M. Zenetti, of
Florence, at our consultation on September 19th,
viz., that there is no present evidence of the ball
having lodged in the wound. It must be borne in
mind that the shot was a large, obtusely-conical
rifle bullet, weighing more than an ounce, fired ob-
liquely from below, and in front, at a distance of
only 150 or 200 paces, which penetrated trousers,
boot, and stocking, and broke off by an obliquely
transverse, linear fracture, the internal ankle bone,
but without smashing or comminuting it, though
the fracture laid open, of necessity, the ankle joint.
The bone discharged from the wound from time to
time has been in the form of fine sand-like particles,
and only once a fragment equal in size to that of
half a pea came away. At present the joint is more
swollen than when I saw it at Varignano (probably
the result of the examination of the 29th of which
the general vividly complained). The foot, though
otherwise in good position, is turned a little more
inwards, owing, I believe, to the want of support
from the broken off internal ankle. The joint is
free from pain, inflexion, and extension. The Ge-
neral's health is excellent, and his face and expres-
sion unchanged; his appetite, sleep, See.)
are also
good ; in fact, he has little of the outward
appearance of an invalid. The leg is suspended
in a Salter's swing fracture-cradle, sent to him
by his English friends, and he reposes on an invalid
bed which I was commissioned to select and send out
to him from England, upon which he was removed
from Varignano to Spezzia, and which affords him
the greatest comfort and ease. We found him at
first in a confined room, with the windows fastened
up ; but on the day I left Sp( zzia his removal was
effected into a large and airy adjoining saloon. The
General has been overwhelmed with visitors, whose
intrusion, of necessity, greatly fatigued him, and I
am sorry to say that our own countrymen and coun-
trywomen have been the most pertinacious intruders.
I ventured, while at Spezzia, to suggest a plan for
the exclusion of these self d g
ndul entand inconside-
rate pilgrims. lam happy to hear by a letter re-
ceived from Spezzia yesterday, that some such mea-
sures have been adopted ; that visitors have been
rigidly excluded, and that the General already be-
gins to feel the benefit of the greater quiet, and of
the more airy room, and the improved appearance
of the wounded ankle, and in more unbroken az:d
tranquil sleep. The General, however, suffers so
much from rheumatic pains, and Spezzia at this
season of the year is so damp and muggy, that his
removal for the winter to a warm and dry climate
is imperative. Dr. Pirogoff and I concurred in
the opinion that amputation is uncalled for, that
the wound should be simply and lightly dressed,
and allowed, if it be so disposed, to heal. That if
the bnllut be really lodged in the wound it must be
deeply seated, and that time will indicate its pre-
sence, and facilitate without injury its removal.
Nothing can exceed the tender care and skilful
dressing of his surgeons, who, with the General
himself, received my visit with hearty pleasure and
welcome, and who permitted the examinations of
Dr. Pirogoff and myself with the utmost courtesy
and kindness. In conclusion, I have only to reite-
rate my former opinion, that though the cure must
needs be tedicus, yet that with rest, quiet, good air,
&e., the case will do well, without loss of limb, and
perhaps even without much impairment of the utility
of the injured joint. Some under-clothing peculiarly
adapted to relieve the rheumatic tendencies of the
General, has been, at my suggestion, sent out to
him by an English lady, and I trust has by this
time arrived at Spezzia.
P.S.—I have received information by a letter
from Spezzia this evening (Oct. 8,) that the Gene-
ral feels himself desirous of ope i-air exercise, and
for that purpose Colonel Veechi asks me to obtain
for him an invalid couch on wheels, which I trust
his friends will enable me to send him. The tele-
intimates the General's re-
gram of tonight also
moval to Pisa, the most favourable climate for him
in Italy.
