even that of preserving the independence of a state, together with the life of its sovereign, and of all its established authorities.

203, NAPOLEON had made his calculations with great exactness. He knew the number of days that would be required to take his army to Moscow; he knew the exact degree of suffering which that army would have to endure upon its march thither; but he knew that he should meet with no resistance there; he knew that his army would be well provided for during the remainder of the winter; and he reasonably calculated, that in the spring he should be able to dictate his own terms of peace, one of which was that the " magnani mous Alexander" should again join him in the war against England. All this knowledge was rendered useless; all these calculations were made to be false, by an act on the part of the Autocrat, such as never before had been contemplated; an act before deemed too horrible to be attributed to the mind of any human being; an act, the very thought of perpetrating which, fills us with inde scribable horror; namely, the setting fire to and ut terly destroying the whole of the city of Moscow, containing three hundred thousand souls; the whole of whom, with the exception of a handful of troops, for whom provision had been made and conveyances had been prepared beforehand, pe rished, either in the flames, or upon the snow! Let the reader contemplate this scene for a mo

m hear the screaming mothers; let on the number of them that must nder the operations of childbirth;

... but the thing is too horrible let him only know these two facts, nd the act was, by the public prints, orders given by the Autocrat; and ame prints, generally speaking the E those who lived on the taxes and applauded to the skies the magnaof the order, and the instrument by der was executed! Aye, and scarcely be found a single publication in Engess disapprobation of the ferocious feeling being lost, every sentiment ing been banished from the breast, e of seeing produced such a revoluze as should restore the Noblesse and that country, and thereby furnish an e argument, wherewith to silence the England; which, as it had been the ect of the war against the republicans as still the object of the war against of France, who, though a despot, had termination not to restore the ancient d not to restore tithes.

POLEON, instead of finding a great ovided city, wherein to quarter his ther with all the means which it ally furnish of obtaining fresh sup

plies according to the Russian manner, found a wide-spread heap of smoking ashes, the residuum of buildings, consisting of wood, surrounded with snows strewed with dead bodies.. To retreat was almost as certain destruction as to lie down on the snow and perish at once. Retreat, however, he did; but the far greater part of his army perished from the intensity of the cold, or were buried in the mountains of snows. The blazing of Moscow, and the certain consequences of that horrible act, emboldened the states of Europe to rise simultaneously for his destruction; and, before he, with the remains of his army, joined by the detachments which he left on his way, could reach the confines of France, the whole of those states were in arms against him. Austria and Prussia, which had crouched down before him; Bavaria, whose chief he had erected into a king; all the petty states of Germany, through which he had to pass; even his brother-in-law MURAT, whom he had made king of Naples, and his other brother-in-law LE CLERC, whom he had made king of Sweden, joined in the league; he had to cut his way to France through myriads of bayonets; the English army in Spain entered France on the south side, at the same time. When he arrived at Paris, he found that treachery had not left him one square yard of earth on which he could find safety; and, thus reduced, he consented to a treaty of abdication,

signed him to the little island of ELBA, on for life, superintended and watched t of the government of England. at, it is to take a very shallow view of

to ascribe this signal fall to mere auses and the reverses of war. We a great deal deeper than this, in order the real causes of the fall of Napoleon. ination against him was formidable; net out of France and Belgium, put in English money (the loans of which et to pay), was pointed at him; but nding all this, if the French had felt m as in the days of the Republic, all s would have been scattered like dust e wind. But his vanity was the cause n. He was a tyrant; but that might d, had he not had the vanity to ally himhe ancient despots of Europe. He had y things to offend the French people, ir inordinate love of military glory and unded admiration of his exploits, made look; but his casting off the wife, who

his sensible and faithful companion egan his career, and taking, in her stead, r of the house of Austria, was an act te which from the minds of men no of military exploits was sufficient. otic acts had greatly shaken him tachment of the people; his abolish

ing of the Republic, his assuming the title of Emperor, his severe and insolent acts and de meanour, had lost him the love of the people; but his vanity lost him his crown; and vanity, too, of a species the most contemptible. He must needs be not only a royal personage himself, but he must become a propagator of the breed of the old royal race; he must marry amongst them; and, what was most abominable, after all that the French people had done and had suf fered, in order to rid themselves for ever of the pernicious influence of the detested house of Austria, he must needs bring a daughter of that very house, and insultingly place her over that same French people; he must bring, to be the sovereign empress of France, the niece of that same MARIE ANTOINETTE, whom the French people, in delivering themselves from her unbear able tyranny and insolence, had, in the excess their ungovernable; and, indeed, unwarrantable, resentment against her, dragged as a malefactor to the scaffold!

of

206. To himself, the consequence of his vanity was ruin; for, had it not been for that empty vanity, even his resolution to be an Emperor or a King would, had it not been for this matrimonial alliance, not prevented him from being able to destroy all the old dynasties; all the sovereigns of the continent would have been of his creation; the right to reign would, every