who had only just landed in America and re-embarked, was to be seen in the streets of London. A report had been spread that he had pledged his word to remain in America for ten years; but this report, it appears, had no foundation in truth, and was raised, his adherents said, from malicious motives. Scarcely had he arrived in London, when the news of his mother's illness caused him to return once more to Switzerland. Here, after receiving her last breath, (5th October, 1837,) he continued to reside, till, finding that he was likely to be the occasion of a rupture between the French and Swiss governments, he voluntarily returned to London. For more than two years he remained in the British capital, one of the bevy of distinguished foreigners that the Londoners like to point out to each other in the parks or at the opera. Regarding his habits during this period, one of his eulogists has taken care to be sufficiently particular; telling us how the Prince uniformly rose at six o'clock; worked till mid-day; then breakfasted and read the journals, causing notes to be taken of what interested him; at two, received visitors; at four or five, rode out; at seven, dined, &c., &c.-in all respects, it seems, the very nephew of his uncle! One of the fruits of those rather apocryphal laborious mornings was the Idées Napoléoniennes, of which everybody must have heard; a sort of pamphlet purporting to be an exposition of the main ideas that had formed the political creed of the Emperor. This production, the most celebrated of the author's writings, is, as our readers may find out on trial, the poorest imaginable series of sententious commonplaces. The pitiful result of the Strasbourg affair, it might be supposed, would have effectually cured the Prince of all such sudden strokes for the future. But his impetuosity was incorrigible; and the very ridicule that his former trial had provoked, prompted him to make a new one that might succeed better. Accordingly, when everybody had ceased to think of him, he again flashed into notice. The time chosen for his new attempt did not seem unpropitious. Still less attached to the dynasty of Louis Philippe than in 1836, the French nation chanced, in the year 1840, to be under the influence of one of those emotional frenzies to which it is so liable, the cause of the excitement being nothing else than the expected arrival of the remains of Napoleon from St. Helena. Availing himself of the Napoleonic fever thus originated, Louis Napoleon resolved to land in France, | effect a revolution, drive out the Orleans family, and as it were prepare the country for his uncle's reception. The means for effecting all this did not appear by any means formidable. On Sunday, the 4th of August, 1840, a small hired steamer, The City of Edinburgh, Capt. Crow, commander, dropped down the Thames from London, with what seemed a pleasure-party of foreigners on board. There were about sixty passengers in all, including gentlemen, grooms, lacqueys, &c.; and the place of destination was said to be Hamburgh. But when the steamer was out at sea on the 5th, the Prince harangued his companions, told them the object of the voyage, distributed money among them, and caused them all to put on false French uniforms which he had brought with him. Captain Crow received orders to make for Boulogne; and during the rest of the voyage, the cabin was the scene of feasting and uproar. Captain Crow had never seen people. drink so much, he afterwards deposed in the witness-box; and poor Hobbs, the steward, did nothing all night but draw corks. By midnight the steamer was off the French coast, and at six o'clock in the morning of the 6th, the party landed at Vimereux, near Boulogne. Having formed in marching order, they set out for the town, the Prince at their head, after him an officer carrying a gilt eagle, and then the men in uniform. The Prince had with him a sum of 500,000 francs (£20,000) in bank-notes and gold; his companions likewise carried bags of money and bottles of rum. Other parts of the furniture of the expedition were a live eagle, which, however, never made its appearance, and copies of three proclamations privately printed in England, one addressed to the French people, another to the army, and a third to the department of Pas-deCalais. Passing a custom-house station, where the men would have nothing to do with them, the band, with a crowd of fishermen, children, &c., hallooing in their train, reached Boulogne, the garrison of which consisted of two companies of the 42d line. The soldiers were at breakfast in the barracks when the party entered. Rum was distributed as well as money; the soldiers were ordered to cry Vive l'Empereur; and Louis Napoleon, addressing them, promised them promotion if they would join him. Totally confused and bewildered, and seeing one of their own lieutenants in the Prince's company, the soldiers offered no resistance; some cried Vive l'Empereur, uncertain, as afterwards appeared, whether to believe the person before them to be the Emperor himself | French government, with a view to obtain come back, or his son, or only his nephew. By permission to visit his father Louis, who was the presence of mind of a sergeant, however, lying dangerously ill at Florence; and it was any decided act of adhesion was prevented; for this especial object, he said, in a letter to and meanwhile, the alarm having been given, the French ambassador, that he had planned the colonel and