Josephine; whether, as some say, the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, or, as others think, jealousy and some vague anticipations of a divorce, or, as is most probable, both these causes operated to prey upon her mind, it certainly appears that from that time Buonaparte's chief exhortations to her are to keep up her spirits to dry her tears-to enjoy society, and to fulfil, with at least an appearance of content, her new duties. His first letter from Berlin, after the wonderful campaign of Jena, is a striking instance of the kind and quality of the attention he paid her. 1 Nov. 1806. Talleyrand is just arrived, and tells me, my dear (mon amie), that you do nothing but weep. What can be the matter? You have your daughter, your grandchildren, and good news. That is surely enough to make you happy. The weather is magnificent-not one drop of rain has fallen during the whole campaign. I am very well, and everything goes right. Adieu, my love! I have received a letter from M. Napoleon (the grandchild), but I suppose it was not written by him, but his mother. A thousand kind things to everybody.-N.' Again, 'Warsaw, 16th January, 1807. I am grieved at what I hear of your spirits. Why in tears-why in grief? I shall soon return-never doubt my affection. If you wish to be still dearer to me, show some courage and strength of mind. I am mortified to think that my wife can distrust my distances. And again, two days after, 6 They tell me that you are for ever in tears-fie, fie, that is wrong! Take courage and show yourself worthy of me. Hold your courts in Paris with suitable dignity; but, above all, be happy. I am well, and love you sincerely, but if you are for ever crying, I shall think you have no firmness of mind. I don't love cowards-(les laches)-an empress should have courage.-N.' We were, at first, a good deal surprised at the number and nothingness of the notes which, at some of the most critical moments of his career, Buonaparte took the trouble of writing to the empress. We found some difficulty in reconciling the frequency of these communications with their inanity. They seem all composed on one plan: each has two principal topics-his own personal health, which is always good, and the weather, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad; but he generally throws in a slight hint about the army, which is always superbe and successful. As to this latter business, it is observable that his greatest victories are sometimes only alluded to in a parenthesis of three words; while, on the other hand, in cases where the success was really more doubtful, he insists, with unusual earnestness, on the prosperous position of his affairs. The explanation of the enigma seems seems to be this.-Buonaparte was much annoyed by the gossip of Josephine's society (some persons of which he occasionally sent into exile). He complains that all the bad news and unfavourable reports of Paris originate in her familiar circle; and it was, we are satisfied, to counteract this tendency, and to give a favourable idea of his position, that we find him, in some of his most important and critical moments-take the battle of Eylau for instance-writing to her such billets as follow: Eylau, 9th Feb. 1807. My dear―There was yesterday a great battle. The victory was eventually ours (la victoire m'est restée), but I have lost a great number of men. The loss of the enemy, which is still greater, does not console me. I write you these two lines with my own hand, though much tired, to assure you that I am well.' Another note of the same evening, and two others of the 11th and 12th, follow to the same effect-a fifth of the 14th says: I am still at Eylau. The country is covered with dead and wounded, but I am well. I have done what I wish and repulsed the enemy, whose projects I have baffled.' He repeats, on the 17th, that the battle was bloody and obstinate, but that he is well, and he writes two words' to say that all is well on the 18th-twice on the 20th-on the 21st and on the 23rd Feb.-three times in the first week of March—and again on the 11th of March he reverts to the subject by saying, 'A great deal of nonsense will be talked about the battle of Eylau ; but the bulletin tells all, and rather exaggerates than diminishes our losses.'-p. 283. to So many letters in so short a time, and each of only two lines. say he is well, savours more of the tender husband than could have been accounted for, but the FIFTEENTH billet-doux gives us le mot de l'énigme. Osterode, 13th March, 1807. I learn, my dear, that the unfavourable reports which used to circulate in your drawing-room at Mentz are renewed in Paris. Silence those people. I shall be very much displeased if you do not stop this.' In short, Buonaparte knew very well that his bulletins had become of very doubtful authority, particularly when not corroborated by some decisive advance (after Eylau he had not been able to advance a step); and, with consummate ability, he despatched these little notes to his wife, which he knew would be circulated in Paris, and by their domestic and confidential style produce more effect than the discredited bulletins. In this point of view these letters may be of some value to the historian; in every other they are wholly worthless: indeed, it seems wonderful that that such a man in such circumstances, during eighteen years of so eventful a life, should have been able to write two hundred and thirty-eight letters without mentioning one single political event, which had not been previously or at latest simultaneously published in the gazettes-without announcing, in any one instance, his own intentions-without anticipating, by the most remote hint, his own proceedings or projects, trifling or important -without communicating, in the frequency and apparent freedom of conjugal correspondence, one word, thought, or deed, which might not have been proclaimed on the Bourse, and which, if so proclaimed, could have interested the greediest Quidnunc. This is assuredly a most singular fact; but the Reine Hortense is greatly mistaken in imagining that its promulgation could either exalt or render more amiable or more respectable the domestic character of Josephine. As to Buonaparte himself-whatever may have been the motive that dictated these communications-they certainly exhibit more kindness, more ease, and more good nature than we had given him credit for possessing. His wife had, it is clear, no share in his thoughts; but he was not deficient in personal attentions to the partner of his throne. ART. VIII.