NEWS OF THE WEEK.
PRINCE NAPOLEON lingered a few hours longer than was expected, but he expired on Tuesday evening, having, it is said, remarked a few hours before : "I have succeeded in nothing, not even in dying." The words contain the history -of a man who, from some original defect either in character 'Or in energy, wasted magnificent gifts in sterile earplugs or in futile efforts to be great. The usual and useless controversy is being carried on as to whether he died without religious -offices ; but it seems certain that he remained to the last an unbeliever in anything greater than himself, whom neverthe- less be thought small. He was a perfect embodiment of the modern spirit, with its intelligent inquisitiveness—for he studied nearly everything—its absence of pity for anything but material suffering, and its incapacity for self-suppression. He was probably hardly judged, but he owed the harshness of the world's judgment mainly to his own contempt for prin- ciple, and to that incapacity fordriendship which made him always ungrateful, and induced a staunch partisan to exclaim, on hearing of his decease : "I like him better now I know that I shall never see him again." It is believed that he has disinherited his eldest son, who in French opinion deserves that sentence for his unfilial conduct, and certain that he took great pains to pre- serve his memoirs from suppression. If they are published soon, they will probably avenge him on all enemies, real or imaginary, for he knew everything about the most corrupt of Courts, and used vitriol for ink. His death leaves his son Victor head of the Bonaparte House.
