enormous burdens of taxation deprive them of the means of living without additions to their income. Pitiful pretence! It is because their principles are more decayed than their fortunes. When people of a certain rank stoop to solicit public posts for the sake of emolument, there is an end to all independence and dignity of national character. In France the shocks and commotions of our Revolution might have afforded an apology for such conduct. All had been unsettled, and all felt the necessity of re-establishing themselves. To promote this object with the least possible offence to delicacy of feeling, I was induced to attach considerable emolument and high honour to all public posts. But in course of time, I intended to work a change by the mere force of opinion. And this was by no means impossible. Every thing must yield to the influence of power, when it is directed to objects truly just, honourable, and great."

These were, we fear, chimeras. We question the possibility of effecting such a revolution in any country, where a taste for ease and refinement has once taken root; and we greatly apprehend, that, among all the nations of Europe, modern France is the very one where the necessary simplicity of character, and practical exaltation of sentiment, would be most difficultly produced, and the least likely to be permanent. Still there is something consolatory in finding, that such a man as Napoleon, experienced as he was in the vices and selfishness of public men, should have clung to the hope, that a system of government founded upon a virtuous preference of the general good was not, after all, so visionary as to forbid the experiment. What follows is more in his character as a keen and severe appreciater of the morals and opinions of his time. After he had developed the preceding views, Las Cases expressed his surprise that he should never have thrown out a hint of the important objects he had in contemplation.

"What would have been the use of promulgating my intentions?" said he, "I should have been styled a quack, accused of insinuation and subtilty, and have fallen into discredit. Situated as I was, deprived of hereditary authority, and of the illusion called legitimacy, I was compelled to avoid entering the lists with my opponents. I was obliged to be bold, imperious, and decisive. You have told me that in your Faubourg they used to say, 'Why is he not legitimate? If I had been so, I certainly should not have done more than I did; but my conduct might have appeared more amiable."

Two or three days after, we find him revealing, at considerable length, and with his accustomed animation, some of the principal objects of his general policy. One of his great plans, he said, was the concentration of France, Spain, Germany, and Italy, each into a separate nation, but bound together by a federal compact, and, if possible, by a unity of codes, principles, opinions, and interests. The concentration of France was perfected-that of Italy far advanced. In Spain, he asserts, it would have been accomplished, had it not been for the reverses he sustained at distant points, and the error he committed in transferring his whole forces to the distance of a thousand leagues from that country. Had it not been for this, he expected in the course of three or four years to have effected such a prosperous revolution in the condition of the Spaniards, as would have well entitled him to their gratitude. This hope might have been reasonable, or it may have been only the sophistry of an ambitious mind, seizing upon any pretext for open and unprovoked aggression; but he was at least prophetic in one point of his concluding observations upon this topic: "I should have saved them from the tyranny by which they are now oppressed, and the terrible agitations that await them." His remarks upon Ger

many, though few, have a prospective interest, that gives them no small importance.

"The concentration of the Germans must have been effected more gradually, and therefore I had done no more than simplify their monstrous complication. Not that they were unprepared for concentralization. On the contrary, they were too well prepared for it, and they might have blindly risen in reaction against us, before they had comprehended our designs. How happens it that no German prince has yet formed a just notion of the spirit of his nation, and turned it to good account? Certainly if Heaven had made me a prince of Germany, amidst the many critical events of our times, I should infallibly have governed the 30,000,000 of Germans combined; and from what I know of them, I think I may venture to affirm, that if they had once clected and proclaimed me, they would not have forsaken me, and I should never have been at St. Helena."

Then after some melancholy details and comparisons, resuming the previous subject, he said,

"At all events this concentration will be brought about sooner or later by the very force of events. The impulse is given, and I think that, since my fall, and the destruction of my system, no grand equilibrium can possibly be established in Europe, except by the concentration and confederation of the principal nations. The sovereign who, in the first great conflict, shall sincerely embrace the cause of the people, will find himself at the head of all Europe, and may attempt whatever he pleases."

66

Here again he returns to his motives for withholding all disclosures upon the subject of these and his other adventurous projects. The passage is remarkable, and one of the most explanatory that we recollect him to have given, of that air of incomprehensibility with which, in the fulness of his power, he was pleased to envelope his proceedings. "It will perhaps be asked," he says, why I did not suffer these ideas to transpire? why I did not submit them to public discussion; since they would doubtless have become popular, and popularity would have been an immense reinforcement to me? My answer is, that malevolence is ever more active than good intention; that at the present day, the power of wit overrules good sense, and obscures the clearest points at will; and that to have submitted these important subjects to public discussion would have been to consign them to the mercy of party-spirit, passion, intrigue, and gossiping, while the infallible result would have been discredit and opposition. I conceived, therefore, that secrecy was the most advisable course. I surrounded myself with that halo of mystery, which pleases and interests the multitude, gives birth to speculations which occupy the public mind, and finally, affords opportunities for those sudden and brilliant disclosures which exercise such important influence. It was this very principle that accelerated my unfortunate march to Moscow. Had I been more deliberate, I might have averted every evil; but I could not delay, and afford time for comment. With my career already traced out, with ny ideas formed for the future, it was necessary that my movement and my success should seem, as it were, supernatural."

