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 appears, 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 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 PRINCESS (NOW QUEEN) VICTORIA.-The many admirers of the late excellent Earl of Durham will read the following paragraph with interest. It is from the Eclectic Review. "We were told by the late Earl of Durham, that he had succeeded in inducing the Duchess of Kent to read with her daughter the whole series of Miss Martineau's tales in illustration of political economy. The young Princess becomes Queen-the liberal Earl dies a broken-hearted man. Years revolve, and free trade becomes the great question of the day. When calculating the strength of the cause of right against wrong, many wonder what the Queen will do. Monopolists surround her. But she had not read in vain. Her Minister, who was nobly struggling amidst a coil of difficulties to make the food of the people free, found in her a warm and intelligent assistant and admirer. In the ingenuous years of youth, her mind had perceived economical truths, and the interested partisans of error could no more turn her Majesty against it than they could persuade her that twice two make five. Now, this elementary reading, we submit, was a beneficial thing for the people, and quite as good a thing for the crown.' 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 dogmas proclaimed by the church-the crime of teaching that the earth moved, and that there were an infinity of worlds: the scoundrel! the villain! the blasphemer! Among the crowd might be seen monks of every description, especially Dominicans, who were anxious to witness the punishment of an apostate from their order; there were also wealthy citizens jostling ragged beggars-The smoke envelopes him; but not a prayer, young and beauteous women, some of them with infants at their breasts, were talking with their husbands and fathers-and playing 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 They chain him to the stake. He remains silent. Will he not pray for mercy? Will he not recant? Now the last hour is arrived -will he die in his obstinacy, when a little hypocrisy would save him from so much agony? It is even so: he is stubborn, unalterable. They light the fagots; the branches crackle; the flame ascends; the victim writhes-and now we see no more. not a plaint, not a single cry escapes him. In a little while the wind has scattered the ashes of Giordano Bruno. 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. 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 poetical pantheist, whom modern Germany, in its rage for rehabilitation, has undertaken to prove one of the great thinkers who have advanced the world. The rarity of the writings made them objects of bibliopolic luxury: they were the black swans of literature. Three hundred florins were paid for the Spaccio in Holland, and thirty pounds in England. Jacobi's mystical friend, Hamann, searched Italy and Germany in vain for the dialogues De la Causa and De l'In-sonal; it is because the hoarded treasures of finito. But in 1830, Herr Wagner, after immense toil, brought out his valuable edition of the Italian works named at the head of this article, and since then students have been able to form some idea of the Neapolitan thinker. The edition is, however, but little known, even to those to whom it will 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 of a Plato; but the truths which a Newton as a legacy to his disciples than can the mind all time. His philosophy becomes extended discovers are impersonal, and are truths for 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. be interesting, and we are almost introducing a new book in giving it a place in our pages. By way of an introduction to the study of these writings, we propose to sketch the life of Bruno, and the outlines of his system. In this task, we shall mainly follow the excellent guidance of the work by M. Bartholmess, who has with great zeal and some skill col lected all the facts relative to Bruno's career, written his life in an erudite and agreeable volume, and devoted a volume to the analysis of his writings. Besides the work of M. It is this personal nature of philosophical Bartholmess, we must also call to our aid systems which lends such peculiar interest the étude on Bruno by that learned and to the biography of great thinkers: their sagacious critic, M. Emile Saisset; and lives are parts of their philosophies. To with these materials, and the works of Bruno show how impersonal science is, we may before us, we may perhaps succeed in inter-Principia" by any details of Newton's life? ask what light could be thrown upon the esting the reader. It was not without design that we opened this account of Bruno with a picture of his death. Philosophical systems, from Thales death. Philosophical systems, from Thales to Schelling, may be likened to works of art, inasmuch as they are indissolubly bound up 