dergone. Indeed, few French persons can be land would never listen to it." I must add brought to believe that it ever was a decent that his highness said this "rather in sorrow abode; and no one can deny that it must outrage than in anger;" then, addressing Count the feelings of a people like the French, so L, one of the faithful followers of Napoespecially affected by associations, to see the leon in exile, and asking him which mausobed-chamber of their former emperor a dirty leum he preferred the one in which we then stable, and the room in which he breathed his stood, the dome of the Invalides, or the rock last sigh, appropriated to the purposes of win- of St. Helena -he answered, to my surprise, nowing and threshing wheat! In the last-St. Helena; for no grander monument than named room are two pathetic mementos of affection. When Napoleon's remains were exhumed, in 1846, Counts Bertrand and Las Cases, carried off with them, the former a piece of the boarded floor on which the emperor's bed had rested, the latter a stone from the wall pressed by the pillow of his dying chief.

Would that I had the influence to recommend to the British government, that these ruined, and I must add, desecrated buildings should be razed to the ground; and that on their site should be erected a convalescent hospital for the sick of all ranks, of both services, and of both nations. Were the British and French governments to unite in this plan how grand a sight would it be to behold the two nations shaking hands, so to speak, over the grave of Napoleon!

On offering this suggestion, when in Paris lately, to one of the nephews of the first Emperor Napoleon, the prince replied that "the idea was nobly philanthropic, but that Eng

that can ever be raised to the emperor!"

Circumstances have made one little incident connected with this, our visit to the Invalides, most deeply interesting.. Comte d'Orsay was of the party; indeed, it was in his elegant atelier we had all assembled, ere starting, to survey the mausoleum being prepared for the ashes of Napoleon. Suffering and debilitated as Comte D'Orsay was, precious, as critiques on art, were the words that fell from his lips during our progress through the work-rooms, as we stopped before the sculptures intended to adorn the vault wherein the sarcophagus is to rest. Ere leaving the works, the director, in exhibiting the solidity of the granite which is finally to encase Napoleon, struck fire with a mallet from the magnificent block; “See," said Comte D'Orsay, "though the dome of the Invalides may fall, France may yet light a torch at the tomb of her emperor." I cannot remember the exact words, but such was their import; Comte D'Orsay died a few weeks after this.

From Eliza Cook's Journal.
BOZZIES.

ENGLISH literature is poor in biography. It is true we have many "Lives," but not many of them are very life-like. Biographywriting is an art little studied. The author oftener thinks of himself than of his subject. If he be rhetorically inclined, he does not 80 much desire to convey to the reader an accurate picture of the Life delineated, as to astonish by fine writing and beautifully-rounded periods. These rhetorical lives are not worth much. They may dazzle, astonish, and even instruct, but they do not give us what we look for in a biography-a picture of how the man lived, how he dressed and ate, what he did, and what he said. The rhetorical biography is a kind of literary clothes-horse, on which the author exhibits himself. As for life, you see little of it; the subject is only taken as a pcg to hang fine sentences upon.

writer is now in course of publication, which seems to have been prepared in the same hasty manner. We allude to the Life of Moore, edited by Lord John Russell. Here we have, not a life, but a collection of materials. His lordship, greatly to his honor, has taken the trouble of arranging the papers which the illustrious poet left behind him, and then sent them so arranged to the publisher. Mr. Panizzi, of the British Museum, whose business is to make catalogues, might have done the work as well: he could have arranged the papers for the printer. But we looked for a biography - a picture of the living, writing, thinking man, by one who knew him; and we have, instead, little more than an arrangement of his papers for publication. It is true, Moore has left behind him a fragment of a diary, fresh and sparkling, which speaks for itself; but we want more than that, and trust the noble editor will yet, before he concludes his labors, supply a portraiture, without which the biography of the poet will be incomplete, and, in many respects, only partially intelligible.