-Life and Poems of the Rev. George Crabbe. By his Son. Vol. viii. 12mo. London, 1834. W E do not on this occasion propose to enter at large upon the subject of Mr. Crabbe's poetry. It is now certain that a Selection from his prose writings will soon be laid before the public; and until that has appeared, the consideration of his literary character, as a whole, must be deferred. We mean, therefore, at present, to confine ourselves to the easy and humble task of reviewing, in a very cursory manner, the last volume of the younger Crabbe's edition of his father's poetical works-that which consists entirely of new matter. In the other volumes of the series, various little pieces have for the first time been published-and some of these appear to us highly meritorious : indeed, the dialogue called Flirtation' (in vol. v.) is a fair specimen of his lightest humour; and The World of Dreams' (vol.iv.), though obviously unfinished in some parts, is on the whole a lyrical composition of extraordinary power, interest, and beauty. But the editor reserved unbroken for his concluding volume those Tales which the poet himself had destined and prepared for posthumous publication; and to these we must give the space that we have now at our disposal. The volume is fitly dedicated to the kindest and most distinguished guished of our poet's surviving friends-Mr. Rogers; and we understand that he is one of those to whose opinion of its contents the editor refers in his modest advertisement : -- 'Although, in a letter written shortly before his death, Mr. Crabbe mentioned the following pieces as fully prepared for the press; and to withhold from the public what he had thus described could not have been consistent with filial reverence; yet his executors must confess that, when they saw the first pages of his MS. reduced to type, they became very sensible that, had he himself lived to edit these compositions, he would have considered it necessary to bestow on them a good deal more of revision and correction, before finally submitting them to the eye of the world. They perceived that his language had not always effected the complete development of his ideas that images were here and there left imperfect-nay, trains of reflection rather hinted than expressed; and that, in many places, thoughts in themselves valuable could not have failed to derive much additional weight and point from the last touches of his own pen. Under such circumstances, it was a very great relief to their minds to learn, that several persons of the highest eminence in literature had read these poetical remains before any part of them was committed to the printer; and that the verdict of such judges was, on the whole, more favourable than they themselves had begun to anticipate; that, in the opinion of those whose esteem had formed the highest honour of their father's life, his fame would not be tarnished by their compliance with the terms of his literary bequest;-that, though not so uniformly polished as some of his previous performances, these Posthumous Essays would still be found to preserve, in the main, the same characteristics on which his reputation had been established; much of the same quiet humour and keen observation; the same brief and vivid description; the same unobtrusive pathos; the same prevailing reverence for moral truth, and rational religion; and, in a word, not a few "things which the world would not willingly let die."-pp. v. vi.. From the judgment of the friendly critics here alluded to we do not apprehend there will be much dissent. The posthumous. volume offers, indeed, no tale entitled to be talked of in the same breath with the highest efforts of Crabbe's genius-no Peter Grimes'—no 'Ellen Orford'—no 'Sir Owen Dale'-no 'Patron' -no Lady Barbara;' but it contains, nevertheless, a series of stories, scarcely one of which any lover of the man and the poet would wish to have been suppressed: every one of them presenting us with pithy couplets, which will be treasured up and remembered while the English language lasts; and some of them, notwithstanding what the editor candidly says as to the general want of the lima labor, displaying not only his skill as an analyst of character, but in a strong light also his peculiar mastery of versification. The example of Lord Byron's 'Corsair' and 'Lara' had not, ке we suspect, been lost upon him. In some of these pieces he has a freedom and breadth of execution which we doubt if he ever before equalled in the metre to which he commonly adheredinsomuch, that in place of a Pope in worsted stockings' (as James Smith has called him), we seem now and then to be more reminded of a Dryden in a one-horse chaise. One of the most amusing of these stories is the first of them, entitled Silford Hall, or the Happy Day.' It gives us the summer's-day adventures of an enthusiastic, dreaming boy, the son of a village schoolmaster, sent by his parent to receive payment of a small account' at a nobleman's seat six miles off-kindly treated by the housekeeper-admitted for the first time to see the interior of a great mansion-and opening his imagination to those dreams of the felicity of grandeur which we suppose every lad of the same class has formed acquaintance with on some similar occasion. The editor intimates that this little narrative is in fact that of a day in the poet's own early life-that on which, being then our new 'prentice,' he first walked across the country with a packet of medicines to Cheveley Hall, a seat of the Rutland family, in whose nobler palace of Belvoir he was, in after years, domesticated. His picture of the schoolmaster is very good :- Peter, the eldest son of this hero, is now in his fifteenth year "A king his father, he a prince has rule, The first of subjects, viceroy of the school' but at leisure hours showed little affection for the contents of old Nathaniel's loftier bookshelf 'Books of high mark, the mind's more solid food, In place of Fluxions, sections, algebraic lore,' Peter turned, with unwearied zest, to his mother's little collection— 'And |