was therefore terrific. The world saw the activity with which he moved great masses of men, the fearlessness with which he attacked superior forces, his contempt of the elements, and of the barriers opposed by rivers and mountains to military movements-and whilst they wondered they were lost. He continued this practice from the commencement of his career to its close-from the passage of the Alps to the flight from Moscow. We may form some idea of the wholesale destruction of human life which this system induced, by knowing that the annual addition to the French army, by conscription, was for many years upwards of 150,000 men, whilst in England the recruits of each year were not more than 5000. The world at last learned to imitate the boldness and the rapidity of his military movements; and it was reserved for England and her allies to beat him by the adoption of those weapons, and yet leave him in the exclusive possession of his system of plunder and bloodshed.

If we could divest ourselves of the abhorrence which we feel of Buonaparte's merciless principles of warfare, we should be ready to acknowledge that he was the greatest general of modern times. But it required even greater military abilities to defeat him, without sacrificing the principles of justice and humanity. This was accomplished by the Englishman who freed Spain from the yoke of his oppression.

But Buonaparte is not to be looked at only as a general; he aspired to and filled the character of a sovereign, and a head of sovereigns. His merits in this particular are easily summed up. He had but one notion of government, and that was founded upon the fear, not the love, of the governed. He was one of the greatest enemies to liberty that ever appeared in the world. He found the French people in the possession of the wildest and most unbridled principles of republicanism, and he made them the willing slaves of his absolute monarchy. Under his rule there was no representation of the people, no freedom of the press, no appeal from the enormities of his cruel and all

pervading police. His sway was a despotism of the most arbitrary character. But he gilded the chains of the French-he filled them with the intoxication of national vanity-he astounded them by his victories— he flattered them by his insolent demeanour to other nations-he imposed no restraints upon their licentious habits, except when they interfered with the even progress of his government-he obtained the suffrages of men of letters by his patronage-and he took care to raise many splendid public works, amongst a people who enjoy themselves only in public, and are insensible to the comforts and securities of domestic life. In his private demeanour as a sovereign he was haughty and repulsive;-coarse and offensive, except upon occasions of show;-overbearing and insolent even to the fair sex. But he appears to have been affectionate to his relations;-and the force of his talents, and the magnificence of his power, could not fail to procure him many warm and faithful friends.

In a word:-Buonaparte was the living symbol of the French Revolution. He was the representative of its ferocity, its selfishness, its contempt of ordinary restraints, its mighty daring, its defiance of God, its cruelty to man. What Cromwell was in a fanatical age was Buonaparte in an atheistical. The world will never again behold two such men, because the circumstances that made them can never again exist. They were both, to a certain extent, impostors; and they both exhausted the materials of their deceptions.

C. K.

SKETCH OF THE REIGN AND PERSONAL
CHARACTER OF GEORGE III.

THE death of George III. has broken the great link which united the history of the present age, with that of a generation which has passed away. The extraordinary length of this Prince's reign was a bond of connexion between the actions, characters, and manners of our own times, and events whose interest is forgotten, names whose power is no more, and

habits whose influence is extinct. There are few domestic circles where there is a living record in whom the remembrances of manhood go back to the commencement of the reign of George III.; and who can adequately describe the prevailing modes and principles of that day. Our late King came to the throne in extreme youth; and he has sat in that honoured seat (nominally indeed for the last nine years, though never absent from the affectionate consideration of his people) until he had attained the fulness of old age. His reign therefore occupies a larger space than any other in our chronicles. It extends very nearly to a period of sixty years; and perhaps every one of those years has been marked by some event whose effects may be traced in the general history of the human race.

