he has himself reared. And, above all, he is preceded by the Gorgon-headed Medusa of his fame, carrying dismay into the opposing ranks, nerving his own men into iron, and stiffening his enemies into stone. And, although longer and sterner ever became the resistance, the result of victory was equally sure. And now he has reached a climax; and yet, not satisfied therewith, he resolves on a project, the greatest and most daring ever taken or even entertained by him. It is to disturb the Russian bear in his forests. For this purpose, he has collected an army, reminding you of those of Jenghiz Khan or Tamerlane, unparalleled in numbers, magnificentin equipment, unbounded in confidence and attachment to their chief, led by officers of tried valour and skill, and wielded and propelled by the genius of Napoleon, like one body by one living soul. But the “ Lord in the heavens did laugh ;” the Lord held him and his force "in derision.” For now his time was fully come. And now must the decree of the Watchers and the Holy Ones, long registered against him, begin to obtain fulfilment. And how did God fulfil it? He led him into no ambuscade. He overwhelmed him with no superior force. He raised up against him no superior genius. But he took his punishment into his own hand. He sent winter before its time, to destroy him and his many men so beautiful.” He loosened snow, like a flood of waters, and frost, like a flood of fire, upon his host; and Napoleon, like Satan, yielded to God alone, and might have exclaimed, with that lost archangel “Into what pit thou seest, The force of those dire arms?” Thus had man and his Maker come into collision, and the potsherd was broken in the unequal strife. All that folIowed resembled only the convulsive struggles of one down, taken, and bound. Even when cast back like a burning ember, from Elba to the French shores, it was evidently all too late. His “star" had first paled before the fires of Moscow, and at last set amid the snows of his flight from it. 66 a Of the private character of Napoleon, there are many contradictory opinions. Indeed, properly speaking, he had no private character at all . For the greater part of his life, he was as public as the sun. He ate and drank, read and wrote, snuffed and slept in a glare of publicity. The wrinkles, darkening into gloom, on that massive forehead, did indeed conceal many a dark and secret thought; but his mere actions and habitudes were all public property. How tell what he was in private, since in private he never was? He was like the man who had “lost his shadow.” No sweet relief, no dim and tender background in his character. Whatever private virtues he might have possessed, never found an atmosphere to develop them in; nay, they withered and died in the surrounding sunshine. He had no time to be a good son, or husband, or father, or friend. The idea which devoured him devoured all such ties too. Still, we believe that he never ceased to possess a heart, and that much of his apathy and apparent hardness of nature was the effect of policy or of absence of mind. A thousand different spectators report differently of his manner in private. To some, he appeared all grace and dignity-to others, a cold, absent fiend, lost in schemes of faroff villany—to a third class, an awkward and unmannered blunderer—and to a fourth, the very demon of curiosity, a machine of questions, an embodied inquisition. One acute spectator, the husband of Madame Rahel, reports a perpetual scowl on his brow, and a perpetual smile on his lips. We care very little for such representations, which rather describe the man's moods than the man himself. We heard once, we protest, a more edifying picture of him from the lips of a Scotch innkeeper, who declared that he believed “ Boney, when he was at leasure, aye sat, wi' his airm in a bowl o' water, resting on a cannon-ball, an' nae doubt meditauting mischief !” It were difficult to catch the features of an undeveloped thought-and what else was Napoleon ? As concentration was the power of his mind, so it was the peculiarity of his person. His body was a little vial of intense existence. The thrones of Europe seemed falling before a ninepin! He seemed made of skin, marrow, a bone, and fire. Had France been in labour, and brought forth a mouse? But it was a frame formed for endurance. It took no punishment, it felt no fatigue, it refreshed itself by a wink, its tiny hand shivered kingdoms at a touch, and its voice, small as the “treble of a fay,” was powerful and irresistible as the roar of Mars, the homicidal god. Nature is often strange in her economies of power. She often packs her poisons and her glorious essences alike into small bulk. In Napoleon, as in Alexander the Great and Alexander Pope, a portion of both was strangely and inextricably mingled. We might deduce many lessons from this rapid sketch of the Emperor of the French. That “moral of ħis story, of which Symmons speaks, would require seven thunders fully to express it. We will not dwell on the commonplaces about “vaulting ambition,” “ diseased pride," "fallen greatness," "lesson to be humble and thankful in our " own spheres," and so on. Napoleon was a brave, great man; in part mistaken, perhaps also in part insane, and also in a large part guilty. But he did a work—not his full work, but still a work that he only could have accomplished. He continued that shaking of the sediments of the nations, which the French Revolution began. He pointed attention with his bristling guns to the danger the civilisation of Europe is exposed to from the Russian silent conspiracy of ages-cold, vast , quietly progressive, as a glacier gathering round an Alpine valley. He shook the throne of the Austrian domination, and left that of his own successors tottering to receive them. He drew out, by long antagonism, the resources of Britain. He cast a ghastly smile of contempt, which lingers still, around the papal crown. While he proved the disadvantages, as well as advantages, of the domination of a single human mind, he unconsciously shadowed forth the time when one divine hand shall take the kingdom_his empire, during its palmy days, forming a feeble earthly emblem of the reign of the Universal King A new Napoleon, were he rising, would not long continue to reign. But even as the ancient polypharmist and mistaken alchemist was the parent and the prophecy of those a modern chemists, who may yet advance the science even to its ideal limits, so, in this age, Napoleon has been the unwitting pioneer and imperfect prophet of a Sovereign, the extent and the duration of whose kingdom shall equal and surpass his wildest dreams. Did he, by sheer native genius, nearly snatch from the hands of all kings their time-honoured sceptres--nearly confirm his sway into a concentrated and iron empire-and prove the advantages of centralisation, as they were never proved before? And why should not “ another king, one Jesus,” exerting a mightier might, obtain a more lasting empire, and form the only real government which, save the short theocracy of the Jews, ever existed on earth? We pause--nay, nature, the world, the church, poor afflicted humanity, distracted governments, falling thrones, earth and heaven together, seem to pause with us, to hear the wherefore to this why. A Constellation of Sacred Authors. No. 1.-EDWARD IRVING. We have often asked, and have often, too, of late, the question asked us, Why have we no life of Edward Irving? Why no full or authentic record of that short, eccentric, but most brilliant and instructive career? What has become of his papers, which, we believe, were numerous-of his ser , mons, private letters, and journal ? (if such a thing as a journal he ever kept—think of the journal of a comet !) Why have none of his surviving friends been invited to overlook these, and construct from them a life-like image of the man? Or, failing them, why has not some literary man of eminence—even although not imbued with all Irving's peculiar opinions, yet, if possessing a general and genial sympathy with him-been employed on the task ? We know that many think this arises from the impression that Irving died under a cloud, being felt by his admirers to be general. But does not the silence of his relatives and friends serve to deepen this impression ? We have heard it hinted, on the other hand, that the real reason is connected with the peculiar views of Irving, some imagining that no man can write his life well, if not what is called an Irvingite, and that no Irvingite has the literary qualifications. These statements, however, we do not believe. Some of the Irvingites are men of very considerable talent, and why-although most of his very eminent literary friends be either dead or have departed farther and farther from his point of view, although Chalmers be gone, De Quincey otherwise occupied, Thomas Carlyle become a proclaimed Pantheist, and Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, |