The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Second Funeral of Napoleon, by
William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

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Title: The Second Funeral of Napoleon

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

Release Date: May 21, 2006 [EBook #2645]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON

by William Makepeace Thackeray

AKA Michael Angelo Titmarch.

I. On the Disinterment of Napoleon at St. Helena

II. On the Voyage from St. Helena to Paris

III. On the Funeral Ceremony

I.--ON THE DISINTERMENT OF NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.

MY DEAR ----,--It is no en the Voyage from St. Helena asy task in this
world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean; and
many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the
works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I should laud
up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my small capabilities, to
imitate the remarkable character about whom I was reading, or whether
I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether
base, unworthy, laughable, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or
a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any
other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity,
rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which
are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people
whom it can do one no earthly good to remember.

It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted with what is
called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from perusing, in very
early youth, the little sheepskin-bound volumes of the ingenious Dr.
Goldsmith, and have been indebted for your knowledge of the English
annals to a subsequent study of the more voluminous works of Hume and
Smollett. The first and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have
written each an admirable history,--that of the Reverend Dr. Primrose,
Vicar of Wakefield, and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of Bramble Hall--