on board his vessel. He died without suffering, and a death the mildest and the most desired by military men.

I deeply sympathise with your sorrow. The moment that separates us from the object we love is terrible: it severs us from the world-it affects the frame with convulsions of agony. The faculties of the mind are annihilated-it retains no relations with the world, except through the medium of an incubus which alters every thing. Mankind appear more cold and selfish than they really are. In such a situation we feel, that if nothing obliged us to live, it would be far better to die; but when, after that first impression, we press our children to our heart, tears and sentiments of tenderness reanimate nature, and we live for our children. Yes, Madam, let yours from that first moment open your heart to melancholy. You will weep with them, you will watch over their infancy, you will instruct them in their youth-you will talk to them of their father, of your grief, of the loss which they and the Republic have suffered. After having re-attached yourself to the world through the influence of filial and maternal love, appreciate for something the friendship and the lively interest that I shall ever entertain for the widow of my friend. Be persuaded that there are some men, though small in number, who deserve to be the hope of the afflicted, because they feel acutely for mental suffering. (Signed) BONAPARTE."

There is a little of the mannerism of the period in the above, but every British woman, whose husband or brother has fallen for his country, will appreciate its value and the motives of the writer. A single authentic document like this refutes and outlives a thousand calumnies.

There are fewer symptoms in this publication of Napoleon's tendency to a belief in predestination than we expected to have found. The feeling, however, now and then breaks out-pretty strongly in his despatch from Egypt announcing the naval defeat at Aboukir; and also in the account of his marriage with Marie-Louise. Upon that occasion Prince Schwartzenberg, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, gave a splendid fete at Paris, to which Napoleon and the new Empress were invited. In the midst of the festivities, a temporary ball-room, which had been constructed in the garden of the Ambassador's hotel, took fire. Many persons perished. Among them the Ambassador's sister-in-law, who was suffocated in the attempt to rescue one of her children. The writer proceeds

"In 1770, during the fête given by the city of Paris to celebrate the marriage of Louis the Sixteenth with Marie-Antoinette, two thousand persons were overturned in the fosses of the Champs-Elysées, and perished. Afterwards, when Louis and Marie-Antoinette met their death upon the scaffold, this terrible accident was recollected and converted into a presage of what followed-for it is to the insurrection of that great metropolis that the Revolution must be immediately attributed. The unfortunate issue of a fête given by an Austrian ambassador, under similar circumstances, to celebrate the alliance of two houses in the persons of Napoleon and Marie-Louise, appeared an inauspicious omen. The misfortunes of France have been solely caused by the change of policy on the part of Austria. Napoleon was not superstitious, yet upon that occasion he had a painful presentiment. The day after the battle of Dresden, when, during the pursuit of the Austrian army, he learned from a prisoner that Prince Schwartzenberg was rumoured to have been killed, he observed-' He was a brave man; but his death is so far consoling, that it was evidently he who was threatened by the unhappy omen at his ball.' Two hours after it was ascertained at head-quarters that it was Moreau, and not Prince Schwartzenberg, that had been killed the day before."

There are numerous other personal traits dispersed through the work, and which, independently of their intrinsic interest, greatly relieve the severity of the historical and military details. If any credit be due to his statements here, and in his recorded conversations at St. Helena, both of which agree with the reports of the best informed Frenchmen, who have no motives to traduce him, his moral character must be taken to have been grossly misrepresented before his fall. In his public capacity he exhibited the feelings, or let us rather call them the crimes, inseparable from ambitious men and ambitious governments. Like other warriors, he was indifferent enough to the effusion of human blood, provided the victory was secured. Like other persons and states aspiring to empire, he made light of the rights and institutions that were opposed to his plans of dominion. But apart from these, the almost universal vices of nations and rulers, he seems as an individual to have been tainted by very few of the noxious passions and caprices of exalted station. His personal habits were laborious and temperate. In private intercourse, if any intercourse with such a man can be called so, he usually succeeded in fixing the unbounded admiration and attachment of those who approached him. In his distribution of favours, there was little of the petty perfidy and mystery of Courts. The system which he directed demanded talent in every department, and wherever he found it, he appropriated it, promptly and even abruptly, but in general so judiciously that he had seldom cause to repent of his selection. From the tone in which he speaks of public men, it may be collected that he was very far from entertaining a contempt for virtue. He asserts, that personal probity formed one of the highest recommendations to his favour-although it was a melancholy fact, that in France during his day, moral worth was, for the purposes of her government, not the most valuable qualification. Even his ambition, culpable and destructive as it was, was not untinged by magnanimity. His abdication at Fontainebleau, the severest trial of human pride, was not so involuntary and sudden as was at the time supposed. In a despatch to Caulaincourt (4th Jan. 1814) appended to this publication, he announces his intention, if called upon, to make that sacrifice.

