The death of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, President of the French Senate, severs the last link between the first and the second French Empires; and we have, accordingly, placed his portrait on record in our columns. At the time of his death he stood alone among “the veterans;” no one then living had seen, enjoyed, and suffered as much as he.

He was born the year after the peace with England, 1784, nearly seventy-six years ago; his native place was that of his brother, Ajaccio, in Corsica. When the family removed to France he was a baby; we hear of him first at a girl’s school directed by Madame Campan; next at a military academy; then, when he was fifteen, as a midshipman on board a French man-of-war. His brother had commenced his autocratic career; under his auspices, had young Jerome possessed a fair share of ability, the world would have heard of him before he had attained his majority. Like the Prince of Wales, who commanded a British regiment at the age of sixteen, young Jerome was place in command of a fine corvette at eighteen, and bidden by his brother to “die or serve his country.” Unhappily for his biographer, the young man had no inclination to do either the one of the other. He sailed to St. Domingo with the ill-fated General Leclerc, and then sailed back again, none the more famous for the voyage. He likewise sailed to the United States, and saved his ship from capture and himself from a long imprisonment by a judicious run into New York Bay. Sailoring, he said, was not his forte—and, so far as the event proved, he certainly was right.

He was more successful in the drawing room. At Baltimore, just fifty-seven years ago, he met Miss Elizabeth Patterson, a lady who was universally conceded to be the belle of her day. She was beautiful, she was rich, she was highly accomplished, high-minded, and of distinguished family. The young Captain, like many others fell in love with her: she was equally charmed by her admirer; and without waiting for the consent of any one save the bride’s family, the young couple were married by the Bishop of Baltimore, a Carroll. We need not stop here to notice the rashness of the proceeding on the lady’s part. Jerome was twenty years and none days old—a minor, to all intents and purposes. He was, as all who knew him must have detected, a young man of feeble will, and not a brilliant intellect. He belonged to a family second to none in the world. The lady, though beautiful and accomplished and good and rich and adorable in every way, was after all, only a Patterson; and she married him without waiting for a line of consent from his mother or his all-powerful brother, the despot of France. The circumstances must be well weighed when we come to judge Napoleon’s subsequent proceedings.

When the news of the marriage reached France, the Emperor simply pooh-poohed the affair. Young men will be young men, he said, in substance; that rascal Jerome is sowing his wild oats in America. As for marriage, the idea is a good joke. I intend, he said to his friend, to marry Jerome some of these days, into a good old royal family. As for “the Patterson,” we must pension her.

Needless to remark that these oracular intimations found their way across the ocean, and greatly disturbed the honey-moon of the child-couple. Jerome himself had been bred in wholesome terror of his willful brother; his young wife was frightened, and loving, and uneasy about the future. Why should Jerome, said she, go away to France? Why not stay here with us, and be happy—away from courts and wars and angry brothers?

Well would it have been for her—perhaps well for him too—had he done so. But the magnetic influence of the Imperial court could not be resisted by so weak a mortal as Jerome. In the midst of a long and delightful nuptial tour the order of recall reached him and he obeyed ‘Twas the last of “Miss Patterson’s” happiness.

Chased by British cruisers, racked by anxiety about the future, the young couple made land at Lisbon in the spring of 1805. If Jerome had been a man of pluck he would have taken his pretty young wife with him to plead at his brother’s feet for her rights as a wife. He was a coward; and he left her in Lisbon, under a plea of ill-health, and posted to Paris alone.

He had been more of consequence there since his marriage than he had been before. The Emperor had been heard to swear that “the Patterson” should never be one of his family. When Jerome arrived, hot and anxious, Napoleon laughed at him bitterly, notified him that his marriage had been annulled on the petition of his mother, and bade him make a decent disposal of “Miss Patterson.” If Jerome had any energy he would have resisted. As it was, he only whined feebly; cried too, ‘tis said, a good deal, when his fair wife far gone in pregnancy, was absolutely refused permission to set foot on shore at Amsterdam—the port to which she sailed from Lisbon. She went to England, poor girl, and there gave birth to her son; but the boy’s father was lost to her forever.

