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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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The tide has ebbed, and we who saw it flow Lamenting ask, "Ah, wherefore dost thou go, Old ocean, hiding in thy southern caves, While all the north laments thy ebbing waves?"

And far-off whispers from th' horizon come, From flying winds that hither, thither roam. "Children of men, 'twixt heaven and earth ye go

In this strange fate of wandering to and fro, Now drawn to good and now to evil deed, Until from earth's vibration ye are freed. Why wonder ocean has its ebb and flow, While man alternates still 'twixt weal and woe?"

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Comes sad-eyed Autumn down the pathless height,

O'er wind-swept heaths

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Sad as the voice of cold winds that have swept
Over eternal snows,

And wail all night around the silent door
Of some deserted house upon a lonely moor.
She wandered down over the trackless hills,
Through woodlands, to the dwellings of
mankind,

And ever at her glance, that blights and chills, The leaves fell thick and thicker down the wind.

She breathed upon the gardens, and her breath

Slew all the colors of the summer flowers. They hung their heads in death,

No more to be revived by any showers, Till, when the long, long winter is outworn, The faint sun welcome back the first spring

morn.

Before her face there sped The last late swallow, now, with hurried wings, Fast fleeting to the summer and the south, Ere the sad trees should shed

Their latest leaves, and Boreas call, who brings

The snow-clouds at the first blast of his mouth,

That soon shall hide their heads in winter's Bind in his iron bonds the waters and the land. And winter, with a fierce, relentless hand,

garb of white.

All the long summer through she lay asleep
'Mongst the bare hilltops, in a lonely grot,
Where no step sounded, save some mountain
sheep,

Wandering thither from its pasture-plot
In the green vale below.

Above her rose the mountains, peak on peak
Of everlasting snow,

At dawning bright with many a crimson streak,

And when the sun was low, Flushing with evening tints and golden bars, Slowly to change to dark beneath the eternal

stars.

Soft was her sleep, while in the happy plains Far down below, the languid summer lay, Where, bathed in sunny hours and gentle rains, The flowery meadows slept, knee-deep in

hay.

Through all the land she went

A veiled shape clothed round with mystery; Till at the last the sound of winds was blent Around her with the murmur of the sea. And down she passed, even to the utmost strand,

And heard the tempest moaning in the north,

Saw mighty billows gathering round the land, With white crests bursting forth;

Then slowly faded she into the night,

A dusky cloud upon the face of heaven, And Winter smote upon the sea with might,

And with a crash of billows rent and riven, 'Midst sound of rushing wind and waves that

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From The Contemporary Review. MEMOIRS OF GENERAL MARBOT.

WHAT inexhaustible stores there appear to be of private memoirs of the great revolutionary epoch of France from 1789 to 1815! Not a year passes without further instalments of them issuing from the press. Nor is there any sign that we have come to the end of the series, or that the demand of the public for them is satiated. Louis Blanc and Taine speak of having had access to many private narratives of this period, of great value, which have not yet seen the light. Among the latest, and certainly the most valuable of such works, is that just published by the descendants of General Marbot, an officer whose name scarcely appears in any history of the time, but who served with great distinction in the Grande Armée of Napoleon from 1799 to the fall of the Empire. He acted as aide-de-camp successively to five marshals Bernadotte, Augereau, Murat, Lannes, and Masséna - and had the singular good fortune to be present and to escape, not without many wounds, but with his life, from nearly all the great historic battles of the period. He served in the campaigns of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, Portugal, Moscow, Leipsic, and Waterloo. He was present at the sieges of Genoa and Saragossa. He was with Murat at Madrid; with Lannes in pursuit of Sir John Moore's army; and with Masséna in his advance on Lisbon, and during the winter before the lines of Torres Vedras, and in the subsequent retreat into Spain. He commanded a cavalry regiment in the Russian campaign, and led it safely across the Bérésina; and finally was present in the two disastrous defeats of Leipsig and Waterloo. He gained every step of promotion, from that of a private in the ranks to that of colonel, by acts of bravery in the field; he was thirteen times severely wounded; at the restoration of the monarchy he was one of those excepted from the amnesty, and forced into exile, but later he became attached to the Duke of Orleans, was made general, served as his aide-de-camp at the siege of Antwerp and in two campaigns in Africa, and finally died in 1854.

