Madame Bonaparte after the death of her husband, resided with her children in their country house. It was a retired residence, approached by an avenue overarched by lofty trees and bordered by flowering shrubs. A smooth, sunny lawn, which extended in front of the house, lured these children, so unconscious of the high destinies which awaited them, to their infantile sports. They chased the butterfly; they played in the little pools of water with their naked feet; in childish gambols they rode upon the back of the faithful dog, as happy as if their brows were never to ache beneath the burden of a crown. How mysterious the designs of that inscrutable Providence, which, in the island of Corsica, under the sunny skies of the Mediterranean, was thus rearing a Napoleon, and far away, beneath the burning sun of the tropics, under the shade of the cocoa groves and orange-trees of the West Indies, was moulding the person and ennobling the affections of the beautiful and lovely Josephine. It was by a guidance, which neither of these children sought, that they were conducted from their widely separated and obscure homes to the metropolis of France. There, by their united energies, which had been fostered in solitary studies and deepest musings they won for themselves the proudest throne upon which the sun has ever risen; a throne which in power and splendor eclipsed all that had been told of Roman, or Persian, or Egyptian greatness. [Illustration: THE BIRTH-HOUSE OF NAPOLEON.] The dilapidated villa in Corsica, where Napoleon passed his infantile years, still exists, and the thoughtful tourist loses himself in pensive reverie as he wanders over the lawn where those children have played--as he passes through the vegetable garden in the rear of the house, which enticed them to toil with their tiny hoes and spades, and as he struggles through the wilderness of shrubbery, now running to wild waste, in the midst of which once could have been heard the merry shouts of these infantile kings and queens. Their voices are now hushed in death. But the records of earth can not show a more eventful drama than that enacted by these young Bonapartes between the cradle and the grave.