any potentate, it was at last agreed to designate as the Enemy of the human race, a title belonging, par excellence,* to the Evil One, and calculated to inspire a sort of blind terror and universal detestation of this Satanic personage. Posterity will hardly know how to reconcile the proverbial courage and sense of our countrymen with the expression of such fears as they will find in the predictions and revelations of the preachers and politicians of the present age; who, by helping out the Apocalypse with an anagram, behold in this warrior sometimes the Horned Beast, at others Apollyon himself. They will smile at the complacency with which we contemplated the dethronement of the Abomination of Abominations as the accidental good which was to be blown to us by this ill wind, as well as at the facility with which, sacrificing our former interpretations to our present interests, our prophecy to our politics, forgetting our faith as our circumstances improved, we strained every nerve to prevent the accomplishment of our own prediction, and in the indiscriminate fury of our opposition to the devil, took up the cudgels for him with whom he had been, in every British heart, so long alliedthe Pope. The children of the present generation have been taught to start at the name of Bonaparte as if he was in the bush; our colleges and academies have given prizes to those who should best pourtray his crimes. The painter has sketched a countenance to correspond with the fancied features of treason, murder, cruelty, and pride. Not the terrors of a degenerate Roman could have beheld the imp-begotten Attila under an aspect so hideous. The pious from their pulpit prayed for that resignation, patience, and humility under this scourge of God, which were recommended from the benches of parliament as the true christian virtues necessary for those who were to be borne along without a murmur by the current of events, to bear all trial of taxation, and to be content with the mean instruments through whom (the help and cunning of man being altogether of no avail) they might, in the appointed time and hour, work out their salvation. Such was the general feeling; to be insensible to which was looked upon as the proof of a hardened mind, perverted by, or perhaps already associated with, wickedness. It is true, and more strange, that in order to complete the monster which the world never saw, there were many amongst us who arrayed him in all bad qualities, contradictory and inconsistent; interweaved with the giant vices all the baser imperfections of humanity, and, to justify their hatred and their fear, denounced him as a coward and a fool. These epithets were designed to take all pretext for admiration from those, who per

By way of eminence.

1

versely gazed with feelings not unmixed upon the most extraor dinary career ever recorded in the annals of ambition. They were employed to deepen the reprobation already attached to those who saw in Napoleon Bonaparte a fortunate soldier-of no less capacity than inclination for conquest and dominionundaunted persevering-unsatisfied-with most of the vices and virtues of conquerors-comparable to any of the great names of history by his exploits, inferior to some of them by the failings which a cotemporary view enables us to see and prompts us to condemn, superior to most of them as being untarnished by those monstrous deeds which characterized the age or habits of other heroes.

It was in vain that the imputed poisonings, and assassination of single captives, became an idle tale, abandoned at last by those who gave to them their original credit. The Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, was still to be charged with withdrawing from his throne and his myriads in arms, to strangle an unarmed British sailor; and it was still to be accounted a want of patriotism for an Englishman to regard him in any other light than the murderer of his countryman. The fall of this Dagon by no means terminated the persecution of his name, nor of his imputed worshippers. It was discovered, that not France, not her capital itself, could show a single evidence that her usurper had ever contemplated to make her beautiful or great. The hatred and fear which his power might have inspired, and which might be supposed to drop with it, were transferred to the alleged friends of his system and principles; but the charges of cowardice and folly were renewed: he was a coxcomb, profligate, empty and vain; a mortal of an ordinary mind and mould; daring and impetuous, nothing more-good-natured, it is true, and communicative, but quite on the usual level; a fit companion for the simple and younger classes of mankind; a man about whom the world had been much mistaken; or, as a midshipman of the Undaunted said, in a letter to his friend, "all in the wrong." That he had found admirers was unaccountable. Those who knew him most, liked him least; a vulgar familiarity constituted all the charm of his converse, which, after all, could have no effect upon the open heart of plain honesty, averse to the blandishments of a knave. Not content to visit with indignation those who did not regard him as the weakest and the most dangerous being in existence, yet without any power of attraction; as the most insignificant and the most to be dreaded of mortals, yet never to be listened to for a moment; it was found useful to assert, that the admiration of such a character which was to be so much deprecated, did not in fact exist. A scandalous story had been told of the

inclinations manifested towards this worthless personage by the crew of the frigate which conveyed him to Elba. It was too true and undeniable, that the officers of that ship had listened to the voice of the tempter. For this the commanding officer had received his reward. What was his reception at home, in return for having bestowed upon an acknowledged Emperor the honours of sovereignty, and for not having employed those torments of insult by which the fallen monarch might feel his dignity to be dying, it would be little to the credit of our admiralty to record.

