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realm for his exuberant imagination to range. | surpass the fictions of romance.
It was the theatre, as he eloquently said, "of
mighty empires, where all the great revolutions
of the earth have arisen, where mind had its birth,
and all religions their cradle, and where six hun-
dred millions of men still have their dwelling-
place."

Napoleon left Rastadt, and traveling incognito through France, arrived in Paris the 7th of December, 1797, having been absent but about eighteen months. His arrival had been awaited with the most intense impatience. The enthusiasm of that most enthusiastic capital had been excited to the highest pitch. The whole population were burning with the desire to see the youthful hero whose achievements seemed to

But Napoleoni was nowhere visible. A strange mystery seemed to envelop him. He studiously avoided observation; very seldom made his appearance at any place of public amusement; dressed like the most unobtrusive private citizen, and glided unknown through the crowd, whose enthusiasm was roused to the highest pitch to get a sight of the hero. He took a small house in the Rue Chanteraine, which street immediately received the name of Rue de la Victoire, in honor of Napoleon. He sought only the society of men of high intellectual and scientific attainments. In this course he displayed a profound knowledge of human nature, and vastly enhanced public curiosity by avoiding its gratification.

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The Directory, very jealous of Napoleon's popularity, yet impelled by the voice of the people, now prepared a triumphal festival for the delivery of the treaty of Campo Formio. The magnificent court of the Luxembourg was arranged and decorated for this gorgeous show. At the further end of the court a large platform was raised, where the five Directors were seated, Jressed in the costume of the Roman Senate, at the foot of the altar of their country. Embassadors, ministers, magistrates, and the members of the two councils were assembled on seats ranged amphitheatrically around. Vast galleries were crowded with all that was illustrious in rank, beauty, and character in the metropolis. Magnificent trophies, composed of the banners taken from the enemy, embellished the court, while the surrounding walls were draped with festoons of tri-colored tapestry. Bands of music filled the air with martial sounds, while the very walls of Paris were shaken by the thunders of exploding artillery and by the acclamations of the countless thousands who thronged the court.

It was the 10th of December, 1797. A bright sun shone through cloudless skies upon the resplendent scene. Napoleon had been in Paris but five days. Few of the citizens had as yet been favored with a sight of the hero, whom all were impatient to behold. At last a great flour ish of trumpets announced his approach. He ascended the platform dressed in the utmost simplicity of a civilian's costume, accompanied by Talleyrand, and his aids-de-camp, all gorgeously dressed, and much taller men than himself, but evidently regarding him with the most profound homage. The contrast was most striking. Every eye was riveted upon Napoleon. The thunder of the cannon was drowned in the still louder thunder of enthusiastic acclamations which simultaneously arose from the whole assemblage. The fountains of human emotion were never more deeply moved. The graceful delicacy of his fragile figure, his remarkably youthful appearance, his pale and wasted cheeks, the classic outline of his finely moulded features, the indescribable air of pensiveness and self-forgetfulness which

a life, so illustrious, by a conquest which the great nation owes to its outraged dignity. Go, and by the punishment of the cabinet of London, strike terror into the hearts of all who would miscalculate the powers of a free people. Let the conquerors of the Po, the Rhine, and the Ti

be proud to bear them. It is a slave still indignant who blushes for his fetters. Hardly will the tri-colored standard wave on the blood-stained shores of the Thames, ere an unanimous cry will bless your arrival, and that generous nation will receive you as its liberator." Chenier's famous Hymn to Liberty was then sung in full chorus, accompanied by a magnificent orchestra. In the ungovernable enthusiasm of the moment the five Directors arose and encircled Napoleon in their arms. The blast of trumpets, the peal of martial bands, the thunder of cannon, and the acclamations of the countless multitude rent the air. Says Thiers, "All heads were overcome with the intoxication. Thus it was that France threw herself into the hands of an extraordinary man. Let us not censure the weakness of our fathers. That glory reaches us only through the clouds of time and adversity, and yet it transports us! Let us say with Eschylus, 'How would it have been had we seen the monster himself!""

