Czytaj książkę: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846», strona 15

The bearded corn of Metapontus, with Ceres or Mars on the reverse: Arion on his dolphin – that beautiful, most beautiful of coins – were, together with sundry others, all too common for his antiquarian eye to take pleasure in; he sought something less frequently presented to it, and at last he found it in a Croton coin with a rare reverse, which, "would we sell him, he would take at twenty dollars, and pay us in living silver." A bow told him we were not disposed to part with it. And now he comes to what we consider to be our finest piece, – our Lipari bronze! And on it is a fat dolphin sporting on a green sea. Dedomenicis' manner is vastly discouraging, and we are prepared for new disappointment, yet we could have sworn that that coin was genuine. But if false, as he believes it to be, why then not have done with it? why put it down to take it up again? why ask whether we don't repute it false, when he knows we know nothing of the matter? And why mouse it so closely under his keen eye, and look round the rim of it, and examine the face of it, and appear as if he would penetrate into its very soul,⁵⁸ and get at its history? Oh! 'tis all right, then; if "he may be mistaken," doubtless he is so: and this is confirmed by his now proposing – thinking an exchange no robbery, of course – to exchange it for us. Ingenuous man! who hadst twice invoked the saints and the Madonna in our behalf when thou heardest the price we paid for our unlucky Hare; and when thou knewest how C – had beguiled us into taking, and paying for a Roman, the price of an Etruscan "As;" and now thou wouldst have robbed us of our best coin, have deprived us of the very Delphin classic of our collection; it won't do! Our Messenian hare is welcome, but, old æruscator, we cannot let you swim away on our dolphin; and we rise to replace him in our monetaro accordingly.

A third interview with Dedomenicis is recorded in our entry-book of such matters. – "Here are the coins, Signor, which you gave me to clean last week: they are ten in number, for which you owe me as many pauls. —Eccole!" "Ah," said we, "you have not made much of them, I fear." "Look and see," was the laconic reply. By which time we had taken up the first, and were pleased to find that an Augustus, whose lineaments we could hardly recognise, when we gave him to Dedomenicis to scale, had come back to us perfectly restored. "Why, Dedomenicis," said we, "this is a restitution better than Trajan's, of this very Emperor's coinage; for that, after all, was but the imitation of an old mint; but yours the restoration of the old one itself. Henceforth I prefer Dedomenicis' restituit to Trajan's restituit." "Well, then, when you have looked over the others, you will, I dare say, pay these and them at the same rate, as if they had been the issues of that Emperor."⁵⁹ We were indeed surprised at what we saw, so much had all our coins gained by the process to which Dedomenicis had subjected them. The second we took up represented the Ostian harbour, (Portus Ostiensis.) We had given it to him with a foul bottom– it was restored to us with its basin cleared out, and with all its shipping, just as it used to look in the days of Nero; in another, the whole arena of the Colosseum had been disencumbered; in another, Antonine's column shone bright from top to bottom; here we saw Honos et Virtus (honour and military prowess) again taking the field; here the scales of Justice once more appeared, and librated freely in her hand; here Hope resumed her green trefoil; Pudicity unveils her face; and there sat Fecundity on a curule seat, with all her family about her; lastly, there were those three scandalous sisters of Caligula – the Misses Money (Moneta,)⁶⁰– standing together with their arms intertwined, and their names at their backs. All these ten restitutions cost only ten pauls! "And how did you manage to clean then so well, Dedomenicis?" "Col tempo ed il temperino," – with time and a penknife: "Ma ci vuo il genio," – you must have a talent for it.

