The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 1

by William Makepeace Thackeray
"by 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 easy 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--in both of which works you will find true and
instructive pictures of human life, and which you may always think
over with advantage. But let me caution you against putting any
considerable trust in the other works of these authors, which were
placed in your hands at school and afterwards, and in which you were
taught to believe. Modern historians, for the most part, know very
little, and, secondly, only tell a little of what they know.