for every year and a cupid in every wrinkle-affecting to shrink from the flame of his impatience, and fanning it with the ambrosial sigh of sixty-five! I cannot paint the fierce meridian transports of the honey moon, gradually melting into a more chastened and permanent affection-every nine months adding a link to the chain of their delicate embraces, until, too soon, Death's broadside lays the Lieutenant low, consoling, however, his patriarchal charmer, (old enough at the time to be the last wife of Methusalem) with a fifty pound annuity, being the balance of his glory against his Majesty's Ship, the Hydra!

Give me leave to ask you, is this one of the cases, to meet which, this very rare and delicate action was intended? Is this a case where a riciprocity of circumstances, of affection, or of years, throw even a shade of rationality over the contract? Do not imagine I mean to insinuate, that under no circumstances ought such a proceeeding to be adopted. Do not imagine, though I say this action belongs more naturally to a female, its adoption can never be justified by one of the other sex. Without any great violence to my imagination, I can suppose a man in the very spring of life, when his sensibilities are most acute, and his passions most ardent, attaching himself to some object, young, lovely, talented, and accomplished, concentrating, as he thought, every charm of personal perfection, and in whom those charms were only heightened by the modesty that veiled them; perhaps his preference was encouraged; his affection returned; his very sigh echoed until he was conscious of his existence but by the soul creating sympathy-until the world seemed but the residence of his love, and that love the principle that gave it animation-until, before the smile of her affection, the whole spectral train of sorrow vanished, and this world of wo, with all its cares and miseries and crimes, brightened as by enchantment into anticipated paradise! It might happen that this divine affection might be crushed, and that heavenly vision wither into air at the hell-endangered pestilence of parental avarice, leaving youth and health, and worth and happiness, a sacrifice to its unnatural and mercenary caprices. Far am I from saying, that such a case would not call for expiation, particularly where the punishment fell upon the very vice in which the ruin had originated. Yet even there perhaps an honourable mind would rather despise the mean, unmerited desertion. Oh, I am sure a sensitive mind

would rather droop uncomplaining into the grave, than solicit the mockery of a worldly compensation! But in the case before you, is there the slightest ground for supposing any affection? Do you believe, if any accident bereft the defendant of her fortune, that her persecutor would be likely to retain his constancy? Do you believe that the marriage thus sought to be enforced, was one likely to promote morality and virtue? Do you believe that those delicious fruits by which the struggles of social life are sweetened, and the anxieties of parental care alleviated, were ever once anticipated? Do you think that such an union could exhibit those reciprocities of love and endearments by which this tender rite should be consecrated and recommended? Do you not rather believe that it originated in avarice—that it was promoted by conspiracy—and that it would not perhaps have lingered through some months of crime, and then terminated in a heartless and disgusting abandonment?

Gentlemen, these are the questions which you will discuss in your Jury-room. I am not afraid of your decision. Remember I ask you for no mitigation of damages. Nothing less than your verdict will satisfy me. By that verdict you will sustain the dignity of your sex-by that verdict you will uphold the honour of the national character-by that verdict you will assure, not only the immense multitude of both sexes that thus so unusually crowds around you, but the whole rising generation of your country, THAT MARRIAGE CAN NEVER BE ATTENDED WITH HONOUR, OR

BLESSED WITH HAPPINESS, IF IT HAS NOT ITS ORIGIN IN MUTUAL AF

FECTION. I Surrender with confidence my case to your decision.

[The damages were laid at 50001. and the Plaintiff's Counsel were, in the end, contented to withdraw a Juror, and let him pay his own Costs.]

12

A CHARACTER

OF

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE,

DOWN TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EXILE TO ELBA.

HE IS FALLEN

WE may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted.

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality.

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.

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 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 worshiped 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 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 paricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne 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 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 caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the colour of his whim, 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 transcendant; 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 developement, and success vindicated their adoption.

His person partook 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 room-with the mob or the levee-wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburghdictating peace on a raft to the czar of Russia, or contemplating

In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the commencement of the Revolution, he assumed the name of Brutus-Proh Pudor!

defeat at the gallows of Leipsic-he was still the same military despot!

Cradled in the camp, 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 on abandoned him, till affection was useless; and their first stipula tion was for the safety of their favourite.

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodi gal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidized 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 jailor 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 protection 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 Subaltern and a Sovereign-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.

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. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France have arisen

Sir Humphrey Davy was transmitted the first prize of the Academy of Sciences.