Nov. 8, 1862:

The Select Committee are now engaged in testing
powder. A very large grain was adopted a short time since,
but is now said to have damaged some of the Armst:7ng
Mle•ftwilrtnY and GaZette4

One of the most remarkable of the great histora
cal productions of the century has here been brought
to its conclusion. As picturesque and elaborated a
record, it is, of the age of Napoleon, as the Chronicles
of Froissart were of the age of Chivalry! Thiers has
proved himself to be as the biographer of Napo-
leon what Arrian and Curtius were combined to
Alexander—as an annalist of the Great Captain's
campaigns what Caesar was to himself. Quite as
a matter of course, the work is coloured by the
writer's own intense predilections. It could not in
reason be expected by any sane man to be other.
wise. As rationally might one turn to that Model
Memoir of a Hero, Robert Southey's " Life of Nel-
son," expecting to find it written from first to last
with a mind perfectly calm and equable, with a
pulse at no moment accelerated by a single throb,
with a judgment throughout in unwavering equi-
poise. An effusion of that Character, could it by
any possibility have been produced, would have
been something intolerable. Why, in regard to
herculean labours such as those which have
been so assiduously.,prosecuted, and we may
now venture to add, • so successfully accom-
plished, during the last eighteen or twenty
years by the gifted ex-Premier of France,
it may safely be asserted that they would scarcely
ever be undertaken by any man competent to
complete them without the preliminary incentive
of precisely those very predilections, that some
shallow observers and pretended critics are so dis-
posed to complain of, and are so loud and ceaseless
in declaiming against upon every conceivable op-
portunity. When an Englishman like Southey
undertakes to recount the history of the life and
fortunes of a sea-captain like Horatio Nelson, we
take it for granted, before turning one solitary page
of the narrative, that it will be no cold or even
luke-warm expression that will be there poured
forth from the writer's intellect—proffered to
the reader's lips to quaff, whenever he lists, from
the current of the Biography. No, it is perfectly
understood by all, from the first instantaneous
glance at the title page, that the Biographer is a
Biographer, for the simple reason, the very precise
reason, that he is in sympathy with the one whom
he himself has volunticily selected to be the Hero
of his Biography. The piquant irony directed by
Lord Macaulay in one of his famous Essays against
that disease of overmuch praise peculiarly apper-
taining to the class of `l3iographers, a disease face-
tiously dubbed by the great Essayist the" lues Bos-
welliana," that piquant irony of Macaulay's always
appeared to us excessively overwrought in various
ways, and in many instances capable of egregious
misapplication. An irony it was, to our thinking,
too keenly pointed, too cruelly barbed, too fiercely
poisoned—and, after all, as it happened, recoiling
against the breast of the very man whose hand
sped it avit;i such accurate aim against others, re-
coiling upon himself with an eccentricity of "move-
ment like that of some literary boomerang. For
the great historic masterpiece of Lord Macaulay's ge-
nius—incomplete, the merest fragment of a " History
of England," perfect and of admirable proportions
in a purely literary point of view as a " History of
King William lll."—is warped and coloured, and
saturated, so to speak, with more intense prejudices,
with more highly coloured predilections than
any other intellectual production of the same class
that could be mentioned as having seen the light in
this generation. There, in truth, is a flagrant in-
stance, if you please, of the lues Boswelliana ! In
estimating Southey's capabilities as an erotic poet,
Lord Macaulay could say of him wittily enough,
in a sudden outburst of scornful antithesis, that
his imaginary enamorata, " either loved like cattle,
or loved like seraphim." But—es gross were those
extremes and exaggerations of antithesis into which
Lord Macaulay himself plunged when he undertook
not to warble like a lyrist, but to grave, with an iron
stylus, upon enduring tablets, the records of our
national glory—as the last, and, in many respects,
the most rarely gifted of our English Historians.
