denounce his second dream of connubial felicity, the danger, or rather the certainty would be, that like the fashionable husband of every clime and age, he would defy the law and set up a separate establishment, to the great scandal of the neighbourhood, the inextinguishable indignation of his neglected partner, and followed in due course by everlasting appeals to the Cadi on the subject of their domestic jars. The legislators of the East, therefore, perceiving the consequences of prohibiting an usage originally founded upon the caducity of female charms, and which would inevitably continue in one form or another, whether they sanctioned it or not, have permitted polygamy; under the restriction, perhaps, in the first instance, of not allowing a second. wife until the first was on the wane ;-but as laws made for the convenience of the rich are liberally construed, the transition was easy from an old and a young wife to two simultaneous young ones, and so on to as many as the husband could afford to support. But although we take Napoleon's conjectures on this subject to be incorrect, there is no want of his accustomed sagacity and boldness in the application that he would make of his doctrine. Speaking in another place of the con dition of St. Domingo, he says, "The question of the liberty of the Blacks is one full of complication and difficulty. In Africa and Asia it has been resolved, but by the means of polygamy. There the blacks and whites form part of the same family-the head of the family having wives of various colours, all the children are brothers, are reared in the same cradle, bear the same name, and sit at the same table. Would it then be impossible to authorize polygamy in our islands, restricting the number of wives to two, a white and a black? The First Consul had some conferences with theologians, in order to prepare the way for this important measure. Polygamy prevailed among the patriarchs in the first ages of Christianity-the Church tolerated a species of concubinage, of which the effect was the same. The Pope, the council have the means of authorising a similar institution, since its object would be to conciliate and produce social harmony, and not to extend the indulgence of the senses. The effects of these marriages would have been limited to the colonies, and suitable measures would have been taken to prevent their producing any disorder in the present state of our society." Some of our female readers who, probably know little of Napoleon's style of thinking and writing except from his bulletins and other public documents, may wish to see how he treats subjects of a lighter kind and as one of the crimes imputed to him during the war, was a barbarous contempt of all gallant feeling and observance towards the sex, we shall select a passage, in which he recalls after a lapse of many years, the impressions made upon him by the ladies of Egypt. The description is very much in the minute and caressing manner of Rousseau. "The General-in-chief had numerous occasions of observing some of the most distinguished women of the country to whom he granted audiences. They were either the widows of Beys or Katchefs, or their wives who came during their absence, to implore his protection. The richness of their dress, their elevated deportment, their little soft hands, their fine eyes, their noble and graceful carriage, and their extremely elegant manners, denoted that they were of a class and an education above the vulgar. They always commenced by kissing the hand of the Sultan Kebir*, which they afterwards raised to their forehead, and then to their breast; many of them expressed their wishes with the most perfect grace, and in an enchanting tone of voice, and displayed all the talent and the softness of the most accomplished Europeans. The propriety of their demeanour and the modesty of their The Great Sultan--the title by which Napoleon was designated by the Arabs. attire added to their attractions, and the imagination took pleasure in forming conjectures respecting the charms of which they would not allow so much as a glimpse." A little farther on he gives an instance of their propensity to assert the rights of women, even to petitioning himself for a redress of connubial grievances; and considering what a frightful despot he was, he appears from his manner of relating the anecdote, to have regarded the stirrings of natural ambition in the bosoms of these aspiring gipsies with singular indulgence. "The women have their privileges ;—there are some things which their husbands cannot refuse them without being considered barbarians, monsters, without causing a general outcry against them; such, for example, is the right of going to the bath. It is at the vapour-baths that the women assemble; it is there that all sorts of intrigues, political and other, are planned; it is there that marriages are settled. General Menou, who had married a female of Rosetta, treated her after the French manner: he led her by the hand into the dinner-room-the best place at table-the most delicate morsels were for her; if her handkerchief chanced to drop, he was on the alert to pick it up. As soon as she related these particulars in the bath of Rosetta, all the others began to entertain hopes of a general change of manners, and signed a petition to the Sultan Kebir, that their husbands should be made to treat them in the same way*." While we are upon the subject of Napoleon's demeanour to women, we cannot refrain from inserting an example that we have met for the first time in these volumes, and which, upon higher grounds than those of courtesy, must be considered as most creditable to his memory. His public despatch from Cairo, (August 19, 1798,) announces to the Executive Directory the defeat of the French fleet at Aboukir—a disaster which he attributes to Admiral Brueys, who, in violation of repeated orders, neglected to remove his squadron from that exposed situation. On the same day he writes as follows to the widow of Brueys. * We throw together two or three shorter anecdotes that occur in this portion of the work. Napoleon gave frequent dinners to the Sheiks. Although our customs were so different from theirs, they found chairs, and knives and forks extremely convenient. At the conclusion of one of these dinners, he one day asked the Sheik El-Mondi, "For the six months that I have been among you, what is the most useful thing I have taught you?" "The most useful thing you have taught me," replied the Sheik, half-serious, half-laughing, "is to drink at dinner."