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The truth is, that his mind, though plastic, and readily adapting itself to seize, re-embody or modify the ideas of others, has little of originality. Give him a hint, and he works it up with much taste and effect; but there is a want of solidity and self-reliance about all that he has written, which will prevent his name from ever being a favourite with the next generation.

This imitative turn pervades almost all his works of imagination. The Werther of Goethe strikes the first chord on his youthful fancy; and the passionate energy and wild complaints of the German are immediately reproduced in that which to us appears, after all, the most successful of his works. Therese Aubert. The dynasty of Goethe, now grown more tranquil and self-balanced, like a long established monarchy, is succeeded by the more stormy rule of Byron;-and the spirit of the Corsair and Lara passes by a new metempsychosis into the bandit Jean Sbojar. This romance, not without invention and force, would perhaps have appeared to more advantage, had not a long succession of such monsters, "with one virtue and a thousand crimes," made the public think with absolute loathing on them and their authors. From Byron he flies to Scott-but alas, his Trilby, ou le Lutin d'Argail, is a strange failure. Sir Walter's White Lady, with her material bodkin, was a whimsical conception, but Nodier's spirit Trilby is ten times worse. In his Smarra, a Thessalian story, in the manner of the sorceries and diableries of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, he is more at home; he certainly does contrive to produce an unpleasant night-mare effect, -a cloud of misty phantoms, and murky and loathsome forms, moving before us in a ghastly dance, which produces the effect of an indigestion or an uneasy dream. But in this walk he must hide his diminished head beside the modern masters of the terrible, Messrs. Balzac, Janin, and Sue, the chiefs of the epileptic and anatomical school.

We really are very much disposed therefore to agree with Nodier himself, that the public would not have been great sufferers, if his works had never reached a second edition. Some of them are powerfully, and others gracefully, written, and as an essayist he is frequently very successful, but we have looked through them in vain for an ably or consistently drawn character; or an ingenious novel of incident.

ART. IX.-1. Le Duc de Reichstadt. Par M. de Montbel, Ancien Ministre du Roi Charles X. Paris. 1832. 8vo.

2. Lettre à M. ***, sur le Duc de Amis. Traduite de l'Allemand. 1832. 8vo.

Reichstadt. Par un de ses Par Gerson Hesse.

Paris.

By a strange fatality, one of the ministers of the dethroned Charles X. was driven to Vienna for shelter, where he arrived in good time to gather up the remains of the ancien Roi de Rome : one of the last ministers of the banished restoration occupies his exile with the latest souvenirs of the abdicated Empire. But a Frenchman is always a Frenchman, and no matter to what party he belongs, or by what party he has suffered-in foreign countries, la patrie, and la gloire, invariably attaching to it, are always ideas which with him sanctify every thing connected with them. Who could have expected to find an ultra-royalist minister of the Restoration occupying his leisure-or rather his time, for it is all leisure with him-with the recollections of the last of the Imperial dynasty? and yet so it is, that with pious hands and reverent feelings, M. de Montbel has taken upon himself the task of recording, for the benefit of the historical world, all that he could discover of the life and character of the son of the most illegitimate of rulers. Let his politics or policy be what they may, we owe his piety grateful thanks for having undertaken the duty, and are happy to say, that the manner in which it is executed is highly creditable both to his feelings as a man, and his abilities as an author. It redounds to the praise of M. de Montbel, that he has been so well able to divest himself of the narrow prejudices of party, and at once, as regards the interesting subject of his biography, place himself in a position of perfect impartiality, and in a most favourable point of view, for recording all that must necessarily interest the world and posterity in the history of this extraordinary graft on the ancient stock of Austrian legitimacy.

The Life, as given by M. de Montbel from the best sources, and frequently in the very words of the only persons qualified to speak, will long be a favourite text both for moralists and politicians. The influence of hereditary disposition, the effect of education generally, and the peculiar character of this youth's education, are fruitful sources of reflection and instruction; while his anomalous position, the chances of his futt.e life, and the probable effect it might have had on France and Europe at large, are not less likely to stimulate the disquisitive faculties of historical writers. M. de Montbel's book has also the recommendation of complete novelty. The life of the son of Napoleon, since he tell into Austrian bands when an infant, has been a perfect mys

tery: the people were scarcely kept in more complete ignorance of the daily life of the man with the Iron Mask: his death was almost the first certain news of his continued existence. Now that there is no motive for farther concealment, we are let into all the details of his short career, down even to the most trivial actions of hourly existence; not without some reservation certainly, produced by a perpetual consciousness of the position of the writer-a dependant of the Court of Vienna-but still with a sufficient abundance of particulars, flowing from the mouths of his friends, tutors, and household, to satisfy us altogether as to the character and disposition of a remarkable and most interesting personage.