Reading his annals, as he has writ them, James the
Second is depicted throughout as an impossible
Monster—William of Orange as an equally impos-
sible Paragon. The one lowers upon us through
an atmosphere as black as Erebus. The other shines
before our dazzled eyes as if (to adopt the historian's
own phrase, when he is speaking of Milton) crowns
of asphodel were seen already sh.'wering around
him upon the jasper pavements of the new Jerusa-
lem ! Without some recognisable leaning, partiality,
predilection (call it what you will) to begin with,
an annalist's or a biographer's work would
be the dreariest reading well imagina-
ble : the least attractive—listless, torpid, all
but lifeless. Recognising the vivifying animus of
the Historian in the very title-page of his History,
of the biographer in the very opening of his
Biography, the reader is, to the full, forearmed be-
cause, to the full, forwarned. The reader's judgment
under those circumstances, with that perfectly ap-
preciable forewarning, can never, if he be but a man
endowed with the most ordinary amount of saga-
city, be biased in the conclusion to which his author
is so clearly bent, from the outset, upon conducting
him. The Golden Bowl (of the Life related) while
traversing again in fancy those " paths of glory"
that " lead but to the grave," may have that bias
imparted to it before reaching the common goal of
every biography—but not to any rational reader's
judgment. What has been recognised therefore
again and again in all the grander masterpieces of
literature of a historical or of a biographical cha-
racter, is here visible anew and in a resplendent form
in these majestic annals of the Great Napoleon,
penned by the "some time" Prime Minister of France,
M. Adolphe Thiers. Throughout the annalist
writes, if not avowedly as a Bonapartist, necessarily
and inevitably, and to his honour, be it said, of
course, as a Frenchman. For Napoleon he cherishes
—quite as a matter of course, and we respect him
for it—the most profound admiration. In recount-
ing the wonderful deeds of Napoleon, the marvellous
conquests made by France under his rule, first of
all, during the Consulate and afterwards during the
Empire, M. Thiers—as a Frenchman, as a French
historian, as a French statesman, as a patriot, as a
man of genius, himself nurtured upon the soil which
was for so many years the rov rro of this warlike
Archimedes, this great captain, this great lawgiver
—exults in the mere retrospect, in the mere remem-
brance. When the marvellous fabricbuilt up within
a period of fifteen years by Napoleon begins to
shake and crumble away from its foundations. when
this Colossus is falling, has fallen—Thiers laments
and in no feeble voice of lamentation. Over the
memory of the grand final crash at Waterloo—[de-
scribed with great elaboration, and we grieve to
add (what so many of our brother-critics here in
England have proved of late usque ad nauseam)
with great unfairness in this last volume]—
the Historian of Napoleon's Consulate and Empire,
the Historian previously of the French Revolution,
cries out with a voice of anguish, of remonstrane_ei
of indignation—to put the fact in simple words,
makes the best of it, so far as relates to the tea
can.
and the generalship of his idol Napoleon.
_mount
not but think that there has been an undueido
of the
of angry feeling manifested on thisd
point of view,
channel in respect to the argumenta
Thiers in explanation, from a French
that immense
of that immense disaster for
France,Battle of Waterloo.
triumph for the Allies,
the
eis narrative of the bat-
tle M. Thiers is grossly a it may be visible, but
d humour. England
erfect goo
define the error
without heat, inE
oshmen, in the recollection of
can afford it-
-131
-able nature of the victory that
what was the veri
wherever
e Wars of the Giants, to a close, Eng-
ly preserve their equanimity in
iishmen may
about it. Admitted that there is a palpas
arguing
brought thos
sure

ble misstatement here as to a date, here again as to
a name, there in reference to the strength of a
regiment, there as to th© bearing of an order—
correct the blunder, proclaim it to be heinous, I
denounce it, even if there appears to be occa-
sion for so doing, as wilful, and, there-
fore as doubly and trebt.y. reprehensible —but
do this without passion, without acrimony, with-
out a manner expressive, rather of irritated and
acrimonious spitefulness than of the calm of the
resolute Searcher after Truth. Comment, correct,
analyse, as befits the Critic who is upon the side of
the Victors. Waterloo was ours---let us, therefore,
conn the French narratives of Waterloo, even though I
they be penned by the authoritative band of a
Thiers, without a perpetual sneer of derision upon I
our lips; but, in lieu of that, with an air (and a
feeling at heart) of commiserative magnanimity.