While we are upon this subject we may in passing observe, that these and similar disclosures contained in other parts of the present work, have been received in a somewhat singular spirit by certain persons among the French, who shared in Napoleon's power, and still profess a devotion to his fame. To some of these, who had constant access to his person, and were considered to have been admitted to his confidence, it has not been a little mortifying to find their old master proclaiming that, after all, they had been as ignorant as the multitude of his secret motives and intentions upon the most important occasions of his career.

They accordingly assert pretty roundly and confidently, that the Emperor has been mystifying the Count Las Cases and Europe; that these elaborate explanations of his uncommunicated views and objects are all a fable, invented for the sole purpose of his individual justification, and therefore to be treated by all sagacious readers as neither more nor less than a brilliant imposture. We cannot stop to adjust the conflicting probabilities between the Exile's veracity and the splenetic incredulity of his former servants. We simply give as not an incurious circumstance, the feeling which we have recently discovered to exist upon this portion of the conversations at St. Helena.

There are, we doubt not, many excellent persons among us, who still think that the penance of Napoleon's latter years was but a poor expiation of his manifold exploits. To these it may be a gratification to know, that, in the plenitude of his glory, he was not exempt from the petty vexations of domestic life. It is not surprising that such a man should have had an expensive wife, but it is at once ludicrous and lamentable to think that her rage for caps and bonnets should have compelled him to employ an imperial coup-de-main upon such an object as a refractory Parisian milliner. Such however appears to have been the necessity of his situation.

Speaking of the Empress Josephine, he says, "Her extravagance vexed me beyond measure. Calculator as I am, I would, of course, rather have given away a million of francs than have seen 100,000 squandered away." He informed us, that having one day unexpectedly broken in upon Josephine's morning circle, he found a celebrated milliner, whom he had expressly forbidden to go near the Empress, as she was ruining her by extravagant demands. 66 My unlooked-for entrance occasioned great dismay in the academic sitting. I gave some orders unperceived to the individuals who were in attendance, and on the lady's departure she was seized, and conducted to the Bicetre. A great outcry was raised among the higher circles in Paris; it was said that my conduct was disgraceful. It soon became the fashion to visit the milliner in her confinement, and there was daily a file of carriages at the gate of the prison. The police informed me of these facts. All the better,' said I; but I hope she is not treated with severity; not confined in a dungeon. No, Sire, she has a suite of apartments, and a drawing-room.' 'Oh, well! let her be. If this measure is pronounced to be tyrannical, so much the better; it will be a diapason stroke for a great many others. Very little will serve to shew that I can do more.'

But what follows was still more provoking.

He also mentioned a celebrated man-milliner who, he remarked, was the most insolent fellow he had ever met with in the whole course of his life. "I was one day," said the Emperor," speaking to him respecting a trousseau that he had furnished, when he had the presumption to call my conduct in question. He did what no man in France except himself would have ventured to do; he began with great volubility to prove to me that I did not grant a sufficient allowance to the Empress Josephine, and that it was impossible she could pay for her clothes out of such a sum. I soon put an end to his impertinent eloquence. I stopped him short with a look, and left him transfixed."

The present, like the former volumes, brings us acquainted with many personal traits which would deserve to be recorded, although Napoleon had never been a monarch. We have already noticed the rapidity and precision of his judgments upon literary topics: we give one farther example.

"At first he expressed his surprise that the Romans should have had no tragedies; but then again he observed, that tragedy, in dramatic repre

sentation, would have been ill-calculated to rouse the feelings of the Romans, since they performed real tragedy in their circuses. The combats of the gladiators," said he," the sight of men consigned to the fury of wild beasts, were far more terrible than all our dramatic horrors put together. These, in fact, were the only tragedies suited to the iron nerves of the Romans."

There are many scattered sayings which mark the man.

Speaking of the elements of society, he said, "Democracy may be furious-but it has some heart-it may be moved. As to Aristocracy, it is always cold and unforgiving."

One day, when the Emperor was reproaching an individual for not correcting the vices which he knew he possessed, "Sir," said he, " when a man knows his moral infirmity, he may cure his mind, just as he would cure his arm or his leg."

It was asked in his presence, how it happened that misfortunes which were yet uncertain often distressed us more than miseries that had already been suffered: "Because," observed the Emperor, "in the imagination, as in calculation, the power of what is unknown is incommensurable."