he ever carried with him, and all associated with | parte. Go," said he turning to Napoleon, "crown his most extraordinary achievements, aroused an intensity of enthusiastic emotion which has perhaps never been surpassed. No one who witnessed the scenes of that day ever forgot them. Talleyrand introduced the hero in a brief and eloquent speech. "For a moment," said he, in conclusion, "I did feel on his account that dis-ber, march under your banners. The ocean will quietude which, in an infant republic, arises from every thing which seems to destroy the equality of the citizens. But I was wrong. Individual grandeur, far from being dangerous to equality, is its highest triumph. And on this occasion every Frenchman must feel himself elevated by the hero of his country. And when I reflect upon all which he has done to shroud from envy that light of glory; on that ancient love of simplicity which distinguishes him in his favorite studies; his love for the abstract sciences; his admiration for that sublime Ossian which seems to detach him from the world; on his well known contempt for luxury, for pomp, for all that constitutes the pride of ignoble minds, I am convinced that, far from dreading his ambition, we shall one day have occasion to rouse it anew to allure him from the sweets of studious retirement." Napoleon, apparently quite unmoved by this unbounded applause, and as calm and unembarrassed as if speaking to an under-officer in his tent, thus briefly replied: "Citizens! The French people, in order to be free, had kings to combat. To obtain a constitution founded on reason it had the prejudices of eighteen centuries to overcome. Priestcraft, feudalism, despotism, have successively, for two thousand years, governed Europe. From the peace you have just concluded dates the era of representative governments You have succeeded in organizing the great nation, whose vast territory is circumscribed only because nature herself has fixed its limits. You have done more. The two finest countries in Europe, formerly so renowned for the arts, the sciences, and the illustrious men whose cradle they were, see with the greatest hopes genius and freedom issuing from the tomb of their ancestors. I have the honor to deliver to you the treaty signed at Campo Formio, and ratified by the emperor. Peace secures the liberty, the prosperity, and the glory of the Republic. As soon as the happiness of France is secured by the best organic laws, the whole of Europe will be free."

Napoleon's powers of conversation were inimitable. There was a peculiarity in every phrase he uttered which bore the impress of originality and genius. He fascinated every one who approached him. He never spoke of his own achievements, but in most lucid and dramatic recitals often portrayed the bravery of the army and the heroic exploits of his generals.

He was now elected a member of the celebrated Institute, a society composed of the most illustrious literary and scientific men in France. He eagerly accepted the invitation, and returned the following answer. "The suffrages of the distinguished men who compose the Institute honor me. I feel sensibly that before I can become their equal I must long be their pupil. The only true conquests-those which aken no regret-are those obtained over ignorance. The most honorable, as the most useful pursuit of nations, is that which contributes to the extension of human intellect. The real greatness of the French Republic ought henceforth to consist The moment Napoleon began to speak the in the acquisition of the whole sum of human most profound silence reigned throughout the knowledge, and in not allowing a single new assembly. The desire to hear his voice was so idea to exist, which does not owe its birth to intense, that hardly did the audience venture to their exertions." He laid aside entirely the dress move a limb or to breathe, while in tones, calm of a soldier, and, constantly attending the meetand clear, he addressed them. The moment he ings of the Institute, as a philosopher and a scholceased speaking, a wild burst of enthusiasm filled ar became one of its brightest ornaments. His the air. The most unimpassioned lost their self- comprehensive mind enabled him at once to control. Shouts of " Live Napoleon the conquer- grasp any subject to which he turned his attenor of Italy, the pacificator of Europe, the saviour tion. In one hour he would make himself masof France," resounded loud and long. Barras, ter of the accumulated learning to which others in the name of the Directory, replied, “Nature,” | had devoted the labor of years. He immediately, exclaimed the orator in his enthusiasm, "has ex- as a literary man, assumed almost as marked a hausted her energies in the production of a Bona- pre-eminence among these distinguished scholars,

as he had already acquired as a general on fields of blood. Apparently forgetting the renown he had already attained, with boundless ambition he pressed on to still greater achievements, deeming nothing accomplished while any thing remained to be done. Subsequently he referred to his course at this time and remarked, "Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual qualities, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing, I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer in the army."

A strong effort was made at this time, by the royalists, for the restoration of the Bourbons. Napoleon, while he despised the inefficient government of the Directory, was by no means willing that the despotic Bourbons should crush the spirit of liberty in France. Napoleon was not adverse to a monarchy. But he wished for a monarch who would consult the interests of the people, and not merely pamper the luxury and pride of the nobles. He formed the plan and guided the energies which discomfited the royalists, and sustained the Directors. Thus twice had the strong arm of this young man protected the government. The Directors, in their multiplied perplexities, often urged his presence in their councils, to advise with them on difficult questions. Quiet and reserved he would take his seat at their table, and by that superiority of tact which ever distinguished him, and by that intellectual pre-eminence which could not be questioned, he assumed a moral position far above them all, and guided those gray-haired diplomatists, as a father guides his children. Whenever he entered their presence, he instinctively assumed the supremacy, and it was instinctively recognized.

