“NAPOLEON THE DESTINED MONARCH OF THE WORLD.”

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 8, Issue 445, 10 December 1866, Page 3

“NAPOLEON THE DESTINED MONARCH OF THE WORLD.”

; (From tba Qaelong' Begister.) We have no right to bring religious controversy into bur secular things; does not preclude us from reviewing religous works as ' literary productions, nor from giving, as news , an account of the reception of such works by the religious party. It may be questioned whether “ Louis Napoleon the Destined Monarch of the World,” is a religious book at all. In the opinion of many it is decidedly irreligious. Certain it is that it contains more politics than religion. It has, moreover, created such an amount of excitement that its re-publication in the colony may be looked upon as an event of much interest in contemporary history. Probably we should not have again noticed this book, had it not been that an article in the Wesleyan Chronicle enables us to give some news respecting its reception in quarters supposed to have authority in ecclesiastical matters. The Wesleyan Chronicle takes the measure of this book as a literary production in a few brief graphic sentences. “There is,” it says, “ a fashion in books as well as in crinolines and bonnets. Sensational literature is quite the rage. There are many excellent persons, however, who very properly shudder at the sensational novels of Miss Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and others, but who must, nevertheless, have some highly spiced religious book; and many a grave and sober man and woman, who would hold up their hands in pious horror at the bare mention of a novel, will read with due reverance (but with great wonder and excitement) some volume which, while it professes to treat on and interpret prophecy, is in fact more fictitious than the orthodox three-volume novel of the circulating libraries.”

That the book is really a work of fiction is evident to any one who brings to its perusal a very moderate knowledge of history. With regard to the past, however, their is great room for difference of opinion; so we will take as an example of the way in which the author accepts fiction for fact, his adoption of a silly paragraph that went the round of the papers about five years ago. He gives as his authority the Banker’s Keport, but we will stake our reputation for the possession of a little common sense upon the declaration of our belief that the Banker’s Keport merely quoted the paragraph in order to scout it as a stupid canard. Mr Baxter quotes it as a proof that prophecy has been fulfilled by the possession by Louis Napoleon of “ treasures of gold and silver.” We shall quote the paragraph to enable our readers to take their own measure of its reliability:— It has been a great mystery to English bankers and to the directors of the Bank of England how the bullion of the Bank of France could he so greatly increased within the last three years, while the institution has been constantly sending gold to England, to Germany and America. Not long since, the Bank of France drew fifteen million francs in silver from the Bank of England, which it paid for in gold bars with the French mint Stamp on them. At its last report it showed a balance of one hundred and seventeen million francs in gold, while the amount one year ago was under eighty millions—nearly one-third increase. It is whispered that this abundance of gold is the result of a scientific discovery, which the Emperor Napoleon has secured the monopoly of. Gold is at the present moment manufactured at Paris in a secret manner. Though it is not known how extensively the precious metal is produced, several hundred-weight of the material are taken to a certain place on the first of each month. Everything is conducted with the utmost secrecy. None of the workmen are allowed to leave, and nothing definite can be known; but the fact that gold is produced is beyond peradventure. How long Napoleon 111 will be able to keep this wonderful secret remains to be seen. 4 Such is the fiction. Now for the fact. It will be remembered that at the time the paragraph refers, the arrival in England of each successive gold ship from Victoria used to be noticed in the money article of the Times, accompanied with the remark “ the greater part of the gold has been taken on continental account.” The mysterious source of supply was Ballaarat or Bendigo. It will be some consolation for those who ha\ e made up their minds that the world will come to an end in 1873, for the reason, among others, that the world will then be 6000 years old, to learn that the reviewer in the Wesleyan Chronicle has gone over the various chronologies, and finds that the year 1873, will be, according to the system most generally received by the learned, 7283 years old, according to the version most commonly used it will be 5876 years old, while according to the.'Jews it will be only 5632 years old. Our religious contemporary closes his review of the book with an estimate of the character of the author in these words:—“Were it not that the : ' writer is evidently sincere in his notions we should pronounce it to be the grossest impiety; as it is, in charity wC nasi regard it as the ravings of a monostamac”

Several Australian- editions of the work have been published. It is a humiliating fact, which speaks badly for the intellectual progress of the age, that only books which h ive paid the publisher to reprint in Victoria are:—“ Artemus Ward: his book,” “Selections from Orpheus C. Kerr,” and Louis Napoleon, the Destine Monarch of the World,” and that the last and worst of these has paid the best.

We may be allowed while writing on such a subject'to add a few words by way of moral. The world is coming to an end so rapidly that to some one or other of the human family it comes to an end every minute. If every individual were to consider the end as regards himself instead of troubling his head about the wholesale desruction of others, he would take pains to mend his own way of life, and thus at the same time take the most effectual way of mending the lives of others by the most powerful of all preaching—-that of example.