To many students of modern history the thought must have occurred, that it is to France we owe all that is most romantic in European archives. Looking back over three centuries only, how comparatively prosaic would their annals appear, without the court chronicles of lo Grand Monarque, the terrible tragedy of the French Revolution, the stories of the first and second empires, with their fiction-dwarfing vicissitudes Such impression has been deepened in one's mind by the recently published ' New Letters of Napoleon I." These papers are ssid to have been formerly withheld by command of Napoleon ILI, as disparaging to his great predecessor's personal character, or detracting from the prestige of his near relatives and trusted agents. However true this may be as to the last-named motive of suppression veri (though we do not think Napoleon's kindred, at least, had any character to lose), it does not strike us that these letters reveal distinctly fresh characteristics of their writer, but merely deepen the lines of the famous and familiar portrait—the genius for domination, the extraordinary self-confidence, the inextinguishable hopefulness, the all-devouring ambition, the ferocious disregard of human es, diplomacy degraded into duplicity and cunning. While unquestionably the nobler side of the Emperor's character is not without demonstration in this volume we are reminded of his generous spirit of clanship, his patience with the brethren so unworthy of his gifts. here is real pathos in some of his correspondence with these men, whose petty self-seeking and treacherous ingratitude servo to illustrate their benefactor's long-suffering placability.
The brother on whom, from his childhood, he had lavished affection and kindness, Louis, King of Holland, in the very act of sowing discord between his ki and Franco, is taken rvice Dr. Latour shall render him the last storm clouds are shadowing his career, he writes to Madame Mere: Louis shows little gener i thus coming to insult me, and obliging me to act severely, when the whole of Europe is rising up against me, and my heart is wrung with anguish, But I am ready to forgive him; not as remembering his conduct of the last ten years, but the love I bore him in his childhood.'
Perhapsno Napoleonic record has brought out, az do many of these letters, the extraordinary attention to minutia in e department of imperial control, which, wh contrasting so curiously with the colossal outlines of the great conqueror's projects, yet doubtless contributed immeaaurably to their achievement. Now it is the title of an Amsterdam newspaper, which mus€ be changed to the Courrier; Moniteur suggests government enders ment. Now it is the ceremonial detail of the Archduchess Marie Louise's progress to Paris for their marriage, Then general must be summoned by post, not telegraph (whatever process in those pre-electric days, may be implied); as the latter would mislead him s to his importance. Where military arrangements are concerned, such particularity is ubiquitous and incessant.
The volume would be almost worth iasuing if only for the crowning revelation of character contained in the closing letter, written to his brother Joseph, his then representative in Paris. The very date is Filling, June 19, 1815! Waterloo fought 8 few short hours ago All is not lost. I shall atill have 150,000 men remaining..... I will horse my artillery with carriage-horses I will raise 100,000 conscripts: I will raise the whole of Dauphine, the Lyonnais, and Burgundy: I will overwhelm the enemy." One seems to hear the echo of the victorious vauntings graven on stone by haughty Assyrian despots, in zenith of power and flush of conquest, rather than the utterance of a vanquished fugitive in desperate extremity. Truly we have here the ruling passion strong in defeat Hundreds of thousands yot to be added to the millions he has already massed for massacre, all Europe Yet is there an undeniable grandeur in such unquenchable pluck; nor can one withhold from this fallen tyrant a certain admiring compassion—even though it be compassion as misplaced as that expressed by the little child gazing on the beasta of prey in Doré's picture of Neronian porsecution, The Arena after the Confiict "Mother, one of those poor tigers has no Christian to eat."
This publication would gain in interest for the general reader, wore the letters linked together by occasional, however light, historic notes.
Autoz Jann Motemma.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.