The altars of religion, overthrown by revolutionary violence, still remained prostrate. The churches were closed, the Sabbath abolished, the sacraments were unknown, the priests were in exile. A whole generation had grown up in France without any knowledge of Christianity. Corruption was universal. A new sect sprang up called Theophilanthropists, who gleaned, as the basis of their system, some of the moral precepts of the gospel, divested of the sublime sanctions of Christianity. They soon, however, found that it is not by flowers of rhetoric, and smoothflowing verses, and poetic rhapsodies upon the beauty of love and charity, of rivulets and skies, that the stern heart of man can be controlled. Leviathan is not so tamed. Man, exposed to temptations which rive his soul, trembling upon the brink of fearful calamities, and glowing with irrepressible desires, can only be allured and overawed when the voice of love and mercy, blends with Sinai's thunders. "There was frequently," says the Duchess of Abrantes, "so much truth in the moral virtues which this new sect inculcated, that if the Evangelists had not said the same things much better, eighteen hun

dred years before them, one might have been tempted to embrace their opinions."

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Napoleon took a correct view of these enthusiasts. They can accomplish nothing," said he, "they are merely actors." How!" it was replied, “do you thus stigmatize those whose tenets inculcate universal benevolence and the moral virtues?” "All systems of morality," Napoleon rejoined, "are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer. Such enthusiasts are only to be encountered by the weapons of ridicule. All their efforts will prove ineffectual."

Republican France was now at peace with all the world, England alone excepted. The English government still waged unrelenting war against the Republic, and strained every nerve to rouse the monarchies of Europe again to combine to force a detested dynasty upon the French people. The British navy, in its invincibility, had almost annihilated the commerce of France. In their ocean-guarded isle, safe from the ravages of war themselves, their fleet could extend those ravages to all shores. The Directory raised an army for the invasion of England, and gave to Napoleon the command. Drawing the sword, not of aggression but of defense, he immediately proceeded to a survey of the French coast, opposite to England, and to form his judgment respecting the feasibility of the majestic enterprise. Taking three of his generals in his carriage, he passed eight days in this tour of observation. With great energy and tact he immediately made himself familiar with every thing which could aid him in coming to a decision. He surveyed the coast, examined the ships and the fortifications, selected the best points for embarkation, and examined until midnight sailors, pilots, smugglers, and fishermen. He made objections, and carefully weighed their answers. Upon his return to Paris his friend Bourrienne said to him, “Well, gen eral! what do you think of the enterprise? Is it feasible?" "No!" he promptly replied, shaking his head. "It is too hazardous. I will not undertake it. I will not risk on such a stake the fate of our beautiful France." At the same time that he was making this survey of the coast, with his accustomed energy of mind, he was also studying another plan for resisting the assaults of the British government. The idea of attacking England, by the way of Egypt in her East Indian acquisitions, had taken full possession of his imagination. He filled his carriage with all the books he could find in the libraries of Paris, relating to Egypt. With almost miraculous rapidity he explored the pages, treasuring up, in his capacious and retentive memory, every idea of importance. Interlineations and comments on the margin of these books, in his own hand-writing, testify to the indefatigable energy of his mind.

Napoleon was now almost adored by the re-poleon regarded this incessant flow of invective publicans all over Europe, as the great champion of popular rights. The people looked to him as their friend and advocate. In England, in particular, there was a large, influential, and increasing party, dissatisfied with the prerogatives of the crown, and with the exclusive privileges of the nobility, who were never weary of proclaiming the praises of this champion of liberty and equality. The brilliance of his intellect, the purity of his morals, the stoical firmness of his self-endurance, his untiring energy, the glowing eloquence of every sentence which fell from his lips, his youth and feminine stature, and his wondrous achievements, all combined to invest him with a fascination such as no mortal man ever exerted before. The command of the army for the invasion of England was now assigned to Napoleon. He became the prominent and dreaded foe of that great empire. And yet the common people who were to fight the battles almost to a man loved him.

