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conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character-the most extraordinary perhaps, that, in the annals of the world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell.

Flung into life in the midst of a Revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledged no superior, he commenced his course a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity. With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank and genius had arrayed themselves; and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interesthe acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshipped no God but ambition; and with an Eastern devotion, he knelt at the altar of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate: in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic; and, with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the crown and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, under the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars!

Through this pantomime of his policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the colour of his whims; and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory-his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny-ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects, his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook of the character of his mind; if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount, space no opposition that he did not spurn;—and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity. The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs,

and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became common-places in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts, and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board,

Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field, or the drawing-roomwith the mob, or the levee-wearing the Jacobin bonnet, or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburgh -dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic-he was still the same military despot.

Cradled in the field, he was to the last hour the darling of the army; and, whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend, or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless; and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favourite. They knew well that, if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that, if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidised every people; to the people, he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters; the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the patronage of learning; the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.-Such a medley of contradictions, and, at the same time, such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist, a republican, and an emperor-a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the Synagogue-a traitor and a tyrant-a Christian and an Infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a

shadow. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world; and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie.

Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism however stupendous, against which they have not a resource; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson, that, if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest.

XXVI.-"PRESS ON."-Anonymous.

THIS is a speech, brief, but full of inspiration, and opening the way to all victory. The mystery of Napoleon's career was this,-under all difficulties and discouragements, 66 PRESS ON!" It solves the problem of all heroes; it is the rule by which to weigh rightly all wonderful successes, and triumphal marches to fortune and genius. It should be the motto of all, old and young, high and low, fortunate and unfortunate so called.

"PRESS ON!" Never despair; never be discouraged, however stormy the heavens, however dark the way; however great the difficulties, and repeated the failures, PRESS ON!"

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If fortune has played false with thee to-day, do thou play true for thyself to-morrow. If thy riches have taken wings and left thee, do not weep thy life away; but be up and doing, and retrieve the loss by new energies and action. If an unfortunate bargain has deranged thy business, do not fold thy arms, and give up all as lost; but stir thyself, and work the more vigorously.

If those whom thou hast trusted have betrayed thee, do not be discouraged, do not idly weep, but "PRESS ON!" find others; or, what is better, learn to live within thyself. Let the foolishness of yesterday make thee wise to-day. If thy affections have been poured out like water in the desert, do not sit down and perish of thirst, but "PRESS ON!". -a beautiful oasis is before thee, and thou mayest reach it if thou wilt. If another has been false to thee, do not thou increase the evil-by being false to thyself. Do not say, the world hath lost its poetry and beauty; 'tis not so; and even if it is so, make thine own poetry and beauty-by a brave, a true, and, above all, a religious life!

XXVII.—CHARACTER OF PITT (LORD CHATHAM.)—Grattan. THE Secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved of his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate; the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour, and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her. Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music, of the spheres. He did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation, nor was he for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding,

a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

XXVIII.—THE STUDY OF NATURE.—Humboldt.

HE who regards the influences of the study of Nature in their relations, not to particular grades of civilisation, or the individual requirements of social life, but in their wider bearings upon mankind at large, promises himself, as the principal fruit of his researches, that the enjoyment of Nature will be increased and ennobled through insight into the connexion of her phenomena. Such increase, such nobility, however, is the work of observation, of intelligence, and of time; in which all the efforts of the understanding of man are reflected. How the human kind have been striving for thousands of years, amidst eternally recurring changes in the forms of things, to discover that which is stable in the law, and so, gradually, by the might of mind, to vanquish all within the wide-spread orbit of the earth; is familiar to him who has traced the trunk of our knowledge, through the thick strata of bygone ages, to its root. To question these ages is to trace the mysterious course of the idea, stamped with the same image as that which, in times of remoter antiquity, presented itself to the inward sense, in the guise of an harmoniously ordered whole; and which meets us, at last, as the prize of long and carefully accumulated experience.

In these two epochs in the contemplation of creation-the first dawn of consciousness among men, and the ultimate and simultaneous evolution of every element of human sciencetwo distinct kinds of enjoyment are reflected. The mere presence of unbounded Nature, and an obscure feeling of the harmony that reigns amid the ceaseless changes of her silent workings, are the source of the one. The other belongs to a higher state of civilisation of the species, and the reflection of this upon the individual; it springs from an insight into the order of the universe, and the co-ordination of the physical forces. Even as man now contrives instruments by which he may question Nature more closely, and step beyond the limited circle of his fleeting existence; as he no longer observes only, but has learned to produce phenomena under determinate conditions; as, in fine, the philosophy of Nature

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