-The custom of the Arabs is not to drink until the repast is over. At a dinner given to the General-in-chief by the Sheik El-Fayoum, the subject of conversation was the Koran. "It comprises all human knowledge," said the Sheiks. Napoleon asked, "Does it contain the art of casting cannons, and making gunpowder?" "Yes," they replied, "but you must know how to read it; a scholastic distinction that has been more or less employed by every religion. One day that Napoleon was surrounded by the Divan of the great Sheiks, information was brought that the Arabs of the tribe of the Osnadis had killed a Fellah and carried off the cattle. He manifested his indignation, and in an animated tone ordered a staff-officer to repair forthwith to Baireh with 200 dromedaries and 300 horsemen to obtain restitution and punish the offenders. The Sheik El-Modi, who was present at this order, and observed the emotion of the General-in-chief, said to him with a smile, "Is that Fellah your cousin, that his death should put you in such a passion?" "Yes," replied Napoleon, "all that I command are my children." "Taibt," said the Sheik, "you speak there like the Prophet," ↑ An Arab word expressing great satisfaction, "Cairo, 3d Fructidor, year VI. (19 Aug. 1798.) "Your husband has been killed by a cannon-ball while he was fighting on board his vessel. He died without suffering, and a death the mildest and the most desired by military men. I deeply sympathise with your sorrow. The moment that separates us from the object we love is terrible: it severs us from the world-it affects the frame with convulsions of agony. The faculties of the mind are annihilated-it retains no relations with the world, except through the medium of an incubus which alters every thing. Mankind appear more cold and selfish than they really are. In such a situation we feel, that if nothing obliged us to live, it would be far better to die; but when, after that first impression, we press our children to our heart, tears and sentiments of tenderness reanimate nature, and we live for our children. Yes, Madam, let yours from that first moment open your heart to melancholy. You will weep with them, you will watch over their infancy, you will instruct them in their youth-you will talk to them of their father, of your grief, of the loss which they and the Republic have suffered. After having re-attached yourself to the world through the influence of filial and maternal love, appreciate for something the friendship and the lively interest that I shall ever entertain for the widow of my friend. Be persuaded that there are some men, though small in number, who deserve to be the hope of the afflicted, because they feel acutely for mental suffering. BONAPARTE." (Signed) There is a little of the mannerism of the period in the above, but every British woman, whose husband or brother has fallen for his country, will appreciate its value and the motives of the writer. A single authentic document like this refutes and outlives a thousand calumnies. There are fewer symptoms in this publication of Napoleon's tendency to a belief in predestination than we expected to have found. The feeling, however, now and then breaks out-pretty strongly in his despatch from Egypt announcing the naval defeat at Aboukir; and also in the account of his marriage with Marie-Louise. Upon that occasion Prince Schwartzenberg, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, gave a splendid fète at Paris, to which Napoleon and the new Empress were invited. In the midst of the festivities a temporary ball-room which had been constructed in the garden of the Ambassador's hotel, took fire. Many persons perished. Among them the Ambassador's sister-in-law, who was suffocated in the attempt to rescue one of her children. The writer proceeds "In 1770, during the fête given by the city of Paris to celebrate the marriage of Louis the Sixteenth with Marie-Antoinette, two thousand persons were overturned in the fosses of the Champs-Elysées, and perished. Afterwards, when Louis and Marie-Antoinette met their death upon the scaffold, this terrible accident was recollected and converted into a presage of what followed-for it is to the insurrection of that great metropolis that the Revolution must be immediately attributed. The unfortunate issue of a fête given by an Austrian ambassador, under similar circumstances, to celebrate the alliance of two houses in the persons of Napoleon and Marie-Louise, appeared an inauspicious omen. The misfortunes of France have been solely caused by the change of policy on the part of Austria. Napoleon was not superstitious, yet upon that occasion he had a painful presentiment. The day after the battle of Dresden, when, during the pursuit of the Austrian army, he learned from a prisoner that Prince Schwartzenberg was rumoured to have been killed, he observed- He was a brave man; but his death is so far consoling, that it was evidently he who was threatened by the unhappy omen at his ball.' Two hours after it was ascertained at head-quarters that it was Moreau, and not