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ELEVATION OF THE MIND.--Lofty elevation of mind does not make one
indifferent to the wants and sufferings of those who are below him: on
the contrary, as the rarified air of mountains makes distant objects seem
nearer, so are all his fellow-beings brought nearer to the heart of him
who looks upon them from the height of his wisdom.
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NAPOLEON AFTER DEATH.--Death had marvellously improved the appearance
of Napoleon, and every one exclaimed, when the face was exposed, “How
very beautiful!” for all present acknowledged that they had never seen
a finer or more regular and placid countenance. The beauty of the
delicate Italian features was of the highest kind; whilst the exquisite
serenity of their expression was in the most striking contrast with the
recollections of his great actions, impetuous character, and turbulent
life. As during his eventful career there was much of the mysterious and
inscrutable about him, even after death Napoleon’s inanimate remains
continued a puzzle and a mystery: for, notwithstanding his great
sufferings and the usual emaciating effects of the malady that destroyed
him, the body was found enormously fat. The frame was as unsusceptible of
material disintegration as the spirit was indomitable. Over the sternum,
or breast bone, which is generally only thinly covered, there was a coat
of fat an inch and a half thick; and on the abdomen two inches, whilst
the omentum, kidneys, and heart, were loaded with fat. The last organ was
remarkably small, and the muscle flabby, in contradiction to our ideal
associations, and in proof of the seeming paradox, that it is possible
to be a very great man with a very little heart. Much anxiety was felt
at the time to ascertain the disease of which Bonaparte died. Mr O’Meara
had represented the liver as the faulty organ, and this has been echoed
by Antommarchi; though, as we have said before, the illustrious sufferer
himself, with better judgment, referred the mischief to the stomach, as
its seat and source; and he was perfectly right, as the event proved.
This organ was found most extensively disorganised: in fact, it was
ulcerated all over like a honeycomb. The focus of the disease was exactly
the spot pointed out by Napoleon--the pylorus, or lower end where the
intestines begin. At this place I put my finger into a hole, made by an
ulcer, that had eaten through the stomach, but which was stopped by a
slight adhesion to the adjacent liver. After all, the liver was free from
disease, and every organ sound except the stomach. Several peculiarities
were noticed about the body. He appeared at some time to have had an
issue open in the arm, and there was a slight mark, like a wound, in
the leg, but which might have been caused by a suppurating boil. The
chest was not ample, and there was something of feminine delicacy in
the roundness of the arms and the smallness of the hands and feet. The
head was large in proportion to the body, with a fine, massy, capacious
forehead. In other respects there were no remarkable developements for
the gratification of phrenologists. The diseased state of the stomach was
palpably and demonstrably the cause of death; and how Napoleon could have
existed for any time with such an organ, was wonderful, for there was not
an inch of it sound.--_Biography of a Surgeon._
* * * * *
THE MARCH OF MAGNILOQUENCE--Is “onward” like the prosperity of your
two-and-sixpenny republic in Central America. We [the Americans] are
becoming so great, that it is very much to be feared we shall lose all
our standards of commerce. Having nothing _little_, we don’t see how the
deuce we shall be able to express a diminutive. Our miniature will all
become magnitude, and it is difficult for us to see our way clearly in
the world. Our insects will grow into elephants, and for aught we see we
shall have to speak of the gnat as a large monster, and the honey-bee
have to be described as a beast of prey. “I does business in this
_store_,” was the remark made the other day by a dealer in crab apples,
as he crawled out of a refuse molasses-hogshead with his peck basket of
merchandise. The skippers of the Long Island clam-boats all call each
other _captains_; and we lately heard a city scavenger complaining to
another gentleman in the same line of business, that his _town house_ had
been endangered during a recent conflagration: a mischievous cracker-boy
had thrown one of his flaming missiles into the segment of a cellar
occupied by the complainant and his family. Mr Mark Anthony Potts told us
the other day that he had made arrangements for extending his _business_.
He has taken the superintendence of two coal carts, having heretofore
shovelled for but one. Nobody thinks nowadays of calling the conductor of
a mud cart on the railroad by any less dignified title than _an agent_.
The vender of apple-jack on a dilapidated cellar-door upon the North
river, is a _merchant_; and the fourth-rate victualler along the wharves,
who manages to rent half of a broken-down cobbler’s stall, _keeps a
public house_!
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