Would they (the Allies) reduce France to her ancient limits? It would be to degrade her. They deceive themselves if they imagine that the reverses of war can make the nation desire peace upon such terms. There is not a French heart that would not in six months' time feel the scandal of such a peace, and that would not reproach the government that could be base enough to sign it. If the nation seconds me, the enemy marches to his destruction. If fortune betrays me, my resolution is taken-I do not cling to the throne-I shall never disgrace the nation, or myself, by subscribing such shameful conditions."

The style of these volumes is simple, perspicuous, and animated. The notes, as we are informed by the editors, are more exclusively his own composition-and, even though we had been ignorant of that fact, would have struck us as among the most original parts of the work, both in matter and execution. There are frequent sketches more or less in detail of contemporary characters. To give an idea of their general manner, we shall conclude our extracts and the present subject with his notice of two of his favourite generals who fell in the battle of Essling

"On this day perished two generals, the Duke of Montebello and St. Hilaire-both of them heroes, and the best of Napoleon's friends. He wept for their loss. They would never have deserted him in his adversity; they would never have been faithless to the glory of the French people. The Duke of Montebello was a native of Lectoure. When a chef de bataillon he distinguished himself during the campaigns of 1796 in Italy. As a general he covered himself with glory in Egypt, at Montebello, at Marengo, at Austerlitz, at Jéna, at Pultusk, at Friedland, at Tudella, at Saragossa, at Eckmül and at Essling, where he found a glorious death. He was cautious, sagacious, and daring; before an enemy his presence of mind was not to be shaken. He owed little to education-Nature had done every thing for him. Napoleon, who had witnessed the progress of his mind, often remarked it with astonishment. For manoeuvring five and twenty thousand infantry on the field of battle, he was superior to all the generals of the French army. He was still young, and would have become more perfect; perhaps he might even have reached to a proficiency in the highest branch of tactics (le grande tactique) which as yet he had not understood.-St. Hilaire was a general at Castiglione in 1796. He was remarkable for the chivalry of his character. He had excellent dispositions, was a kind companion, a kind brother, a kind relative. He was covered with wounds. His attachment to Napoleon commenced at the siege of Toulon. They called him, alluding to Bayard, le Chevalier sans peur, et sans reproche.""

THE SWORD OF THE TOMB.*

A Northern Legend.

"VOICE of the gifted elder Time!

Voice of the charm and the Runic rhyme!
Speak! from the shades and the depths disclose,
How Sigurd may vanquish his mortal foes-
Voice of the buried past!

"Voice of the grave! 'tis the mighty hour

When Night with her stars and dreams hath power,
And my step hath been soundless on the snows,
And the spell I have sung hath laid repose

On the billow and the blast."

Then the torrents of the North
And the forest pines were still,
When a hollow chaunt came forth
. From the dark sepulchral hill.

"There shines no sun through the land of dead,
But where the day looks not the brave may tread;
There is heard no song, and no mead is pour'd,
But the warrior may come to the silent board
In the shadow of the night.

"There is laid a sword in thy father's tomb,
And its edge is fraught with thy foeman's doom;
But soft be thy step through the silence deep,
And move not the urn in the house of sleep,
For the viewless have fearful might."
Then died the solemn lay,

As a trumpet's music dies,

By the night-wind borne away

Through the wild and stormy skies.

The idea of this ballad is taken from a scene in "Starkother," a tragedy by

the Danish Poet, Ochlenschlager.

The fir-trees rock'd to the wailing blast,
As on through the forest the warrior past
Through the forest of Odin, the dim and old,
The dark place of visions and legends told
By the fires of northern pine.

