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ing Miss Patterson his wife on the 25th of naparte family, neither reduced her to obDecember, 1803, and no considerations of scurity nor tarnished her name. The pope his duty as a husband or the common con- declared the marriage binding beyond his siderations of humanity towards a woman power to annul it; and the rest of Europe about to become the mother of his child, recognized in Madame Jerome the victim of withheld him from abandoning her, in a arbitrary power. strange country, where she had neither friends nor relatives, where her position was more than equivocal, and where, if she were not in want of the necessaries of life, it was no thanks to Jerome, who made no provision for the protection or support of an extremely beautiful woman of seventeen whose physical condition rendered a return to her own country and her father's house impossible. He left her almost immediately on arriving at Lisbon, professedly to throw himself at his brother's feet and prevail upon him to forgive the marriage. His subsequent conduct proves that he never had any intention to embarrass himself further with her whom he had married; he showed himself as self-willed and inconsequent in running away from difficulties as he had been in running into them.

Jerome set off in hot haste to present himself before his brother, who was at Turin. For eleven days he was kept waiting for an interview; during this time he wrote a letter of abject submission, consenting to be governed in all things by the will of the emperor, and to recognize his own marriage as absolutely null, not even requiring to be dissolved. Napoleon wrote an order to Jerome, that he himself should announce to his wife that he had of his own free will recognized that his marriage was and had been null from the beginning.

In return for this unqualified submission, Jerome was graciously pardoned and restored to his brother's favor. Jerome's consent once given, all manner of official acts and declarations were set forth to show how entirely null the marriage had always been, and the offspring illegitimate beyond redemption.

France was not all the world; and the imperial decrees, although they deprived Madame Jerome of all the advantages she had hoped for from her connection with the Bo

She and her husband never met again after they parted at Lisbon, less than seven months after their marriage. She went to England where she was received with much kindness and sympathy, and in England her son was born, whom she had baptized as Jerome Bonaparte. She afterwards returned to America. That her conduct and character were always above the power of scandal to impugn, was no thanks to Jerome,—a weaker woman or a less worldly one would have been entirely crushed by such treatment as she had received. Madame Jerome was equal to her situation: she would doubtless have made quite as good a princess as any of the temporary royalties Napoleon loved to create, as though they had been the flowers and garlands of his more solid efforts of power; but, apart from this mortification, she made all the gain possible out of her position. She accepted the handsome pension allotted to her by the emperor, and lived in such amicable relations with the family, as to give a great color of probability to her present claim on the estate of Prince Jerome. The loss of such a husband could be nothing but a gain to her. She seems to have been a woman who, like Bussy Rabutin, n'aimait que le solide. A very proud, sensitive woman would have refused to accept the emperor's pension; but she judged it best to take it. Poverty was not added to her other vexations. As for Jerome, he was through life a fool and a poltroon. The fine epithets and sentimental phraseology in which the courtly editor of these Memoirs dresses his conduct does not disguise the very ugly look of his actions, both public and private. On his submission, Napoleon sent him once more to sea, and there he distinguished himself by his entire inability either to obey or command. He was the torment of his admiral, as he had been of the Consul Pichon.

From The Athenæum.

Home Ballads and Poems. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Boston, U. S., Ticknor & Fields; London, Low & Co.

beat quicker for the day when black slavery shall be no more, and in bringing about the present movement which the hopeful look upon as preparatory to the gathering up of the slave forces for a final fight.

The poet is less martial in his latest book. He has learnt to possess his soul with more patience. The momentum is more subdued, and has a slower swing, quietly intense. Longer brooding has brought forth a more perfect, though less striking result. Take, for example, a few of the noble lines in remembrance of Joseph Sturge, a man after our poet's own heart :

"For him no minister's chant of the immortals
Rose from the lips of sin;
No mitred priest swang back the heavenly por-

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To let the white soul in.

