the Niemen, with the rapidity of the eagle. You celebrated at Austerlitz the anniversary of my coronation; you have this year celebrated here the anniversary of Marengo. Soldiers of the grand army of France, you have been worthy of yourselves and of me!"

of this gorgeous drama. Behold! the scene is the court of Fontainebleau: Listen to his solemn adieux to the faithful remains of his army-to those soldiers who could not bring themselves voluntarily to separate from their general, and who were weeping around him. Antiquity affords no scene at once so heart-rénding and so solemn :—

For

In 1809, when prepared to punish Austria for her treachery, he again adopted the bold and unexpected course of confiding to the army his great designs. He mingled. "Soldiers! amongst the soldiers, and made them share I make you my adieux. twenty years, that we have been together, I have the spirit of his vengeance; he never allowbeen content with you! I have always found ed himself to be separated from them, and you on the road to glory. All the powers made his cause their cause. What a mili-of Europe are armed against me alone; some of tary elan there is in the following speech!-

"Soldiers ! I was surrounded by you when the sovereign of Austria came to my bivouac in Moravia; you heard him implore my clemency, and swear eternal friendship for me, his victor in three campaigns. Austria owed everything to our generosity; three times has she perjured herself. Our past successes are a sure guarantee of the victories that await us; forward, then, and let the enemy acknowledge its conqueror in our very aspect."

It was with a like ardor he animated the army sent to Naples against the English. His speech appeared to move with the pas de charge:

my generals have betrayed their duty and France. France has deserved other destinies. With you and the other braves who have remained faithful to me I could have maintained a civil war, but France would have been unhappy. Be faithful to your new king-be obedient to your new chiefsand do not abandon your dear country. Do not lament my fate. I shall be happy so long as I know that you also are happy. I might have died. If I have consented to live, it is still to your glory. I will write the great deeds that you have done. I cannot embrace you all, but I embrace your general. Come, General Petit, let me press you to my heart. Bring me that Eagle, and let kiss which I give you be remembered by posterity. me embrace it also. Ah! dear Eagle, may this Adieu, my children. My prayers will always accompany you. Preserve my memory!"

he organized that expedition, the mere narrative of which seems almost fabulous.

"Soldiers! march; throw yourselves upon them in a torrent, if these feeble battalions of the tyrant. He departed, and in the island of Elba of the deep will even await your approach. Do not wait to inform me that the sanctity of treaties has been vindicated, and that the manes of my brave soldiers, murdered in the ports of Sicily, on their return from Egypt, after having escaped all the perils of the deep, the deserts, and of a hundred fights, have at last been appeased!"

"Soldiers! after having triumphed on the Danube and the Vistula, you have traversed Germany by forced marches-I order you now to traverse France without a moment's repose. Soldiers! I have need of you. The hideous presence of the leopard defiles the peninsula of Spain and Portugal; let it fly terrified at your look. Carry your victorious eagles even to the columns of Hercules; there, also, you have treachery to revenge. Soldiers! you have surpassed the renown of modern armies, but have you equalled the glories of the legions of Rome, who, in the same campaign, triumphed on the Rhine and on the Euphrates, in Illyria and on the Tagus?"

Let us now pass to the penultimate act

He had not yet set foot on the shores of France, when already, from the deck of that frail skiff "which bore Cæsar and his fortunes," he gave to the winds and the waves his celebrated proclamation. He evoked before the eyes of his soldiers the images of a hundred fights, and sent his eagles before him, as the harbingers of his triumphant return:

"Soldiers! in my exile I heard your voice. We have not been conquered, but betrayed. We must forget that we have been the masters of nations, but we must not allow others to mingle themselves in our affairs. Who shall pretend to be master in our country? Resume those eagles that you had at Ulm, at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Montmirail. The veterans of the army of the Sambre and the Meuse, of the Rhine, of Italy, of Egypt, of the west, of the grand army, are humi liated. Come, place yourselves under the flag of your chief. Victory will march at the pas de charge. The eagle, with the national flag shall fly from steeple to steeple, until she lights on the

towers of Notre Dame !"

On the morrow of his arrival at the Tuil

leries, and amidst the astonishment which followed that night of enthusiasm and intoxication, he called his old guard around his flag, and presented it to his brave companions of the island of Elba :

"Soldiers! behold the officers of the battalion who have accompanied me in misfortune. They are all my friends-they were dear to my heart: wherever I saw them, they represented to me the different regiments of the army. Among these six hundred veteran companions were men of all the regiments. All reminded me of those great days, the memory of which is so dear to me for all were covered with honorable wounds, received in those memorable battles In loving them I loved you all. Soldiers of the French army! they bring you back those eagles, which will serve you as a rallying point. In giving them to the Guard, I give them to the whole army. Treason and unhappy circumstances have covered them for a time with mourning; but, thanks to the French people and to you, they re-appear, resplendent with all their former glory. Swear that they shall be found always wherever the interests of the country shall call them. Let the traitors and those who invade our territory never be able to stand before their looks."

