The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-03-17

Jonn Clark Ridpath-
In poor health and general morhiditv of
mind. By this time his arbitrary Character
nad begun to show itself in full force.
once at home. he played the despot- He
hectored all his kinsfolk. with the exceD
uon OF the mother. and she could hardly
stand MS impetuosity, wfllfulness and
sioom His old and equity great uncle
-ucieh' from being the main stay of the
Idrnlly' was now about to die. Napoleon
! SOusht 70 alleviate the distresses Of the
household; but his resources were limited.
and his ambitions We're constantly con-
affection.
Home again after an absence of nearly
nine years, the young officer busted him
sen more with things great than things
I niue. lie was more concerned with the
/ PohIlcal condition of the world than with
the daily needs of his mothers house. He
oWelt more on the state of Corsica than
| on the emptiness of Mime. Bonaparte's
cuislne-more on the woes Of Ajaccio than
on those of his brothers and sisters
stomachs. He conceived himself to be
the patriot par excellence of his age, and
| spent more time in delivering socialistic
monoiogues than in contriving the means
10 rescue the family from impending ruin.
II was at this iuncture that Napoleon
| began to concern himself especially about
| the institutions and history of England.
Along with his Necker he studied Smiths
| wealth of Nations" then only twelve
years from the press. The Elizabethan age
not indeed for the intellectual glory that
was IN 1t. but for it's political intrigues-
| impressed him greatly; and he undertook
| to do into fiction the features of that era
| in novel entitled the Count of Essex"
| Then he flew back to his History of Cor
sica,' revised the parts which he had sent
/ 10 the Able Raynal, and pressed on with
the rest. Alongside of Voltaire, he would
set up rival production of his own, called
| the Masked Prophet'-a marvellous and
| impossible invention of Persia! Litera-
/ ture was thus mixed with affairs; fiction
| 1ourished at the meager meals which Ma
| dame Bonaporte was able to set for her
| family; anathemas of Joseph's unprofita-
BILE wine shop were illuminated with para
| graphs about the glories of rebellion; and
| the mulberry orchard back of Ajaccio was
| cursed in the middle of an apostrophic
peroration about the regeneration of man
| kind!
Bonapartes leave of absence-so eagerly
| sought-soon became as intoerabe to
him as to the rest. His paper gave him
privilege to be away from his command
/ for six months; but before the end of the
| fourth mountaineering casuistcal rea-
| sons-he impatiently left Corsica to rejoin
his company. During his stay in the is
/ land, he had accomplished something
/
any other. He had induced the French in
| tendant to agree to allow his mothers
| claim He had pushed forward the inert
| Joseph to try the law as a profession, and
had seen him installed a Bastia. He had
urged upon his equity uncle the necessi-
| ty Of patriotism! He had drawn up and
submitted a system of coast defenses for
| the principal ports of the island. He had
prepared a scheme for the creation of an
| insular army. He had studied and writ
| ten necessarily at a furious speed, COM
| pleting his oriental novel and his History
| of Corsica" The latter was cast in the
| epistolary form, and was dedicated to
| Monseigneur Marbouff, now promoted
to the see of Sens.
Meanwhile the Regiment La Fere had
been ordered from Douai. to Auxonne, in
Cote dor, 1872 miles from Paris Thither
Napoleon repaired, to rejoin his COM
| mand in the last week of May. 1888 He
took with him the manuscript of
his History of Corsica" seek
either at Valence or Lyons or
| Auxonne or Paris or anywhere else in this
mundane sphere forever. In that same
| week Alexander Hamilton wrote his
last paper for The Federalist One month
previously, from the presses of Strahan
and Cadell, in the Strand, was issued, by
the author, on his fifty-frst birthday. the
1t would be impossible to define the mem
| tai condition of Napoleon at this stage
| of his development. Politically-for though
a soldier he was always a politician-he
went hating between two forces The
| one tendency drew him powerfully toward
| the local independence of his native
| island. This involved hatred of the con-
quest and annexation of Corsica to France
| 1t also involved hatred of France itself;
| of the French race; and of the French
| monarchy in particular But the other
| tendency drew Franceward with equal
stress. 1t was from the powerful fact of
France that all benefits had thus far
flowed to the family of Bonaparte BY
France he had himself been educated Be
sides, Corsica, even as an independent
state, was a limited field of action. France
is great. France offers worldwide dis
tinction. Our commission as lieutenant of
artillery is a French commission, and our
very sword is a French blade
But our History of Corsica" is a patri-
otto and insurrectionary document 1t is
inconsistent with our allegiance, and hurt
full to what France may promise here
after. Therefore, we would better shut
fle, and rewrite our book. We will nut il
into the mouth of Corsican patriot of
the old Genoese faction, to which the
family of our mother Ramolino once be-
longed. In it's present form we make a
copy of 1t, and send it to the great Paoli
in London; but he returns it to us. putting
us off with the counsel that we are as vet
immature, too young for writing history, -
and adding words to the effect that our
| book is not sufficiently original. In truth.
our mind is a vortex, a maelstrom of
conflicting tides. Here at Auxonne, during
our stay of eighteen months, we will sit
down again, Unsuitable, in solitary gloom,
and devour the greatest things thought
and written by men whom we shall one day
surpass and eclipse.
John Clark Ridpath.
Lent in Washington.