impracticable: but in his hands, simplicity marked their developement, and success vindicated their adoption.

"His person partook of the character of his mind if one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmountspace, no opposition that he did not spurn: and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and endowed 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-place in his contemplation. Kings were his people-Nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and

tion. 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.

"Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Buonaparte, the first, and it is to be hoped, the last emperor of the French. That he has done much evil, there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little.

"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 so stupendous against which they have no 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."

CHAPTER X.

"Now the scene of trouble 's o'er;
And, resting on our native shore,
Gay content will sweeter be,
Compared with past adversity."

On the final breaking up of the camp, some of the regiments took their departure for England; others were quartered on the small towns near Paris, and those who were to remain, as the Army of Occupation, were sent to the garrisons, in which it was intended they should continue. To prevent any further out-break against "Louis le Desiré," as the French King was most inappropriately styled, our regiment was sent to a village called St. Remy, about twenty-five miles from Paris. I had charge of twenty of our men; and we were quartered at a flour mill, where we were placed in a de

tached building, containing a large square room, and kitchen.

On our first meeting with the proprietor, we found that his feeling towards us was any thing but friendly; nor did he disguise his sentiments towards us and our country, thinking we did not understand his language. On his denying us wood for firing, a great deal of which he had stacked for his own use, we made free with the branches of his fruit trees, which burned tolerably well; and when the gentleman found that all his swearing, bouncing, and threatening, was of no use, he kindly informed us that he would provide us with wood from his stack.

Our duty here was very light, as we had only to furnish a small regimental guard, and a beacon guard; the latter on the top of a very steep hill, thickly studded with trees and bushes, on the sides, but the top presenting a large flat surface, and here the beacon was erected. It consisted of a quantity of dry straw, on which was placed successive layers of dry faggots of wood, to the height of about

twelve or fourteen feet. It was neatly thatched, and presented the appearance of a large beehive, and the guard having charge of this, placed close to it, a sentinel, with strict orders to keep his eye constantly fixed on a hill in the distance, on which another beacon was placed; and if he saw that one on fire, he was immediately to call out the guard, and the non-commissioned officer was then to fire the one he had charge of, which would have been perceived and answered by some on the other side of us. Any insurrection, or outbreak of the French, would have been thus immediately communicated to the proper authorities.

During the latter part of November, and beginning of December, when large quantities of snow descended, and the frost set in intensely severe, this guard was certainly the very coldest position I had ever been placed in ; and the journey to and from this place, while the sides of the mountain were covered with snow, was both difficult and dangerous

About the middle of December, we received the route for England. A day or two before