other officers rushed to the his escape. Unable, however, to procure the barracks. The parleying now gave way to necessary passports, he was obliged to revehement altercation; the soldiers gathered main in London, where he had again taken round their officers; the Prince fired a pistol up his abode, and where, two months afterat the colonel, missing his aim, but wounding wards, he received the news of his father's a soldier in the neck; and, at last, totally de- death. After the escape of the Prince, the feated in their object, the whole party left French government did not think it necessathe barracks and took to their heels through ry to continue the durance of Count Monthe town, showering pieces of money among tholon and the other prisoners; and by the the crowd that ran after them. The Prince end of the year 1846 the Boulogne business, seemed out of his senses; he ran at the head like that of Strasbourg, was well-nigh forof his little band brandishing his cocked hat gotten. Coincident with the extraordinary which he had stuck on the point of his movement that is still accomplishing itself in sword, and crying out Vive l'Empereur. all the continental countries, we have to mark, Meanwhile the soldiers had set out in pur- as a striking fact, the reinstauration everysuit; and with little difficulty the whole par- where of the overthrown Bonapartes. ty was captured, Brought to trial before the Chamber of Peers, the prisoners were found guilty, and condemned as follows: the Prince to perpetual imprisonment; his chief associates, such as Count Montholon, M. de Parquin, and M. de Persigny, to twenty years' detention; and the minor culprits, such as Dr. Conneau, to lesser terms of the same punishment. The various offenders were then distributed through different prisons. The Prince, Count Montholon, and Dr. Conneau, were sent to the fortress of Ham. There they remained for nearly six years, Dr. Conneau voluntarily protracting his term of imprisonment in order to continue near the Prince. The occupations of the three companions during these six years were sufficiently various. They read together, made experiments in chemistry, &c.; and the Prince, his literary propensities still remaining, not only amused himself by translating poems, and penning occasional letters to newspapers and to private friends, but continued his connection in a more express manner with the world without, by means of one or two new publications, the chief being an odd tract of military statistics, entitled De l'Extinction du Pauperisme, copies of which he sent to George Sand, Chateaubriand, the poet Béranger, and other persons of note. He also meditated, it pears, a life of Charlemagne, and corresponded on the subject with the historian Sismondi. From these and other entanglements, however, he was glad to shake himself loose, by escaping from the fortress, in the disguise of a laborer, on the 25th of May, 1846. He had previously been in negotiation with the VOL. XVII NO. IIL ap 20 It was the Italian branch of the family that first experienced the favorable turn of fortune. Restricted, during the oppressive pontificate of Gregory XVI., to the exercise of his talents as a naturalist, and a man of general literary tastes, the Prince of Canino, the son of Lucien Bonaparte, and now a man in the prime of life, and the father of a large family, was one of those influential Romans that gladly gathered round the present Pope on his accession, and assisted him in his reforms. Throughout the subsequent revolution that drove the Pope from his dominions, he equally distinguished himself; and, at the present moment, holding the vice-presidency of the representative chamber of the Roman republic, the former ornithologist of America figures as one of the most conspicuous men on the busy theatre of Italian politics. While, however, one shoot of the prolific Napoleonic stock appears thus to have found permanent root in Italy, it is in France, their own France, that the general re-union of the dispersed Bonapartes has taken place. Scarcely had the Revolution of February, 1848, occurred, when, rising from their haunts in all parts of Europe, the various members of the family, with the old ex-king of Westphalia at their head, hurried to the scene of action. France received them with open arms. At the first elections to the National Assembly three of them were returned as representatives-Pierre Bonaparte, the second son of Lucien, and the brother of the ornithologist, aged thirty-three; Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of King Jerome, aged twenty-six; and Napoleon-Lucien-Charles Murat, the former New York lawyer, aged forty-five. The case of Louis Napoleon was more peculiar. People naturally hesitated before admitting to the benefits of Republican citizenship so exceptional a personage as the Imperialist adventurer of Strasbourg and Boulogne. Twice he was elected by several departments simultaneously, and twice he found himself compelled to decline the honor; and it was not till after the supplementary elections of September, 1848, when he was returned at the head of the poll for Paris with a number of other candidates, that he was able to defy opposition and take his seat. Once restored to France, the outburst of opinion in his favor was instantaneous and universal. From Calais to the Pyrenees, from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine, he was the hero of the hour. Lamartine, Cavaignac, and everybody