And when all was finished-when the lightning of Waterloo had struck him, how touching were his last words to his army :—

"Soldiers!" said he, "I will follow your steps, although absent. It was the country you served in obeying me; and if I have had any share in your affections, I owe it to my ardent love for France our common mother. Soldiers ! some few efforts more, and the coalition will be dissolved. Napoleon will be grateful to you for the blows you are going to give.”

Some days afterwards, at the assembly in the Champs de Mars, he speaks not of the glory of the battles, nor of the devotion of the soldiers, but, being in the presence From on board the Bellerophon, anchorof the people and of the legislative bodies, ed in British waters, he addressed the folhe extols the grand principle of the nation-lowing letter to the Prince Regent :al sovereignty :

"YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,-Overcome by the factions which divide my country, and by the hosEmperor, consul, soldier-I hold all from the tility of the great powers of Europe, I have termipeople. In prosperity, in adversity, on the battle-nated my political career, and I come, like Thefield, at the council-board, on the throne, in exile, mistocles of old, to sit down at the hearth of the France has ever been the only and constant object British people. I place myself under the protec of my thoughts and of my actions, Like that tion of their laws, which I claim from your Royal king of Athens, I sacrificed myself for my people, Highness, as the most powerful, the most conin the hope of seeing realized the promise given, stant, and the most generous of my enemies.” to preserve for France its national integrity, its honor, and its repose."

On the meeting of the Chambers, he addressed them, conjuring them to forget their quarrels in the face of the imminent danger of the nation :—

"Let us not imitate the example of the lower empire, which, pursued on all sides by barbarians, exposed itself to the laughter of posterity, by oc cupying itself with paltry dissensions at the moment when the battering ram struck on the walls of the city. It is in difficult times that great nations, like great men, develop all the energy of their characters."

Falling unexpectedly amongst the army, he recalled to its recollection that it ought not to allow itself to be alarmed by the

At St. Helena, his imagination retraced his past life, reverted to Egypt and the East, and the brilliant recollections of his youth.

I should have done better," said he, striking his forehead, "not to have quitted Egypt. Arabia waited for a hero. With the French in reserve, and the Arabians and Egyptians as auxiliaries, I should have rendered myself master of India, and should now have been Emperor of all the East.”

Dwelling still on this grand idea, he used to say

"St. Jean d'Acre taken, the French army would have flown to Damascus and Aleppo, and, in the twinkling of an eye, would have been on the Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the

But let us now endeavor to dispel the Then as if liberty, fairer than the em-illusions created by the sublimity of his pire of the world, had shed on him a new light, he exclaimed

the work-shops and the fields he engrafted on the army a new noblesse, which soon became more insupportable than the ancient one, because it had neither the same antiquity nor the same prestige; he levied arbitrary taxes-he desired that in the whole empire there should be but one voice

lar illusion which attached itself to the blood of kings-sovereignty, majesty, and power. He raised the people in their own esteem, by showing to them kings, desćended from kings, at the foot of a king who had sprung from the people. He so overwhelmed hereditary monarchs, by placing them in juxtaposition with himself-he so-his voice; and but one law, his will. The oppressed them with his own greatness, capital, the cities, the armies, the fleets, that, in taking them one by one, all these the palaces, the museums, the magistrates, kings and all these emperors, and bringing the citizens, became his capital, his cities, them beside himself, that they were scarcely his armies, his fleets, his palaces, his museperceivable, so small and obscure did they be- ums, his magistrates, and his subjects. He come by the comparison with this Colossus. drew the nation out to conflict and to battle, But let us listen to what the severe voice where we have nothing left remarkable save of history will pronounce against him: the insolence of our victories, our corpses, He dethroned the sovereignty of the and our gold. In fine, after having besieged people. The emperor of the French re- the forts of Cadiz-after having in his hands public, he became a despot-he threw the the keys of Lisbon, of Madrid, of Vienna, of weight of his sword into the scales of the Berlin, of Naples, and of Rome-after havlaw-he incarcerated individual liberty in ing made the pavement of Moscow tremble his state prisons-he stifled the liberty of under the wheels of his artillery, he left the press, by the gags of the censorship-France less great than he found her he violated trial by jury-he trampled un- bleeding with her wounds, dismantled of der his feet the tribunals, the legislative her fortresses, naked, impoverished, and bodies, and the senate he depopulated humiliated.

From Tait's Magazine.

FEMALE AUTHORS.-No. III.-MRS. SHELLEY.

