"a word. But, like me, he had perhaps too

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great a contempt for women; he treated them "as puppets, and thought he could make them "dance at any time by pulling the wires. "That story of Gardez vos enfans' did not "tell much in her favour, and proves what I I shall be curious to see Las Cases'

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say. book, to hear what Napoleon's real conduct "to her was.”

I told him I could never reconcile the contradictory opinions he had expressed of Napoleon in his poems.

"How could it be otherwise?" said he. "Some of them were called translations, and I

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spoke in the character of a Frenchman and a "soldier. But Napoleon was his own antithe"sis (if I may say so). He was a glorious ty

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rant, after all. Look at his public works: 66 compare his face, even on his coins, with those

" of the other sovereigns of Europe. I blame

"the manner of his death: he shewed that he

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consenting to live.

"possessed much of the Italian character in There he lost himself "in his dramatic character, in my estimation. "He was master of his own destiny; of that, "at least, his enemies could not deprive him. "He should have gone off the stage like a "hero: it was expected of him.

"Madame de Staël, as an historian, should “have named him in her 'Allemagne ;' she was wrong in suppressing his name, and he had a

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right to be offended. Not that I mean to justify his persecutions. These, I cannot help thinking, must have arisen indirectly "from some private enemy. But we shall see.

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"She was always aiming to be brilliant-to

produce a sensation, no matter how, when, or "where. She wanted to make all her ideas,

"like figures in the modern French school of

"out of the canvass, each in a light of its own. "She was vain; but who had an excuse for

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vanity if she had not? I can easily conceive

"her not wishing to change her name, or acknowledge that of Rocca. I liked Rocca; he "was a gentleman and a clever man; no one "said better things, or with a better grace. "The remark about the Meillerie road that I

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quoted in the Notes of Childe Harold,' 'La

"route vaut mieux que les souvenirs,' was the

“observation of a thorough Frenchman."

"Here is a letter I have had to-day," said he. "The writer is a stranger to me, and pleads

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great distress.

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He says he has been an offi

cer in the East India service, and makes out

a long list of grievances, against the Company " and a Mr. S He charges the Govern"ment with sending him home without a "trial, and breaking him without a Court-mar"tial; and complains that a travelling gentle

Q

"man, after having engaged him as an inter

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preter to accompany him to Persia, and put "him to great expense in preparations for the

"journey, has all at once changed his mind, "and refused to remunerate him for his lost "time, or pay him any of the annual stipend His name seems

" he had fixed to give him.

"to be

You have been at Bombay,

"do you know him?"

"No," answered I; "but I know his story. He was thought to have been hardly used. As to the other part of his complaint, I know nothing."

"He asks me for 501. I shall send it him by "to-morrow's post: there is no courier to-day."

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"Who would not wish to have been born

two or three centuries later?" said he, putting into my hand an Italian letter. "Here is

a savant of Bologna, who pretends to have dis"covered the manner of directing balloons by

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means of a rudder, and tells me that he is

ready to explain the nature of his invention "to our Government. I suppose we shall soon "travel by air-vessels; make air instead of sea

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voyages; and at length find our way to the

moon, in spite of the want of atmosphere."*

"Cælum ipsum petimus stultitiâ,” said I.

“There is not so much folly as you may suppose, and a vast deal of poetry, in the idea," re

plied Lord Byron. "Where shall we set "bounds to the power of steam? Who shall

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6

say, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?'

"We are at present in the infancy of science. "Do you imagine that, in former stages of this

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planet, wiser creatures than ourselves did not "exist? All our boasted inventions are but the

Steam-engines will convey him to the moon."

Don Juan, Canto X. Stanza 2.