Many unworthy suspicions have been entertained of the Court of Austria respecting the treatment of this young man: these suspicions will at once vanish before the perusal of this book, while the truth of the intentions of the Emperor, or at least of his minister, will appear with tolerable plainness. It was resolved, first, that the young King of Rome should be made a German Prince ;-next, that as every man who has passions and talents must have a pursuit, it was deemed safest, and perhaps most beneficial, that he should be indulged in his enthusiasm for the military profession. The example of Prince Eugene was set before him as the one they would most desire him to follow. Prince Eugene was neither imperial nor alien, and yet one of their most valuable Generals, and in no way a dangerous subject, while he gained glory enough to satisfy the most ambitious of men. These calculations would probably have answered, had not the natural been a more complex machine than the political, and as such even beyond the ingenious management of M. de Metternich. The youth was in a moral prison, and his soul pined. It was deemed necessary that he should be cut off from all communication with the agitators and adventurers of France. To effect this object, he was kept in utter solitude; surrounded certainly by attendants and instructors, but still, in a social sense, buried in utter solitude. His orders were obeyed, his every wish anticipated; he had his books, his horses, and his equipages for promenade or the chase; but for all that the soul or the heart holds dear, he was, with slight exceptions, a solitary prisoner. This might be practicable to some extent with an Austrian archduke; but with a child in whose veins the quick blood of the Corsican Conqueror flowed, it was a species of lingering moral torture. To outward appearance, he was like Rasselas in the Happy Valley; but, like him, he was wearying for all that was beyond the range of the mountains that separated him from his fellow-men: in the one case, these mountains were physical obstacles; in the other,

moral ones. The spirit chafed against the prison bars: the victim, bruised and care-worn, refused its food, lost its substance, grew emaciated, and died. The mind all the while was developed, and grew apace, while the body became debilitated, nay, aged the truth being, that intellectual food may always be found in prison, but moral and social isolation prey upon the physical state; the creature grows up a sapless weed, with the suspicions and distrust of long experience, and the reflection and calm profundity of thought peculiar to unclouded age. After his death, young Napoleon presented in his body the same anomaly he had done in his lifetime: his frame had all the slenderness and fragility of infancy stretched into unnatural length, while his vital organs bore the schirrous and flaccid appearance of extreme old age: there was no part healthy or natural but the brain, which was wonderfully fine, with the exception, that it was more compact, and of firmer substance than is usually found. So it was in life. This boy had all the enthusiasm and passion of youth in extreme force, alternating with a distrust, a caution, and a rapidity in fathoming the character and appreciating the talents of the persons with whom he was necessarily brought into contact, which are the usual qualities of age. His intellect chiefly exhibited itself in mastering the history of his father in all its voluminousness, in the soundness and acuteness of his criticism on the several authors he had read, and in the facility with which he acquired the theory of war, and all the studies which conduce to it. He seems to have known almost by instinct, that it was only through war that he could ever rise to more than a mere eunuch of the palace, and from the earliest age he took the deepest interest in every thing that partook of military movement. It was not, however, thought safe to intrust him abroad till he was nearly grown up; he felt that his entrance into a regiment was his first step to emancipation, as he called it, and he devoted himself to the practical duties of a soldier and a chief officer with an ardour which quickly devoured the pigmy body that had been frittered away and shaken by the silent struggles of solitude. The word pigmy must, however, be taken in the sense of feeble in its sense of diminutive, it is wholly inapplicable; for the young Napoleon, in that respect, taking rather after the Austrian than the Corsican race, had shot up in his sunless nursery to the height of the tallest man. No story was ever replete with more painful interest than the account of the obstinate struggle which this unhappy youth kept up against physical decay; he never complained, never even would admit that he was ill; finding his voice fail him in manoeuvring his corps, he would, after the exertion of a review, go and hide his weakness, fainting and sinking upon some secret

sofa. He was terrified, poor fellow! lest he should be, on the very threshold of the world, driven back into his solitary splendour. At length, however, on the representation of a physician, whom he never would consult, he was sent to Schönbrunn, where he died. He had, however, nearly rallied, and if the disease had not advanced to the extent of producing severe organic change, would perhaps have recovered by a proposed tour to Naples, and other parts of Italy. The effect on the mind of the moral prisoner was electric, and to his dying hour, this journey was his chief hope and prospect in the world.

Before the little Napoleon came into Austrian hands, of course no regular attempt had been made to educate him; but it is not to be supposed that nearly five years of such a pregnant existence as his, were left without numerous and deep impressions. His was far from a communicative disposition, and consequently, he did not, like some children, talk himself out of his recollections. They sank in the mind of the forlorn boy, and if ever they were permitted to see the light, it was in some little moment of excitement. One day, when he was playing with the imperial family, one of the archdukes showed him a little medal of silver, of which numbers had been struck in honour of his birth, and were distributed to the people after the ceremony of his baptism: his bust was upon it. He was asked, do you know who this represents? "C'est moi," answered he, without hesitation, "quand j'étais Roi de Rome." Ideas of his own former consequence, and the greatness of his father, says his early tutor, M. Foresti, were constantly present to his mind. Other impressions were not less deep; he had a love of truth which made him utterly intolerant even of fable, and probably contributed to his subsequent distaste for poetry. The word vrai he used to pronounce, when a perfect child, with a solemnity and a movement of the hand, which showed that it had to him all the sacred character of an asseveration. And yet, child as he was, he had that force of character, or rather that sensitiveness mixed with vigour, that, on being ridiculed unintentionally for its use, he never again repeated the word. On occasion of his mother's birth-day, some of the little court, soon after the dethronement, made these verses, in order to be repeated to Maria-Louisa by her child :

:

Autant que moi, pe sonne, ô ma chère Maman,
Ne doit tenir ce jour prospère;

Vrai, ne lui dois-je pas le bonheur si touchant,

Et si doux à mon cœur, de vous nommer ma mère ?

He soon learned the stanza, and was afterwards told why the

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