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

MUCH as we hear of Schools of Authors, | school, again, supposes a similar mode of there has, properly speaking, been but one training. But how different the erratic in British Literature-at least, within this education of Coleridge, from the slow, century. There was never, for example, solemn, silent degrees by which, without any such thing as a Lake school. A school noise of hammer or edge-tool, arose, like supposes certain conditions and circum- the ancient temple, the majestic structure of stances which are not to be found among Wordsworth's mind! A school, besides, the poets referred to. It supposes, first of implies such strong and striking resemblanall, a common master. Now, the Lake poets ces as shall serve to overpower the specific had no common master, either among them- differences between the writers who comselves or others. They owned allegiance pose it. But we are mistaken if the dissineither to Shakspeare, nor Milton, nor milarities between Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wordsworth. Each stood near, but each and Southey be not as great as the points in stood alone, like the stars composing one which they agree. Take, for example, the of the constellations. A school, again, im- one quality of speculative intellect. That, plies a common creed. But we have no in the mind of Coleridge, was restless, disevidence, external or internal that, though contented, and daring-in Wordsworth, the poetical diction of the Lakers bore still, collected, brooding perpetually over a certain resemblance, that their poetical narrow but profound depths-in Southey, creed was identical. Indeed, we are yet almost totally quiescent. The term Lake to learn that Southey had, of any depth School, in short, applied at first in derision, or definitude, a poetical creed at all. Al has been retained, principally because it is

convenient-nay, suggests a pleasing image, masque of Christianity? Cloaking the and gives both the public and the critics leading principle of our religion, its disinglimpses, that do make them less for-terested benevolence, under a copy of the lorn," of the blue peaks of Helvellyn and features of Helvetius and Volney, he went Skiddaw, and of the blue waters of Derwent and Windermere.

a mumming with it in the train of the philosophers of the Revolution. But when he The Cockney school was, if possible, a approached the domain of actual life and misnomer more absurd-striving, as it did, of the human affections, the ugly disguise in vain to include, within one term, three dropped, and his fictions we hesitate not to spirits so essentially distinct as Hazlitt, characterize as among the noblest illustraKeats, and Leigh Hunt-the first a stern tions of the Sermon on the Mount. But to metaphysician, who had fallen into a hope- the public they seemed the reiterations of less passion for poetry; the second, the exploded and dangerous errors such a load purest specimen of the ideal a ball of of prejudice and prepossession had been susbeautiful foam, 66 cut off from the water," pended to their author's skirts. And now, and not adopted by the air; the third, a the excitement of danger and disgust having fine tricksy medium between the poet and passed away from his theories, interest in the wit, half a sylph and half an Ariel, the works which propounded them has also now hovering round a lady's curl, and now subsidzd. "Caleb Williams," once chastirring the fiery tresses of the Sun-aracterized by Hannah More as a cunning fairy fluctuating link, connecting Pope with and popular preparation of the poison Shelley. We need not be at pains to cut which the Political Justice had contained out into little stars the Blackwood constel- in a cruder form, and thereby branded as lation, or dwell on the differences between a Wilson, a Lockhart, and a James Hogg. One school, however, there has appeared within the last fifty years, answering to all the characteristics we have enumerated, namely, the Godwin school, who, by a common master-the old man eloquent himself a common philosophical as well as poetical belief, common training, that of warfare with society, and many specific resemblances in manner and style, are proclaimed to be one. This cluster includes the names of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecroft, Brockden Brown of America, Shelley, and Mrs. Shelley.

dangerous, is now forgotten, we suspect, by all but a very select class of circulating library readers. "St. Leon," "Fleetwood," "Mandeville," and "Cloudesley," with all their varied merits, never attracted attention, except through the reflex interest and terror excited by their author's former works. Thus political excitement has been at once a raising and a ruining influence to the writings of a great English author-ruining, we mean, at present-for the shade of neglect has yet to be created which can permanently conceal their sterling and imperishable worth. After the majority of the writings of Dickens have perished-after one-half of Bulwer's, and one-fourth of Scott's novels, have been forgotten-shall many reflective spirits be found following the fugitive steps of Caleb Williams, or standing by the grave of Marguerite de Damville, or of Bethlem Gabor, as they do well to be angry even unto death. If sincerity, simplicity, depth of thought, purity of sentiment, and power of genius can secure immortality to any productions, it is to the fictions of Godwin.

Old Godwin scarcely got justice in this Magazine from Mr. De Quincey. Slow, cumbrous, elephantine as he was, there was always a fine spirit animating his most lumpish movements. He was never contemptible-often common-place, indeed, but often great. There was much in him of the German cast of mind-the same painful and plodding diligence, added to high imaginative qualities. His great merit at the time and his great error, as it proved afterwards-lay in wedding a partial philo- Mary Wollstonecroft-since we saw her sophic system with the universal truth of countenance prefixed to her husband's Mefiction. Hence the element which made moir-a face so sweet, so spiritual, so far the public drunk with his merits at first withdrawn from earthly thoughts, steeped in rendered them oblivious afterwards. So an enthusiasm so genuine-we have ceased dangerous it is to connect fiction (the finer to wonder at the passionate attachment of alias of truth) with any dogma or mythus Southey, Fuseli, and Godwin to the gifted less perishable than the theogony of Homer, being who bore it. It is the most feminine or the Catholicism of Cervantes. After countenance we ever saw in picture. The all, what was the theory of Godwin, but the" Rights of Women" seem in it melted