| blinded historians to the results of his influence on the affairs of Europe, for a century's judgment will make him the greatest republican of the age, Washington and Lincoln not excepted. The ends may not justify the means, but the world judges only by results; and it was Napoleon who chilled into permanent form the wild republican theories and accomplishments that were poured forth in fantastic shape from the volcanic French revolution. The musty feudal bonds that held man in the dust in the eighteenth century on the continent of Europe, today are weakened or broken through the sole agency of this man. It will be Josephine whose reputation will be ruined by this revival; while poor Maria Louisa, of course, has no reputation to lose.
The subject of Napoleon is inexhaustible, whether it be approached from the military, the social, the political, or the antiquarian standpoint. In this great resurrection of Napoleon, the modern reading public are principally interested in this latter aspect of the subject. The old prints, the old books, the old medallions, the old china, and even the old clothes of the great general, are being searched for, with the greatest diligence and success. The numismatist, the artist, the bibliophile, and the china-lover are now roaming in unsettled, unexplored fields, whose boundaries are unknown; the terrific force of forty years of Napoleonic upheaval which occurred at the beginning of this century has strewn the shelves and shops of Europe and America with countless precious relics; and the power which produced this material and the power that scattered it were so tremendous that the collectors have by no means gotten things together yet. The veriest amateur may stumble on relics for which the professional collector has been longing and looking in vain. This is the secret of the |
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charm of "Napoleoniana"; once formed, the habit becomes chronic.
The properties which properly constitute a curiosity are as indefinable and various as human nature itself. To my mind, the term should be confined to that material which is distinctive of the subject, and which is not found commonly elsewhere. We all of us wear clothes, eat with knives and forks from dishes, and such of us as are sufficiently advanced, write with pen and ink. Now, I hold that china that has been used by Napoleon is no proper curiosity, unless it contains markings that make it peculiarly his own; so with stockings, pens, swords, and other material; unless they contain something intrinsic that shows at a glance that they were Napoleon's and could not have possibly belonged to any one else, they are not curiosities. Personally, I would go still farther in this line and say that no relic of Napoleon was valuable unless it was suggestive of the line along which he became famous. Napoleon as a writer, as an |
