The Public has been of late much interested and not a little
bewildered, by the accounts of many strange events, said to have
recently taken place in France and other parts of the Continent. Are
these accounts of such a character as to allay, or to strengthen and
increase, such doubts as have been suggested in the foregoing pages?
We are told that there is now a Napoleon Buonaparte at the head of the
government of France. It is not, indeed, asserted that he is the very
original Napoleon Buonaparte himself. The death of that personage, and
the transportation of his genuine bones to France, had been too widely
proclaimed to allow of his reappearance in his own proper person. But
"uno avulso, non deficit alter." Like the Thibetian worshippers of the
Dalai Lama, (who never dies; only his soul transmigrates into a fresh
body), the French are so resolved, we are told, to be under a
Buonaparte--whether that be (see note to p. 56) a man or "a
system"--that they have found, it seems, a kind of new incarnation of
this their Grand Lama, in a person said to be the nephew of the
original one.
And when, on hearing that this personage now fills the high office of
President of the French Republic, we inquire (very naturally) _how he
came there_, we are informed that, several years ago, he invaded
France in an English vessel, (the _English_--as was observed in p.
52--having always been suspected of keeping Buonaparte ready, like the
winds in a Lapland witch's bag, to be let out on occasion,) at the
head of a force, not, of six hundred men, like his supposed uncle in
his expedition from Elba, but of fifty-five,(!) with which he landed
at Boulogne, proclaimed himself emperor, and was joined by no less
than _one_ man! He was accordingly, we are told, arrested, brought to
trial, and sentenced to imprisonment; but having, some years after,
escaped from prison, and taken refuge in England, (_England_ again!)
he thence returned to France: AND SO the French nation placed
him at the head of the government!
All this will doubtless be received as a very probable tale by those
who have given full credit to all the stories I have alluded to in the
foregoing pages.