was strikingly grand. "Of all the libels and pamphlets," said Napoleon subsequently, “with which the English ministers have inundated Europe, there is not one which will reach posterity. When I have been asked to cause answers to be written to them, I have uniformly replied, 'My victories and my works of public improvement are the only response which it becomes me to make.' When there shall not be a trace of these libels to be found, the great monuments of utility which I have reared, and the code of laws that I have formed, will descend to the most remote ages, and future historians will avenge the wrongs done me by my contemporaries. There was a time," said he again, "when all crimes seemed to belong to me of right; thus I poisoned Hoche,* I strangled Pichegrut in his cell, I caused Kleber ‡ to be assassinated in Egypt, I blew out Desaix's ( brains at Marengo, I cut the throats of persons who were confined in prison, I dragged the Pope by the hair of his head, and a hundred similar absurdities. As yet," he again said, "I have not seen one of those libels which is worthy of an answer. Would you have me sit down and reply to Goldsmith, Pichon, or the Quarterly Review. They are so contemptible and so absurdly false, that they do not merit any other notice, than to write false, false, on every page. The only truth I have seen in them is, that I one day met an officer, General Rapp, I believe, on the field of battle, with his face begrimed with smoke and covered with blood, and that I exclaimed, 'Oh, comme il est beau! O, how beautiful the sight! This is true enough. And of it they have made a crime. My commendation of the gallantry of a brave soldier, is construed into a proof of my delighting in blood."

The revolutionary government were in the habit of celebrating the 21st of January with great public rejoicing, as the anniversary of the execution of the king. They urged Napoleon to honor the festival by his presence, and to take a conspicuous part in the festivities. He peremp torily declined. "This fête," said he, memorates a melancholy event, a tragedy; and can be agreeable to but few people. It is proper

The throne trembled. The nobles were in consternation. "If we deal fairly and justly with France," Lord Chatham is reported frankly to have avowed, "the English government will not exist for four-and-twenty hours." It was necessary to change public sentiment and to rouse feelings of personal animosity against this powerful antagonist. To render Napoleon unpopular, all the wealth and energies of the government were called into requisition, opening upon him the batteries of ceaseless invective. The English press teemed with the most atrocious and absurd abuse. It is truly amusing, in glancing over the pamphlets of that day, to contemplate the enormity of the vices attributed to him, and their contradictory nature. He was represented as a perfect demon in human form. He was a robber and a miser, plundering the treasuries of nations that he might hoard his countless millions, and he was also a profligate and a spendthrift, squandering upon his lusts the wealth of empires. He was wallowing in licentiousness, his camp a harem of pollution, ridding himself by poison of his concubines as his vagrant desires wandered from them; at the same time he was physically an imbecile-a monster-whom God in his displeasure had deprived of the passions and the powers of healthy manhood. He was an idol whom the who died very suddenly in the army. "Hoche," said entranced people bowed down before and wor-Bonaparte," was one of the first generals that ever France shiped, with more than Oriental servility. He produced. He was brave, intelligent, abounding in talent, was also a sanguinary heartless, merciless butch- decisive, and penetrating." er, exulting in carnage, grinding the bones of his own wounded soldiers into the dust beneath his chariot wheels, and finding congenial music for his depraved and malignant spirit in the shrieks of the mangled and the groans of the dying. To Catholic Ireland he was represented as seizing the venerable Pope by his gray hairs, and thus dragging him over the marble floor of his palace. To Protestant England, on the contrary, he was exhibited as in league with the Pope, whom he treated with the utmost adulation, endeavoring to strengthen the despotism of the sword with the energies of superstition.

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Lazare Hoche, a very distinguished young general,

+ Charles Pichegru, a celebrated French general, who entered into a conspiracy to overthrow the consular gov ernment and restore the Bourbons. He was arrested and conducted to the Temple, where he was one morning found dead in his bed. The physicians, who met on the occasion,

asserted that he had strangled himself with his cravat. "Pichegru," said Napoleon, "instructed me in mathemat ics at Brienne when I was about ten years old. As a general he was a man of no ordinary talent. After he had united himself with the Bourbons, he sacrificed the lives of upward of twenty thousand of his soldiers by throwing them purposely in the enemies' hands, whom he had informed beforehand of his intentions.

General Kleber fell beneath the poinard of an assassin in Egypt, when Napoleon was in Paris.

