66 when the armed bands of Europe will be dismissed to more useful occupations, as this same Emperor sent his legionary soldiers to reclaim the barren land; but I do trust, menacing as are the clouds that overcast us now, that a time of wholesale desolations may never again come round, such as that amidst which he who has been called the "Bourgeois vengeur" moved the master-spirit of bloodshed, and whose career has been thus described by one of his own countrymen. 'His aim," says Chateaubriand, was universal dominion, and he gazed at it stedfastly with the eye of an eagle and the appetite of the vulture. He combined within himself all the elements of terror, nerve, malice, and intellect, a heart that never trembled, a mind that never wandered from its purpose. The Almighty appeared to have entrusted to him the destinies of the globe, and he used them to destroy; he shrouded the sun with the clouds of battle, and unveiled the night with his fires. His march reversed the course of nature: the flowers of the spring perished, the fruits of autumn fell, for his track was cold and cheerless and desolate, like the withering wintry blast. Great he unquestionably was great in the resources of a misguided spirit— great in the conception and execution of evil-great in mischief, like the pestilence-great in desolation, like the whirlwind." Such were the practical results that flowed from the their fatal rashness, forgot the severity of the Emperor, whom they had massacred, and hastened to perpetuate, by an honourable monument, the memory of his virtues and victories." glory and renown of the so called Great Napoleon. His imperial sceptre, like that of the first Cæsar, is now wielded by a nephew who has but to act consistently and with moral courage upon his own best apophthegm, and the age of Napoleon the Third will prove as benignly favorable to the interests of civilization as that of Augustus; for the foundation of all true human happiness is contained in a well-known phrase of the present French Emperor, which has more moral grandeur than all that were ever delivered by the first of his family· L'Empire c'est la paix.” 66 Printed by J. Leech, Bristol Times and Journal Office, Small-street. |