On the genius and character of Napoleon.

Nothing after him! nothing around him but his shadow, making sterile the eighteenth century, absorbed and concentrated in himself alone. Personal glory will be always spoken of as characterising the age of Napoleon; but it will never merit the praise bestowed upon that of Augustus, of Charlemagne, and of Louis XIV. There is no age; there is only a name; and this name signifies nothing to humanity but himself.

XLVII.

False in institutions, for he retrograded; false in policy, for he debased; false in morals, for he corrupted; false in civilization, for he oppressed; false in diplomacy, for he isolated,-he was only true in war; for he shed torrents of human blood. But what can we then allow him? His individual genius was great; but it was the genius of materialism. His intelligence was vast and clear, but it was the intelligence of calculation. He counted, he weighed, he measured; but he felt not; he loved not; he sympathised with none; he was a statue rather than a man. Therein lay his inferiority to Alexander and to Cæsar he resembled more the Hannibal of the Aristocracy Few men have thus been moulded, and moulded cold. All was solid, nothing gushed forth, in that mind nothing was moved. His metallic nature was felt even in his style. He was, perhaps, the greatest writer of human events since Machiavel. Much superior to Cæsar in the account of his campaigns, his style is not the written expression alone; it is the action. Every sentence in his pages is, so to speak, the counter-part and counter-impression of the fact. There is neither a letter, a sound, or a colour wasted between the fact and the word, and the word is himself. His phrases concise, but struck off without ornament, recall those times when Bajazet and Charlemagne, not knowing how to write their names at the bottom of their imperial acts, dipped their hands in ink or blood, and applied them with all their articulations impressed upon the parchment. It was not the signature; it was the hand itself of the hero thus fixed eternally before the eyes; and such were the pages of his campaigns dictated by Napoleon,-the very soul of movement, of action, and of combat.

On the genius and character of Napoleon.

XLVIII.

This fame, which constituted his morality, his conscience, and his principle, he merited, by his nature and his talents, from war and from glory; and he has covered with it the name of France. France, obliged to accept the odium of his tyranny and his crimes, should also accept his glory with a serious gratitude. She cannot separate her name from his, without lessening it; for it is equally incrusted with his greatness as with his faults. She wished for renown, and he has given it to her; but what she principally owes to him is the celebrity she has gained in the world.

XLIX.

This celebrity, which will descend to posterity, and which is improperly called glory, constituted his means and his end. Let him therefore enjoy it. The noise he has made will resound through distant ages; but let it not pervert posterity, or falsify the judgment of mankind. This man, one of the greatest creations of God, applied himself with greater power than any other man ever possessed, to accumulate. therefrom, on his route, revolutions and ameliorations of the human mind, as if to check the march of ideas, and make all received truths retrace their steps. But time has overleaped him, and truths and ideas have resumed their ordinary current. He is admired as a soldier; he is measured as a sovereign; he is judged as a founder of nations; great in action, little in idea, nothing in virtue;-such is the man!

BOOK TENTE.

The Bourbons-Louis XVIII.-His life at the Court of Louis XVI.His disposition-His understanding-His conduct during the Revolution-His flight from Paris-His residence at Coblentz-Treaty of Pilnitz-Manifesto of the French princes-Aspect of the Court of the Count de Provence during the Emigration-His opinionsHis unpopularity with the Emigrants-Popularity of his brother the Count d'Artois-Letter of the Count de Provence to Louis XVI.War against the Republic-The Count de Provence Regent-His intrigues in France and in Vendée-His manifesto on the death of Louis XVI.-His life at Verona-He quits Verona, and visits the army of Condé-His negociations with Pichegru-He leaves the army of Condé-His adventures and his life in Germany-He retires to Mittau-He is forced to quit it-His return to Mittau-He goes to England-He is received by the Duke of Buckingham-He retires to Hartwell-M. de Blacas-Life and meditations of Louis XVIII. at Hartwell-England and Louis XVIII. in 1813.

I.