The Emperor knew enough of men to judge his brother rightly. A few energetic measures were sure to cool his boy-love. In March 1805, express orders were given that no registrar should register “a pretended marriage” of Jerome Bonaparte with “a foreigner.” In May following, this letter was written by Napoleon to the Pope:

“I have frequently spoken to your Holiness of a young brother, nineteen years of age, whom I sent in a frigate to America, and who, after a sojourn of a month, although a minor, married a Protestant, the daughter of a merchant of the United States, He just returned. He is fully conscious of his fault, I have sent back to America Miss Patterson, who calls herself his wife. By our laws the marriage is null, A Spanish priest so far forgot his duties as to pronounce the benediction, I desire form your Holiness a bull annulling the marriage. I could easily have the marriage broken in Paris, since the Gallican Church pronounces such marriages null. But it appears better to me to have it done In Rome, on of the example to sovereign families marrying Protestants. It is important for France that there should not be a Protestant young woman so near my person. It is dangerous that a minor and distinguished youth should be exposed to such seduction against the civil laws and all sorts of propriety.”

The Pope, however, did not take the bait. He was about as weak as Jerome himself, but he saw an opportunity to of thwarting his great oppressor, and he seized it. He declined to annul the marriage. It is not likely that the Emperor was greatly chagrined by the event, though it did not probably improve his opinion of the Pope. He quietly annulled the marriage by civil decree, and offered Jerome a fine embassy to Algiers in exchange for his wife. The mean-spirited creature accepted the offer, and his beautiful Elizabeth became Miss Patterson once more, returning home to this country with her son.

Historians have been fond of alluding to this transaction as an evidence of the selfishness and bad faith of the Emperor Napoleon. But there is another side to the question. It is using a mild term to say that the lady’s friends acted imprudently in the matter. It was clearly their duty, in view of Jerome’s age and rank and character, to obtain Napoleon’s consent before the celebration of the marriage. No careful father would allow his daughter to marry a foreigner and a minor without some evidence of the willingness of his parents. If any New York merchant suffered his daughter to marry the minor son of an English duke, with ascertaining how the duke felt on the subject, the public would not be surprised to hear that the boy’s father had taken steps to have the marriage annulled. Unfortunately for Jerome’s wife, there is evidence to show that her friends did not overlook the possible and probable contingency of the nullification of the marriage, but actually traded on it. The marriage contract was drawn up by Mr. Dallas, one of the first lawyers of his time, who was afterward Secretary of the Treasury, and father of our present minister to England. It contains the following clauses:

“Article 1. In case of any difficulty being raised relative to the validity of the said marriage, either in the State of Maryland or the French Republic, the said Jerome Bonaparte engages, at the request of the said Elizabeth Patterson and the said William Patterson, or either of them, to execute any deed necessary to remove the difficulty, and to confer on the said union all the character of a valid and perfect marriage according to the respective laws of the State of Maryland and of the French Republic. “Article 4. That if the marriage should be annulled either on the demand of the said Jerome Bonaparte or that of any member of his family, the said Elizabeth Patterson shall have a right, in any case, to one-third of the real, personal, and mixed property of her future husband.”

Both of these clauses, we are sorry to say, look to pecuniary results. The latter speaks for itself; the former could only have given rise to an action against Jerome for money damages for non-fulfillment of contract. It is pleasant to know that the lady has never availed herself of the privilege.

No one could be more gracious than Napoleon when people gave up body and soul for him. He made Jerome captain of a line-of-battle ship, put him the way of capturing British traders, and though, with his usual luck, he was obliged to run his ship ashore to prevent her being taken by the first English man-of-war she met, he rewarded his failure as though it had been a success. Jerome lost his wife; but he was made an admiral, a Prince, and General of Division in the army. Thus laden with incongruous honors and titles, the weak-headed youth was easily persuaded to assent to the nullification of his marriage, and to wed a German Princess, Frederica Catarina of Würtemberg. The particular bribe he got for this condescension was the crown of Würtemberg, which he assumed at the age of twenty-two, three weeks after his second marriage.

Jerome’s public career was so uneventful that it may be dismissed in a very few words, and the reader’s attention recalled to the more interesting details of his private life. As King, he was a bon garçon—a good fellow; played leap-frog in his court-room; having little religion, and less money, he welcomed Jews to his capital. In 1812, he led a division of the Grand Army, and behaved so badly at Smolensko that he was degraded by his brother. Next year, he ran away from his capital, and few days afterward, he ran out of Germany altogether. The year after, he ran out of France. By-and-by, Napoleon escaped form Elba, and Jerome loomed up again, very respectable, but alarmingly feeble, in the House of Peers; a few days more, and he was running away again—this time from Waterloo. Then he craved a bedroom from his father-in-law, whom he had previously dispossessed of the throne; the old man consented, provided Jerome would have no one near him who spoke French. The Germans, you see, had already acquired that touching affection for their Fanzösische brüder which is one of their most amiable characteristics to-day.

