BONAPARTE AS GENERAL, CONSUL, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE.
These busts are in Sèvres biscuit. The first, which is much superior to the other two, is attributed to Boizot. The manufactory of Sèvres produced many such busts, especially in the consular period, and Bonaparte, anxious to see his face everywhere, encouraged the production and diffusion of them. I have before me an official document which shows that from the commencement of the year VI. to the end of the year IX. the factory produced more than four hundred busts and thirteen hundred medallions of Bonaparte.—A. D.
In literature and in music, as in art and science, there was a renewal of activity. A circle of poets and writers gathered about the First Consul. Paisiello was summoned to Paris to direct the opera and conservatory of music. There was a revival of dignity and taste in strong contrast to the license and carelessness of the Revolution. The incroyable passed away. The Greek costume disappeared from the street. Men and women began again to dress, to act, to talk, according to conventional forms. Society recovered its systematic ways of doing things, and soon few signs of the general dissolution which had prevailed for ten years were to be seen.
Once more the traveller crossed France in peace; peasant and laborer went undisturbed about their work, and slept without fear. Again the people danced in the fields and “sang their songs as they had in the days before the Revolution.” “France has nothing to ask from Heaven,” said Regnault de Saint Jean d’Angély, “but that the sun may continue to shine, the rain to fall on our fields, and the earth to render the seed fruitful.”
NAPOLEON IN 1803.
Painted by A. Gérard in 1803. Engraved by Richomme in 1835.
[1]. The Volta prize has been awarded only three or four times. An award of particular interest to Americans was that made in 1880 to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. The amount of the prize was a little less than ten thousand dollars. Dr. Bell, being already in affluent circumstances, upon receiving this prize, set it apart to be used for the benefit of the deaf, in whose welfare he had for many years taken a great interest. He invested it in another invention of his, which proved to be very profitable, so that the fund came to amount to one hundred thousand dollars. This he termed the Volta Fund. Some of this fund has been applied by Dr. Bell to the organization of the Volta Bureau, which collects all valuable information that can be obtained with reference to not only deaf-mutes as a class, but to deaf-mutes individually. Twenty-five thousand dollars has been given to the Association for the Promotion of Teaching Speech to the Deaf. Napoleon is thus indirectly the founder of one of the most interesting and valuable present undertakings of the country.