who has filled the world with his fame, and made his name a proud title to the admiration and love of your countrymen. If you would desire to see the interior, I shall be most happy to gratify your wish. Pray enter; and I will show you the apartment where the ancestors of Napoleon were born, and the roof, now blackened by time, beneath which the life, traditions, and fortunes of his family were fostered during three centuries.'

“ While thus addressed by the venerable and sympathising ecclesiastic, the manly countenance of the enthusiastic Buonapartist was lit up with the deep-felt joy and sentiment of thankfulness which the words and courteous invitation of the speaker had kindled in his breast. The name of Napoleon, coupled with circumstances of such local and historical interest, could not other than deeply move him, dispelling the doubt and uncertainty on the subject of the identity of that house of which he had received some vague information from the host of his hotel on the previous evening. As one whom the bullets of Jena and Mont St. Jean had respected, he felt privileged in the gratification of his curiosity, courteously accepting the welcome invitation.

"The officer at once entered the house, and ascended the stone staircase, at the top of which the ecclesiastic received him with the most charming geniality of manner. The first object to which he directed the attention of his visitor was a large, stone-sculptured armorial shield placed above the door which gave entry into the spacious salon of the 'Casa Buonaparte.'

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"Look at that escutcheon,' said the priest; 'you will there see that same eagle that you have beheld gleaming above the standards of the great man of our age. The eagle was the military insignia which the Majorcan Buonapartes bore upon their banners and shields; and if the armies of Napoleon added thereto the thunderbolt of Jupiter in the claws of the king of birds, it was to indicate that Napoleon was the bearer of war's thunder, or rather to announce to the nations his Imperial apotheosis, after the manner of the emperors of Ancient Rome. The glory your countrymen have acquired on the battlefield they owe to Napoleon; and, as I perceive, you have served under him for many years. I can comprehend and excuse the pride you feel at thus being beneath its roof. This is the cradle of his race !'

"To dispel any doubt you may have entertained on the subject, I will here show you a document I am possessed of,' taking it from an antique carved oaken bookcase, the shelves of which were filled in compact array with volumes and parchment-bound MSS. Here,'

said he, is the Royal Decree by which, on the 23rd July, 1409, Martin I., King of Aragon, rewarded the services of Doctor Hugo Buonaparte, Majorcan, by nominating him Regente (Chief Judiciary President) of Corsica. That magistrate, born in this very house, is the direct ancestor of Napoleon, and the first of that family who established himself in the other island. He it was who there founded the illustrious stock from which in course of time was to issue the great man whose war-genius humbled the proudest thrones of continental Europe.

"What I have now told you is furthermore proved by this other document,' taking from the same compartment of the MSS. another similarly skin-bound collection of parchments. Here you will see the legal powers given and conferred by the same Regente upon the 27th May, 1419, to his brother, Bartoloméo Buonaparte, to sell all the possessions and properties which he had left but still held in Majorca, and to remit to him the product, by reason of his resolve to remain and settle definitively in Corsica with the children already borne to him by his wife, Juana de Saucis. These two documents bear, as you will perceive, in themselves every authenticity necessary to obtain. and give credit to their contents. They prove that in the second decennium of the fifteenth century a Buonaparte passed from Majorca into the Island of Corsica, where he established himself and begot children, who became the stock and progenitors of the Corsican family of the Buonapartes, and of Napoleon.

"Now lend me your attention yet a little longer, and listen to this letter, written to the author of 'The Chronicles of Majorca,' Don Geronimo Alemany, by a learned Jesuit of the College of Trilingue, whom various affairs having relation to his society had obliged to proceed to Corsica :

"To Señor D. Geronimo de Alemany.

"Ajaccio, May 23, 1752.

"MY DEAR SENOR,-Desirous to fulfil the commission that M. Herarger charged me to execute for you, I visited and searched all the public archives of this city. As result of my labours, I have to inform you that from several documents preserved therein it is attested that the family of Buonaparte, originally from Majorca, first began here in the person of Hugo Buonaparte, who was Regente of this island about the year 1418, and before whom no similar name is to be found in Corsica. In further result of my researches, I found that the sons of that Regente, by name Stephano, Ferdinando, and Andréa, became persons of distinction; that they obtained upon

several occasions offices of mark in the Republic,* in the class of patricians; and that since the fifteenth century until the present day the Buonapartes have been lords of Baetria. I think that this will suffice to convince you of the identity of the Majorcan and Corsican families.

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"They are most assuredly one and the same race, if what M. Herarger has told me on your part be true. But he added before my departure for Marseilles that the Majorcan house was become extinct. That of Corsica still subsists, and reckons many members, of whom Hermanno and Carlos Buonaparte are both established in Tuscany.

