posed, and placed on an elevation that despotism had never before attained, he stood amongst us like some stupendous and majestic Apennine, the earth rocking at its feet, the heavens roaring round its head; and, when thrones are crumbled and dynasties forgotten, will stand the landmark of his country's genius, sublimely elevated amid regal ruins and national dissolution, a mental pyramid in the solitude of time.

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne. A mind bold, independent, and decisive-a will despotic in its dictates-an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character, the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world ever rose, or reigned, or fell. The chief of cabinets, and the controller of camps a statesman by office, and a soldier by profession-he was, from the cradle to the grave, the same pre- ; eminently brilliant, stirring, and audacious spirit.

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, wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest-he acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshipped no god but ambition; and, with an

eastern devotion, he knelt at the shrine 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 dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he be. came the adopted child of the republic; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the tower of his despotism.

A professed catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a professed patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in 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 caprice. At his touch crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, and systems vanished; the wildest theories took the colour of his whim, and all that was venerable, all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even in the gambling of his wild ambition defeat itself assumed the appearance of victory his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny ruin itself only elevated him to the empire!

But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils, 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 suc. cess vindicated their adoption.

His person partook of the character of his

mind-if the one never yielded in the cabi net, 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 an. tiquity became common places in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, crowns, camps, churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chessboard.

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

Cradled in the camp, he was to the very last the darling of the army; and whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook

VII

friend, or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless, and their first stipulation was the safety of their favourite.

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself: that if he exposed them to the peril, he repaid them with the plunder. For the soldier, he sub. sidised the people, to the people he made every 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 uni

verse.

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, he yet pretended to the protection of learning! the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, and the benefactor of De Lille.

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 subaltern and a Sovereign-a Christian and an infidel-be 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.

Coalition after coalition crumbled away

before him; crowns were but ephemeral; monarchs only the tenants of an hour: every evening sun set upon a change; every morning dawned upon some new convul. sion; the whole political globe trembled as with an earthquake, and no one could tell what venerable monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid and reposeless fragments of the French volcano. But he is fallen! His own ambition was his glorious conqueror. He attempted, with a sublime audacity, to grasp the fires of heaven, and his heathen retribution has been the vulture and the rock.

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 revery.