But artists as well as authors obtain from him the same encouragement, and experience the same liberality.  In our different museums we, therefore, already, see and admire upwards of two hundred pictures, representing the different actions, scenes, and achievements of Bonaparte’s public life.  It is true they are not all highly finished or well composed or delineated, but they all strike the spectators more or less with surprise or admiration; and it is with us, as, I suppose, with you, and everywhere else, the multitude decide:  for one competent judge or real connoisseur, hundreds pass, who stare, gape, are charmed, and inspire thousands of their acquaintance, friends, and neighbours with their own satisfaction.  Believe me, Napoleon the First well knows the age, his contemporaries, and, I fear, even posterity.

That statuaries and sculptors consider him also as a generous patron, the numerous productions of their chisels in France, Italy, and Germany, having him for their object, seem to evince.  Ten sculptors have already represented his passage over the Mount St. Bernard, eighteen his passage over Pont de Lodi, and twenty-two that over Pont d’ Arcole.  At Rome, Milan, Turin, Lyons, and Paris are statues of him representing his natural size; and our ten thousand municipalities have each one of his busts; without mentioning the thousands of busts all over Europe, not excepting even your own country.  When Bonaparte sees under the windows of the Tuileries the statue of Caesar placed in the garden of that palace, he cannot help saying to himself:  “Marble lives longer than man.”  Have you any doubt that his ambition and vanity extend beyond the grave?

The only artist I ever heard of who was disappointed and unrewarded for his labour in attempting to eternize the memory of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a German of the name of Schumacher.  It is, indeed, allowed that he was more industrious, able, and well-meaning than ingenious or considerate.  He did not consider that it would be no compliment to give the immortal hero a hint of being a mortal man.  Schumacher had employed near three years in planning and executing in marble the prettiest model of a sepulchral monument I have ever seen, read or heard of.  He had inscribed it:  “The Future Tomb of Bonaparte the Great.”  Under the patronage of Count von Beast, he arrived here; and I saw the model in the house of this Minister of the German Elector Arch—­Chancellor, where also many French artists went to inspect it.  Count von Beast asked De Segur, the grand master of the ceremonies, to request the Emperor to grant Schumacher the honour of showing him his performance.  De Segur advised him to address himself to Duroc, who referred him to Devon, who, after looking at it, could not help paying a just tribute to the execution and to the talents of the artist, though he disapproved of the subject, and declined mentioning it to the Emperor.  After three months’ attendance in this capital, and all petitions and memorials to our great folks remaining unanswered, Schumacher obtained an audience of Fouche, in which he asked permission to exhibit his model of Bonaparte’s tomb to the public for money, so as to be enabled to return to his country.