Napoleon divorced Josephine that he might be the father of a line of kings.  When he abdicated in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, he declared his son, the child of Marie Louise, “Napoleon the Second, Emperor of France,” and the world laughed.  The son died before he had fairly reached manhood’s estate.  Napoleon the Third, son of Hortense, Queen of Holland, the grandson of Josephine, reigned long and well as Emperor of France.  The Prince Imperial—­a noble youth—­great-grandson of Josephine, was killed in Africa while fighting the battle of the nation that undid Napoleon.

Josephine was a parent of kings:  Napoleon was not.

When Bonaparte was banished to Elba, and Marie Louise was nowhere to be seen, Josephine wrote to him words of consolation, offering to share his exile.

She died not long after—­on the Second of June, Eighteen Hundred Fourteen.

After viewing that gaudy tomb at the Invalides, and thinking of the treasure in tears and broken hearts that it took to build it, it will rest you to go to the simple village church at Ruel, a half-hour’s ride from the Arc de Triomphe, where sleeps Josephine, Empress of France.

MARY W. SHELLEY

Shelley, beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knowest.  When Spring arrives, leaves that you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it, and the grass will be of another growth.  Thy name is added to the list which makes the earth bold in her age, and proud of what has been.  Time, with slow, but unwearied feet, guides her to the goal that thou hast reached; and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still nearer the hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of Cestius. —­Journal of Mary Shelley

[Illustration:  MARY SHELLEY]

When Emerson borrowed from Wordsworth that fine phrase about plain living and high thinking, no one was more astonished than he that Whitman and Thoreau should take him at his word.  He was decidedly curious about their experiment.  But he kept a safe distance between himself and the shirt-sleeved Walt; and as for Henry Thoreau—­bless me!  Emerson regarded him only as a fine savage, and told him so.  Of course, Emerson loved solitude, but it was the solitude of a library or an orchard, and not the solitude of plain or wilderness.  Emerson looked upon Beautiful Truth as an honored guest.  He adored her, but it was with the adoration of the intellect.  He never got her tag in jolly chase of comradery; nor did he converse with her, soft and low, when only the moon peeked out from behind the silvery clouds, and the nightingale listened.  He never laid himself open to damages.  And when he threw a bit of a bomb into Harvard Divinity School it was the shrewdest bid for fame that ever preacher made.

I said “shrewd”—­that’s the word.