So extended have been the researches of M.
Thiers during the process of preparing the ground
for the building up of this gigantic historical
memorial of the age of Napoleon, that, in compari
son with these labours of investigation, the toils of
Macaulay described by him so graphically in an
incidental passage of his great literary masterpiece,
is
Lo
rd
shrink into insignificance.
Macaulay, himself who there, in the particular pas-
sage we are referring to, comments upon the
sufficiently comprehensible circumstance, that, ac-
cordingly as his work advanced, accordingly as he
descended the stream of time, till he came within
view of an epoch nearer to his own, naturally, in-
evitably he found his labours, in the way of
research and investigation, increase and multiply.
Piles upon piles of folios, of quartos, of octavos,
pamphlets, broadsheets, journals, memoirs, autobio-
graphies, correspondence, state papers, littering
the table, the chairs, the floor around the historian
as he read and wrote, collecting his facts and col-
lating his authorities. 'What were mountains in
this way to Lord Macaulay when dealing with the
annals of William 111., are mole-hills to M. Thiers
when doing the like by the era of Napoleon I. His
survey extending geographically, moreover, over
all Europe—into Africa—into Asia. His hero en-
tering in triumph as a conqueror, one after another,
the great capitals of Christendom, advancing from
Paris, to Milan, to Berlin, to Vienna, to Moscow*, to
Madrid, to Cairo, to Alexandria. His investiga-
tions embracing within them the whole world of
diplomacy, of war, of legislation. Statesmen and
Warriors, Emperors and Kings grouping together
as subsidiary figures around the central form of that
One Man, the narrative of whose marvellous career
the annalist has here undertaken. Eighteen or
twenty years have been comprised in theimere pub-
lication of the twenty substantial volumes consti-
tuting this immense tribute of admiration to the
genius of Napoleon. Since the issue, from the press
in this country, of the first of these twenty volumes
of the work in the form of a very carefully prepared
and avowedly authorised translation—Thiers' His-
tory of the Consulate and Empire has had to pass
through the hands of a succession of translators, and
through the hands also, be it said, of a succession of
publishers. D. Forbes Campbell was the name of
tie first of these translators, the name affixed to
the first title-page. Volume I. being published
under those auspices " with the sanction and ap-
proval of the author," in the March of 1845 ! The
lifte Mr. Colburn being the original publisher, and
so continuing to be, in fact, during the next lustre,
During that first year—it is curious to note thus
the jolting manner of the appearance of the work
throughout (for, as with the English translation, so
has it been with the French original—the two pub-
lications taking place throughout as nearly as possi-
ble simultaneously)—during that first year (1845)
t'he first five volumes appeared. In the next year but
one (1847) two more were issued—the sixth and
seventh. Another year buias skipped, in 1840
came forth the eighth, and in 1850 the ninth volume
of Thiers' History. The next year, the year of the
Hyde Park Exhibition (1851) witnessing the issue
in sequence of the two following, that is the tenth
and eleventh : the publisher's name then appearing
for the first time differently, viz., as Colburn and
Company. This being preliminary to the transfer-
ence of the late Mr. Colburn's business to the now
well-known firm succeeding to it, the firm of
Messrs. Hurst and Blackett. Five years, however,
were now allowed to slip by, before, in 1856, volumes
twelve and thirteen were published by Messrs,
Willis and Sotheran. Into the hands of this
firm the entire copyright then passed, and it is by
the Messrs. Willis and Sotheran that the work has