Of the public affairs of this period, important as it is prolonged, it would be quite impossible, within our prescribed limits, to give a detailed review which should be at all satisfactory. During this time North America has been won and lost. An empire has been founded in India, whose extent almost surpasses the remarkable stories of ancient conquests. Colonies have been added to the British crown, which complete the chain of our maritime power and commercial intercourse. Mighty revolutions have shaken other states to their foundations, while the great principles of order have been upheld in our own country. For twenty years, with a transient interruption, a war of unexampled magnitude was waged with a government which aimed at the dominion of the world;-the tyranny was put down, and Great Britain, in asserting her own independence, broke the fetters of the other European nations. Events of this magnitude belong to the calm and dispassionate consideration of history. We have only to notice such portions of these, and of other memorable facts, as, looking to the peculiar nature of our limited monarchy, may be supposed to have received a direction from the personal character of our late venerable King.

George III. the second child of Frederick Prince

of Wales, son of George II. and of Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, was born in Norfolk-house, St. James's-square, on the 4th June (according to the alteration of style), in the year 1738. His father died when the young prince was thirteen years of age. His education was therefore principally regulated by the care of his mother, who appears to have been ever anxious to impress upon him the principles of conscientious integrity and habitual piety. His subsequent character, both as a monarch and a man, is the best proof of the success of this truly maternal solicitude. There has been a general belief that the political instructors of the late King were anxious to turn him aside from those constitutional principles upon which his ancestors had obtained the crown of Great Britain. But let it be remembered, that there never has existed a sovereign more scrupulously exact in his adherence to the laws, or more devotedly attached to the just and lawful rights of his people. This consideration either disproves the statement that this Prince was educated upon an illiberal system; or manifests that the soundness of his understanding, and the goodness of his heart, uniformly led him to reject any evil advice, and, as he himself expressed on his accession, to consider the civil and religious rights of his subjects equally dear with the most valuable prerogatives of his crown.

To those who are curious, at this distance of time, to trace the formation of their late sovereign's mind, we offer the following extracts from the Diary of a celebrated courtier, Bubb Doddington-a person who was in habits of intimacy with the mother of the young Prince, and whose testimony may be depended upon in this particular:

'I took the liberty to ask her" (the Princess of Wales) "what she thought the real disposition of the Prince to be? She said, that I knew him almost as well as she did; that he was very honest, but that she wished that he was a little more forward and less childish, at his age (he was then 15); that she hoped his preceptors would improve him. That she did not observe the Prince to take very particularly to any body about him but to his brother Edward, and she was very glad of

it, for the young people of quality were so ill educated, and so very vicious, that they frightened her. I told her, I thought it a great happiness that he shewed no disposition to any great excesses, and begged to know what were his affections and passions. She repeated that he was a very honest boy, and that his chief passion seemed to be for Edward. The Prince seemed to have a very tender regard for the memory of his father, and she encouraged it as much as she could. I humbly begged that she would cultivate and improve the personal influence which her many virtues, as well as natural affection, gave her over the Prince. She expressed herself civilly for the regard I testified for her, and said she could have nothing so much at heart as to see him do well, and make the nation happy.”

In a subsequent conversation the mother of the young Prince, whose education was a matter of such public importance, thus described his disposition:

"He was not a wild, dissipated boy, but good-natured and cheerful, with a serious cast upon the whole-those about him knew him no more than if they had never seen him; he was not quick, but with those with whom he was acquainted, applicable and intelligent. His education had given her much pain; his book learning she was no judge of, though she sup posed it small or useless; but she hoped he might have been instructed in the general understanding of things."

The preceding extracts certainly offer no very important information; but a character is oftentimes disclosed by particulars which may at first sight appear trifling. We may learn from these details, that the late King's strict integrity, his domestic habits, his aversion to dissipation, his kind-heartedness, his cheerful but yet reflecting temper, were very early manifest to those about him. The British nation has reason to be thankful that his qualities were more sound than brilliant; and that the purity and simplicity of his youthful mind were afterwards displayed in those virtues, which constituted the value of his example, and the blessing of his government.

George III. having recently completed his 22d year, ascended the throne on the 25th October, 1760. The death of George II. was unexpected. The young sovereign was somewhat embarrassed by the