The same promptness of scientific analysis will be recognised in the following anecdote.-The Count Las Cases, who, by the way, is singularly prone to exalt every casual coincidence into a miraculous interference, related an instance of the kind, as reported to him by Charette, the hero of La Vendée. Charette, in his youth, was off Brest in a small cutter, when a furious gale of wind came on. The mast was carried away; the vessel became unmanageable, and certain destruction seemed inevitable. At the moment of extreme danger, the whole crew, by a spontaneous impulse, made a vow of a taper to Our Lady of Rocouvrance at Brest, if she would vouchsafe to ensure their safety. The wind instantly abated. It was in the month of December, and the night was long and dark. The vessel, which had got entangled among ridges, drifted along at hazard, and the crew had resigned themselves to the will of fate, when they unexpectedly heard the ringing of a bell. They sounded, and finding but little depth of water, they cast anchor. At daybreak they found that they were at the mouth of the river of Landernau. The bell they had heard was that of the neighbouring parish church.

"The cutter," continued the Count, "had miraculously escaped the numerous sand-banks that are dispersed about the entrance of Brest. She had been carried through the narrow inlet of the port, had passed three or four hundred ships that were lying in the roads, and had at length found a calm station at the mouth of the river."-"This," said the Emperor," shews the difference between the blindfold efforts of man, and the certain course of nature. That, at which you express so much surprise, must necessarily have happened. It is very probable, that with the full power of exerting the utmost skill, the confusion and errors of the moment would have occasioned the wreck of the vessel; whereas, in spite of so many adverse chances, Nature saved her she was borne onward by the tide; the force of the current carried her precisely through the middle of each channel, so that she could not possibly be lost."

We would recommend this explanation to our Irish friends as a formula of reasoning that may be occasionally applied to the course of miracles which Prince Hohenlohe has undertaken for the benefit of the tongue-tied ladies of their country.

Among the numerous historical details that are scattered throughout the present publication, there is a full account of the affair of the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien, and of the manner in which Napoleon recurred to it. In the presence of strangers he adopted a line of argument founded almost exclusively on the law of nature and state politics. With those whom he admitted to the intimacy of private conversation, he descended into the following particulars:

"I was one day alone, I recollect it well; I was taking my coffee, halfseated on the table on which I had just dined, when sudden information is brought to me that a new conspiracy has been discovered. I am warmly urged to put an end to these enormities. They represent to me that it is time, at last, to give a lesson to those who have been day after day conspiring against my life; that this end can only be attained by shedding the blood of one of them; and that the Duke d'Enghien, who might now be convicted of forming part of this new conspiracy, and taken in the very act, should be that one. It was added, that he had been seen at Strasburg; that it was even believed that he had been in Paris; and that the plan was, that he should enter France by the East, at the moment of the explosion, whilst the Duke of Berry was disembarking in the West. I should tell you (observed the Emperor) that I did not even know precisely who the Duke d'Enghien was (the Revolution having taken place when I was yet a very young man, and I having never been at Court); and that I was quite in the dark as to where he was at that moment. Having been informed on those points, I exclaimed, that if such were the case, the Duke ought to be arrested, and that orders should be given to that effect. Every thing had been foreseen, and prepared-the different orders were already drawn up-nothing remained to be done but to sign them; and the fate of the young Prince was thus decided. He had been residing for some time past at a distance of about three leagues from the Rhine, in the States of Baden. Had I been sooner aware of this fact, and of its importance, I should have taken umbrage at it, and should not have suffered the Prince to remain so near the frontiers of France; and that circumstance, as it happened, would have saved his life. As for the assertions that were advanced at the time, that I had been strenuously opposed in this affair, and that numerous solicitations had been made to me, they are utterly false, and were only invented to make me appear in a more odious light. The same thing may be said of the va rious motives that have been ascribed to me. These motives may have existed in the bosoms of those who acted an inferior part on the occasion, and may have guided them in their private views; but my conduct was influenced only by the nature of the fact itself, and the energy of my disposition. Undoubtedly, if I had been informed in time of certain circumstances respecting the opinions of the Prince, and his disposition-if, above all, I had seen the letter which he wrote to me, and which, God knows for what reason, was only delivered to me after his death, I should certainly have forgiven him."

We had noted several other striking passages for insertion; but we are reminded by our limits that it is time we take a final leave of this interesting work-the most attractive and important, in numerous points of view, that has appeared in modern times. To the extraordinary person of whom it treats, we foresee that we shall have many future occasions to recur. His character and conduct have raised questions of vital interest that will long be remembered and discussed. Among these (and it is one of not the least singular circumstances of his history) the question of his personal merits has met with rather a curious destiny in this country. He is detested and decried for his despotism and aggression by that class of politicians among us who would abridge, if they could, both at home and abroad, the privileges of thought and action--by the admirers of the Holy Alliance--the