now been gradually completed. Two more volumes,
the fourteenth and fifteenth, appearing in 1857,
and another, the sixteenth, in 1858. In 1860 the
seventeenth was issued, " translated from the
French," according to the title page, by some name-
less translator or translators. Last year the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth volumes brought the History
down to the Champ de Mai—the present year wit-
nessing its tardy but brilliant and, so far as Water
100 is concerned, we grieve to add, its singularly
untruthful completion by the issue of this last
volume, the twentieth. As affording the reader an
instant notion of the arrangement of the narrative
from first to last by M. Thiers, and of his skill in
grouping the parts together as a symmetrical whole,
we will here specify by name, in numerical order,
the title of the Sixty-two Books into which this
enthralling History of Napoleon has been subdi-
vided. The number of Books being by a purely
accidental coincidence identical with the number of
years to which the century had extended when
these annals of the Consulate and the Empire were
completed

Book Book
1. Constitution of the Year 32. Erfurth
Eight 33. Sorno-Sierra
2. Internal Government 34. Ratisbon
3. Ulm and Genoa 35. Wagram
4. Marengo 36. Talavera and Vireeheren
5. Heliopolis 37. The Divorce
_,,nde
6. Armistice 38. Continental Blee'"
7. Hohenlinden. 39. Torres Vedr"
8. The Infernal Machine .. 40. Fuentes d'Onoro
9. Neutral Powers 41. The Council
10. Evacuation of Egypt 42. Tarragona ~ Niemen
11. General Peace f
43. Passage o the
12. The Concordat 44. Moscow
13. ..,„
and 13. The Tribunate 45. The Berli
Sala-
-14. Consulate for Life 46. Waebizz-
oz-
-15. The Secularisations mama
16. Rupture of the Peace of 47. The Cohorr
Amiens a u
Vittoriatze n
17. Camp ot Boulogne alum
4498:
pLurodtzenenanal3u
18. Conspiracy of Georges 50. InvasionLeiP
19. The Empire 51. The d
52. Beelineand o
Alontrairail
20. The Coronation
63. First Abdication
.e
Bour.
21. Third Coalition 54. Itastoration of tn
22. 111 m and Trafalgar bons
23. Austerlitz
the 55. Go
24. Confederation of
Congress of Vienna
25. Jena
57• The Island of Elba
26. Eylau
Zrnin
irIII
Rhine 56..
alit
o f Louis
~ 58. Additional Act
27. Friedland and Tilt 59. The Champ de Mai
28. Fontainebleau 60. Waterloo
29. Aranjeuz 61. Second Abdication
30. Bayonne 62. St. Helena
31. Bayles has been
eared u massed together in the
Already pon
criticisms which there have app those
three
Last
constituting the closing or twentieth
Thiers' Annals of the Consulate and
boookfs m.
volume
Empire of France, under._ Napoleon-such an over-
mass of evidence demonstrating the
wbeltning
Only fallacy not
of the conclusion the French His-
torian (might we not rather say Fabulist) has
arrived at in regard to the Crowning Battle of
Waterloo, but even, it must be said, of the very facts
marking every stage of that tremendous conflict,
that we may allow this sixtieth Book to pass by
sub silentio. Skimming but lightly over the sur-
face of the penultimate book (the 61st) relating to
" The Second Abdication," as being (like the epoch
or incident it describes) distractingly confused, all
but bewildering even in its confusion-we pause
by preference at that last scene of all in this
"strange eventful" Tragedy-Epic-Melodrama-
the History of Napoleon ! Book the Sixty-second,
and Last, it is marked-and the title of it is, simply
" St. Helena." It is a chapter or book worthy of
its theme. It is the noblest effusion of the genius,
and eloquence, and patriotism, and scholarship of
M. Thiers. It is one of the grandest tributes ever
yet offered to the immense and imperishable fame i

of Napoleon. He whose deathless
Lawgiver, is attested to the recognitich
future times by the- Code—Napoleon. lie
matchless glory as a Great Captain,
been asserted in burning words of admira-
tion by the chivalrous English Military His.