WHILE Napoleon was thus travelling towards his first exile, whither we shall soon have to follow him, the princes of the house of Bourbon were approaching Paris. They were coming to occupy, or to form the circle round a throne which war had bestowed upon them after having raised it for another, and of which the Revolution and the counter-Revolution, then unanimous, were soon after to dispute the possession. These princes were known to France only by name.

Before we narrate the accession of the Bourbons, their attempt at reigning, and their second fall, we shall introduce the reader to the princes and princesses who composed this royal family, and who had been proscribed equally for twenty years from the memory and the soil. We shall also state the feeling with which these members of the sovereign dynasty returned to the kingdom of their sires, and the sentiments with which France regarded them, and hailed their return.

Family of the Bourbons.

II.

The royal family was composed of seven princes and five princesses :—The King, Louis XVIII.; his brother, the Count d'Artois; the two sons of this prince; the Duke d'Angoulême, and the Duke de Berry; the Prince of Condé; his son, the Duke de Bourbon, and the Duke d'Orleans.

The princesses were the Duchess d'Angoulême; the Duchess d'Orleans, widow of Philip-Egalité; the Duchess d'Orleans, wife of Louis Philippe; Duke d'Orleans; Mademoiselle d'Orleans, sister of Louis Philippe; and finally, the Duchess de Bourbon, and the children of Louis Philippe, Duke d'Orleans; the Princess Louise, and the Duke de Chartres.

These were the personages whom exile had restored to their country.

In this return to the common mother land of old France (after so many years of adversity and sorrow, after so many mutilations from the royal trunk and its branches, by the revolutionary axe, or by the assassination of Vincennes, in this tardy reparation of proscriptions, in this astonishment of the palace on receiving its ancient lords, in this joy of the servants on seeing once more their old masters, in the unexpected happiness of this family, in treading at length, amidst the noise of acclamations and public rejoicings, the soil which might have long before devoured them)—there was so much heartfelt sympathy, foreign as well as French, for unmerited misfortunes, and touching reparations, such an effusion of popular sensibility, associating itself with these royal impressions; in fine, such a benignity in the aspect of the country, that tenderness, astonishment, and family joy seemed, in some measure, a national spirit, and the imagination of the people appeared to participate in the adversities and in the felicities of a recovered portion of the old royal stock. This is the force of nature, when allowed to appear through political science: it is the spell of bygone recollections, when it mingles for a moment with future hopes; it is the awakening of traditions in the heart, when these traditions are personified

Count de Provence (Louis XVIII.)

in a race returning from a lengthened exile; it is pity which avenges itself, and a popular coronation of the restored exiles. These were the only days they could call their own; but they were delightful, as combining at once the past and the future. The day after recommenced their difficulties and their perils ; for impossibilities were required of them;—the adoption of interests and ideas repugnant to their hearts,—that which was and cannot be again, that which is to come, and that which is gone, the illusion and the reality, the past and the present. But let us not anticipate these future trials of the royal family; a glimpse of them only was visible in their return: they were preceded by an immense, favour-this was the power of feeling.

III

Louis XVIII. was bordering on the sixtieth year of his life; the age at which the understanding possesses all its maturity, and at which the body has yet lost none of its vigour in the powerful races of mankind. He was brother to Louis XVI., the Charles I. of France His father was the

Dauphin, son of Louis XV., a prince who had had only a glimpse of the throne, and who seemed destined to adorn it with only obscure virtues. Louis XVIII., before the murder of his brother Louis XVI., bore the title of Count de Provence, and had married, when young, Josephine of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel III., King of Sardinia. He never had any children; and had lost his wife during the emigration. This prince, who has played with great good fortune, one of the most difficult parts in history on the throne, merits consideration. His understanding was equal to the requirements of his destiny, if his character was inferior to the work assigned him. He would have founded a dynasty, had he known how to maintain it. Let us examine his life; it will elucidate his reign

IV.

The Count de Provence, solitary and reserved at the court of Louis XVI., had surrounded himself with a little court,