There are biographies of another kindmen who collect all the letters, memoranda, scraps of writing, anecdotes at second-hand, It is said that Johnson, when he heard rumors, reports, birth and marriage certifi- that Bozzy intended to write a Life of him, cates, of a distinguished personage, and stow-threatened that he would prevent it by taking ing them away in a book, which they "edit" Boswell's! This rage of Johnson was doubtas the "Life and Letters" of such a one; less caused by the lamentable manner in and forthwith a big book is issued from the which so many great English Lives have been press. Call this a biography! It is no such strangled by their biographers. For, good thing. It is an omnium gatherum, a collec- biographies are even rarer than well-spent tanea, often a pile of rubbish, but not a Life. lives; and many great men have been strangled We have had many notable instances of this after death by little men, who have attempted to sort of manufacture lately, the most melan- delineate them, but succeeded only in drawing choly of which was the Life of Wordsworth, their own pictures. Strange enough it is, by his son. Southey fared rather better, but that Boswell, who was so suspected by Johnson his Life too suffered in the ponderous six vol- as an incompetent biographer, should have umes of undigested, though admirable mate- left us the most complete portraiture of a great rials, which have recently been given to the English, living man, that is to be found in world. Wilberforce's Life, though hand- our language. And yet Boswell was no dissomely paid for, was another failure, originat- tinguished littérateur. Macaulay contempting in the same causes. For sons, even uously calls him "a dunce, a parasite, a coxthough they possess the requisite literary comb", one of the smallest men that ever ability, are the last persons to write fairly lived." And yet this despised Boswell has and dispassionately the Lives of their parents. written the best English biography They draw a veil over those points of charac- that is worthy of a place beside Plutarch. ter which the world most wishes to see un- How is this? Why, because Boswell related veiled, and which give the chief interest to that of which he knew, and because out of a biography. They think of their father's the fulness of his heart and memory his mouth fair name, and aim at reconciling editorial spoke and his pen wrote. He gave us a real duties with filial love. And thus, often, the Life of Johnson - told us every minute detail pith of the memoir is allowed to escape. Sir about him, even to the kind of coat and wig Samuel Romilly's life, by his son, is one of he wore the tea, fish-sauce, and veal-pie the best that has appeared; but, fortunately, with plums, which he loved his rolling walk the father had left behind him an excellent and blinking eye-his foibles, vanities, and autobiography which the son allowed to speak prejudices - his trick of touching the posts as for itself, and there was left little more to be he walked, and his superstition about entering desired. To this, we may add the extremely a house with the right foot first his habit interesting Life of Curran, by his son-one of picking up and treasuring by him scraps of the best pieces of biography which has of orange-peal - his gruntings-his vehecome to light of recent years. ment You lie, sir!"- his whirlwind eloquence - his fits of rage his penitence

Another biography of a highly-celebrated

a book

and rebuffs he underwent, could gain from the world no golden, but only leaden, opinions. His devout discipleship seemed nothing more than a mean spanielship in the general eye. There is much lying yet undeveloped in the love of Boswell for Johnson. A cheering

his gloomy moroseness, and sometimes his un-ing, consequential ways, the daily reproofs controllable laughter. In fact, you have the man as he lived, written down by one who followed him like his shadow; or rather, who daguerreotyped him for us in sun-pictures which shall live forever in English biography. And not only is Johnson delineated as he lived in Boswell's pages, but by far the most charac-proof, in a time which else utterly wanted teristic traits in the life of Oliver Goldsmiththose which inform us as to the life, and character, and dress, and conversation, of that simple-minded being-are also to be found recorded there. And so of many others of Johnson's distinguished contemporaries, of whom, but for James Boswell, we should now have known comparatively little.

and still wants such, that living Wisdom is quite infinitely precious to man, is the symbol of the Godlike to him, which even weak eyes may discern; that loyalty, discipleship, all that was ever meant by hero-worship, lives perennially in the human bosom, and waits, even in these dead days, only for occasions to unfold it, and inspire all men with it, and again make the world alive! James Boswell we can regard as a practical witness (or real martyr) to this high, everlasting truth."

place. We want faithful delineations of character, which is nature in its highest form : and it is matter for thankfulness that brilliant powers are not needed for its true appreciation. Your Bozzies are the best historians of their age, and often teach us more than Hume or Robertson can do. Even the garrulous Samuel Pepys may tell us more of the real life of his "Own Times" than a Burnet or a Swift.

