The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-28

Il 1oV scalping of Beacon Hill to make way for improvement. Thirty feet down be removed. An old landmark was to disappear with the swelling summit at the rear of the State House. Bos- ton was then city of scarcely 35.- 900 inhabitants, and the lowering of Beacon Hill was an absorbing topic to it's people in the intervals of the receipt of foreign news, tidings from that great Europe which in the stir ring first quarter of the nineteenth century furnished so much sensation al reading matter.
 The records of Europe in 1911 did not abound with so many incidents that compelled attention as did those of immediately preceding years. No nation fell; no old dynasty was push ed aside by a newer or ruthlessly re- duced to a second rank. There was war in progress in Europe, France and England continued to fight one another by sea and land. Napo- leon had his hands full in Spain and Portugal. where Wellington was win- ming victories that enabled him to hold his own. These were triumphs feated Massena at Fuentes de Onoro on May 5, and Soult at Albuera May 16, for the British were not strong enough to make good their stay in Spain. Wellington had held the lines of Torres vedras, in Portugal all through the autumn and winter, and only emerged from them, when the bafffed French, falling back, af- forded him a chance to strike them some quick, sharp blows. ets Peace reigned. however, in the greater part of continental Europe. There was no fighting in Germany, Prussia was still humbled and dependent, Russia kept on a mask of friend1iness for France. and Austria, besides being allied to France by the marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise, had too vivid recollections of Wagram to seek prematurely a resort to arms.
 On March 20 that most unhappy of princes, Napoleon's son successive ly known as King of Rome, Prince of Parma and Duke of Reichstadt, was born. His birth was everywhere of importance It was believed by ninety nine commentators out of one hundred to be the most effectual guarantee of the Bonaparte dynasty. The clouds that hung over it's future were thought to be dissipated by this
 
 A baby's hand had strengthened that mighty hand which had so long held the rod of empire so poets said, and so dip1omatists thought. Now few relics of his childhood and youth kept in the imperial treasure house at Vienna and shown to the curious are the only. souv of Ma poleon's son. On March 20. 1911, the visions were all splendid to the Parisians, who counted the discharg- es Of cannon that announced the birth of an imperial child It had been announced that if Napoleon held a daughter in his arms twenty-one guns would be fired. When the twen- ty-first report was followed by the twenty-second the thousands in the streets went wild with joy, for they knew that a son had been born to the sovereign. The cannon ceased firing only at the hundred and first round There was no electric tele- graph to flash the tidings in sec ond to the uttermoet parts of the em- pire, but the semaphore was worklng and news was at once transmitted to Strasburg, where a special courier with relays of horses held ready in advance was waiting to start for V1- emma. Major Robelau, noted as a horseman and a hustler, had been lated at the time, as showing how rapidly distance could be covered when expedition was organized that though the King of Rome was born at 10 A. M., March 20, Major Robe lau delivered his message at the A. M. March 23 That message set Vienna wild with joy. for the people hailed it as presaging long period of peace in the maintenance of which both the imperial families of France and Austria would be interested. N 6oi iov nh horsefiesh to it's utmost speede and endurance Mime. Blanchard, the aero naut, was careering through French skies in a balloon from which she scattered handbflls announcing the birth of a son and heir of the Empe-s TOT.
 Many peasant or laborer looking up at the balloon ran to catch flut- tering paper and learned from it that there was a new inhabitant of the earth destined to be Napoleon IT, if all went we'll. All did not go well, and there is no sadder chapter in the history of the vanity of human wish es than that which tells the captive life and early death of the Duke of R Reichstadt. Called at his birth on hint from Metternich him self, the King of Rome, the title had become empty, even ridiculous. wherA he was 4 years old. Once when with his grandfather, the Emperor of Austria, the boy said he recalled peopling mailing him King of Rome and asked what it meant The grandfather dryly answered that it meant just as much as when he was called King of Jerusalem" that being among the many titles associat- ed with the Hapsburg monarchs. Re- gently it has been proposed in France that the ashes of the Duke of Reich stadt should be transferred from Vii emma to Paris and placed beside those of his father. The proposal was but received, and now appears to have been abandoned for lack of support The Duke of Reichstadt has been dead more than seventy eight years, but he is no deader than 
 Tn England, toward which so many Ara nerican eyes were anxiously direct ed in 1911, George HIS Ymalady' reached such stage as to leave no room for doubt that at T3 the recov- cry of what reason he ever had was hopeless His son, the Prince of Wales, afterward George w, formal Iy became Prince Regent February 5. There was the more anxiety in the American watchfulness of England be- cause not few of our trained ob- servers realized that the relations be- tween tn two countries would not go tween the two countries would not go sion suddenly snapping. England abated not jot of it's arrogant as- sumption to exercise the right of search and impressment on the high seas, and betweeen Napo1eon's de- cres setting up a paper blockade of