upon dynasties? He could, he did wear
them. These were his coronation shoes,—the
shoes of the Concordat, the Champ de Mai,
the night divorce from Josephine, and the
marriage with Maria Louisa! He wore
those gloves, too, that hang above. They are
of white leather, embroidered, but large and
clumsy-looking; for, the Colossus had large
hands (though soft, white, and dimpled, like
those of a girl), as became the grasper of
thrones, the seizer of Italy, who put the Iron
Crown on his own head, crying " Guai a chi
la tocca!"—Woe to him who touches it. He
wore those dainty pink silk stockings with
the golden clocks; he wore that 'broidered
white satin tunic, that would so admirably
become Madame Vestris in one of Mr.
Planché's burlesques; he wore that voluminous
crimson velvet mantle which is pinned
out in a circle against the wall; and—laugh
not, sneer not, but wonder!—he wore those
half-dozen court coats and continuations in
velvet and satin, with big cuffs, straight
collars, and square skirts. The conqueror of
Europe, in the spangled court suit of the
Marquis de Carabas! Yea, and with a gilt
sword, like a dancing-master's,—yea, and with
a brocaded waistcoat, with low flaps and peaked
pockets! If the old clothes were not there to
bear me out, you would think that I lied.

This was his, too,—a very different
coat; a sombre, faded, long-tailed, double-
breasted, high-collared, purple-blue coat,
embroidered on collar and cuff and down the
seams with olive leaves in dead gold. That
is the coat of a general of the Republic. It
is the coat of Marengo.

Black, rusted, devoid of splendour,
ludicrous almost, there are three secondhand
sovereignties here, perhaps the most interesting
and significant in the Museum. These
are three hats. Two of them are of the species
known as cocked, and were worn by the
Emperor in his campaigns; but they are
singularly unlike the petit chapeau.* These two
hats are cumbrous, top-heavy, lopsided,
exaggerated monstrosities. The resemblance
between one, and that affected by the British
beadle is painfully exact;. the other might
have been worn by glorious John Reeve as
Marmaduke Magog in the Wreck Ashore, or
by the ghost of a fiddler in that famous old
Vauxhall orchestra that had (has it still?) a
sounding-board like a cockle-shell. Yet these
were hats of power; hats that defined against
the white smoke of the battle, gave hope to
the faltering, encouragement to the brave;
one sight of which, one approving nod, made
the mutilated grenadier forget his wounds—
took half the sting away from death. Each
was a guiding-star to glory, plunder, victory;
and—ah me!—how many hundred times was
each cocked hat an ignis fatuus, decoying
men to a bloody, unremembered grave!

* The veritable " petit chapeau " is among the
relics in the Emperor's tomb at the Invalides.

Hat number three, is of a different order
altogether. It is not cocked, three-cornered,
flapped, slouched, peaked, or broad-brimmed.
It is not a fantail hat, a coach-wheel hat, a
wide-awake, a Jim Crow, a brigand, a William
Tell, a Hecker, a Tom and Jerry, a
waggoner's, a Tom Tug, a sou-wester, a four-and-
ninepenny gossamer, a Paris velvet-nap, a
shovel hat, a sombrero, a straw hat, or an
ordinary chimney-pot " tile." It is simply a
"shocking bad hat,"—the shockingest
perhaps that ever was seen by human eyes or
worn by human head; a round hat with a
short crown and a narrow brim, made
perhaps of felt, perhaps of rabbit's-skin,—
certainly of a greasy, mangy, rusty material,
utterly seedy, poverty-stricken, and woebegone
in appearance. Napoleon the Great—he
of the white satin shoes and velvet robe—
wore this miserable old hat; this shameful
tatterdemalion fragment, that no Jew would
touch with a pair of tongs; that would
dishonour, by companionship, even a spoutless
kettle in a kennel, or a dead cat on a
dustheap. He wore it, where? At Longwood,
St. Helena.

If any comment were valuable (and no
comment is) on the futility of human
ambition, the rottenness of human grandeur,
it might surely be found in this old hat. It
is the hat of a bankrupt. Not that the man
was penniless. He had enough money, even
in his stern captivity, to have purchased a
score of hats, with lace and ribbons enough
on them to serve my lord the sweep on
May-day; but, it is the moral, not the material ruin
that stares you in the face in this shabby
head-covering. The hat says, " Broke."

Underneath this hat, is a little yellow
iron-moulded cambric pocket-handkerchief,
that was taken off Napoleon's bed after his
death. The relic should soften us. It is all
over now. Outlaw, emperor, adventurer,
general, prisoner—they exist no more! They
are all blended into the handful of ashes in
the Invalides, " on the banks of the Seine, among
the French people, whom he loved so well."

The sceptre, sword-belt, coronation-sword,
and sash of Napoleon; a chess-board and
chess-men presented to him by his sister,
Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples; several
sets of saddles, bridles, and housings, of
Oriental workmanship, blazing with gold and
embroidery, presented to him during the
campaign of Egypt; a crown of olives,
modelled in pure gold, placed on his coffin as an
offering from some city, whose name I forget,
on the occasion of his second funeral; a
splendidly-bound copy of Ossian's Poems,
illustrated with original drawings by Isabey,
after Giraud; a copy of the Code Napoleon,
engrossed on vellum; a manuscript record of
the coronation, with costly coloured
drawings; these are yet among the relics of the
Empire, exhibited in these glass cases. Within
a railing in a corner, is the Emperor's camp-
bed. Emperor's camp-beds do not interest me