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crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whims, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victoryhis flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny-ruin itself only elevated him to Empire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent, decision. flashed upon his counsels and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects, his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their developement, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook of the character of his mind; if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount, space no opposition that he did not spurn;-and whether, amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity. The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became common places in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and

cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board.

Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or the drawing-room-with the mob or the levee-wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburgh-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic-he was still the same military despot.

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the darling of the army; and whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend, or forgot a favor. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless; and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favorite. They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidized every people; to the people, he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. The jailor of the press, he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the patronage of learning-the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and

sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.* -Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist, a republican, and an emperor-a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the Synagogue-a traitor and a tyrant-a Christian and an Infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world; and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie.

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bonaparte; the first, (and it is to be hoped, the last,) Emperor of the French. That he has done much evil, there is little doubt that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France, have arisen to the blessings of a free constitution; superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the Inquisition; and the feudal system, with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever. Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they have not a resource; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson, that if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest.

* Sir Humphrey Davy.

ORATORICAL EXTRACTS.

AGAINST THE CHARGE OF BRITISH PREDILECTION. RANDOLPH, (1811.)

AGAINST Whom are these charges of British predilection brought? Against men, who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. It is insufferable it cannot be borne. It must and ought, with severity to be put down in this house, and out of it to meet the lie direct! Strange, that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole world! The great Autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates, are very civil good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. Turks, Jews, and Infidels, Melimelli or the Little Turtle; barbarians and savages of every clime and every color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against

whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed-representation-trial by jury-voting the supplies-writ of habeas corpus--our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence ;-against our fellow-Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion with ourselves! In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America, learn those principles of civil liberty, which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and their valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots-by Washington, Hancock and Henry-than by Chatham, and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us in our struggle. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sydney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities, which, would to God, I possessed in common with that illustrious

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