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It was the last but

principal figure in the group."* brightest glare of the dazzling sun, before it was clouded or darkened. While thus encircled by kings and princes, he commanded the attendance of the diplomatist, De Pradt, whom he appointed ambassador at Warsaw. But the gold soon became dim, the scene and the sight were soon changed, and the sun was seen as smitten. "After narrowly escaping being taken by the Russians, Napoleon reached Warsaw upon the 10th December. Here the Abbe de Pradt, then minister of France to the diet of Poland, was in the act of endeavouring to reconcile the various rumours which poured in from every quarter, when a figure, like a spectre, wrapped in furs, which were stiffened by hoar frost, stalked into his apartments supported by a domestic, and was with dif ficulty recognised by the ambassador as the duke of Vicenza. You here, Caulincourt?' said the astonished prelate; and where is the emperor?' At the hotel d'Angleterre, waiting for you!' • Where

is the army It no longer exists.' The abbe hastened to the hotel. In the yard stood three sledges in a dilapidated condition. One for the emperor and Caulincourt, the second for two officers of rank, the third for the Mameluke Rustan and another domestic. He was introduced with some mystery into a bad inn's bad room, where a poor female servant was blowing a fire made of green wood. Here was the emperor, whom the Abbe de Pradt had last seen when he played king of kings among the assembled sovereigns of Dresden. He was dressed in a green pelisse, covered with lace and lined with furs, and by walking briskly about the apartment was endeavouring to obtain the warmth which the chimney refused." "He saluted Monsieur l'Ambassadeur,' as

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* Sir W. Scott's Life of Nap. vol. vii. p. 1. † Ibid. 390, 392.

he termed him, with gaiety. The abbe felt a movement of sensibility to which he was disposed to give way, but as he says, The poor man did not understand me.' He limited his expression of devotion, therefore, to helping Napoleon off with his cloak.” Such now was the great Napoleon,-a bad inn's bad room his only council chamber, the humblest menial his only attendant-three shattered sledges his vehicles for flight, without any appurtenances of war,seeking by quick motion to excite the warmth which the cheerless green wood, the only fuel, could not impart, and needing help to strip him of his cloak. From Smorgoni to Warsaw a few Cossacks might anywhere have staid and taken prisoner the captain of the age, who. six months before held a million of soldiers at his command, and had invaded Russia at the head of five hundred thousand. And now when he had reached again the capital of one of his dependant kingdoms, which he would not make free, he who had cast kings from their thrones and raised others in their place, who held Italy his own, Rome his second city, and the pope his prisoner, stood as a "poor man" before anabbe. Xerxes repassing the Hellespont in an open boat was not a more humiliating sight for human pride to profit by.

Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar, says Solomon, yet will not his folly depart from him. And Bonaparte, though fallen, had still high thoughts of earthly glory. He hastened incognito to Paris, to rouse again the energies of his empire. "New conscriptions were called for and yielded. Regiments arrived from Spain and from Italy. Every arsenal resounded with the preparation of new artillery, thousands of horses were impressed in every province. Ere many weeks had elapsed, Napoleon found himself once more in a condition to take the

field with not less than 350,000 soldiers."*

The

sun burst forth from the midst of clouds to dazzle the world with its lustre, once and again, before it should be blotted from the heavens, or, rather, the imperial power of Bonaparte was renovated, that on it the vial of wrath might be yet more fully poured out. A brief glance at his downward course may suffice.

Among the nations which he had subdued the fancied charm of his irresistible power was broken, the magic of his terrible name was gone; but the memory of deep injuries remained, the wrathful nations. were roused to vengeance, Europe was free to reckon with the tyrant, and Bonaparte at length had to fight for the existence of his empire.

The campaign of Saxony succeeded the invasion of Russia. The allies now stood the shock of Napoleon. After great carnage from the morning till seven in the evening, on the 2d May 1813, the allies kept the field of Lutzen. At the town of Bautzen the whole army of Napoleon bivouacked in presence of the allies; who, after a terrible battle, retired with all the deliberate coolness of a parade, halting at every favourable spot and renewing their cannonade." The French lost 15,000 men; the allies 10,000-" What," exclaimed Napoleon, "no results after so much carnage! not a gun! not a prisoner?-these people will not leave me so much as a nail. Fortune has a spite at us this day." "It was not" says Sir Walter Scott rightly-"it was not yet exhausted." The empire of Napoleon existed—his sun was not yet black, and the vial of wrath was not yet" exhausted." At Dresden, " fortune revisited her ancient favourite with a momentary gleam of sunshine;" but, after repeated defeats, the battle of Leipsic, in which he lost 50,000 men,† killed,

Hist. of Napoleon, vol. i. p. 169.

By some accounts, 100,000.

wounded, or prisoners, decided the fate of Napoleon.

Meanwhile the time had passed in which British troops retired before the French in the swamps of Flanders, or the fields of Spain, or sickened and died amidst the marshes of Walchern, or were pent up in the lines of Torres Vedras on the coast of Portugal. From that spot the British army now advanced triumphantly to the eastern borders of Spain; and France, not Britain, was invaded. On one side of that now fated kingdom the British descended the Pyrenees, and on the other the allies passed the Rhine. Within the space of eighteen months the French were in Moscow, and the Russians in Paris; the soldiers of the allies were quartered in the capital of France, and the Cossacks bivouacked in the Camps Elysées. Bonaparte abdicated; and, with the title of emperor, the island of Elba was assigned and occupied, as the portion of the man whose ambition before was not bounded by Europe.

But the hero of a hundred battles had yet reserved for him the reign of a hundred days. That reign terminated, and his empire ceased, with the battle of Waterloo. And even in title, or in name, he was no longer an emperor. At first he came, a youth of unknown name, from an island in the Mediterranean; and, at last, transported like a felon, under the name of general, common to thousands, "he died a prisoner on a rock in the Atlantic." His history, of itself, is instructive-and how should it teem with wisdom, while, looking from the sources of the Bormida, where the first steps of his conquests were taken, to the tomb in St. Helena, where his body was interred, there is seen in all his history a palpable illustration of the word of God, who ruleth over the kingdoms of the earth, and giveth them to whomsoever he will!

The third vial began with the first triumphs of Bonaparte; and the fourth closes with the close of his empire. A few verses sum up his history. And, united in his person, the third and fourth vials are not less intimately connected, or less clearly consecutive, even to contact, than any of the antecedent prophecies that follow in their order. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus: for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy. And I heard another angel out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat,— and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

He who loveth God loves his brother also; but while the fiercest passions were at work, men fearlessly blasphemed the name of God. To swear like a dragoon, a trooper, or a tar, became proverbial expressions. Such, at least, was not the spirit by which men were actuated on the former grand moral revolution in Europe,-even though the Reformation was followed by wars. And neither the civil wars and subsequent commonwealth" in Britain, nor our glorious Revolution, were marked by such a brand of blasphemy. But when religious restraints as well as superstitious fears were dissipated by the revolution of France, execrations, almost at every word, gave free vent to the practical infidelity of the hardened hearts of men; devotional feelings gave way together with

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