For a time Jerome existed in this condition of dependence; but the Würtembergers made it too hot for him at last, and he ran away once more—this time to Austria, where he lived some thirty years in peace. In 1848, the old man was recalled to France by his nephew, the President of the French Republic. Louis Napoleon knew his man. He paraded him on all occasions and in all weathers before the Parisians as “The last surviving brother of the Emperor:” he made him a Marshal; he made him president of the Senate; he gave him “donations” to enormous amounts; he presented him with the Palais Royal as his residence; he appointed him heir to the throne, failing direct issue. The old man bore all meekly, and did as He was bid; it must have been pleasant for him to perceive that he was, at last, of some use in this world.

Satirists will discover, in the life of this man, new arguments against female sagacity; for feeble and cowardly and inept as he was, he was beloved truly and honestly by two of the strongest women of his day. His first wife, “Miss Patterson,” still lives in Baltimore, universally beloved and respected. Over half a century has elapsed since she parted forever from her husband: all these years she has lived alone, a graceful and noble lady, doing her duty to her son, her grandson, and her neighbors, and maintaining so high a social standing that, at Baltimore, it is she and Jerome who is said to have made a mésalliance. Whatever may be said of the friends who suffered her, in tender girlhood, to contract as imprudent marriage, even the foulest scandal-monger has hushed his tongue when the name “Miss Elizabeth Patterson” has been mentioned.

Nor was Frederica of Würtemberg an ordinary woman. Like her sister-in-law, Hortense, she was married from motives of state policy to a man whom she hardly knew, and whose poor affections had already been given to another. Yet she loved him as a peasant’s wife lovers her husband, followed him in his exiles; accompanied him to the camp, guided him in his hour of trouble, and stood by him honorably and faithfully when her own kith and kin had no insult too keen for too brutal to inflict on him.

How few good and strong men have the good fortune to marry one woman as excellent as either of the two wives of this poor simpleton!

The race of Jerome Bonaparte survives in the persons of Captain Patterson, a West Pointer, now in the French army, the grandson of “Miss Patterson;” Prince Napoleon, who succeeds his father as President of the French Senate, and the Princess Mathilde, both children of Frederica of Würtemberg. Captain Patterson inherits his grandmother's vigor of character, and is a fine soldier. He has vainly endeavored to have the decree annulling his grandfather's marriage with Miss Patterson canceled. The present Emperor declines to reverse his uncle's decision.

Of “Napoleon Jerome” and Mathilde it is difficult to speak seriously. They are the common butts of the Parisian wits. Rumor accuses the former of being a coward and a fool; the latter enjoys a very dusky reputation. An industrious jest-collector has gathered in a book no less than six hundred jokes against Prince Napoleon, all of which have been current in Parisian salons: and his sister has been equally victimized. The last two may serve as types of the whole. In Jerome's last illness he was attended by Doctor Rayer.

The story runs as follows: “One day the Prince Napoleon is said to have arrived in haste at Villegénis to see his father; he was stopped in the ante-chamber by Dr. Rayer, who declared that the mind of the patient was confused and wandering, and that it might be an indiscretion to admit him at that moment to his father's bedside. The Prince insisted; he was sure his father would recognize him, and therefore there could be no harm in admitting him. The Prince was admitted, when his father, turning his eyes to the door, exclaimed ‘Je voila, mon brave!’ ‘There you see!’ said the doctor, reproachfully. The same story is turned in another sense to suit the Princess Mathilde. The Princess insisted upon seeing her father when in this condition, and the doctor remonstrated as he did with her brother, saying that it was useless, as her father was incapable of recognizing her. The Princess, however, was admitted, and the doctor asked the sick man if he knew who it was that stood by his bed-side. ‘Oh, oui,’ he answered ‘C’est Mathilde, la sainte femme!’ ‘There’ said Rayer, ‘I told you he was deranged.’ So numerous are these jokes that the famous Professor of the Faculty threatens to leave town till the excitement is over.”