The three bulky volumes of memoirs

now at last published are full of the most interesting and exciting matter; the narrative never flags for a single page. Marbot's position as aide-de-camp brought him into contact with all the leading generals of the period, and often with Napoleon himself. His descriptions of his personal adventures are of extraordinary interest; and he gives hundreds of incidents throwing light on the condition of the army and the relations of its generals to one another and to their chief. The story is connected by short and lucid accounts of the general manœuvres in the several campaigns of Napoleon. There is, however, nothing very new in these. A comparison with Thiers's history shows that he must have revised his account from that source. What is of real value and interest is his own personal experi ence. Some of his adventures and hairbreadth escapes are so extraordinary as almost to surpass the credible.

Marbot, however, left the reputation of a man of the highest honor. He wrote this account of his military experiences for the benefit of his family, and apparently with no intention of publishing it; his descendants have only recently been induced to make it public. He had by writing a defence of the emperor's strategy in the campaign of Wagram earned the gratitude of Napoleon, who left him by his will one hundred thousand francs, with the request that he would undertake a history of the wars in which he was engaged. The contents of the book breathe in every page sentiments which do honor to him. It is impossible, then, to doubt his general veracity. The utmost that has been suggested by some critics in France is that Marbot was a good raconteur, and that in frequently telling the stories of his adventures he may have unconsciously improved them.

Although these memoirs are not written with the literary style of De Ségur, or in the solemn and tragic tone of Férenzac, they are in many respects more interesting. They strike one as more real in the sense that they mainly describe the incidents which came under the writer's personal view; they give the impression of these great wars from the point of view of

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a staff officer, just as the memoirs of Fri- the existing government of France, and casse gave those of the common soldiers to grasp supreme power. Bonaparte did of the Republic, and those of Coignet of his best, by adroit flattery, to gain General the soldiers of the Empire. They breathe Marbot to his cause, but failing in this, he the life of the Grande Armée, the spirit artfully tried to give the impression to the which animated the officers and men, and public that Marbot was with him by walkwhich made it the greatest engine of war ing arm in arm through the city in the which has ever been known. most confidential manner. The general Marbot belonged to a family settled in saw what was coming, and believed it to the Dordogne, not of noble birth, but liv- be inevitable, but he would not be a party ing noblement - that is to say, on their to the overthrow of the Republic. Marown resources, without any other industry, celline was introduced to Bonaparte, who or any profession than that of arms. They took him by the ear, a sign with him of gave three generals to France in the last the most friendly condescension, and said: hundred years. His mother's seven broth-This lad will one day be a second Geners were all in the army, and all of them eral Marbot." The general, wishing to emigrated during the Revolution. His father, a Republican by conviction, rose rapidly in the army during the early period of the Revolution, became a general, and was a deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He was appointed to the command of the Army of Paris in 1799, but when, shortly after, a plot was formed by Siéyès and others to place the government in the hands of a single military chief, and the general was sounded on the subject, he refused to give his aid. He agreed that the misfortunes of the country demanded a prompt remedy, but having sworn to maintain the existing Constitution, he would not avail himself of the authority which his command gave him over the troops of his division to overthrow the Constitution. He resigned his post, and asked for an active command in the field. Bernadotte followed his example. General Marbot was appointed to a division in the Army of Italy under Masséna; he took with him his son Marcelline, the author of these memoirs, then a lad of only seventeen. He was at this early age so timid by nature, that his father said he was more fit to be a girl, and called him Mademoiselle Marcelline. The lad soon showed that within a delicate frame he had a heart of steel, great physical endurance, and presence of mind and resource in time of peril.

leave Lyons the next morning, found that every horse in the town had been engaged by Bonaparte for a round of inspection of the fortifications. He was much annoyed by this, but contented himself, saying: This is the beginning of omnipotence." He was obliged to descend the Rhone to Avignon in a barge, and was wrecked on a sandbank. From Avignon he went to Aix, and while there was invited to a grand banquet by the Radicals of Cavaiilon, who left him to pay the bill of fifteen hundred francs for the entertainment, which included ortolans and the best of wines. Some of these patriots desired to pay their share, but the others said it would be an insult to the general.

