Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte/Postscript to the Seventh Edition
POSTSCRIPT TO THE SEVENTH EDITION.
Since the publication of the Sixth Edition of this work, the French nation, and the world at large, have obtained an additional evidence, to which I hope they will attach as much weight as it deserves, of the reality of the wonderful history I have been treating of. The great nation, among the many indications lately given of an heroic zeal like what Homer attributes to his Argive warriors, τίσασθαι ἙΛΈΝΗΣ ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε, have formed and executed the design of bringing home for honorable interment the remains of their illustrious chief.
How many persons have actually inspected these relics, I have not ascertained; but that a real coffin, containing real bones, was brought from St. Helena to France, I see no reason to disbelieve.
Whether future visitors to St. Helena will be shown merely the identical place in which Buonaparte was (said to have been) interred, or whether another set of real bones will be exhibited in that island, we have yet to learn.
This latter supposition is not very improbable. It was something of a credit to the island, an attraction to strangers, and a source of profit to some or the inhabitants, to possess so remarkable a relic; and this glory and advantage they must naturally wish to retain. If so, there seems no reason why they should not have a Buonaparte of their own; for there is, I believe, no doubt that there are, or were, several museums in England, which, among other curiosities, boasted, each, of a genuine skull of Oliver Cromwell.
Perhaps, therefore, we shall hear of several well-authenticated skulls of Buonaparte also, in the collections of different virtuosos, all of whom (especially those in whose own crania the "organ of wonder" is the most largely developed), will doubtless derive equal satisfaction from the relics they respectively possess.