Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/710

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some time at Ludlow castle on parole. Every sincere effort to save Napoleon after 1814 failing, he returned to Italy and spent the remainder of his life in lettered leisure. Lucien might have averred with justice at the close of his prolonged political career, that he had fought throughout for his convictions. His principles, indeed, have stood as yet; Napoleon's have undergone utter shipwreck: nor would Lucien's natural eloquence have been listened to with unconcern, at any period when bulletins and pretences fell powerless on the ear of Europe. The autumn of his life was spent at Canino. The Pope adorned him with a princedom; and he repaid the gift by a generous reception of strangers, and efforts for promotion of the arts. He wrote an epic on Charlemagne in two quarto volumes, which few persons have read;—another instance of orators not being poets. His estate being in old Etruria, he had the satisfaction to disinter valuable Etruscan antiquities; and he formed a museum superior to any other existing. It was an object visited by every classical traveller in Italy. At some assemblies in Rome the princess of Canino—equally skilled in antiquities with Lucien—created a great sensation by her magnificent parure of jewels, obtained from old tombs on her husband's estate. Lucien died at his residence in 1840, having reached the age of sixty-five. It were useless, although curious, to speculate as to the probable present condition of Europe, had the arbiter of its fates partaken more of the integrity, the self-abandonment, the human affections, as well as of the promptitude, courage, and perseverance of Lucien. Lucien left many descendants; among his sons we find Pierre Bonaparte, somewhat known in French politics. Lætitia, wife of Mr. Wyse, is his grandchild.

(b.) BONAPARTE, Charles Lucien, prince of Canino and Musignano, the eldest son of Lucien, born in Paris in 1803. This prince has special claims to notice. Inheriting the literary tastes of his father, although following them out according to his own predilections, he became one of the best ornithologists and naturalists of our time. During his residence in the United States he followed the track of our own Wilson, not, as men often do, seeking for a scientific position by picking up crumbs left by predecessors, but really and in good faith with a view to complete Wilson's great work. Among the three, Audubon, Wilson, and Charles Lucien, it were difficult to award the preeminence. They had different and special faculties, and each of them did his part so well that the union of their works forms the most gorgeous and complete ornithology ever yet completed regarding any great region of the earth. It falls, we think, as an important duty, to the government of the United States—already rich in desert with regard to such achievements—to reproduce these great works in a style befitting them. The Prince on his return to Italy did not lay aside his tastes. He produced, of course at great expense to himself, the "Iconografia della Fauna Italica," in three superb volumes folio,—a work yet unrivalled in illustration of the animal kingdoms of Italy. To Charles Lucien the honour is unquestionably due of originating those scientific congresses within Italy, which may establish a communion founded on considerations more general than political ones; and he was a favourite guest at the meetings of the British Association in England, to which people sometimes crowded, to see in a living face the almost exact effigy of the superb Napoleon.—It was impossible for a prince of this family, and of so much intelligence, to abide inactive and obscure amidst the events that stirred and shook Italy during 1848, 1849, and 1850. With other leading Italian noblemen, he hastened to sustain the reforming Pope; but his associations were too broad to permit his desertion of reform, at the nod of the pontiff. He abode by the national government at Rome, and was president of the house of deputies, while Mazzini was triumvir. His prudence taught him that resistance to the arms of France ought not to be carried out after success had become impossible: in our modern age, a Curtius would be a rash and imprudent man, simply because no Curtius could be of the slightest use. The Prince did not abandon his opinions; he took again to science, but he never "turned his back on himself." Desirous to reach England, he solicited liberty to pass through France. His cousin, the present emperor, granted his request, but on the condition that Prince Lucien should travel under surveillance of the police. It must have seemed pregnant with humour to the true head of the House of Bonaparte, that, in the centre of France, he dared not dine except in presence of a gendarme!—The prince died in 1857.

IV. BONAPARTE, Louis, fourth son of Carlo; born in 1778; died in 1846. Louis was a quiet unobtrusive man, given somewhat to sentiment, and as keen an admirer of Rousseau as his great brother once was; he was an author likewise, his works being "Marie ou les peines de l'amour," by no means a work worthy of immortality; and a thoroughly good and candid account of his own government, "Documens Historiques et Reflexions sur le gouvernement de la Hollande." After having been obliged, by the fiat of Napoleon, to surrender an early and sincere attachment, he married unwillingly Hortense, daughter of Josephine. They separated soon, and were finally divorced; it is certain that their life together was not a happy one; nor are authorities yet agreed that a full certificate is due to the brilliant Hortense, on the point of fidelity to her spouse. Three children were born by Hortense in wedlock, viz., Napoleon, who died in 1807, after having been designated by the Emperor as his successor; Napoleon-Louis, who died in 1831; and Charles-Louis-Napoleon, the present possessor of supreme power in France. In 1806, Louis was offered by the States-General the title of king of Holland. The offer was made under dictation; but, had Louis been free, the people of that country would never have regretted their choice. He was not inferior in his sense of duty to Joseph; and he felt, after accepting its crown, that Holland was his country—not France. Nothing could well be in greater disaccord with the notions and policy of his brother, who accounted him only as a lieutenant, whose first duty was submission:—at that very time Napoleon was instructing Joseph how, by sufficient confiscations, and the dotation of French soldiers out of these, Naples might be changed into a French military colony! On Louis' resignation, the Emperor named his son as his successor, addressing him in words which men in those days thought not too shameful for publication in the Moniteur, "Never forget that whatever position you may be required to occupy—in order to conform to my line of politics and the interest of my empire,—your first duty must always regard me, your second must have reference to France. All your other duties, even those towards the countries which I commit to your charge, are secondary to these primary obligations." Is it astonishing that Napoleon fell? This world below is not yet quite ripe for a Kehama! Minor disagreements on matters which touched the honour of Louis, were fast consolidating into a permanent coolness, when an event occurred that left the king of Holland no choice or alternative. The wealth and importance of that country have ever come from its commerce; and, of all successful or lucrative commerce, freedom of exchange is a prime and indispensable condition. Urged by his blind, or rather insane hatred of Great Britain, and utterly miscalculating his forces, the Emperor established what was termed the "Continental System," or a virtual blockade on paper, of every British commercial port. The states of Holland could not, consistently with their own preservation, give assent to the destruction of intercourse with Great Britain; and Louis protested as their representative. He obtained at first some concessions; yielded, however, only that they might be recalled. The integrity and clear insight of his character as derived from his mother, prevailed without a struggle; and he abdicated a sovereignty which—carrying with it no opportunity for the use of wisdom or the practice of beneficence—could have, for an honourable man, no charms. The effort to make the son of Louis a viceroy failed, and Holland was absorbed in France:—in the words of his tool Champagny, whom Napoleon had put forward as a responsible minister, "Holland being in a manner an emanation from the territory of France, and necessary to the full complement of the empire!" Surely the time will come when transactions like these, shall be rightly estimated by history. Louis Bonaparte will at that time receive the high reward which belongs to simple honesty manifested in high places, and in the face of great difficulties and temptations. This prince lived until 1846 in comparative retirement, assuming the title of Count of St. Leu.

V. (a.) BONAPARTE, Jerome, the youngest of the family, was born at Montpellier in 1784. We have not to record in the case of Jerome any of those struggles and sacrifices that consumed the happiness and thwarted the energies of Joseph, Louis, and Lucien. He was a man of considerable ability, but it may be doubted whether considerations would ever have weighed with him, which assuredly would have been held imperative by Madame Mère, but which, all the world knows, were lightly esteemed