r reached home, when Cardinal Fesch
and the mother of Napoleon had it examined by her own physician and four
medical professors of the university. They also pronounced the disease
to consist of an obstruction of the liver. So much for the certainty of
medicine. The whole report is now known to have been a blunder. Napoleon
ultimately died of a fearful disease, which probably has no connexion
with the liver at all. His disease was cancer in the stomach.

The result of those quarrels, however, was to give a less circumscribed
promenade to Napoleon. On the decline of his health being distinctly
stated to Sir Hudson Lowe, he enlarged the circle of his exercise, and
Napoleon resumed his walks and works. From this period, too, he resumed
those dictations which, in the form of notes, contained his personal
opinions, or rather those apologies for his acts, which he now became
peculiarly anxious to leave behind him to posterity.

Whatever may be the historic value of those notes, it is impossible to
read them without the interest belonging to transactions which shook
Europe, and without remembering that they were the language of a man by
far the most remarkable of his time, if not the most remarkable for the
result of his acts, since the fall of the Roman empire. In speaking of
the return from Elba--"I took," said he, "that resolution as soon as it
was proved to me that the Bourbons considered themselves as the
continuance of the Third Dynasty, and denied the legal existence of the
Republic, and the Empire, which were thenceforth to be regarded only as
usurping governments. The consequences of this system were flagrant. It
became the business of the bishops to reclaim their sees; the property
of the clergy, and the emigrants must be restored. All the services
rendered in the army of Conde and in La Vendee, all the acts of
treachery committed in opening the gates of France to the armies which
brought back the king, merited reward. All those rendered under the
standard of the Republic and the Empire were acts of felony." He then
gave his special view of the overthrow of the French monarchy.

"The Revolution of 1789 was a general attack of the masses upon the
privileged classes. The nobles had occupied, either directly or
indirectly, all the posts of justice, high and low. They were exempt
from the charges of the state, and yet enjoyed all the advantages
accruing from them, by the exclusive possession of all ho