The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-15 00:00:00

" On the 4th of December, 1508, he entered the capital
of Spain, where his star began to grow pale.
" On the 16th of December, 1809, he divorced Jose-
phine, in order to form a closer connexion with the old
monarchical system, which he had first so valiantly com-
bated ; he divorced, we may say, with himself and with
posterity.
" Three years later, on the 20th of December, 1812,
leaving his army and his fortune in the ice of Russia, he
re-entered Paris as a fugitive.
" It is finally in the month of December his mortal re-
mains return to Paris, after 25 years' exile, to seek a tomb
which he so ardently desired on his death bed. His last
wish, at least, has been accomplished.
" But Fho are the men about to receive his remains ?
I,';.:iat hands will commit him to the funereal vault ?
Strange fatality ! We omit the names we are not allowed
to pronounce. We will net either speak of the old peni-
tent conqueror of Toulouse. He is a mere shadow, and
we perceive-behind this too transparent figure the real de-
positary of the ministerial power, the chief of the Cabinet,
M. Guizot. Thus the missioa of laying in his tomb the
man of St. Ilelena devolves on the protege of the Abbe
Montetquieu, the man of Ghent.'
" We have just recapitulated the anniversaries of the
Emperor. The man of Ghent has also his own. We
shall content ourselves with merely mentioning one, and
not heed the others.

" It was on the 15th of December, 1815, the Prevotal
Courts were instituted, in which M. Guizot, the Secretary-
General of the Minister of Justice, acted so conspicuous a
part. Now, against whom were sinister tribunals or-
ganized? Against the Emperor and the remains of the
empire. Is it then to commemorate this anniversary of
sanguinary memory the man of Ghent has fixed the impe•
rial funeral for the 15th of December? The coincidence
is deplorable ; it would have been better to have chosen
the 2d ; on that day blood also flowed, but it was not shed
at the foot of the Prevotal Courts; it was on the field of
battle of Austerlitz.

" Do what you will, sound your trumpets, fire your
cannon, unfold your banners, you will not succeed in im-
parting to the obsequies of the vanquished of Waterloo a
becoming character. Your funeral ceremony will want
moral grandeur, you will convert into a theatrical show
what ought to be a national solemnity. You are not
equal to the accomplishment of such a ceremony.
"The moment would be badly chosen to discuss coolly
the titles of Napoleon and submit his memory to the pos-
thumous censure of Egyptian kings; the long agony of
St. Helena commands indulgence; but although this
terrible expiation has effaced many faults and many re-
collections, we, the children of the new democracy, let us
not forget that, if the conqueror of Austerli.z achieved
great feats, the conquerors of the Argonne and Fleurus
had likewise achieved as great, and that they made their
glory serve the cause of liberty, whilst the empire had
placed liberty under the feet of glory. Napoleon appears
to us always accompanied by his prefects, his police, his
grand dignitaries, and that oppressive and dark adminis-
tration which still keeps hold of France by its iron grasp.
" But let us not recriminate with death, it is not the
destroyer of the tribune, the press, and all our public
liberties the people of Paris will receive to-morrow
at the triumphal arch of l'Etoile, it is the young
conqueror of Arcole, Rivoli, of the Pyramids—it is
the proud negotiator of Leoben, the great plebeian
captain who loved France too well to suffer her to bo
dictated to by strangers, and who, to his last hour, was
the faithful guardian of the national dignity and honour ;
for there were two men in that man—the interior

man, who ought to be brought to a severe account by de-
mocracy, and the exterior man who, unknowingly, and in
spite of himself, was one of the most powerful and for-
midable agents of that very democracy which he so much
dreaded ; that is the man whcm we salute with the name
of great, whose memory we honour, and whose coffin the
winisfre de l'etranyer eonnot contemplate without exposing
himself to hear his accusing voice.
" No, your France, such as you made her to your
image, is not the France he fancied in his island. He be-
held her still great, and you have lessened her by shaping
her to your height, He imagined her brave, generous, in-
telligent, sympathetic, enthusiastic, as in her heroic days,
and you made her a nation of cowards, egotists, petty shop-
keepers, bowed to the brutal and stupid worship of material
interests. During the last 25 years, Europe has held its
foot on our throat and its lance on our heart, and that ap-
pears to you natural and legitimate : you are astonished
that hearts should shudder, that civilization should take
alarm ; because you feel nothing, you arc heartless, and
accordingly cannot conceive any great thoughts ; because,
in short, there are no pulsations under your left breast.
" Imperial France made up for the absence of liberty
by her glory. The France of 1840 has no more glory, and
where arc her liberties? The insolence of the Allies ex-
ceeds all bounds ; they speak to us with irony on their
lips ; they have even ceased to threaten us ; they hold us
in contempt, Still Ministers were found to accept, to
sanction all this ignominy—to justify it from the tribune,
in the face of the French nation; and those are the men
who, on Tuesday, arc to welcome the illustrious exile I He
only required this last affront to complete his torture I It
would have been preferable to allow him to rest in peace
far from France, which has ceased to be his France, under
the shade of an African weeping willow.
" What I Ministers of Louis Philippe, you have kissed
the boots of the Czar, insulted, shot after the victory the
vanquished of Waterloo, and you have not the modesty to
decline assisting at a ceremony, where your presence is
impossible, and you will dare to follow the cortege ! No,
you cannot. Would you not be then under the haute sur-
veillance of the Allies? They would control your gestures,
your looks ; they would net even tolerate the feigned ra-
thusiasm of a mendacious recantation. We defy you to
pass, without looking down on the bridge of Jena, before
the street of Austerlitz, names which your ears cannot bear
to hear. Prussia and Austria forbid it, and M. de Pahlrn
would frown if you presumed to pronounce them. Be par.
ticularly cautious not to displease your friend Palmerston,
lest he should take it into his head to sweep all that.'
" You wish to live with the aid of foreigners ; foreigners
will be your destruction, for although you have sunk France
ever so low, she will not lend herself tamely to the con-
summation of her suicide. Let the funeral of the Em-
peror, then, rekindle the enthusiasm of the country in
hearts too long extinct I Napoleon possessed in the high-
est degree the sentiment of nationality ; he bore it in his
heart, it was as it were incarnate in him. That nationality
is now in peril ; let us save it. 0 France, if thou be'st
not on thy guard, those men will inter it with thy Emperor
in the vaults of the Invalides.

" Tho kith of December should not remain a sterile
day. The people must not assemble round those noble
ashes as they would round an ordinary coffin ; they ought
to derive from it a great political lesson, and return from
the funeral ceremony with that faith in themselves and
that invit:eible force which they formerly had, and which
they ought never to have lost. If this were not the case,
the fitheral of Napoleon would be a vain pomp, and it
would be said of us that we were no longer fit for Any
thing but to bury our dead."