Scaling a Coin

"Ci vuo il genio," – he was right; and think you 'tis so easy or simple a thing to clean a coin? to unmask an empress, pertinacious in her disguise, or to scrape acquaintance with emperors? Try it; – not that you will succeed; but that the difficulties which you are thus made to encounter in the attempt, will dispose you the more readily to do justice to the skill of those who succeed in this delicate process, which, like the finer operations of surgery, requires at once precision and address, great nicety in the handling of your instrument; while the importance attached to the operation itself makes the successful performance of it not a little desirable. The penknife, guided by a dexterous hand, may light upon a discovery that has been buried for ages; and a pin's point may make revelations sufficient to adjust some obscure point in history. Who knows what face may now lie hid (facies dicatur an ulcus?) under some obscure coating of paste? What an it be a Vitellius; what if a Pertinax should reveal himself? or suppose, when you have removed the foul larvæ, you undermine a Matidia! a Plotina!! an Annia Faustina!!! and your fortune is made! 'Tis a lottery, we admit. But the very principle of the excitement – the charm is, that you know not what may turn up; for a less chance, you may possibly have bought a "Terno" in a Frankfort lottery, the chance of an estate on the Moselle! But there are small prizes to be picked up occasionally – and here's a case in point: – "I was one day sauntering," said our friend C – , "by the tomb of Cecilia Metella, when a peasant came up with a handful of very dirty-looking coins, so firmly encrusted with mortar, that it seemed absurd to attempt its removal. Having nothing particular to do, and liking the wild quiet of the spot, I gave some 'baiocchi' to the man; and taking my seat on a bit of the old aqueduct, I opened my penknife, and began to scrape away. At first I saw the trace of a letter; and digging round it, I at length disinterred a large M – a Roman M! It was probably Maximin, or his son Maximus, that I then had under my thumb; but it might be a Marinus, in which case it was a valuable coin; so I wrought on with renewed vigour, and presently an L was in the field. A better prospect this than the last; for if it turned out to be an Æmilianus, I should have made a good morning's work of it – and it was so! Little by little, line by line, grain by grain, I opened the field, till C. Julius Æmilianus, Pontif: Max: in a full epigraphe, shone forth with the imperial head in full relief, all in a bright emerald patina. I have seen several Æmilianuses, but none like that; and it cost me only a penny."

Now, touching the difficulties in your way – should you still fancy them to be imaginary – take any dirty coin nigra moneta sordibus, and try to clean it; oil it, and scrub it as you may; pick into, poke at, finally, waste your whole morning over it, till your back aches, and your penknife is blunted; you will have to confess at last that your labour has been lost! Your only chance, then, is the fire; and if the actual cautery fails, there is no longer any hope. As in learning to scale properly, you must come to sacrifice a great many coins before you can hope to succeed, fiat experimentum in corpore vili– begin with those that are worthless. Never mind scratching a Faustina's face; set no store by Nero; you may, if you like, mutilate as many Domitians as that emperor mutilated flies. For why? – they cost nothing; unless, indeed, there were something to be gained by reversing the picture. But this only while learning, and to learn; for when you know how to clean a coin properly, you will hardly waste your time in adding new Trajans to the ten thousands already in existence; nor whet your curiosity or steel upon an empress, known to be as common in bronze as she was wont to be in the flesh! When you have a really valuable coin, on which your pains will not be thrown away, your mode of procedure is, first to scrape, with extreme caution, on some small spot by the margin, till you have taken your proper soundings, and come down to the patina. Your next step must be, to ascertain whether that patina is hard, or soft and friable; in which latter case you will have to use all diligence not to poke your penknife in Crispina's eyeball, nor to wound her husband, with a few days' beard upon his chin. No healing process can help you here to undo your clumsy surgery and want of skill. He will remain cicatrised, and she lippa for life. Each separate feature requires renewed care. When your minute manipulations have brought out the eyeball unspecked, then comes the nose; and to remove the closely sticking plaster from its side, and expose uninjured the curling nostril underneath, requires more than Taliacotian sleight of hand to manage properly. You must not trifle with Faustina's hair, nor with Philip's beard. The "flava coma," which we do not consider as ornamental at any time, looks far worse in brass than in golden tresses. You must be an aurist when you come to the ear. Deal with the ear, and remember that it has its portio mollis as you gently probe your way into its tube. Need we insist upon the necessity of respecting a lady's lips? and yet you will wound them, unless you are careful. And when all is done, you may find that your coin is no sooner cleaned, than it is seized with the smallpox,⁶¹ which will become confluent and spread, unless properly instructed. You have probed each cicatrix to the bottom, and filled the minute holes with ink. Thus you will see that patience, tact, and care are all required in scaling a coin; or, as Dedomenicis said, ci vuo il genio!

