Year: 1859

Napoleon First In 1910.


Napoleon died on the 5th of May 1921.
The man who made that strangely minute
record of the transactions, even Of the min
utes that preceded his decease. was after
wards guest of the enthusiastic hospital
tiles of the Frenchmen of New Orleans.-
lie did not live to see the test of his work
of the embalmment of the Emperor. Dy-
ing in 1889, he passed away the year pre-
vious to that strange day when Napoleon
was again made visible to mortal eve, and
friend and follower started back as the
cerement was rolled from the face which
had seemed passed forever into the graves
| oblivion.


Nineteen years and five months had
gone. The Napoleon family, considered
as relic of a wild storm in government,
were scattered over the earth. Louis
Philippe deemed it policy to court the old
| sentiment Of the Nation by associating the
action of his son with the honors to the
dead and powerless Emperor. lie did not
realize that when he brought Napoleon to
France, "to the banks of the Seine,
among the French people l have loved"
as the will and wish of the Imperial Exile
plaintiyely expressed, he was building deep
and strong the basis on which the lever
of new and grander Revolution should
be placed.


At midnight on the 18th of October,
le4O, the exhumation commenced. The
Ninety-frstEnglish Regiment stood around
thegrave. There was labor of nine hours
before it was possibse to lift from the tomb
the enormous stone which covered it.
They who built that grave, built it for en-
durance. In their eyes, the scenes of st.
Helena had exhausted the influence of the
name, and they determined faithfully to-
preserve to the Island the trust in whose
keeping the name of this little mid-ocean
crag had become a world of history.


There We're prayers offered when the
coffin was attained, and this recognition of
the Power which rules the living and the
dead was made, one by one the encasing
metals were removed, and at last the inner
one was opened. Then the Napoleon of
the past was once more seen, and seen as
if on his bed. The form, the features were
revealed beneath the white lining, and
there was such recognition as shall never
again meet mortal eye.


But the quick eye of the amazed spec
.ators detected Immediately that one hand
1T was white as on the dav its living
beautv-was raised out of the fixed atti-
tude of the dead There was that sudden
though Int of horror in this. Had he breath
ed and lived and moved after the moment
when the curtain of the coffin-id fell upon
him? Those who have ever feItthe in
tensity of such. a doubt, Gt is but the Gre
alton of gloomy fancy,) can realize what
thllled that group of men.


All, said General Bertrand do you not
remember that after we had arranged
his limbs, and just before we left him, |
raised that hand to kiss it


The decay of time had dimmed the Or
naments, except that the Cross of the Le-
gion Of Honor was bright A similar in
cident, it is said, attended the exhumation
of Lord Stirling, at Albany, where a silver
decoration had been worn glttered amidst
the dust of the coffin.


One soldier had never left the tomb
Faithfully since the day Of 1921, he had
kept his watch and ward. He was indeed
the Old Guard who never deserted his En-
peror, and when he was, first of all, allow
cd to land on the arrival of France, he was
met and embraced by the Generals, who
thought i. honor thus to receive the un-
swerving friend.


Since then the Queen of England has, in
the truthful nobeness of her character,
and in the fathfulness of the recompenses
that time gives to History, visited his
tomb.


Time has not yet woven, fast as its shut
tie plies the veil thick enough to hide
| from us the minute incidents of such won
derful events. Still, for us, the word Ma
poleon is one of actual Empire. Less in
territorial power than before, but in moral
strength immeasnrably greater. The fam
| lily of the Corsican is in the chronicles of
Crowns, and he who bears the name clus-
tiers around it the associations of science
and civilization first, and Of war only as a
chapter closed almost as suddenly as COM
menced.