The fir-trees rock'd, and the frozen ground
Gave back to his footstep a hollow sound,
And it seem'd that the depths of those mystic shades
From the dreamy gloom of their long arcades
Gave warning with voice and sign.

But the wind strange magic knows
To call wild shape and tone

From the grey wood's tossing boughs,
When Night is on her throne.

The pines closed o'er him with deeper gloom,
As he took the path to the monarch's tomb,
The pole-star shone, and the heavens were bright
With the arrowy streams of the northern light,
But his road through dimness lay!

He pass'd, in the heart of that ancient wood,
The dark shrine stain'd with the victim's blood,
Nor paused, till the rock, where a vaulted bed
Had been hewn of old for the kingly dead,
Arose on his midnight way.

'Then first a moment's chill®

Went shuddering through his breast,
And the steel-clad man stood still
Before that place of rest.

But he cross'd at length, with a deep-drawn breathi,
The threshold-floor of the hall of death,

And look'd on the pale mysterious fire,

Which gleam'd from the urn of his warrior-sire
With a strange and a solemn light.

Then darkly the words of the boding strain,
Like an omen, rose on his soul again,

-"Soft be thy tread through the silence deep,
And move not the urn in the house of sleep,
For the viewless have fearful might!"
But the magic sword and shield
Of many a battle-day

Hung o'er that urn reveal'd

By the tomb-fire's waveless ray.

With a faded wreath of oak-leaves bound,
They hung o'er the dust of the far-renown'd,
Whom the bright Valkyriur's glorious voice
Had call'd to the banquet where gods rejoice,
And the rich mead flows in light.
With a beating heart his son drew near,
And still rung the verse in his thrilling ear,
-"Soft be thy tread through the silence deep,
And move not the urn in the house of sleep,
For the viewless have fearful might!"
And many a Saga's rhyme,

And legend of the grave,
That shadowy scene and time

Call'd back to daunt the brave.

The sepulchral fire, supposed to guard the ashes of departed heroes, is fre

quently alluded to in the Northern Sagas.

But he raised his arm-and the flame grew dim,
And the sword in its light seem'd to wave and swim,
And his faltering hand could not grasp it well-
From the pale oak-wreath with a clash it fell
Through the chamber of the dead.
The deep tomb rung with the heavy sound,
And the urn lay shiver'd in fragments round,
And a rush, as of tempests, quench'd the fire,
And the scatter'd dust of his warlike sire

Was strewn on the champion's head.
One moment-and all was still
In the slumberer's ancient hall,
When the rock had ceased to thrill
With the mighty weapon's fall.

The stars were just fading, one by one,
The clouds were just tinged by the early sun,
When there stream'd through the cavern a torch's flame,
And the brother of Sigurd the valiant came
To seek him in the tomb.

Stretch'd on his shield, like the steel-girt slain
By moonlight seen on the battle-plain,

In a speechless trance lay the warrior there,
But he wildly woke when the torch's glare
Burst on him through the gloom.
"The morning-wind blows free,
And the hour of chace is near;
Come forth, come forth with me;
What dost thou, Sigurd, here?"

"I have put out the holy sepulchral fire,
I have scatter'd the dust of my warrior-sire!
It burns on my head, and it weighs down my heart,
But the winds shall not wander without their part
To strew o'er the restless deep!

"In the mantle of Death he was here with me now,
There was wrath in his eye, there was gloom on his brow,
And his cold still glance on my spirit fell

With an icy ray and a withering spell

Oh! chill is the house of sleep!"

"The morning wind blows free

And the reddening sun shines clear,
Come forth, come forth with me,
It is dark and fearful here !"

"He is there, he is there, with his shadowy frown,
But gone from his head is the kingly crown,

The crown from his head, and the spear from his hand—
They have chased him far from the glorious land
Where the feast of the gods is spread !*

"He must go forth alone on his phantom-steed,
He must ride o'er the grave-hills with stormy speed,
His place is no longer at Odin's board,

He is driven from Valhalla without his sword!

But the slayer shall avenge the dead!"
That sword its fame had won

By the fall of many a crest,

But its fiercest work was done

* Severe sufferings to the departed spirit were supposed by the Northern Mythologists to be the consequence of any profanation of the sepulchre.