The collecting coins is a pleasant way of learning the chronology of the royal families of antiquity; and if you are culpably negligent in their arrangement, the first dealer who sees your cabinet takes care to apprize you of your mistakes, and will generally rate you soundly as he does so. The first time Dedomenicis visited our collection of the Roman emperors, he was in a great taking on detecting (which he did not fail to do at a glance) various anachronisms in our arrangement. "By all that should be, if here is not Agrippina the wife of Germanicus, and Claudius's Agrippina, in next-door neighbourhood! the two Faustinas (che scandalo, dottore mio!) lying side by side with strange husbands! Philip junior deposing his own father —ci avevano questa consuetudine, so let that pass; but here is a more serious affair. Pray separate all these Julias a little, my dear sir, caro lei, (looking at us very reproachfully;) here, in this one tray, you have mixed, introduced, and confounded together all the Julias of the Roman empire! Julia, the daughter of Titus, alone in her right place beside her first consort Domitian. But Julia Pia and Julia Domna are but the aliases of the same empress, the wife of Septimius Severus; and here you have placed by mistake Julia Paula, the wife of Eliogabalus, after Julia Mammæa, who you must remember married Maximin. Pray attend to these things; and whenever your series is deficient, leave vacant spaces in your trays to mark the deficiencies. Don't crowd your emperors thus together, when time has separated them in history," &c. &c. &c. We promised faithfully to attend to these hints; but it was all to no purpose, for in one week our friends, to whom we used to show our collection properly arranged, would again involve our chronology in inextricable confusion, especially certain dear young ladies of our acquaintance, who, by no means showing the same respect for old Time that old Time continued to demonstrate towards them, would make light of whole centuries; and we have known them so regardless of all dates, except perhaps their own, as to bring up a Constantine or Maxentius, and to place them under the very nose of Augustus!

THE LAST RECOLLECTIONS OF NAPOLEON. ⁶²

There are few things more striking than the analogy in civil and physical changes of the world. There have been in the history of man periods as distinctive as in the history of nations. From these periods society and nations have alike assumed new aspects, and the world has commenced a new career. The fall of the Roman Empire was the demarcation between the old world and the new. It was the moral deluge, out of which a new condition of man, new laws, new forms of religion, new styles of thought, almost a totally new configuration of human society, were to arise. A new settlement of the civil world took place: power absorbed by one race of mankind was to be divided among various races; and the development of principles of government and society, hitherto unknown, was to be scarcely less memorable, less unexpected, or less productive, than that voyage by which Columbus doubled the space of the habitable globe.

The Reformation was another mighty change. It introduced civil liberty into the empire of tyranny, religion into the realm of superstition, and science into the depths of national ignorance. The French Revolution was the last, and not the least powerful change within human experience. Its purpose is, like its operation, still dubious. Whether it came simply for wrath, or simply for restoration – whether, like the earthquake of Lisbon, it came only to destroy, and leave its ruins visible for a century to come; to clear the ground of incumbrances too massive for the hand of man, and open the soil for exertions nobler than the old, must be left to time to interpret. But there can be no question, that the most prominent agency, the most powerful influence, and the most dazzling lustre, of a period in which all the stronger impulses of our being were in the wildest activity, centred in the character of one man, and that man – Napoleon.

It is evidently a law of Providence, that all the great changes of society shall be the work of individual minds. Yet when we recollect the difficulty of effecting any general change, embracing the infinite varieties of human interests, caprices, passions, and purposes, nothing could seem more improbable. But it has always been the course of things. Without Charlemagne, the little principalities of Gothic Europe would never have been systematised into an empire; – without Luther, what could have been the progress of the Reformation? – without Napoleon, the French Revolution would have burnt itself out, vanished into air, or sunk into ashes. He alone collected its materials, combined them into a new and powerful shape, crowned this being of his own formation with the imperial robe, erected it in the centre of Europe, and called the nations to bow down before a new idol, like the gods of the Indian known only by its mysterious frown, the startling splendour of its diadem, and the swords and serpents grasped in its hands.

