his apophthegms are like feathers falling from the pinions of this same eagle, when they were outspread in that soaring flight, which bore it from the towers of Notre Dame from steeple to steeple of the capitals of Europe, to the battlements of the Kremlin and the summits of the Pyramids, Unheeded by himself was the fall of those feathers in that stormy flight; but as we follow him from city to city and battle field to battle-field, to pick up, to him, those "unconsidered trifles," our pains will be amply rewarded by finding what a body of sublimity and wisdom, though in laconic fragments, we have in the end got together; and I would, therefore, almost prefer leaving to you the task and satisfaction of searching them out, than performing that office for you.

Coleridge said-speaking at a time when he of whom he spoke was living, and the public mind was exasperated against the author of it-that "Napoleon was always contemptible save when acting a part, and that part not his own." To canvass this extreme opinion (as it is no portion of my task to treat of the character of Napoleon) is not the cause of my citing it; but if it were said (which I fancy it was) during his exile in St. Helena, we cannot deny there were some grounds for the imputation of acting. The retirement of great performers on this world's stage, whether that retirement be forced or voluntary, will not bear too close and rigid a scrutiny. The cloistered life of Charles V. at St. Yuste was an existence of gout and gluttony; and the irritable and egotistical failings-the selfishness, if you please-of

Napoleon's nature being more worked upon by circumstances and nearer seen at St. Helena, naturally contributed at the time to break, in the eyes of many, the awful charm that previously invested his name.* Indeed, he seems to have felt it himself, as anticipating the probable effects upon the public mind, he endeavoured to avert it by an interpretation of his own, when he said to Las Cases, "Misfortunes are not without their heroism and their glory: adversity was wanting to my career. Had I died on the throne, enveloped in the dense atmosphere of my power, I should to many have remained a problem; but now misfortune will enable all to judge of me without disguise." And on the whole, I think the romance and wonder of his life are, at this distance of time, little impaired by the trying ordeal of his imprisonment; for if we cage up the lion, and tease him by petty annoyances, we must not complain, if, when chafing behind the bars, he exhibits a less majestic spectacle than when at large and at liberty in his native jungle. Nowhere, indeed, did Napoleon appear to play a part so much at St. Helena when, probably not unconscious of the danger of his historic proportions being dwarfed by a nearer and more domestic view, he occasionally attitudinized not a little; while

* Amongst the many distressing instances of the enervating effect of exile upon his mind, was the puling complaint which he uttered on hearing that some fish which he had in a pond in the garden of Longwood, had died. "Everything I love," he complained, like a fretful child that had lost its toys, "everything that belongs to me is stricken; Heaven and mankind unite to afflict me." Heaven and mankind united to take away the great Napoleon's playthings!

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the majority of his conversations were evidently-if I may be pardoned a professional allusion-spoken to the reporters. In the solitude, in that speck of an island, he was perfectly conscious that the eyes of the civilized world were directed to him to the human phenomenon which it held that every word he spoke was reiterated through Europe, or treasured up for after publication; and this consciousness, this impression, is traceable in most of his conversations. Speaking to his group of attendants or English visitor, you see that though his words be spoken on a remote rock, they are addressed to France, to England, to Europe, to which his eye directed. He must have been almost more than mortal could he dismiss from himself the consciousness, the knowledge that he was watched, and his every word and look chronicled by the curious, for his contemporaries and the future. He could not sit in his porch without perceiving that he was scanned from the distance-he could not take a walk within his little demesne, without being aware that eyes peered on the great Napoleon from behind the foliage of the gum-trees and the myrtles in front of which he passed. It is hardly a wonder, therefore, that he should act, and he did act—for there was scarcely a speech he made during his exile that was without design; unless, perhaps, that last, when in the delirium of fever his imagination no longer cabined and confined within that narrow rock, he recurred to the splendid and stirring period of his past career, and the diseased brain conjured up the glittering phantas magoria of a foughten field, while amid a strife and

tumult symbolised by the elemental storm that had just raged without and around the dwelling in which he was then dying, his eye pierced once more through" battle, cloud, and smoke," and seeing some critical passage of the combat, in the emergent moment the words " Tête d'armée" broke from lips that instantly afterwards closed in death.

Indeed, it was only a day or two before, and while lying on that very pallet, he delivered a speech to those who waited and listened round him, which was palpably made for a dramatic purpose. "I shall rejoin my brave companions in the Elysian fields," said he. "Yes, Kleber, Dessaix, Bessière, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, Berthier, will come to greet me, and to talk to me of what we have done together. I shall recount to them the latest events of my life. On seeing me they will rekindle with enthusiasm and glory, and we will discourse of our wars with the Scipios, the Haunibals, with Cæsar, and with Frederick. There will be pleasure in that, unless, "he added, smiling, "they should be alarmed below to see so many warriors assembled together," a speech which, however manifestly theatrical it might have been, still discovers in a high degree that richly picturesque and vivid imagination which marked the great majority of Napoleon's speeches; and induced Alison to observe, that “if he had not been the first of warriors he must have been the greatest of Epic Poets." And this fervour of fancy struck others so forcibly, that while he was yet a comparatively obscure student, Domairon, Professor of belles lettres at

the Military College at Paris, astonished at the singularity of his amplifications, said of them, "they were flaming granites poured from a volcano."

To all present the early prediction and short but striking judgment pronounced by General Paoli, after an interview with his then unknown countryman at Corsica, is familiar. "He is one of Plutarch's men," said the General, "cast in the mould of the antique.” There is no question that the " Lives," as well as the Literature of Ancient Greece and Rome, helped to form his character, as to infuse their spirit into his most striking sayings. It was to the ancients he looked for his models, and it was with their great men he sought to measure himself. The Alexanders and the Scipios, the Hannibals and the Cæsars were those with whom he habitually instituted comparisons; and with the exception of the Prussian Frederick, no warrior of modern times appears to have attracted his attention. No wonder, then, that old Paoli should have been struck with the likeness to Plutarch's men in one who so ardently admired them, or that the outline of the antique should be traceable in him, whose predilections for the classical period were so early formed by the contemplation and study of it.

HIS CLASSICAL APOPHTHEGMS.

And indeed no man ever equalled Napoleon for the point, force, and direct appositeness of his classical allusions. He seems to have thought, if I may so speak, in that idiom. They fell from him unpremeditatedly; he employed them often as the readiest and shortest