else that had done an efficient thing, were forgotten; and the result of the great election of the 10th of December was that, as if in posthumous justification of enterprises that the world till then had agreed to laugh at, the former prisoner of Ham was raised, by the suffrages of five millions of people, to the presidency of the French Republic. How he may continue to deport himself in this office, which he has already held for several months, it would be difficult to say. That he has not mind enough to perform of himself any original or decisive part in European affairs, must be clear to every one that has read a page of his writings; but whether he may not possess those minor qualities that would make him a suitable constitutional puppet, either as president or as emperor, in the hands of a ministry, experience must yet prove. One thing may even now be decidedly asserted with regard to his political posi tion, and that is, that, since his elevation to the presidency, he has thrown aside all his former half-connections with the Revolutionary party, and become the head and representative of the reaction. Meanwhile, as a private man, he has yet one important step in life before him. Although in his fortysecond year, he is still unmarried. We have heard it jocosely proposed that he should marry a daughter of his transatlantic brother, President Taylor, provided, that is to say, the tough old general has any daughters. Such a marriage would certainly have a splendid effect. And here we have to conclude our sketch of the history of the Bonaparte family. The impressions that remain on our mind after such a survey, are principally these two: first, that of all known families now in existence, the Bonapartes are, in point of fact, the most cosmopolitan, the most considerable, that is, whether as regards diffusion or elevation; and secondly, that, on the whole, they have merited this distinction, having remained, on the whole, individually faithful to the cause of progress, in whose name they first obtained power and credence. And yet, after all, one cannot help remembering that they owe their reputation, and all the European facilities that they enjoy, to the greatness of the one man whose name they bear; and that there are, doubtless, at this moment, in all our cities, hundreds of abler and better men, who, less favorably circumstanced, have to languish their lives away in indigence and obscurity, expending more intellect in the single task of keeping themselves alive than all the existing Bonapartes need expend in order to secure the thanks and good-will of Western Europe. THE LATE EARL OF DURHAM AND THE many wonder what the Queen will do. MoPRINCESS (NOW QUEEN) VICTORIA. The nopolists surround her. But she had not read many admirers of the late excellent Earl of in vain. Her Minister, who was nobly strugDurham will read the following paragraph gling amidst a coil of difficulties to make the with interest. It is from the Eclectic Re- food of the people free, found in her a warm view. "We were told by the late Earl of and intelligent assistant and admirer. In the Durham, that he had succeeded in inducing ingenuous years of youth, her mind had perthe Duchess of Kent to read with her daugh- ceived economical truths, and the interested ter the whole series of Miss Martineau's tales partisans of error could no more turn her in illustration of political economy. The Majesty against it than they could persuade young Princess becomes Queen-the liberal her that twice two make five. Now, this Earl dies a broken-hearted man. Years re-elementary reading, we submit, was a benevolve, and free trade becomes the great ficial thing for the people, and quite as good question of the day. When calculating the a thing for the crown.' strength of the cause of right against wrong, From the British Quarterly Review. GIORDANO BRUNO-HIS LIFE AND WORKS. 1. Jordano Bruno. Par M. CHRISTIAN BARTHOLMESS. 2 vols. 2. Opere di Giordano Bruno, Nolano, ora per la prima volta raccolte e pubblicati da Adolfo Wagner. 2 vols. Leipsig. 1830. heads. A hush comes over the crowd. The procession solemnly advances, the soldiers peremptorily clearing the way for it. "Look, there he is there, in the centre! How calm-how haughty and stubborn, (women whisper, how handsome!') His large eyes are turned towards us, serene, untroubled. His face is placid, though so pale. They offer him the crucifix; he turns aside his head-he refuses to kiss it! The heretic!" They show him the image of Him who died upon the cross for the sake of the living. truth--he refuses the symbol! A yell bursts from the multitude. On the 17th February, 1600, a vast concourse of people were assembled in the largest open space in Rome, gathered together by the irresistible sympathy which men always feel with whatever is terrible and tragic in human existence. In the centre there stood a huge pile of fagots; from out its logs and branches there rose up a stake. Crowding round the pile were eager and expectant faces, men of various ages and of various characters, but all for one moment united in a common feeling of malignant triumph. Religion was about to be avenged a heretic was coming to expiate on that spot the crime of open defiance to the They chain him to the stake. He remains dogmas proclaimed by the church-the crime silent. Will he not pray for mercy? Will of teaching that the earth moved, and that he not recant? Now the last hour is arrived there were an infinity