Carlyle, in his admirable article on Samuel Johnson, originally published in Fraser, has done much to rescue Boswell from the obloquy and contempt which recent commentators It was through this intense admiration for have sought to cast upon his name. True, he Johnson, that Boswell was enabled to produce was a weak, vain man— something of a flun- his life-breathing biography; and although key. Yet was he a hero-worshipper. He many great literary men have lived since his might not have the capacity of being a nota- time, they have been able to produce nothing ble man himself; but he admired all such, equal to it. We want more Bozzies -men and Samuel Johnson was the hero whom he with a heart and an eye to discern character idolized. The man who had in him this in- and to recognize wisdom-with free insight, tense admiration of a character such as John- simple love, and childlike open-mindedness. son's could not be so utterly worthless. "It We have more than enough of rhetorical and is," says Carlyle, "one of the strangest phe-didactic talent, but in biography it is out of nomena of the past century, that at a time when the old reverent feeling of discipleship (such as brought men from far countries, with rich gifts and prostrate souls to the feet of the Prophets), had passed utterly away from men's practical experience, and was no longer surmised to exist (as it does) perennial, indestructible, in man's inmost heart, James Boswell should have been the individual, of all others, predestined to recall it, in such singular guise, to the wondering, and, for a What would we not give for a Bozzy's long while, laughing and unrecognizing world. account of Shakspeare?-Shakspeare, the The worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, man of men, of whose private life so little is voluntary business. Does not the frothy-known? Indeed, his only autobiography is hearted yet enthusiastic man, doffing his to be found in his sonnets. But we should advocate-wig, regularly take post and hurry like to know how Shakspeare lived, how he up to London, for the sake of his sage chiefly, dressed, even what kind of stockings he wore, as to a Feast of Tabernacles, the sabbath of what were his habits, his times of rising up his whole year? The plate-licker and wine- and lying down, whether he wrote in dressingbibber dives into Bolt Court to sip muddy gown and slippers, how he worked and fared. coffee with a cynical old man, and a sour-tem- who his companions and friends were, and, pered, blind old woman (feeling the cups, above all, what was his talk and familar conwhether they are full, with her finger), and versation, what were his speculations about patiently endures contradictions without end; life and death, and wealth and poverty, and too happy so he may but be allowed to listen what was the daily life of the men and women and live. Nay, it does not appear that vulgar about him. We have only occasional glimpses vanity could ever have been much flattered by of these subjects in his noble works; but then, Boswell's relation to Johnson. Mr. Croker to have his familiar talk jotted down for us, says, Johnson was, to the last, little regarded his recollections of his boyhood and of his by the great world; from which, for a vulgar adventures in the woods of Charlecote; and vanity, all honor, as from a fountain, descends. then his struggles amid London life- how he Bozzy, even among Johnson's friends and took to the stage, what was his history there, special admirers, seems rather to have been how he worked his way up to proprietorship laughed at than envied; his officious, whisk- in the Blackfriars theatre, what was his life

put them in his biography? And Voltaire has observed in the same spirit, "Every man has a wild beast within him. Few know how to chain him. The greater number give him the rein except when the fear of the law holds them back." You cannot expect men to tell you honestly how they manage with their "wild beast. We would rather believe in the Bozzy, to the extent of his observation.