That the character of Napoleon was a singular compound of the highest intellectual powers with the lowest moral qualities, is evidently the true description of this extraordinary being. This combination alone accounts for the rapidity, the splendour of his career, and the sudden and terrible completeness of his fall. Nothing less than pre-eminent capacity could have shot him up through the clouds and tempests of the Revolution into the highest place of power. A mixture of this force of mind and desperate selfishness of heart could alone have suggested and sustained the system of the Imperial wars, policy, and ambition; and the discovery of his utter faithlessness could alone have rendered all thrones hopeless of binding him by the common bonds of sovereign to sovereign, and compelled them to find their only security for the peace of Europe in consigning him to a dungeon. He was the only instance in modern history of a monarch dethroned by a universal conviction; warred against by mankind, as the sole object of the war; delivered over into captivity by the unanimous judgment of nations; and held in the same unrelaxing and judicial fetters until he died.

It is another striking feature of this catastrophe, that the whole family of Napoleon sank along with him. They neither possessed his faculties, nor were guilty of his offences. But as they had risen solely by him, they perished entirely with him. Future history will continually hover over this period of our annals, as the one which most resembles some of those fabrications of the Oriental genius, in which human events are continually under the guidance of spirits of the air; in which fantastic palaces are erected by a spell, and the treasures of the earth developed by the wave of a wand – in which the mendicant of this hour is exalted into the prince of the next; and while the wonder still glitters before the eye, another sign of the necromancer dissolves the whole pageant into air again. Human recollection has no record of so much power, so widely distributed, and apparently so fixed above all the ordinary casualties of the world, so instantly and so irretrievably overthrown. The kings of earth are not undone at a blow; kingdoms do not change their rulers without a struggle. Great passions and great havoc have always preceded and followed the fall of monarchies. But the four diadems of the Napoleon race fell from their wearers' brows with scarcely a touch from the hand of man. The surrender of the crown by Napoleon extinguished the crowns actually ruling over millions, and virtually influencing the whole Continent. They were extinguished, too, at the moment when the Imperial crown disappeared. It had no sooner been crushed at Waterloo, than they all fell into fragments, of themselves; – the whole dynasty went down with Napoleon into the dungeon, and not one of them has since returned to the world.

The name of General Count Montholon is well known to this country, as that of a brave officer, who, after acquiring distinguished rank in the French army by his sword, followed Napoleon to St Helena; remained with him during his captivity; and upon his death was made the depositary of his papers, and his executor. But his own language, in a letter dated from the Castle of Ham in June 1844, gives the best account of his authority and his proceedings.

"A soldier of the Republic, a brigadier-general at twenty years of age, and minister-plenipotentiary in Germany in 1812 and 1813, I could, like others, have left memoirs concerning the things which I saw; but the whole is effaced from my mind in presence of a single thing, a single event, and a single man. The thing is Waterloo; the event, the fall of the Empire; and the man, Napoleon."

He then proceeds to tell us, that he shared the St Helena captivity for six years; that for forty-two nights he watched the dying bed of the ex-monarch; and that, by Napoleon's express desire, he closed his eyes. But to those duties of private friendship were affixed official services, which looked much more like tyranny than the tribute of personal regard, and which we should think must have worn out the patience, and tried the constitution, of the most devoted follower of this extraordinary captive.

Napoleon, though apparently contemptuous of the opinions of mankind, evidently felt the strongest anxiety to make out a favourable statement for himself. And all his hours, except the few devoted to exercise on horseback and to sleep, and to his meals, were employed in completing the narrative which was to clear up his character to mankind.

During the last years passed in St Helena, Napoleon sent for the Count every night at eleven o'clock, and continued dictating to him until six in the morning, when he went into the bath, dismissing the count with – "Come, my son, go and repose, and come to me again at nine o'clock. We shall have breakfast, and resume the labours of the night." At nine, he returned, and remained with him till one, when Napoleon went to bed. Between four and five, he sent for the count again, who dined with him every day, and at nine o'clock left him, to return at eleven.

The world little knew the drudgery to which these unfortunate followers of the Ex-Emperor were thus exposed, and they must all have rejoiced at any termination of a toil so remorseless and so uncheering.