of worlds: the scoun--will he die in his obstinacy, when a little drel! the villain! the blasphemer! Among hypocrisy would save him from so much the crowd might be seen monks of every de- agony? It is even so he is stubborn, scription, especially Dominicans, who were unalterable. They light the fagots; the anxious to witness the punishment of an branches crackle; the flame ascends; the apostate from their order; there were also victim writhes-and now we see no more. wealthy citizens jostling ragged beggars-The smoke envelopes him; but not a prayer, young and beauteous women, some of them not a plaint, not a single cry escapes him. with infants at their breasts, were talking In a little while the wind has scattered the with their husbands and fathers—and play-ashes of Giordano Bruno. ing about amidst the crowd, in all the heedlessness of childhood, were a number of boys, squeezing their way, and running up against scholars pale with study, and bearded soldiers glittering in steel. Whom does the crowd await? Giordano Bruno-the poet, philosopher, and hereticthe teacher of Galileo's heresy--the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and open antagonist of Aristotle! Questions pass rapidly to and fro among the crowd; exultation is on every face, mingled with intense curiosity. Grave men moralize on the power of Satan to pervert learning and talent to evil: Oh, my friends, let us beware!let us beware of learning!-let us beware of everything! By-standers shake significant The martyrdom of Bruno has preserved his name from falling into the same neglect as his writings. Most well-read men remember his name as that of one who, whatever his errors might have been, perished as a victim of intolerance. But the extreme rarity of his works, aided by some other causes into which it is needless here to enter, has, until lately, kept even the most curious from forming any acquaintance with them. We have all of us caught glimpses of him in Coleridge* and the Germans, and we have, *Coleridge proposed to place Bruno in his Vindicia Heterodoxa, (one of the hundred intentions which never became realities,) by the side of Böhmen, Swedenborg, and Spinoza. H nor preserve it from the assaults of others. That is why systems rise and fall. They live an individual life, because they are not impersonal. The great plastic power of imagination, which presides over the elaboration of every system of philosophy, is a quality which is not transmissible from master to disciple. If the man of positive science is more fortunate in this respect-if he can transmit to disciples a heritage which they will enrich-it is because science is imper perhaps, some vague notion of him as a po- career, written his life in an erudite and agreeable up It was not without design that we opened this account of Bruno with a picture of his death. Philosophical systems, from Thales to Schelling, may be likened to works of art, inasmuch as they are indissolubly bound with the philosopher's individuality, and have no impersonal vitality. A Raphael dies, and carries with him to the grave the sweet secret of his genius. In his atelier there are many admiring imitators, but no successor; there is no one capable of taking up the art where Raphael left it, and carrying it still higher upwards towards perfection. Plato dies, and in passing away he leaves an academy, which must fall to pieces now that his potent spirit is no longer present to animate it. The philosopher, like the artist, leaves behind him rivals, but no successors; disciples, but no continuators; disciples, who can neither enrich the heritage of his genius, * Révue des Deux Mondes, tome 18, p. 1070. observation which, with the ascertained laws of nature's processes, constitute the wealth of every scientific system, can be handed down from master to disciple, and receive fresh accumulations from every earnest seeker. "Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada tradunt." The mind of a Newton can no more be left as a legacy to his disciples than can the mind of a Plato; but the truths which a Newton discovers are impersonal, and are truths for all time. His philosophy becomes extended and improved: his imperfect views become developed. But who continues Plato? Plato's philosophy remains confined to Plato, just as Shakspeare's poetry remains the sole possession of Shakspeare. It is this personal nature of philosophical systems which lends such peculiar interest lives are parts of their philosophies. To to the biography of great thinkers: their show how impersonal science is, we may ask what light could be thrown upon the "Principia" by any details of Newton's life? tittle better, if we could penetrate into his Should we understand Faraday's views a private life, and learn his heroisms and his foibles, his sympathies and antipathies?— Not one iota. But rightly to understand a System of philosophy we must understand its source. Its source is personal, and the man attracts us. What manner of man was Bruno ? Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, in La and midway between Vesuvius and the MedTerra di Lavoro, a few miles from Naples, iterranean. The date of his birth is fixed as 1550-that is to say, ten years after the death of Copernicus, whose system he was before the birth of our own illustrious Bato espouse with such ardor, and ten years Tasso well says: con. "La terra Simili a sè gli abitator' produce;" and Bruno was a true Neapolitan child-as |