when he went back, full of deep-welling has it" Were the best man's faults written thoughts, to that quiet country life at Strat- on his forehead, he would pull his bonnet ford-on-Avon, where he died-who would over his brow." Could you expect him to not wish to have all this related to him, as Boswell has related the story of Johnson's career? But, as it is, Shakspeare's life is written in his works; and more than they tell us we can scarcely be said to know. About all such great men there is the most natural desire to know much. The world's eyes are turned to them. We want to know their individuality and manner of existence, which may often be full of profit and instruction for us. But we are curious also as to their feat- Of recent biographies, Carlyle's Life of Sterures, and looks, and dress, and sayings, and ling and Disraeli's Life of Lord George Beneven their most indifferent actions-the record tinck furnish apposite illustrations. The former of which only Bozzies can duly note for our sat- is a real, living portrait; it lets you into the isfaction. Your "distinguished writers" have actual life of an earnest man- paints him as rarely eyes for such small matter. They are so he lived, and thought, and worked; it is a apt to make the subject of their book a mirror in life worthy of Plutarch. The latter the which they wish to see themselves. The lives life of Lord George Bentinck is a political they write are not biographies, so much as pamphlet rather than a life. There is here the dry bones of a body, which should have and there to be found a little of the biograbeen alive. It is only the loving, gossiping phic lath and plaster; but we will venture to Bozzies who can adequately satisfy us about say that a better idea of Lord George Bentinck the matters we are most desirous to know. as a man might be obtained from a brief conAutobiographies are very instructive; in-versation with one of his servants or grooms deed, Johnson has said that every man's life may be best written by himself. But those who write their own lives are apt to omit the very things in which the world takes most interest. A man is not always the best judge himself. He is disposed to paint himself en beau; otherwise he were scarcely human. Rousseau is the only writer who has been honest in this respect, and there may have been an affectation in his confession of faults, not altogether truthful. Hear Rousseau himself on this point:

"No one can write a man's life so well as himself. His interior being, his true life, is known to himself alone; but, in writing, he disguises it; under the name of a Life he makes an apology; he shows himself as he would like to be seen, but not at all as he is. The sincere are more or less truthful in what they say, but they are more or less false through reservations; and what they conceal has such a bearing on what they avow, that, in telling only a part of the truth, they in reality say nothing. I place Montaigne at the head of these false sincere writers, who would deceive you even in relating what is true. He paints himself with his faults, but then they are only amiable ones; there is no man who has not hateful faults too. Mon

taigne paints himself like, but only in profile. Who knows but that some gash on the cheek, or a cast in the eye, on the side concealed from us, would not have totally altered the expression of the countenance?"

A man cannot speak freely of himself in his autobiography. As the old Highland proverb

It

than from this so-called biography. It is a
mere clothes-horse, on which Mr. Disraeli
displays his collection of political wares.
is little better than réchauffée of Hansard :
certainly it is not the Life of Lord George
Bentinck.

The French greatly excel us in biography and memoirs; but this topic we reserve for some future number.

THE Journal des Débats, quoting from the Java Bode, a journal published at Batavia, gives an account of a recent sale of slaves at the Chinese camp. The slaves, twelve in number, having been placed upon the table of the exposition, disposed in four lots, rattled some money in their hands, and addressed a few words timidly and in low tones to the assembly. A person who acted as their agent here stepped forward, and stated that his clients, having accumulated by long and painful labors some small saving, solicited the favor of being allowed to make a bidding for the purchase of their own persons. No opposition being offered, the first lot was cried, and made an offer through their agent, of forty francs. No advance being made upon this sum, the slaves were knocked down to themselves, the next lot, encouraged by their predecessors, offered only twenty-four francs. became their own purchasers. The public preserved the same silence, and they The third lot took the hint, and were even more fortunate, picking themselves up at a decided bargain, for the modest sum of ten francs. The Java Bode sees in these facts a great advance in civilization, especially among the Chinese, who formed the great majority of the persons present.

From Chambers' Journal.

double window over their heads, make a atom of that world or not; but instead of pursuing reflections which might make the good tender heart of my kind friend Frederika Bremer to ache, I will put on my cloak and a bonnet, to show I am not going out to dinner; and then I will take a walk, and distract myself, as my French friends would say, in the only way I

can.

