Minnesota weekly times. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1859, 1855-04-03

Remarks Of the London Times ON the death Of Mich
elias, Emperor 81 Russia. 0aa
The London Times Of the Sd inst, contains the
following striking commentary upon the death of
the Emperor Nicholas: st
1t is hardly possible to overrate the Importance
of the extinction of this single life in the present
circumstances of this and other countries. Its eff
feet must be greater and immediate, and it is more
than probable that the bloody struggle impending
before Sebastopol, in which thousands of lives
would certainly be sacrificed. may be spared by
the event which we announce this morning. In
the case of the extinction of despotic monarch
like the Emperor of Russia, whose will was the
law of fifty or sixty millions of people, the policy
he embodied while living, dies with him, and the
restoration of peace becomes, under the circum-
stances, less matter of doubt than of certainty.
The fate which has ovcrtaken this great but un-
scrupulous monarchs supposing him to have died a
natural, and not like many of his predecessors, a
violent death, demonstrates in tho strongest pos
sible manner, how feeble the most potent become
when unsustained by that moral power which is
stronger than cannons or bayonets, or the most
deadly weapons of war. Twelve months back,
before the declaration of hostilitics, Nicholas
Romanef who lies mass of clay in his ancestral
halls on the Neva, was the most proud, the most
powerful and the most arrogant sovereign on this
planet; but this small interval of time has served
the humbest of his serfs; for his nefarious at
tempt to subjugate weak and near neighbor, he
outraged Justice, provoked the hostility of the
Western Powers, stirred up resistance throughout
Europe to his dictatlon, and lived long enough to
discover that the prepared strength of a long
reign and almost bOundless empire, was utterly
futile in the pursuit of bad purpose.
The most conservative ruler in the world fell
almost literally by his own hand when he pushed
his aggressions on the property of others beyond
the bounds of endurance. The violation of the
commandment which told him to respect his neigh
boris property ended in his destructiOn-in that
prostration of the mental and the physical powers
which superinduced apoplexy.
Although our enemy, it is useless to deny that
the dead Gar was great man as we'll a
mighty potentatc. Notwithstanding the mean-
choly fact that a quarter of a million of human
creatures have persisted one way or another since
this war began-sacrifced, in point of fact, to the
Unsuitable ambition of an INSCRIPTIONS ruler, yet
he had many fine qualities Of head and heart, and
to such of the British nation settled in Russia,
he was extremely partial, and always paid them
the most marked attention. The lion preys not
upon carcasses. We can afford to do justice to
departed worth even in the person of foe, and it
is not too much to say that if he had terminated
his career without the Turkish aggression which
produced this war, history would have enrolled
him amongst the most intellectual and successful
monarchs of modern Europe. Perhaps it is as
we'll for the future peace Of the world that this
outbreak of Russian rapacity took place when it
did, for guarantees will now be forced which will
effectually prevent its repetition. The fangs of
the wolf will be drawn, and the lesson which he
has been taught will tell upon his sue essors for
centuries. The Car was born on the 9th July,
1899 and if he had lived until summer, would
have attained his fifty ninth year. He died not of
old age, but of a broken heart-of the disappoint-
60 &c Ill
of aggrandizment, the prostraton of all his hopes
"a terrible example of the effects of unhallowed
ambition.
Before great event like this all the other for
cign affairs of the week fade into insignifcance.
BONAPARTE's POVERTY IN EARLY LIFE.
Theirs, in his History of the Consulate, rccites
some very strange and previously unknown par
tculars respecting the carly life and pcnury Of
Napoleon Bonaparte. 1t appears that, after he
had obtained subaltern's commission in the
French service, by his skill and daring at Tulon,
he lived some time in Paris in obscure lodgings,
and in such extreme poverty that he was often
without the means of paying ten sous (ten cents)
for his dinner, and frequently went without any
at all. lie was under the necessity of borrow
ing small sums, and even worn out clothes, from
his acquaintance. lie and his brother Louis,
afterwards King of Holland, had at one time only
a coat between them, SO that the brothers could
only 60 out alternately, time about. AT this crl-
sis, the chief benefactor Of the future Emperor
and cOnqueror, cat whose mighty name the world
grew palc,'' was the actor TaIina, who often gavo
him food and money. Napolcon's face aft,r-
wards so famed for its classical mould was during
that period of starvation, harsh and angular in
its lineaments, with projecting cheek His
meagcr form brought on an unpleasant and un-
slightly cutaneous disease, of type so virulent
and malignant that it took all the skill and ASST
duty of his accomplished physician, Corvisart, to
cxpel it after duration Of more than ten years.
The squa!id beggar then, the SPLENDID emperor
afterwards the thread-bare habiliaments and i'm
pcrial mantle; the meager food and gorgeous
banquet; the friendship of poor actor, the hon.
age and terror of the world; an exile and pris-
oner. Such are the ups and downs of this change
full life; such are the lights and shadows of the
great and mighty.
Cy1 Ten thousand English troops in the Cri-