But this reception was not judged a sufficient punishment; the mistaken conduct of that cajoled though gallant officer was to be publicly arraigned, and a channel of accusation was found in the pages of a literary journal, devoted usually to better purposes. A half official memoir was ushered into the world, compiled I have good reason to believe partly from the papers of the military gentleman, who, from his residence at Elba, was a judge more competent, but I now think hardly so fair as the abovementioned midshipman of the Undaunted, and who, unless his colouring was heightened by other hands, made it seems the discovery of that youth, that his charge was nothing above the usual run, a very commonplace-minded man, imprudent and unguarded to an excess, incapable of keeping a secret in love, or war, or politics; with a flux of talk both as to past, present, and to come, quite unbecoming and incompatible with real grandeur. Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, when I knew him, was a most worthy, sensible man; but it is just possible that being accustomed to Lord Cathcart, and the dignities of this world, he was astounded perhaps at first, and then disgusted, at finding so much of human frailty, of the weaknesses of common life, in a general and a sovereign. The colonel might have been but little surprised to have seen him shoot a grenadier a day. There would besides have been more of dignity in guarding such a Nero; but to find that his prisoner had none of the trappings of legitimate tyranny; that he could not discover one trait in his manner or conversation which affected or gave him a superiority over himself; that he talked freely and playfully on the passages of his former life, and sometimes of his future destination and even projects; that he took no pains to conceal any weakness or error; that he was, in short, altogether such a being as himself; this was intolerable, and would be so to any eye accustomed to contemplate all objects at a certain angle, and to mistake elevation of position for height of stature. Had Napoleon been haughty, morose, reserved, important, and pompous, it would have been easy to recognize and appreciate those kingly characteristics; and to have foreseen and provided against an effort to

recover his crown. I was not therefore much astonished to hear and read the judgment formed by the guardian officer: (diffi cult as it was to reconcile that judgment, to my mind so erroneous, with what I formerly knew of Sir Neil Campbell ;) but I was truly surprised at some representations contained in the journal alluded to, which I knew could not proceed from his pen, as they furnished the most extraordinary example extant of that species of writing called by Voltaire the oeconomic style, or an expedient falsification of facts.

The sailors of the Undaunted frigate are stated to have resisted all that cajolement which succeeded with the officers; and to have refused a gratuity offered them at disembarkation by the Emperor, in terms both rude and contemptuous-" they would take none of Mr. Bonaparte's money." Could the writer of the memoir have invented both the refusal and the speech? He should have known that the sailors did receive about four hundred louis d'ors from Napoleon; and that the boatswain, in their name, addressed him on the quarter-deck, in a short harangue, in which he thanked his honour, and wished him long life and prosperity in the island of Elba, and better luck another time. The fact is notorious to every man on board the frigate at the time; as to the fiction, I know not to what extent it has been believed or spread.

I should not have mentioned either the one or the other, had I not thought it worth while to give a good sample of the dialectic employed by some pretended champions of the church and state. I exhort you, therefore, to label this pious fraud, as Fra Paoli did his dagger-stillo della sancta chiesa.

The Quarterly Review has not, as I hear, found more buyers nor admirers since it has undertaken to write down Bonaparte, from authentic documents. Twice has it tried its hand this way; a third time it may show, that the conquest of Egypt, of Italy, of Austria, of Prussia, of Poland, the foundation of empires and kingdoms, fifty victories, a thousand monuments of laws, and arts, and arms, all are fictions, unreal, non-existent, and invented, like the pretended death of Charles I. by the jacobins of France, to serve the purpose and animate the wicked zeal of the enemies of the true Porphyrogeniti-the legitimate two or three for whom the modern many were made, and are permitted to exist. The triumph of these gentlemen was at its height: the carcase butchers had carved out the nations at Vienna; Lord Castlereagh having given Saxony to Prussia, Poland to Russia, Italy to Austria, Genoa to Savoy, and Hildesheim to Hanover, was returned to receive the thanks of a grateful British parliament.-Napoleon reappears-the stability of the system of our great statesman, and its fitness to that portion of Europe called

France, are at once apparent, by the resistance offered to the invader; but his lordship, though a little sick and hurt, is not abashed: he speaks for four hours, as if nothing had happened. The night, indeed, of that famous speech so stuck with laughter as was never goose with lard, as Harrington says of my Lord Epimonus-de-garrula's harangue, did give hopes to the malicious. It was thought impossible that the patience of parliament should any longer endure. The most tried members, who, during a long course of court complaisance, had never slept nor smiled at a minister's speech, now nodded outright, or bore their murmurs to the club: Westminster hall and St. James's-street were vocal to the complaints even of the humble servants of the treasury. The most devoted followers began to suspect that the character which one accident had made considerable, another accident might again reduce to its original and tried insignificance. The rats were looking for their holes: some said they had begun to run. But it seems this house is not yet to fall. His lordship has declared his sitting permanent; and having that immovability which success stamps with the name of perseverance, but which, under other circumstances, is termed obstinacy, or desperation, is resolved to bet his blue ribbon against Napoleon's crown. Now, feeling no interest, and not thinking myself involved in the playing of this match; being convinced likewise that the threatened war is not, as far as England is concerned, national, but ministerial; I have resolved to pursue a journey which I have long projected, and to revisit Paris, in spite of the event which has driven so many of my countrymen, with so much speed and so little urgency, from that capital. I have still hopes of peace, but very little. little. A saying of the Duke of Wellington circulates at Brussels, that he will be in Paris in three months and his Grace is not known either to boast or to threaten often in vain. The Prince of Orange has buckled on his armour, and has forbidden the English under his command to say that Bonaparte is a great man. By some accident, no one talks of his father, nor seems to recollect that he was one of the last batch of kings.

His majesty the King of the Netherlands is a sound not yet familiar to Brussels, where the garlands are yet green that adorned his triumphal entry. The town-house and some few houses in the park are hung with stripes of orange-bunting; and by the edge of the canal leading to the palace of Lâchen is a triumphal arch, recording the reception of Gulielmus Primus. These machines, and the placard of that article of the Vienna Congress by

* Oceana, p. 120.