Napoleon was fond of the Turkish doctrine of fatality. Whether so acute a mind was capable of believing a doctrine so palpably contradicted by the common circumstances of life, and so utterly repugnant to reason, can scarcely be a question; but with him, as with the Turks, it was a capital doctrine for the mighty machine which he called an army. But the count seems to have been a true believer. He, too, pronounces, that "destiny is written," and regards himself as being under the peculiar influence of a malignant star, or, in his own words: "In fact, without having sought it, my destiny brought me into contact with the Emperor in the Elysée Bourbon, conducted me, without my knowing it, to the shores of Boulogne, where honour imposed upon me the necessity of not abandoning the nephew of the Emperor in presence of the dangers by which he was surrounded. Irrevocably bound to the misfortunes of a family, I am now perishing in Ham; the captivity commenced in St Helena."

Of Count Montholon, it must be acknowledged, that he was unstained by either the vices or the violences which scandalized Europe so frequently in the leaders of the French armies. He appears to have been at all times a man of honourable habits, as he certainly is of striking intelligence. But we have no faith in his doctrine of the star, and think that he would have acted much more wisely if he had left the stars to take care of themselves, avoided the blunder of mistaking the nephew of Napoleon for a hero and a genius, and stayed quietly in London, instead of risking himself with an invasion of valets to take the diadem off the most sagacious head in Europe.

The narrative commences with the return of Napoleon to Paris after his renown, his throne, and his dynasty were alike crushed by the British charge at Waterloo. He reached Paris at six in the morning of the 21st. It is now clear that the greatest blunder of this extraordinary man was his flight from the army. If he had remained at its head, let its shattered condition be what it might, he would have been powerful, have awed the growing hostility of the capital, and have probably been able to make peace alike for himself and his nation. But by hurrying to Paris, all was lost: he stripped himself of his strength; he threw himself on the mercy of his enemies; and palpably capitulated to the men who, but the day before, were trembling under the fear of his vengeance.

Nobleness of heart is essential to all true renown; and perhaps it is not less essential to all real security. Napoleon, with talents which it is perfectly childish to question, though the attempt has been made since the close of his brilliant career, wanted this nobleness of heart, and through its want ultimately perished. Of the bravery of him who fought the splendid campaigns of Italy, and of the political sagacity of him who raised himself from being a subaltern of artillery to a sovereign of sovereigns, there can be no doubt. But his selfishness was so excessive that it occasionally made both contemptible, and gave his conduct alike the appearance of cowardice, and the appearance of infatuation. His flight from Egypt, leaving his army to be massacred or captured, disgraced him in the face of Europe. His flight from Russia, leaving the remnant of his legions to be destroyed, was a new scandal; but hitherto no evil had been produced by this gross regard of self. The penalty, however, must be paid. His flight from the army in Belgian, leaving it without counsel or direction, to be crushed by a victorious enemy, was the third instance of that ignoble preference of his own objects which had characterised and stained his Egyptian and Russian career. But retribution was now come, and he was to be undone. The slaughter of Waterloo had been tremendous, but it was not final. The loss of the French army had been computed at forty thousand men, killed, wounded, and dispersed. He had come into the field with seventy-two thousand men, independent of Grouchy. He had thus thirty thousand remaining. Grouchy's force of thirty thousand was still untouched, and was able to make its way to Paris. In addition to these sixty thousand, strong garrisons had been left in all the fortresses, which he might without difficulty have gathered upon his retreat. The Parisian national guard would have augmented this force, probably, on the whole, to one hundred thousand men. It is true that the allied Russian and Austrian forces were on the frontier. But they had not yet moved, and could not prevent the march of those reinforcements. Thus, without reckoning the provincial militia of France, or calculating on a levée en masse, Napoleon within a fortnight might have been at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand men, while the pursuing army could not have mustered half the number. He would thus have had time for negotiation; and time with him was every thing. Or let the event be what it might, the common sense of the Allies would have led them to avoid a direct collision with so powerful a force fighting on its own ground under the walls of the capital, and knowing that the only alternatives were complete triumph or total ruin.

Count Montholon makes a remark on the facility with which courtiers make their escape from a falling throne, which has been so often exemplified in history. But it was never more strikingly exemplified than in the double overthrow of Napoleon. "At Fontainbleau, in 1814," says the Count, "when I hastened to offer to carry him off with the troops under my command, I found no one in those vast corridors, formerly too small for the crowd of courtiers, except the Duke of Bassano and two aides-de-camp." His whole court, down to his Mameluke and valet, had run off to Paris, to look for pay and place under the Bourbons. In a similar case in the next year, at the Elysée Bourbon, he found but two counts and an equerry. It was perfectly plain to all the world but Napoleon himself that his fate was decided.