'But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces
In the low hovel's door,

And prayers went up from all the dark by-places
And shelters of the poor.

But a fine sense of right,

HERE is poetry worth waiting for, a poet worth listening to. Mr. Whittier may not ascend any lofty hill of vision, but he is clearly a seer according to his range. His song is simple and sound, sweet and strong. We take up his book as Lord Bacon liked to take up the bit of fresh earth, wet with morning and fragrant with wine. It has the healthy smell of Yankee soil with the wine of fancy poured over it. We get a gush of the prairie breeze, weird whispers from the dark and eerie belts of pine, wafts of the salt sca winds wandering inland, superb scents of the starred magnolias and box-tree blossoming white. We hear the low of cattle, the buzzing of bees, the lusty song of the huskers, brown and ruddy, the drunken laughter of the jolly bob-o-link. Here are green memorials of the New World's spring of promise, golden memorials of her abund-"Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, ance when the horn of autumn is poured into the overflowing lap of man; we see the white-horns tossing over the farmyard wall, the cock crowing in the sun with his comb glowing a most vital red, the brown gable of the old barn, roses running up to the eaves of the swallow-haunted homestead, the June sun "tangling his wings of fire" in the network of green leaves, the aronia by the river lighting up the swarming shad, the river full of sunshine, with the bonny blue above and the blithe blink of sea in the distance, and many a sight and sound of vernal life and country cheer. No American poet has more of the home-made and homebrewed than Mr. Whittier. His poetry is not filtered from the German Helicon; it is a spring fresh from New World nature; In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble and we gladly welcome its "sprightly runnings."

Our Yankee bard is among poets what Mr. Bright is amongst the peace men. He has the soul of some old Norseman buttoned up under the Quaker's coat, and the great bursts of heart will often peril the hold of the buttons, whilst the speaker with all his native energy and a manly mouth is "preaching brotherly love and driving it in." With him, too, the Norse soul is found fighting for freedom, and he has done good service in making the heart of the North

And truth's directness, meeting each occasion

Straight as a line of light.

"The very gentlest of all human natures

He joined to courage strong,
And love out-reaching unto all God's creatures
With sturdy hate of wrong.

"Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed
nourished

Still a large faith in human-kind he cherished,
By failure and by fall,

And in God's love for all.

"And now he rests his greatness and his sweet

ness

No more shall seem at strife;
And death has moulded into calm completeness
The statue of his life.

"Where the dews glisten and the song-birds war-
ble,

His dust to dust is laid,

To shame his modest shade.

"The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; Beneath its smoky vail,

Hard by, the city of his love is swinging

Its clamorous iron flail.

"But round his grave are quietude and beauty,
And the sweet heaven above,-

The fitting symbols of a life of duty
Transfigured into love."

In a time of trouble and struggle, of war and rumors of war, these lines take one with their quiet mastery and peaceful music, sinking softly into the soul as if spoken by

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"Ah, me! we doubt the shining skies

Seen through our shadows of offence, And drown with our poor childish cries The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence.

"And still we love the evil cause,

And of the just effect complain; We tread upon life's broken laws, And murmur at our self-inflicted pain; "We turn us from the light, and find

"All as God wills, who wisely heeds

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To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told!

Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track;
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back;
"That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good:

"That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight;

"That care and trial seem at last,

Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain ranges over-past,
In purple distance fair:

“That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.

"And so the shadows fall apart,

And so the west winds play ;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day."

Our spectral shapes before us thrown, As they who leave the sun behind Walk in the shadows of themselves alone. "And scarce by will or strength of ours We set our faces to the day; Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal Powers Alone can turn us from ourselves away." Mr. Whittier is most successful perhaps But we shall not be doing justice to these in the present work in setting gravely sweet Home Ballads" if we do not vary the and kindly comforting thoughts to a com- strain. They are not all devoted to the life mon ballad measure, which he has tried that is livad in our day. Here and there again and again until it reaches its perfec- we find a bright and vigorous portrait tion in pieces like " My Psalm" and "My Playmate." Here is a specimen of the lat

ter poem :

"O playmate in the golden time!

Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.

"The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.

"And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,-
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!"

"My Psalm" is only to be felt thoroughly in the eve of life, when the mellowing influences of age and experience have done their work, and the golden haze gathers about the closing of the calm day, touching this world with the beauty of the next. It must be read slowly and thoughtfully to be felt deeply:

painted on the dark background of the past. Such is that of "Samuel Sewall," the man of God with a "face that a child would climb to kiss." Sometimes, also, the poet peers into the shadowy land of Indian legend, watching, questioning the darkness, till the mist begins to stir and transform itself into spectral life. Then he will tell us a tale of the early time of witchcraft and cruelty.

Our concluding extract is from a robust ballad, called

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"Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of check and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
With conch-shells blowing, and fish-horn's twang,
Over and over the Mænads sang,-

'Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!'
"Small pity for him!-He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,-
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own townspeople on her deck!
'Lay by lay by!' they called to him.
Back he answered, Sink or swin!

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Brag of your catch of fish again!'

And off he sailed through the fog and the rain.
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!

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'Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!' "Hear me, Neighbors!' at last he cried,— 'What to me is this noisy ride?

What is the shame that clothes the skin

To the nameless horror that lives within?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me,-I only dread
The hand of God and the face of the Dead.'
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !

"Then the wife of the Skipper lost at sea
Said, God has toucht him!-why should we?'
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
'Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!'
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !"

Mr. Whittier has many admirers in this country, to whom this volume will be wel

come.

1820 ascent) as being that of Pierre Balmat.
"3. Part of a guide's knapsack, with sundry
portions of a lantern attached to it.

"4. An iron crampon, which the guides at that time strapped on their shoes when they crossed the glaciers, etc., to prevent slipping.

"5. Several portions of guides' dress-cravats, hats, torn portions of linen, portions of cloth, coats, etc., all easily distinguishable as belonging to men of the guide class."

REMARKABLE DISCOVERY IN THE ALPS.- color, etc. One of these fragments was recogThere is news from Switzerland, says an Eng-nized by Julian Devoussoux (a survivor of the lish paper, which painfully recalls the memory of a terrible catastrophe which happened on the Grand Plateau of Mont Blanc on the 20th August, 1820. On that day a party, consisting of Dr. Hammel and some gentlemen from Geneva, started up the mountain, accompanied by several guides. A descending avalanche swept off three of the latter, by name, Auguste Tairraz, Pierre Balmat and Pierre Carrier, all three belonging to families now inseparably connected with the history of the mountain. From that day, up to the 15th of last month, not a trace of them was ever discovered; on that morning was discovered, on the lower part of the Glacier des Bossons, a number of human remains and fragments of dress, accoutrements, etc., which have been recognized as having belonged to these hapless guides. These relics are stated to consist of

Two of the guides who accompanied the party of 1820 are still alive, and it is said that Dr. Hammel still survives in England. The most interesting circumstance in connection with this recovery of the remains of these long-ago mourned men is, that it is in exact fulfilment of Professor James D. Forbes' prediction, based on his observations and knowledge of the laws which guide the motions of the glaciers. Pro"1. An arm in the most perfect state of pres-fessor Forbes, it is stated, has repeatedly told ervation, with the hand, fingers, nails, skin, and dried frozen flesh intact, in noways discolored; part of little finger only gone. The length of this limb extends to the elbow.

"2. Parts of two different skulls, with a good deal of hair remaining with the skin on both; one belonging to a fair man, the other to a dark one. The hair most wonderfully preserved in

the Chamounix guides that they might look out for traces of their deceased comrades in the Lower Bossons in about forty or forty-five years after the catastrophe, and that he told Auguste Balmat in 1858 to keep a look-out. From the discovery, therefore, we may deduce a satisfactory demonstration of the glacier theory now accepted by men of science.