Prince Schwartzenberg, that had been killed the day before." There are numerous other personal traits dispersed through the work, and which, independently of their intrinsic interest, greatly relieve the severity of the historical and military details. If any credit be due to his statements here, and in his recorded conversations at St. Helena, both of which agree with the reports of the best informed Frenchmen, who have no motives to traduce him, his moral character must be taken to have been grossly misrepresented before his fall. In his public capacity he exhibited the feelings, or let us rather call them the crimes, inseparable from ambitious men and ambitious governments. Like other warriors, he was indifferent enough to the effusion of human blood, provided the victory was secured. Like other persons and states aspiring to empire, he made light of the rights and institutions that were opposed to his plans of dominion. But apart from these, the almost universal vices of nations and rulers, he seems as an individual to have been tainted by very few of the noxious passions and caprices of exalted station. His personal habits were laborious and temperate. In private intercourse, if any intercourse with such a man can be called so, he usually succeeded in fixing the unbounded admiration and attachment of those who approached him. In his distribution of favours, there was little of the petty perfidy and mystery of Courts. The system which he directed demanded talent in every department, and wherever he found it, he appropriated it, promptly and even abruptly, but in general so judiciously that he had seldom cause to repent of his selection. From the tone in which he speaks of public men, it may be collected that he was very far from entertaining a contempt for virtue. He asserts, that personal probity formed one of the highest recommendations to his favour-although it was a melancholy fact, that in France during his day, moral worth was, for the purposes of her government, not the most valuable qualification. Even his ambition, culpable and destructive as it was, was not untinged by magnanimity. His abdication at Fontainebleau, the severest trial of human pride, was not so involuntary and sudden as was at the time supposed. In a despatch to Caulaincourt (4th Jan. 1814) appended to this publication, he announces his intention, if called upon, to make that sacrifice. "Would they (the Allies) reduce France to her ancient limits? it would be to degrade her. They deceive themselves if they imagine that the reverses of war can make the nation desire peace upon such terms. There is not a French heart that would not in six months' time feel the scandal of such a peace, and that would not reproach the government that could be base enough to sign it. If the nation seconds me, the enemy marches to his destruction. If fortune betrays me, my resolution is taken-I do not cling to the throne-I shall never disgrace the nation, or myself, by subscribing such shameful conditions." The style of these volumes is simple, perspicuous, and animated. The notes, as we are informed by the editors, are more exclusively his own composition-and, even though we had been ignorant of that fact, would have struck us as among the most original parts of the work, both in matter and execution. There are frequent sketches more or less in detail of contemporary characters. To give an idea of of their general manner, we shall conclude our extracts and the present subject with his notice of two of his favourite generals who fell in the battle of Essling "On this day perished two generals, the Duke of Montebello and St. Hilaireboth of them heroes, and the best of Napoleon's friends. He wept for their loss. They would never have deserted him in his adversity; they would never have been faithless to the glory of the French people. The Duke of Montebello was a native of Lectoure. When a chef de bataillon he distinguished himself during the campaigns of 1796 in Italy. As a general he covered himself with glory in Egypt, at Montebello, at Marengo, at Austerlitz, at Jéna, at Pultusk, at Friedland, at Tudella, at Saragossa, at Eckmal and at Essling, where he found a glorious death. He was cautious, sagacious, and daring; before an enemy his presence of mind was not to be shaken. He owed little to education-Nature had done every thing for him. Napoleon, who had witnessed the progress of his mind, often remarked it with astonishment. For manœuvring five and twenty thousand infantry on the field of battle, he was superior to all the generals of the French army. He was still young, and would have become more perfect; perhaps he might even have reached to a proficiency in the highest branch of tactics (le grande tactique) which as yet he had not understood.-St. Hilaire was a general at Castiglione in 1796. He was remarkable for the chivalry of his character. He had excellent dispositions, was a kind companion, a kind brother, a kind relative. He was covered with wounds. His attachment to Napoleon commenced at the siege of Toulon. They called him, alluding to Bayard, 'le Chevalier sans peur, et sans reproche.'” THE SWORD OF THE TOMB.* A Northern Legend. "VOICE of the gifted elder Time! Voice of the charm and the Runic rhyme! Speak! from the shades and the depths disclose, "Voice of the grave! 'tis the mighty hour When Night with her stars and dreams hath power, In the billow and the blast." Then the torrents of the North When a hollow chaunt came forth From the dark sepulchral hill. "There shines no sun through the land of dead, "There is laid a sword in thy father's tomb, As a trumpet's music dies, By the night-wind borne away Through the wild and stormy skies. *The idea of this ballad is taken from a scene in "Starkother," a tragedy by the Danish Poet, Ochlenschlager. |