Connecticut western news., 1879-06-25
THE NAPOLEON FAMILY.
THE LAST OF A FALLEN DYNASTY DEATH
 OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL.

OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL.
 The son of Napoleon III. is dead
 trapped by zulus in ambush, and hi
 body pierced by poisoned spears. Tn
 Prince Imperial, who played at piekin
 up spent bullets while the eath-knel of the Empire was sounding, has fallel a victim to his own rashness at the mo ment when. the Republic declares itsel strong enough to intrust it's existence t the keeping of Paris. The dynasty tha was nursed among the mountains O Corsica comes to an end amid the path less wilderness of South Africa l; the bo, that was born in the purple just as tn. treaty of Paris put it's seal on the great ness of the third Empire, and whom the world hailed as the assured successor tc throne not less firm than the oldest 1T Europe, has gone down with the last remnant of the heritage of the man o1 destiny in skirmish with nameless sav' ages. It were tedious to exhaust the autitheses which such subject sug' gests, endless to dwell on the bitter irony of fate which closes the historical episode of Bonapartism. For the fate of this generous, brave, and modest young man, neither the contemporary annalist nor the future historian can have aught but pity; over the death of the cause which he represented, of the hopes of which he was the source and centre, no lover of freedom will drop a tear.
 It is but no years ago since Napoleon Bonaparte was born, not more than 80 years ago since he was recognized as one of the most prominent figures on the historic stage of Europe. Between the fall of the Directory and Sedan is an in- terval of 70 years, during half of which the Napoleonic idea was the most potent impulse in shaping the dest1nies of half the civilized world. What the first Napoleon thought and did need not be interpreted either by the acts or com- mentaries of his nephew. Such elements of greatness as both possessed differed even more in kind than in degree such influence for evil as was exercised by both was strikingly similar. Liberty, statesmanship, self-respect, withered be- fore the dry, metallic lustre of the i'm perial throne; charlatantry, time-ser- vice, sycophancy grew and fourished. The first Emperor would permit his own brothers to be but dummy kings the third made Ministers and Senators out of the alventurers and blacklegs who had been his fellow exiles and cocoon. spirators. Both were the products oi revolution which had completed the cir cult between despotism and chaos, and both owed the1r elevation to 8 sacrifice of liberty for order. The first Napoleon, false, cruel and selfish as he was, had g splendid dream of European reconstruc- tion whose realization might have put an end to war and antedated the slow adjustment of centuries. The third o1 the name, however pretentious, shallow and hypocritical, made France, for g time, powerful abroad and prosperous at home. But the exhaustion of 1915, which left the country prostrate before the allies and a helpless prey to tke re- vived tyranny of the Bourbons, followed as naturally the splendid brigandage of the first Empire, as did the rottenness of the entire fabric of civil and military organization which toppled down before the onset of the Germans after the licensed corruption and robbery of the second.
 That France has had for all time enough of this may be readily conceded. It does not follow, however, that the Prince who died in Zululand represented merely bankrupt faction and baseless expectancy. It was aft CT the ridiculous fasco of Strasburg that his father wrote from New York in 1887 "But if one day contending parties should overthrow existing power-as the example of the last fifty years permits me to expect and if, habituated as they have been for twenty years to despise authority, they sapped all the bases of the social edifce, then, perhaps, the name of Napoleon will be an anchor of safety for all that is generous and truely patriotic in France. J The fugitive who had merely made him. self the laughing stock of Paris stoutIy protested then that he was no !" ordinary adventurer," ," just as three years later. after the other ludicrous failure at Bou- logne, he confidently claimed to repre-. sent {" principle, cause, and defeat, and appealed to the principle of nationa sovereignty as the only one which the Bonaparte family-the issue of the revo- lution-could recognize. Who shall say that the Napoleonic idea of " the hier archy in democracy, equality in law recompense for merit," the pyramida Colossus, broad in the base and exalted in the head" had not chance of frui tion while the last inheritor of the rights conferred by thelaw of succession of the "5 Frimaire, Year KILL" yet survived It were perhaps rash to assume that i will be buried with him beyond all hope of resurrection, but for the present, al least, the French Republic has one pre- tender the less to fear, even though the party whose hope he was should transfer it's allegiance to the son of Jerome, who never was in the line of succession 8 all. The Zulu assegals that ended thu life of a gallant young soldier and pierced the heart of doting mother, half crazet with grief, have also removed one more obstacle from the path of human pro gress. The phrase sounds cruel, but i is not the first time that bad cause ha died with cue whom all men pitied.-N
 y. ISnaeS.