2. A still more fatal influence of the spirit of self-exaggeration which characterized Bonaparte, remains to be named. It depraved to an extraordinary degree his moral sense. It did not obliterate altogether the ideas of duty, but, by a singular perversion, it impelled him to apply them exclusively to others. It never seemed to enter his thought that he was subject to the obligations of morality, which all others are called to respect. He was an exempted being. Whoever stood in his way to enterprise, he was privileged to remove. Treaties only bound his enemies. No nation had rights but his own France.

3. He claimed a monopoly in perfidy and violence. He was not naturally cruel, but when human life obstructed his progress, it was lawful prey; and murder and assassination occasioned as little compunction as war. The most luminous exposition of his moral code was given in his councils to the King of Holland. "Never forget, that in the situation to which my political system and the interests of my empire have called you, your first duty is toward ME, your second toward France; all your other duties, even those toward the people whom I have called you to govern, rank after these." In his own mind he was the source and centre of duty.

4. He was too peculiar and exalted to be touched by that vulgar stain called guilt. Crimes ceased to be such when perpetrated by himself. Accordingly, he always speaks of his transgressions as of indifferent acts. He never imagined that they tarnished his glory, or diminished his claim on the homage of the world. In St. Helena, though talking perpetually of himself, and often reviewing his guilty career, we are not aware that a single compunction escapes him. He speaks of his life as calmly as if it had been consecrated to duty and beneficence, whilst in the same breath he has the audacity to reproach unsparingly the faithlessness of almost every individual and nation with whom he had been connected. We doubt whether history furnishes so striking an example of the moral blindness and obduracy to which an unbounded egotism exposes and abandons the mind.

5. His spirit of self-exaggeration was seen in his openness to

adulation. Policy indeed prompted him to put his praises into the mouths of the venal slaves, who administered his despotism. But flattery would not have been permitted to swell into exaggerations, now nauseous, now ludicrous, and now impious, if in the bosom of the chief there had not lodged a flatterer who sounded a louder note of praise than all around him. He was remarkably sensitive to opinion and resented as a wrong the suppression of his praises.

6. The press of all countries was watched, and free States were called upon to curb it for daring to take liberties with his name. Even in books published in France on general topics, he expected a recognition of his authority. Works of talent were suppressed when their anthors refused to offer incense at the new shrine. He resolved indeed to stamp his name on the literature as on the legislation, policy, and warfare of his age, and to compel genius, whose pages survive statues, columns, and empires, to take a place among his tributaries.

7. We close our view of Bonaparte's character by saying that his original propensities, released from restraint and pampered by indulgence to a degree seldom allowed to mortals, grew up into a spirit of despotism as stern and absolute as ever usurped the human heart. The love of power and supremacy absorbed, consumed him. No other passion, no domestic attachment, no private friendship, no love of pleasure, no relish for letters or the arts, no human sympathy, no human weakness, divided his mind with the passion for dominion and for dazzling manifestations of his power.

8. Before this, duty, honor, love, humanity, fell prostrate. Josephine, we are told, was dear to him; but the devoted wife, who had stood firm and faithful in the day of his doubtful fortunes, was cast off in his prosperity, to make room for a stranger, who might be more subservient to his power. He was affectionate, we are told, to his brothers and mother; but his brothers, the moment they ceased to be his tools, were disgraced; and his mother, it is said, was not allowed to sit in the presence of her imperial son. He was sometimes softened, we are told, by the sight of the field of battle strewn with the wounded

and dead.

But if the Moloch of his ambition claimed new

heaps of slain to-morrow, it was never denied.

9. With all his sensibility, he gave millions to the sword with as little compunction as he would have brushed away so many insects which had infested his march. To him, all human will, desire, power, were to bend. His superiority none might question. He insulted the fallen, who had contracted the guilt of opposing his progress; and not even woman's loveliness and the dignity of a queen could give shelter from his contumely. His allies were his vassals, nor was their vassalage concealed. Too lofty to use the arts of conciliation, preferring command to persuasion, overbearing and all-grasping, he spread distrust, exasperation, fear, and revenge through Europe; and when the day of retribution came, the old antipathies and mutual jealousies of nations were swallowed up in one burning purpose to prostrate the common tyrant, the universal foe.

Napoleon's fame, which constituted his morality, his conscience, and his principles, he merited, by his nature and his talents, from war and from glory; and he has covered with it the name of France. France, obliged to accept the odium of his tyranny and his crimes, should also accept his glory with a serious gratitude. She cannot separate her name from his without lessening it; for it is equally incrusted with his greatness as with his faults. She wished for renown; and what she principally owes to him is the celebrity she has gained in the world. This celebrity, which will descend to posterity, and which is improperly called glory, constituted his means and his end. Let him therefore enjoy it. The noise he has made will resound through distant ages; but let it not pervert posterity, or falsify the judgment of mankind. He is admired as a soldier; he is measured as a sovereign; he is judged as a founder of nations;-great in action, little in ideas-nothing in virtue. Such is the man!-Lamartine.

Death of Napoleon-McLellan.

[The 5th of May (1821) came amid wind and rain. Napoleon's passing spirit was deliriously engaged in a strife more terrible than the elements around. The words "tête d'armée" [head of the army], the last which escaped from his lips, intimated that his thoughts were watching the current of a heavy fight. About eleven minutes before six in the evening Napoleon expired."—Scott's Life of Napoleon.

WILD was the night; yet a wilder night
Hung round the soldier's pillow;
In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight
Than the fight on the wrathful billow.

A few fond mourners were kneeling by,
The few that his stern heart cherished;
They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,
That life had nearly perished.

They knew by his awful and kingly look,

By the order hastily spoken,

That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,
And the nations' hosts were broken.

He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew,
And triumphed the Frenchman's "eagle;"

And the struggling Austrian fled anew,

Like the hare before the beagle.

The bearded Russian he scourged again,
The Prussian's camp was routed,
And again, on the hills of haughty Spain,
His mighty armies shouted.

Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows,
At the pyramids, at the mountain,
Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,
And by the Italian fountain;

On the snowy cliffs, where mountain-streams
Dash by the Switzer's dwelling,

He led again, in his dying dreams,
His hosts, the broad earth quelling.

Again Marengo's field was won,

And Jena's bloody battle;
Again the world was overrun,
Made pale at his cannons' rattle.

He died at the close of that darksome day,
A day that shall live in story:

In the rocky land they placed his clay,
"And left him alone with his glory."

[In 1840 Napoleon's remains were transported from St. Helena to Paris, and there entombed with every possible circumstance of splendor and magnificence.]

George the Third.—Thackeray.

[George III. died in 1820, after a reign of sixty years, the longest in English history. No period, perhaps, in the world's history has been more replete with momentous events. The following sketch is taken from one of the lectures delivered by Thackeray on the "Four Georges."]

1. WE have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy, Napoleon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle.

2. The old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored; Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revo