might have been a
problem. Without the will, the energy, the genius, or the selfishness of
his remarkable father, the son of Napoleon had yet ambition,
persistence, and a reverence for his father's memory that amounted
almost to a passion. Without any special love for France, he cherished
that dream of empire that his father had made come true. Had he lived
and joined ability to strength, his name might have raised up armies,
and again drenched Europe in blood--the tool of factions or the prey of
his own ambitions. He died a lonely invalid, and Europe was spared the
horror of a possible "might have been."

On the plain bronze tomb that marks this boy's place of burial in the
Carthusian Monastery at Vienna--near to that of another unwise and
unfortunate Prince, the Austrian usurper Maximilian of Mexico--the
visitor may read this inscription, placed there by the Emperor, his
grandfather: To the eternal memory of Joseph Charles Francis, Duke of
Reichstadt, son of Napoleon, Emperor of the French, and Marie Louise,
Archduchess of Austria. Born at Paris, March 20, 1811, when in his
cradle he was hailed by the title of King of Rome; he was endowed with
every faculty, both of body and mind; his stature was tall; his
countenance adorned with the charms of youth, and his conversation full
of affability; he displayed an astonishing capacity for study, and the
exercise of the military art: attacked by a pulmonary disease, he died
at Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, July 22, 1832.

The epitaph tells but one side of this boy's story; the other side is
sad enough. A young life begun in glory went out in gloom; the Prince of
the Tuileries became the prisoner of Vienna: the dream of empire was
speedily dispelled, and death itself mercifully removed one who might
have been a menace and a curse to Europe.

What he might have been had his father remained conqueror and Emperor
none may say. But the star of Napoleon, that had blazed like a meteor in
Europe's startled sky, flickered, fell, and went out in disgrace.
Thenceforward the shadow of the father's downfall clung to the boy, and
the son of Napoleon had neither the opportunity, the energy, nor the
will to display any trace of that genius for conquest that made the name
of Napoleon great in his day, and greater since his downfall and his
death.

OAKLEIGH.

BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.

CHAPTER XII.

"Why has he come home?"

This was the question on the lips of each one of the fam