"Go back and tell the new-born child who is seated on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, a crown of many stars about his youthful brow-tell him there are rights that states must keep, or they shall suffer wrongs! Tell him there is a God who guards every race of man, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks His just, eternal law! Warn the young empire that he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb! Tell him that justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. Bid him keep it and be safe." High in the heavens, the pole-star of the world, shines justice; placed within us as our guide thereto is conscience. Let us be faithful to that "Which, though it trembles as it fairly flies, Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. He is no saint, and he is no hero, in the high sense. The man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position that he could indulge those tastes which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal or deny: good society, good books, travel, dress, servants, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures and statues, music, palaces, and conventional honorsprecisely what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century, this powerful man possessed. Napoleon had the virtues of the masses of his constituents: he had also their vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuits of wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means. Napoleon was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. The highest-placed monarch in the most cultivated age and population of the world, he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. He is unjust to his generals; egotistic and monopolizing; meanly stealing the credit of all their great actions from Kellermann and from Bernadotte; intriguing to involve his faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance from Paris, the capital, because the familiarity of his manners offends the new pride of his throne. He is a boundless liar. The official paper, his "Moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; and worse he sat, in his premature old age, upon his lonely island, coldly falsifying facts and dates and characters, and giving to history a theatrical éclat. Like all Frenchmen, he has a passion for stage effect. Every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. His star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all French. "I must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give the full liberty of the press, my power would not last three days." "A To make a great noise is his favorite design. great reputation is a great noise: the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not flattering. "There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not love even my brothers: perhaps Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I love him, too, but why? Because his character pleases me: he is stern and resolute, and I believe the fellow never shed a tear. For my part, I know very well that I have no true friends. As long as I continue to be what I am, I may have as many pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibility to women; but men should be firm in heart and purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war and government." He would He was thoroughly unscrupulous. steal, slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. He had no generosity, but mere vulgar hatred. He was intensely selfish; he was perfidious; he cheated at cards; he was a prodigious gossip; and opened letters; and delighted in his infamous police; and rubbed his hands with joy when he had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the men and women about him, boasting that “he knew everything"; and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the women; and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of the street, incognito. His manners were coarse. He treated women with low familiarity. He had the habit of pulling their ears and pinching their cheeks, when he was in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. In short, when you have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman at last, but with an impostor and rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of Scamp Jupiter. con stit' u ents, those represented by one in a prominent public position. e' clat' (ǎ' clä'), striking effect; splendor. in cog'ni to, without one's name being known; in disguise. mo nop' o li'zing, taking everything for one's self. per fid'i ous, faithless; false to principles or friends. un scru' pu lous, without conscience; unprincipled. 19 EXTRACT FROM THE "SPANISH STUDENT." H. W. LONGFELLOW. SCENE V.-VICTORIAN'S chambers at Alcalá. Hypolito. Thou art courageous. Hast thou e'er reflected How much lies hidden in that one word, now? Victorian. Yes; all the awful mystery of Life! I oft have thought, my dear Hypolito, That could we, by some spell of magic, change In the same attitudes they now are in, What fearful glances downward might we cast What groups should we behold about the deathbed, Putting to shame the group of Niobe! What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells! (Clock strikes three.) Hark! how the loud and ponderous mace of Time Knocks at the golden portals of the day! And so, once more, good night! Vict. Good night! But not to bed; for I must read awhile. |