Arrived at Nice, Marcelline entered as a private in the First Regiment of Hussars, which formed part of the division which his father commanded. A mentor was assigned to him, one Pertelay, a type of the hussar of the time. This man's face was divided by an immense scar; he had a long pigtail, moustaches half a foot in length, curled with wax, and losing themselves in his ears, and two wide plaits of hair which descended from his shako to his chest. In order to conform as far as possible to this type, which was that affected by the regiment, the young man was taken to a hairdresser, who rigged him out with false hair for a pigtail, plaits, and moustaches, so as to give him the necessary appearance of ferocity.

There is an interesting account of the Marbots, father and son, on their way to Italy, meeting at Lyons with General Within a few weeks Marcelline was able Bonaparte, then returning from Egypt, to show his quality and to earn promotion. with the full determination to overthrow A detachment of fifty hussars, under the

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shirt, leaving only his breeches, his boots, and his plumed hat. Thus, naked to the waist, he exposed to view a trunk as hairy as that of a bear. Once equipped en bête, clenching his sabre, he rushed on the foe, swearing like a pagan, but he seldom came to close quarters, for the singular and terrible sight of this half-naked giant covered with hair, and who presented himself with yells, so terrified his foes that they flew on all sides, thinking they had to do with a wild beast." Marbot gives illustrations of the extreme ignorance of this man. "It must not be supposed," he adds, "that all the officers in the Army of Italy were like him; it contained in its ranks a great number of men distinguished by their education and their manners; but at this time it also included some chiefs who were very much out of place in the superior ranks. They were weeded out by degrees."

command of a lieutenant, was ordered to traordinary bravery — when about to make reconnoitre a certain district. The lieu- a charge at the head of the cavalry, was tenant met with an accident by the fall of accustomed s'habiller en bête, as he called his horse, and was unable to proceed. it. He divested himself of his coat and Sergeant Canon, who then took command, remained behind at a drink-shop, complaining of illness. The men then chose young Marbot as their leader. Under his command they surprised a hundred Austrian hussars, took seventeen of them prisoners, and escaped with great difficulty from a large force of Austrians. On their return they found Canon asleep at the drink-shop, with an enormous ham before him and two empty wine bottles. On reporting themselves to General Serras he began to abuse Canon, when Pertelay exclaimed: "Do not blame him, general, he is such a coward that if he had led us the expedition would never have succeeded." The general broke Canon on the spot, took his stripes from him in the presence of the regiment, and made Marbot sergeant in his place, without even suspecting that he was the son of the general commanding one of the divisions of the army. A month later Marbot was engaged in another affair, in which thirty hussars, led by a younger brother of Pertelay, surprised a battery of Austrian artillery, and carried off six guns. One-third of the men engaged were killed or wounded. General Championnet, who commanded in chief, was so delighted with their action that he availed himself of a recent decree of the first consul, and awarded three swords of honor, carrying with them after a time the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and a commission as sub-lieutenant, to the detachment, allowing them to chose themselves who should receive these rewards. Their leader having been killed, they unanimously selected Marbot, who was nominated sub-lieutenant in December, 1799.

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Marbot, having got his commission, became aide-de-camp to his father. The army shortly after retreated, under Masséna, to Genoa, and there underwent one of the most terrible sieges of modern times. In the course of it General Marbot was severely wounded, and later died of fever in his son's arms. The sufferings of the army and of the inhabitants were very great. Masséna maintained order only by enforcing the most rigid discipline. Any officer who did not punctually execute orders was broken without pity, by virtue of powers then conferred on commanders-in-chief. Marbot gives an illustration in the case of a Colonel Sarcleux, who failed to bring his regiment into position at the appointed time, and was the cause of the failure of a sortie which the marshal had planned. marshal deprived him of his command, and announced it in an order of the day. Sarcleux would have shot himself if he could have re-established his honor by so doing. Instead of this he shouldered a musket and took his place in the ranks of the regiment he had commanded.

The

Marbot, after the death of his father,

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