◊ General Desaix fell, pierced by a bullet, on the field of Marengo. Napoleon deeply deplored his loss, as that The philosophical composure with which Na- of one of his most faithful and devoted friends

one of the neulahs which had suffered the last sentence of the law; but how to get at the young we did not know, unless by digging up the floor, and of this I did not approve. So the little young ones would have perished but for a childish freak of my young daughter. She seated herself before the nest, and imitated the cry of the famished little animals so well, that three wee, hairless, blind creatures crept out, like newly-born rabbits, but with long tails, in the hope of meeting with their lost mamma.

to celebrate victories; but victims left upon the melancholy squeaking which seemed to proceed field of battle are to be lamented. To celebrate from an old rat-hole in one corner. Upon proper the anniversary of a man's death is an act un-investigation this was suspected to be the nest of worthy of a government; it creates more enemies than friends-it estranges instead of conciliating; it irritates instead of calming; it shakes the foundations of government instead of adding to their strength." The ministry urged that it was the custom with all nations to celebrate the downfall of tyrants; and that Napoleon's influence over the public mind was so powerful, that his absence would be regarded as indicative of hostility to the government, and would be highly prejudicial to the interests of the Republic. At last Napoleon consented to attend, as a private member of the Institute, taking no active part in the ceremonies, but merely walking with the members of the class to which he belonged. As soon as the procession entered the Church of St. Sulpice, all eyes were searching for Napoleon. He was soon descried, and every one else was immediately eclipsed. At the close of the ceremony, the air was rent with the shouts, "Long live Napoleon!" The Directory were made exceedingly uneasy by ominous exclamations in the streets, "We will drive away these lawyers, and make the Little Corporal king." These cries wonderfully accelerated the zeal of the Directors, in sending Napoleon to Egypt. And most devoutly did they hope that from that distant land he would never return.

THE

AN INDIAN PET.

HE ichneumon, called in India the neulah, benjee, or mungoos, is known all over that country. I have seen it on the banks of the Ganges, and among the old walls of Jaunpore, Sirhind, and at Loodianah; for, like others of the weasel kind, this little animal delights in places where it can lurk and peep-such as heaps of stones and ruins; and there is no lack of these in old Indian cities.

That the neulah is a fierce, terrible, bloodthirsty, destructive little creature, I experienced to my cost; but notwithstanding all the provocation I received, I was led to become his friend and protector, and so finding him out to be the most charming and amiable pet in the world.

Our hearts immediately warmed toward the little helpless ones, and no one wished to wreak the sins of the parents upon the orphans; and knowing that neulahs were reared as pets, I proposed to my daughter that she should select one for herself, and give the others to two of my serv

ants.

My daughter's protégée, however, was the only one that survived under its new régime; and Jumnie, as she called her nursling, throve well, and soon attained its full size, knowing its name, and endearing itself to every body by its gambols and tricks. She was like the most blithesome of little kittens, and played with our fingers, and frolicked on the sofas, sleeping occasionally behind one of the cushions, and at other times coiling herself up in her own little flannel bed.

In the course of time, however, Jumnie grew up to maturity, being one year old, and formed an attachment for one of her own race—a wild, roving bandit of a neulah, who committed such deeds of atrocity in the fowl-house as to compel us to take up arms again. If she had only made her mistress the confidante of her love!-but, alas! little did we suspect our neulah of a companionship with thieves and assassins; and so leaving her, we thought, to her customary frolics, we marched upon the stronghold of the enemy. Two neulahs appeared, we fired, and one fell, the other running off unscathed. We all hastened to the wounded and bleeding victim, and my little daughter first of all; but how shall I describe her grief when she saw her little Jumnie writhing at her feet in the agonies of death! If I had had the least idea of Jumnie's having formed such an attachment, I should have spared the guilty for the sake of the innocent, and Jumnie might long have lived a favorite pet; but the deed was done.

In my military career (for I was for a long time attached to the army) I was stationed at Jaunpore, and having a house with many conveniences, I took pleasure in rearing poultry; but scarcely a single chicken could be magnified to a hen: the rapacious neulahs, fond of tender meat, way- The neulahs, like other of the weasel kindlaying all my young broods, sucking their blood, and like some animals I know of a loftier species and feasting on their brains. But such devasta-are very rapacious, slaying without reference tions could not be allowed to pass with impunity; so we watched the enemy, and succeeded in shooting several of the offenders, prowling among the hennah or mehendy hedges, where the clucking-hens used to repose in the shade, surrounded by their progeny.

After one of these battues, my little daughter happened to go to the fowl-house in the evening in search of eggs, and was greatly startled by a

to their wants; and Jumnie, although fond of milk, used to delight in livers and brains of fowls, which she relished even after they were dressed for our table.

The natives of India never molest the neulah. They like to see it about their dwellings, on ac count of its snake and rat-killing propensities; and on a similar account it must have been that this creature was deified by the Egyptians, whose

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