The late Ex-Emperor's will has been published by the soli-
citors to the Empress, in order to rectify, as they say, the false rumours current about it. The firm adds that his estate has been sworn under £120,000, but that it is subject to claims which will reduce that sum by more than one-half,.--a statement which sufficiently disproves the accusation which was sure to be made, but which we never credited in the least, that Louis Napoleon plundered France to enrich himself. The will itself is short, stately, and, as we have shown elsewhere, singularly supersti- tious after a curious and not very noble type of its own, but it would be difficult to say the same things in more Imperial phrase. For instance, it opens thus :—" Jo recommande mon Ills et ma femme aux grands Corps de l'Etat, an peuple, et b. l'arm6e,"—a very dignified commencement. He enjoins on his son never to forget the motto of the head of his family, "Everything for the French people," to study " the writings of the Prisoner of St. Helena,"—is that, by the way, merely a mode of describing the Emperor at the time of his last conversations and reminiscences, or was it meant to revive "a memory and a defeat" ?—and to remember, "whenever circumstances will permit," that " the cause of the peoples is the cause of France." We suspect the Emperor knew even then that " circumstances " had perhaps not altogether permitted what he had nevertheless done in Italy. His reference to the Empress is very stately :—" I hope my memory will be dear to her, and that after my death she will forget the mortification I may have caused her." He closes with, "I shall die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith, which my son will always honour by his piety." The date is April 24, 1865.
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