From The Press.
EXPERIMENTS WITH CANNON.

the depth of some three-quarters of an inch, but otherwise seemed to have but little efON Tuesday some interesting experiments fect, except upon the rivets of the angle iron were conducted at Shoeburyness, under the inside the sheathing, which were apparently superintendence of the Iron Plate Commis- somewhat started. Two flat-headed fortysion, upon two new kinds of targets, built up pounder steel shot, fired at the same range, to resemble a portion of an iron-plated frig-produced more effect. Their indentation ate's broadside. One target was sent in to was quite an inch and a half, if not more, be experimented upon by Mr. Fairbairn. This was about ten feet long by six feet high, and consisted of four plates five inches thick, the upper and lower being each about ten feet, the two in the centre being only five feet each. The peculiarity of this target was that there was no wooden backing to the armor plating, for the attention of the Commission has lately been much directed to endeavoring to ascertain how far it is possible by a slight increase in the thickness of the plates to do away entirely with the weight and expense of the vertical and horizontal mass of timber beyond them. Another peculiarity was the effort to do away with the acknowledged source of weakness which arises from holes having to be drilled in the plates for the bolts to fasten them to the ship's side. In nearly all cases where plates have been fractured by shot, the crack has commenced from one of the rivet holes. There were none of these in Mr. Fairbairn's target. The plates were fastened directly to what in an iron frigate would be its outer skin, which, in the case of the target, was represented by wrought iron three-quarters of an inch thick. From the side of this were rib girders much of the same kind as the iron ribs of a frigate would be. These were half an inch thick by about eleven inches deep and eighteen apart, with stout angle irons fastening them to the outer skin. From inside this skin the rivets were let into the plate like topped screws, penetrating a little more than half-way through the five-inch armor plate. The iron used in this target was of the very best kind, and the whole of its workmanship was admirable and substantial to the last degree, as the tests showed. First, a flat-headed steel shot, about one pound in weight, was fired against it to test the quality of the iron. This made only a dent of from a quarter to one-third of an inch in depth. Two of Armstrong's fortypound shell, filled with sand, were next discharged point-blank at a distance of one hundred yards. They also dented the iron to

and the rivet-heads holding the armor plates
were evidently shaken, though apparently
they held as firmly as ever. The hun-
dred-pounder Armstrong was next tried at
two hundred yards, with a shell filled with
sand. This broke one of the angle irons of
the inner sheathing, made a deep dent, and
started some of the smaller rivets, yet on the
whole surprisingly little damage was done,
and practically the target seemed as strong
as ever. A solid hundred-pounder shot
was then tried, and this struck with a tre-
mendous blow the centre of the mark, the
effect of which visibly started the plates and
rather curved them outwards at some of
their joints. The effect of two shots from a
solid sixty-eight-pounder at one hundred
yards shook the armor plates still more,
starting them from the skin to which they
were bolted, and denting them through their
entire substance considerably. A two hun-
dred pound shot was then fired at two hun-
dred yards range. This ponderous missile
not only made a very deep dent where it
struck, but bulged the whole target in, shak-
ing all the plates loose, and breaking some
of the screws which held them. Still, how-
ever, no plate gave way under these tremen-
dous visitations, nor had any of them been
detached. The last shot fired was with a
hundred-pounder, at eight hundred yards,
and the effect of this was final.
By the
force of the concussion the upper plate,
with one of the centre small ones, was com
pletely detached, and came crashing down,
leaving those that still remained in a very
shaky and precarious condition.
It was,
however, considered by all on the ground to
have withstood the rude assaults it had re-
ceived in a most extraordinary manner. The
screws held on to the very last, and a great
deal longer than any one expected, while the
plates, though, of course, much battered and
defaced, were not only not broken, but
showed no symptoms of becoming so. On
the whole, therefore, it was considered that
the resistance offered by a target built on

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