The Shasta courier., 1860-08-04
Jerome BonaParte.

The following brief sketch Of this remarkable
man, of whose death we have recently learned,
was published some time since in the Cincinnati
Enquirer. 1t wilirepay perusal;
/ 1t has seldom fallen to the lot of man to see
such amazing vicissitudes Of fortune, affecting
/ himself and family, as has been witnessed by
! the parsonage whose name heads this article
/ The dreams of romance have been excelled by
the actual realities Of life. lie is the only sur
viving brother of the illustrious Napoleon, and
was born in 1884. So long has the latter been
an historical character, that, at first, it appears
almcst impossible that the great conqueror, who,
after running the most remarkable career of
twenty years that the world ever saw, termina-
ted it by his death, nearly forty years ago upon
the rock of st. Helena, should have brother
now occupying high position in the French
Government.
Of all his family, he alone is permitted to wit
ness both their remarkable rise in prosperity
and fortune and their subsequent tremendous
downfall, and their equally wonderful return to
the height of power and influence. His recol-
lection goes back to the time when the family
of Bonaparte was not known beyond the range
OF few friends and acquantances, and when
its members in private life were compelled to
struggle in obscurity with penury and misfor-
tune. He recollect his mother, a widow
with a large family of children upon her hands,
and when it required stern conflict to obtain
for them the necessary means for subsistence
He was in early manhood when the genius of
his brother first burst upon the world, and open
ed to his relatives visions OF power and splendor
that never, in the widest flights of imagination
had they previously entertained. He saw his
brothers and sisters placed by the magic wand
of Napoleon, upon nearly all the thrones of Eu-
rope, and decked with diadems and coronets
For the first time in the history of Europe was
the extraordinary spectacle observed of family
Of private citizens parcelng thrones and crowns
among themselves as if they had been the
merest baubles. Jerome was thirty-one years
old when the dark clouds of misfortune and
disaster gathered black and heavy over the for
tunes Of his family, and when the storm came
that swept them from the height of grandeur
and glory, into the depth of humiliation and
debasement He saw the star of the Bonaparte
destinY,so often apostrophized by Napoleon, sink
beneath the clouds, apparently never to rise
again. For nearly forty years the blackness OF
night enyeoped it. Not of the original
family saw this long night to a close, save Je-
rome; as. before it again emerged from the po-
Itical horizon, they were all deceased. Jerome
has had the remarkable felicity to see the for
tunes of his family re-establshed under new
Napoleonic dynasty.
One of the chiefs of the old empire, he holds
similar position in the new. He directs the
eounsels of the Regent Empress Eugenie, as he
had previously done those of Maria Louisa
great historical monument fthe past is this old
King jerome, who personally has witnessed the
most remarkable family history that the world
has ever seen. 1t is not yet finished. He has
not yet attained the most extreme old age, and
it is possible that he may see events affecting
his family quite as startling and remarkable as
those which have hitherto characterized its Ca
reer.