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. tittle better, if we could penetrate into his 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. ardent as its volcanic soil and burning atmosphere, and dark thick wine (mangia guerra)-as capricious as its varied climate. There was a restless energy in him which fitted him to become the preacher of a new crusade urging him to throw a haughty defiance in the face of every authority in every country-an energy which closed his wild adventurous career at the stake lighted by the Inquisition. He was also distinguished by a rich fancy, a varied humor, and a chivalrous gallantry, which constantly remind us that the athlete is an Italian, and an Italian of the sixteenth century. Stern as was the struggle, he never allowed the grace of his nature to be vanquished by its vehemence. He went forth as a preacher; but it was as a preacher, young, handsome, gay, and worldly-as a poet, not as a fanatic. The first thing we hear of him is the adoption of the Dominican's frock. In spite of his ardent temperament, so full of vigorous life, he shuts himself up in a cloisterallured, probably, by the very contrast which such a life offered to his own energetic character. Bruno in a cloister has but two courses open to him: either all that affluent energy will rush into some stern fanaticism, and, as in Loyola, find aliment in perpetual self-combat, and in bending the wills of others to his purposes; or else his restless spirit of inquiry, stimulated by avidity for glory, will startle and irritate his superiors. It was not long ere Bruno's course was decided. He began to doubt the mystery of transubstantiation. Nay, more, he not only threw doubt upon the dogmas of the church, he had also the audacity to attack the pillar of all faith, the great authority of the ageAristotle himself. The natural consequences ensued he was feared and persecuted. Unable to withstand his opponents, he fled. Casting aside the monkish robe, which clothed him in what he thought a falsehood, he fled from Italy just as Montaigne, having finished the first part of his immortal Essay, entered it, to pay a visit to the unhappy Tasso, then raving in an hospital. Bruno was now an exile, but he was free; and the delight he felt at his release may be read in several passages of his writings, especially in the sonnet prefixed to l'Infinito: "Uscito di prigione angusta e nera La man di mia nemica invida e fera," &c. He was thirty years of age when he began his adventurous course through Europe-to wage single-handed war against much of the falsehood, folly, and corruption of his epoch. Like his great prototype, Xenophanes, who wandered over Greece, a rhapsodist of philosophy, striving to awaken mankind to a recognition of the deity whom they degraded by their dogmas, and like his own unhappy rivals, Campanella and Vanini, Bruno became the knight-errant of truth-according to his views of truth-ready to combat all comers in its cause. His life was a battle without a victory. Persecuted in one country, he fled to another-everywhere sowing the seeds of revolt, everywhere shaking the dynasty of received opinion. It was a strange time--to every earnest man a sad, an almost hopeless time. The church was in a pitiable condition-decaying from within, and attacked from without. The lower clergy were degraded by ignorance, indolence, and sensuality; the prelates, if more enlightened, were enlightened only as epicures and pedants, swearing by the gods of Greece and Rome, and laboriously imitating the sonorous roll of Ciceronian periods. The Reformation had startled the world, especially the ecclesiastical world. The Inquisition was vigilant and cruel; but among its very members were sceptics. Scepticism, with a polish of hypocrisy, was the general disease. It penetrated almost everywhere-from the cloister to the cardinal's palace. Scepticism, however, is only a transitory disease. Men must have convictions. Accordingly, in all ages, we see scepticism stimulating new reforms; and reformers were not wanting in the sixteenth century. Of the Lutheran movement, it is needless here to speak. The sixteenth century marks its place in history as the century of revolutions; it not only broke the chain which bound Europe to Rome, it also broke the chain which bound philosophy to scholasticism and Aristotle. It set human reason free; it proclaimed the liberty of thought and action. In the vanguard of its army, we see Telesio, Campanella, and Bruno, men who must always excite our admiration and our gratitude for their cause and for their courage. They fell fighting for freedom of thought and utterance-the victims of a fanaticism, the more odious because it was not the rigor of belief but of pretended belief. They fought in those early days of the great struggle between science and prejudice, when Galileo was a heretic, and when the implacable severity of dogmatism baptized in blood every new thought born into the world. One spirit is common to all these reform |