torian, Sir William Napier, who, at the close of
his Annals of the Peninsular War, has declared
Napoleon the Greet +o be comparable only to
liansibel,and seeonl to node. in a series of contrasts
as noble as any to be found among the wondrous
parallels in Plutarch, M. Thiers has placed the
fame and genius of. Napoleon in juxtaposition
successively with those Of Cwsar, of Alexander, of
Hannibal, of Charlemagne, This just, it is eloquent
.—this majestic series of comparisons. Even we, as
Englishmen, can now admit as mu .h very readily—
now( that so many ytats hs.ve elapse-d since this
modern Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal, Ch,:irlemsgne
bi eathed his last as a state prisoner at Longwood.
The recognition cif Napoleon's vast genius and of his
astonishing achievemenb can in no way deteriorate
surely from our national renown, can only tend to
signalise and to enhance it. For' has not England
inscribed upon her annals in characters of blood and
flame that she it was among the nations who pulled
down this Colossus ?
As an affecting specimen of M. Thiers' manner
as a narrator, here are the historian's reflections when
musing over the autopsy of Napoleon :
Theinspegilon of his body revealed several wounds, some
very sligh; and three very distinct. Of these three, one
was in his:head, one on the ring finger of the left hand,
' and a third in the left thigh, the last a very deep wotind
resulting from a bayonet thrust received at the siege of
'Toulon, Of these wounds the origin of the latter alone cart
historically ascertained. From the measures taken and
.the exact description made of the body, it appears that Na-
poleon was five feet two inches (FrenchaneasurO, the body
well proportioned, the feet and hands remarkable for the
regularity of their `form, the shoulders wide, the chmt well
developed, the neck a little short, but bearing firmly and
erect, the largest and best formed head ever submitted to
the investigations of science, and a countenance whose
beauty even death respected, of which his contemporaries
have preserved an ineffaceable remembrance, and of which
posterity will say, when comparing it with busts front the
antique, that it was one of the most beautiful that God had
ever made to manifest the workings of genius. His life so
pregnant in action, that it seems to comprise centuries, did
not last more than 52 years. MM. de Montholon and Mar-
chand dressed him in the uniform he preferred, that of the
Chasseurs of the luard-and placed tipon-his puispcnt head
the little hat he was accustomed to wear. A single pries
and a few friends prayed for some days beside his inanimate
body. What a wonderful lesson (conformable to the termi-
nation of his career) was presented by the profound solitude
thatsurrounded the death-bed of the man that the universe
had looked up to and flattered! To the honour of soldiers
it must be recorded, that as long as his coffin remained
open, the English troops defiled around. When, at last, the
tomb that was to receive him was completed, and which
was situate near the fountain whose waters had afforded
him some relief, his friends, followed by the Governor, the
staff of the island, the soldiers of the garrison, and the ma-
rines of the naval squadron, bore him to the spot where he
was to repoie until, when, in accordance,with his wishes, he
was transported to the banks of the Seine. The English sol-
diers fired a salute of cannon over his inanimate body, and
his companions in exile, having knelt for a while beside the
tomb that had just received the remains of the greatest man
the world had seen since Caesar and Charlemagne, prepared
to return to Europe. As a concluding lesson to the many
that may be derived from this tomb, we must add that the
exiles from St. Helena were received with general interest
even in England, whilst the unfortunate Hudson Lowe,
who was merely the instrument of his Government, was
met with coldness by-his countrymen, with ingratitude by
the Ministers he had obeyed, and with embarrassment by
his very friends I Eternal justice of Providence revealing
itself here below! At St. Helena Napoleon expiated the
misery he had caused the world, and those to whomit wag
allotted to punish him had to expiate the disrespect they
had shown to glory and genius!
Yet more affecting, in another sense, is the reflection,
or. yather, as M. Thiers himself calls it, the cry with
which the whole work is thus brought to a conclu-