There certainly seems to have been something in his conduct at this period that can scarcely be accounted for but by infatuation. His first act, the desertion of his army, was degrading to his honour, but his conduct on his arrival was not less degrading to his sagacity. Even his brother Lucien said that he was blinded with the smoke of Waterloo. He seems to have utterly lost that distinct view and fierce decision which formerly characterised all his conduct. It was no more the cannon-shot or the thunder-clap, it was the wavering of a mind suddenly perplexed by the difficulties which he would once have solved by a sentence and overwhelmed by resistance – which he would have once swept away like a swarm of flies. The leader of armies was crushed by a conspiracy of clerks, and the sovereign of the Continent was sent to the dungeon by cabal of his own slaves.

While Napoleon was thus lingering in the Elysée Bourbon, the two chambers of the Legislature were busily employed between terror and intrigue. The time was delicate, for the Bourbons and the Allies were approaching. But, on the other hand, the fortunes of Napoleon might change; tardiness in recognising the Bourbons might be fatal to their hopes of place, but the precipitancy of abandoning Napoleon might bring their heads under the knife of the guillotine. All public life is experimental, and there never was a time when the experiment was of a more tremulous description.

At length they began to act; and the first precaution of the Chamber of Deputies was to secure their own existence. Old Lafayette moved a resolution, that the man should be regarded as a traitor to the country who made any attempt to dissolve the Chamber. This was an obvious declaration against the authority of the Empire. The next motion was, that General Beker should be appointed commandant of the guard ordered to protect the Legislature. This was a provision against the mob of Paris. The Legislature was now safe on its two prominent perils. In the mean time, Napoleon had made another capital blunder. He had held a council of the ministers, to which he proposed the question, whether he should proceed in person to the Chamber of Deputies, and demand supplies, or send his brothers and ministers to make the communication. Three of the ministers approved of his going in person, but the majority disapproved of it – on the plea of its being a dangerous experiment, in the excited state of the public passions. If Napoleon had declined this counsel, which arose from either pusillanimity or perfidy, it is perfectly possible that he might have silenced all opposition. The known attachment of the troops, the superstition connected with his fortunes, the presence of the man whom they all so lately worshipped, as the Indians worship the serpent for the poison of its fang, might have produced a complete revulsion. Napoleon, too, was singularly eloquent – his language had a romantic splendour which captivates the artificial taste of the nation; and with an imperial figure before them, surrounded with more powerful incidents than the drama could ever offer, and threatening a fifth act which might involve the fate of France and Europe, the day might have finished by a new burst of national enthusiasm, and the restoration of Napoleon to the throne, with all his enemies in the Legislature chained to its footstool.

But he sent his brother Joseph to the Chamber of Peers, and received the answer to his mission next morning, in a proposal which was equivalent to a demand for his abdication.

A council of ministers was again held on this proposal. The same three who had voted for his presence in the Chamber, now voted for his rejection of the proposal. The majority, however, were against them. Napoleon yielded to the majority. He had lost his opportunity – and in politics opportunity is every thing. He had now nothing more to lose. He drew up an acknowledgment of his abdication; but appended to it the condition of proclaiming his son, Napoleon Second, emperor of the French. This was an artifice, but it was unworthy even of the art of Napoleon. He must have been conscious that the Allies would have regarded this appointment as a trick to ensure his own restoration. His son was yet a child; a regent must have been appointed; Napoleon would have naturally been that regent; and in six months, or on the first retreat of the Allies, he would as naturally have reappointed himself emperor. The trick was too shallow for his sagacity, and it was impossible to hope that it could have been suffered by the Allies. Yet it passed the Chamber, and Napoleon Second was acknowledged within the walls. But the acknowledgment was laughed at without them; the Allies did not condescend to notice it; and the Allies proceeded to their work of restoration as if he had never existed. In fact, the dynasty was at an end; a provisional government was appointed, with Fouché at its head, and the name of Napoleon was pronounced no more.