abuses that occasioned it, and mercenary traitors, insensible to the calamities of an invaded country, associated their efforts to paralyse national exertion, and make you believe that war was my policy, and peace the boon which the governments of Europe solicited from France. Unwilling to sacrifice the illustrious remnant of your defenders, thus isolated from their country, I yielded to the wishes of your representatives, and, to consummate your security, I surrendered myself into the hands of my enemies.

History affords no example where repose and independence were the rewards of submission, but many instances of individual devotion to the hopes of a nation. Since the fata! moment when France announced that she ceased to combat for her liberty and safety, what misfortunes, crimes and humiliations have devastated and degraded the empire? War with all its devastations-conquest, with all its violence-tyranny, with all its abuses-and subjugation, with all its shame, have overwhelmed you. Outrage and perfidy have outstripped even my forebodings.

The perfidy of Austria, which uncovered my line and occasioned my disasters in Russia, which bartered Poland, violated the military convention of Dresden and negotiated but to betray; the perfidy of Prussia, whose monarchy I preserved, when treason had undermined the throne, and cowardice had rendered the kingdom defenceless;-of Russia, whose civil, military and political history is a series of systematic contempt of faith and equity;-of Bavaria, whose unparalleled turpitude obliged me to fight at Leipsic for preservation, and not for conquest;-of Switzerland, who, for a paltry bribe, sold the tranquility of her citizens, the safety of her country, and the sanctity of her neutrality;-of England, whose sophisms have annihilated public law, and whose policy, since the era of Pitt, has unblushingly substituted power for principle, and expedience for justice: not the recollection of all these perfidies had prepared me for those which have now been emulously perpetrated by sovereigns who professed that they bore arms against France only so long as I was seated on her throne. The most lawless barbarians have never manifested such contempt for solemn obligations. The darkest ages have never presented such scenes of treachery and lincentious direction of force in an unresisting country The miserable king, who was content to render France theit prey, has even his wrongs to plead. The mockery of his sway desecrates the divinity of his right, and he trembles lest

the vengeance of the nation should sweep him and the despoilers from the soil before the work of ruin is accomplished.

Frenchmen! you are now told that not only my ambition, but your contumacious spirit of conquest demanded punishment. Even the acquisitions of former sovereigns and former epochs are now cited as your crimes. And by whom are these charges advanced? By sovereigns whose empires have been formed of successive encroachments on the independence and territories of their neighbors. What was Russia in the beginning of the last century? How became the elector of Brandenburgh monarch of a powerful kingdom? Has Austria absorbed no kingdoms, dismembered no provinces, and does she now hold no domain by the sole tenure of force? Look at the map of Europe. Has France only usurped?Do all the states recognised as independent, even by the treaty of Westphalia, exist? Look around the globe. See the English flag flying in every quarter, and in countries where religion, laws, and language are most dissonant. Has she not subjugated the greater part of Asia? Is she not still endeavoring to force the rampart which separates her from China, and has she not been waging a second war to recover her influence on the American continent?

Our ambition was security. If England had not aspired at the sovereignty of three fourths of the globe, I should have temporised with the unfriendly counsels of Spain. If Russia had not partitioned Poland, and aimed at empire in the south, I never should have proposed to repulse her from the Vistula to the Volga. Europe had acknowledged the baneful influence of England's usurpation. The blood that has flowed for the last twenty-five years has flowed at her purchase; and Europe will further rue the event of a struggle that removes the ascendancy of a civilized people for the domination of northern barbarians.

You are accused of having preferred war to peace, so long as war was successful. Your answers are these. Who first warred against your revolution? Who violated the treaty of Amiens, and violated it with shameless disdain of truth?— Who rejected negotiations repeatedly offered, or broke them when conciliation was practicable? Who declared the war of which you are now the victims? Is it not of their own decreeing? I regreted your sacrifices. I was moved to vindicate your indignities, but I adopted the policy of peace, which was the will of the nation, and I respected it as the bond of union between me and my people Frenchmen'

posterity will judge how far I am responsible to my country for the event of our military efforts. They will decide, when the records are before them, whether I could have mastered fortune; u. my love for France, my gratitude for her confidence, and my devotion to her welfare, can never be subjec to suspicion. To France I owe my existence, and the consciousness of that claim has confirmed the rights of nature Frenchmen! I am still your emperor: but I hold the crown for my son and your interests. His succession can alone ensure the fruits of your efforts against a dynasty whose reign is identified with your slavery. Foreign force may support the throne of a patricide king: but the power of fifty millions of Frenchmen is not to be permanently subdued. You have acquired mournful but useful experience. You are now convinced that arms alone can redeem you from vassalage and ignominy.

Cherish the brave men who have fought your battles. They will again conduct you to glory and victory.

On the rock where I am doomed to pass my future days by the disloyal sentence of your enemies, I shall hear the echo of your triumph, and hail, in the loom of its horizon, the flag of your independence NAPOLEON

CHAP. XXIX

Napoleon at St. Helena. The Briars. Longwood, his residence. Pre cautions taken for his safe custody. Sir Hudson Lowe. Napoleon's domestic habits, amusements and exercises. Sir Pulteney Malcolm.Interview with Captain Basil Hall.

NAPOLEON was weary of shipboard, and, therefore, landed Immediately. Finding the curiosity of the people troublesome, he took up his quarters at 'the Briars,' a small cottage about half a mile from James's Town, during the interval which must needs elapse before the admiral could provide suitable accommodation for his permanent residence. For that purpose, Longwood, a villa about six miles from James's Town, was, after an examination of all that the island afforded, determined on: except Plantation House, the country

residence of the governor, there was no superior house in St Helena; and two months having been employed diligently in some additions and repairs, the fallen emperor took possession of his appointed abode on the 10th of December. The very limited accommodation of the Briars (where, indeed, Napoleon merely occupied a pavilion of two chambers in the garden of a Mr. Balcombe,) had hitherto prevented him from having all his little suite of attendants under the same roof with him. They were now reassembled at Longwood, with the exception of M. and Mme. Montholon, who occupied a separate house at some little distance from it. While at the Briars, Napoleon made himself eminently agreeable to the family of the Balcombes, particularly the young ladies and children, and submited on the whole with temper and grace to the inconveniences of narrow accommodation, in doors, and an almost total want of exercise abroad-this last evil occasioned wholly by his own reluctance to ride out in the neighborhood of the town. He continued also to live on terms of perfect civility with Sir George Cockburn; and, there seemed to be no reason for doubting, that, when fairly established with his suite about him, he would gradually reconcile himself to the situation in which he was likely to remain, and turn his powerful faculties upon some study or pursuit worthy of their energy, and capable of cheating captivity of half its bitterness. These anticipations were not realized.

A subaltern's guard was posted at the entrance of Longwood, about six hundred paces from the house, and a cordon of sentinels and piquets was placed round the limits. At nine o'clock the sentinels were drawn in and stationed in communication with each other, surrounding the house in suchpositions that no person could come in or go out without being seen and scrutinized by them. At the entrance of the house double sentinels were placed, and patrols were continually passing backward and forward. After nine, Napoleon was not at liberty to leave the house, unless in company with a field officer, and no person whatever was allowed to pass without the countersign. This state of affairs continued until day-light in the morning. Every landingplace in the island, and, indeed, every place which presented the semblance of one, was furnished with a piquet, and sentinels were even placed upon every goat-path leading to the sea; though in truth the obstacles presented by nature, in almost all the paths in this direction, would of themselves, have proved insurmountable to so unwieldly a person as Napoleon