AN OLD-FASHIONED SWEDISH WEDDING. ST. STEPHEN'S DAY-Boxing-day as it is sometimes rudely called in England, to the infinite perplexity of foreigners, some of whom want to persuade me that it is among us made the festival of our great national art -St. Stephen's Day is, in Sweden, in one sense, a greater holiday than its prede- The winter air of Sweden is very exhilaratcessor; it is observed in a less religious but ing out of doors; within, it is quite the more festive manner than Christmas. Shops contrary; the rooms are so warm, the walls and offices of all descriptions are closed; and windows so thick, the closed-up stoves so visiting, meeting, congratulating, eating, oppressively hot, that they make me stupid, drinking, walking, sledge-driving, smoking, heavy, indolent as a native. Now, I am on and talking, may well fill up a short winter- Norrbro, gazing on a scene that never tires. day. My post of observation is my window, Here, looking at this beautiful Mälar, in its looking over my favorite Place Carl tretons unfrozen part, sweeping between snowy Torg. What a scene I look down upon now! boundaries, to cast itself into the Baltic, and the whole street, the whole Place, covered at the widely-extended and brilliantly-white with black figures moving over the snowy scene on either side, I get into a better ground. Everybody is going out to dinner. humor than I was in my air-tight rooms, and You may know that such is the intention of forget to feel spiteful when I see fur-clad these good people, for it is between two and men pulling off their hats, and perhaps exthree o'clock, and the women wear black posing a bald crown to the biting air, while hoods or black silk kerchiefs on their heads. they bow, and bow, and bow-three times Among true Swedes, no lady, young or old, is the mode- as if they were presented for goes out to a party or public place without a the first time to the friends they salute; and hood or kerchief, which is taken off on enter- then grasp them by the hand, clap them on ing. Maid-servants, and decent women of the the shoulder, or perhaps, on occasions, hug lower ranks, wear the kerchief at all times them in the arms, with all the warmth of when abroad · -a bonnet would be thought brotherhood. And I forbear to envy the by them an impropriety, a "setting up for hooded women, who are constantly stopping something above them;" their entire costume on their way to courtesy down to the ground, is still appropriate and distinctive. May and then to pull a hand from the inevitable they long retain their own fashions, and scorn muff, and extend it with a certain formal the tawdry bonnets, flowers, and imitative heartiness to meet another hand. I never modes of a similar class among ourselves! have to pull out my hand from the wide To look out of my window on this bright day, sleeves of my furred cloak, which I try to and over this charmingly clear and snowy persuade the Swedes answer for the muff, into prospect, one might fancy that the whole of which all classes, even without bonnets on Stockholm was moving out to a great funeral. their heads, must insert their hands. Voices Festivities in Sweden are solemn-looking are buzzing round me in congratulation or things. Black is the state-costume in every hopeful wishes. Perhaps even now some sense; only black or white can be worn at airy voice may syllable my name, but it does court, and black is still the state-dress of the not reach me. Well, what matter? If I plain and lower ranks. Formerly, it was used had to shake many hands, mine would be at every ceremonial or visit of importance; frozen; and if I had to say: "Hur star det and to-day, the crowds of black figures till?" to all the friends I met, my breath moving in the bright sunshine, together with would be congealed, as it is on the countless the always grave and quiet demeanor of the mustaches and beards around me. Swedes when out of doors, give one the idea of anything rather than the festive meetings to which all are hastening.

But are there no mourners left behind, no sick, no sorrowing? Are there no hidden mourners moving among them? Is the festivity of St. Stephen's Day undarkened by a memory, unalloyed by a gnawing heart-pang? Why ask the question? They look happy, speak happily, walk along contentedly, looking as if the world were satisfied with them, and they were satisfied with the world. They are not thinking whether I, perched at the

I returned alone, as I had gone out, and alone I was to be. There was no dinner dressed in the house this day; every creature had left the immense building, servants and all; a poor old woman was, I believe, in some remote corner, sent in just to see that no one ran away with it. I was alone, and had to make the best of my solitude. My respected and kind friends at the British Embassy had illness in their family, and no one else thought of the solitary stranger on that day of reunions; but there was good in this, too, for it taught me just to do the con