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'That God, our Lord, may preserve your life, is the prayer of your Servant and Brother in Jesus Christ,

EUSEBIO CAssar,

""Of the Society of Jesus.'

"Do you not see, monsieur,' said the venerable ecclesiastic, 'do you not see in that Charles Buonaparte the husband of Lætita Ramolino, and in both the parents of the First Consul, of the Emperor and King of Italy?" "

JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.

• Corsica was at this time a dependency of the Genoese Republic.

THE IRISH PRESS.

N recent years, whenever the utterances of the Irish press have been brought under the notice of the English people, the attention of the public on this side of the Channel has been directed for the most part to articles which are, in the opinion of the Irish Executive, calculated to foment discontent, or to blow into living flame the slumbering ashes of sedition. Though, however, the titles of the Irishman, and its cheaper edition, the Flag of Ireland; the Nation, and its cheaper edition, the Weekly News, are familiar to the reading public, very few contributors to the daily and weekly papers in London have ever seen copies of the Irish "National" journals. They circulate among the Irish resident in the metropolis; but are rarely read in the houses of any other section of the population. It may be further stated, as a somewhat curious fact, that they are seldom, if ever, seen on the tables of newspaper editors in the metropolis. It may not, therefore, be uninteresting to describe briefly the character of these papers, the widespread and potent influence of which cannot be disregarded; and to indicate the effect they exercise on the state of Irish political feeling in its various phases. No one who remembers the deep respect with which the Roman Catholic clergy were considered some few years ago by the people constituting their flocks could have possibly anticipated the indifference with which their views as political guides are now received. This alteration in sentiment must be attributed in the main to the effect of the writing in the journalistic organs generally known in England as "National." Twenty, indeed a dozen years ago, any one who dared to utter in public a sentence derogatory to a priest in the south or west of Irelandwould probably have been the object of a violent assault; and any one who might have had the hardihood to inflict any bodily injury on one of the spiritual guides of the majority of the people would probably have been the victim of lynch-law as prompt and final as the improvised code under which so many obnoxious persons were done to death in the earlier days of the American Republic. The contrast between the state of feeling indicated and that which now prevails is the most striking which has ever been presented in the recorded history of any country. Within a very few years a priest has been burned in effigy; another

has been struck in the face at a public meeting; while the most extreme of the "National" organs employ their bitterest satire and most pungent rhetorical darts to assail men who, like Cardinal Cullen and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kerry, have publicly denounced the Fenian confederacy as being a secret society.

The Nation, the oldest of the "National" papers, was started in October, 1842. In a short time it gathered to the ranks of its contributors all the talented young men who advocated the principles of the National party. Among these the best known at this side of the Channel are Maurice O'Connell, M. P., John O'Connell, M. P., Charles Gavan Duffy, and Denis Florence M'Carthy. The articles were characterised by remarkable vigour and beauty of diction, and some of the songs and other poems published in its columns have in a republished form taken a standard position in Anglo-Irish literature. Under the title of "The Spirit of the Nation" these lyrics have attained a wide popularity, and such songs as "The Battle Eve of the Brigade" and "Clare's Dragoons," by Thomas Davis, "The Memory of the Dead," published anonymously, and "O'Domhnall Abu" (commonly written O'Donnell Aboo), by M. J. M'Cann, are known through the length and breadth of the land; and the knowledge of such pieces for recitatation as "The Geraldines" and "My Grave," and "The Lament of Owen Roe O'Neill," by Thomas Davis, is equally broadly diffused. On their first publication, the Quarterly Review described these metrical selections as possessing great beauty of language and imagery, and Fraser's Magazine declared that though they were mischievous it "dared not condemn them, so full were they of beauty." Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C., now member of Parliament for Limerick, a gentleman who at one time directed the magazine which takes its name from Ireland's olden university, spoke of them as being "inspired;" and the martial tone and spirit of some of the ballads elicited from the Tablet the expression that they were "the music of the battle-field." The following is an extract from the preface to the edition of "The Spirit of the Nation," published in February, 1854:

"A new edition of 'The Spirit of the Nation' has been long called for. It had got so completely out of print that the publishers, after long inquiry, only obtained a copy accidentally at an auction of books. Meantime its reputation has been steadily rising, not only at home, but in England and America." Francis Jeffrey and Miss Mitford in England, and Longfellow in America, have written and spoken of some of the poems with enthusiasm, and a new demand for them has grown up in both countries. Still more recently the great Tory periodical quoted above contained a justly laudatory