W. E.
Elevation of the Mind.—Lofty elevation of mind does not make one indifferent to the wants and sufferings of those who are below him: on the contrary, as the rarified air of mountains makes distant objects seem nearer, so are all his fellow-beings brought nearer to the heart of him who looks upon them from the height of his wisdom.
Napoleon after Death.—Death had marvellously improved the appearance of Napoleon, and every one exclaimed, when the face was exposed, “How very beautiful!” for all present acknowledged that they had never seen a finer or more regular and placid countenance. The beauty of the delicate Italian features was of the highest kind; whilst the exquisite serenity of their expression was in the most striking contrast with the recollections of his great actions, impetuous character, and turbulent life. As during his eventful career there was much of the mysterious and inscrutable about him, even after death Napoleon’s inanimate remains continued a puzzle and a mystery: for, notwithstanding his great sufferings and the usual emaciating effects of the malady that destroyed him, the body was found enormously fat. The frame was as unsusceptible of material disintegration as the spirit was indomitable. Over the sternum, or breast bone, which is generally only thinly covered, there was a coat of fat an inch and a half thick; and on the abdomen two inches, whilst the omentum, kidneys, and heart, were loaded with fat. The last organ was remarkably small, and the muscle flabby, in contradiction to our ideal associations, and in proof of the seeming paradox, that it is possible to be a very great man with a very little heart. Much anxiety was felt at the time to ascertain the disease of which Bonaparte died. Mr O’Meara had represented the liver as the faulty organ, and this has been echoed by Antommarchi; though, as we have said before, the illustrious sufferer himself, with better judgment, referred the mischief to the stomach, as its seat and source; and he was perfectly right, as the event proved. This organ was found most extensively disorganised: in fact, it was ulcerated all over like a honeycomb. The focus of the disease was exactly the spot pointed out by Napoleon—the pylorus, or lower end where the intestines begin. At this place I put my finger into a hole, made by an ulcer, that had eaten through the stomach, but which was stopped by a slight adhesion to the adjacent liver. After all, the liver was free from disease, and every organ sound except the stomach. Several peculiarities were noticed about the body. He appeared at some time to have had an issue open in the arm, and there was a slight mark, like a wound, in the leg, but which might have been caused by a suppurating boil. The chest was not ample, and there was something of feminine delicacy in the roundness of the arms and the smallness of the hands and feet. The head was large in proportion to the body, with a fine, massy, capacious forehead. In other respects there were no remarkable developements for the gratification of phrenologists. The diseased state of the stomach was palpably and demonstrably the cause of death; and how Napoleon could have existed for any time with such an organ, was wonderful, for there was not an inch of it sound.—Biography of a Surgeon.
The March of Magniloquence—Is “onward” like the prosperity of your two-and-sixpenny republic in Central America. We [the Americans] are becoming so great, that it is very much to be feared we shall lose all our standards of commerce. Having nothing little, we don’t see how the deuce we shall be able to express a diminutive. Our miniature will all become magnitude, and it is difficult for us to see our way clearly in the world. Our insects will grow into elephants, and for aught we see we shall have to speak of the gnat as a large monster, and the honey-bee have to be described as a beast of prey. “I does business in this store,” was the remark made the other day by a dealer in crab apples, as he crawled out of a refuse molasses-hogshead with his peck basket of merchandise. The skippers of the Long Island clam-boats all call each other captains; and we lately heard a city scavenger complaining to another gentleman in the same line of business, that his town house had been endangered during a recent conflagration: a mischievous cracker-boy had thrown one of his flaming missiles into the segment of a cellar occupied by the complainant and his family. Mr Mark Anthony Potts told us the other day that he had made arrangements for extending his business. He has taken the superintendence of two coal carts, having heretofore shovelled for but one. Nobody thinks nowadays of calling the conductor of a mud cart on the railroad by any less dignified title than an agent. The vender of apple-jack on a dilapidated cellar-door upon the North river, is a merchant; and the fourth-rate victualler along the wharves, who manages to rent half of a broken-down cobbler’s stall, keeps a public house!
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