The paltry gaoler (1) and the prying spy,

The staring stranger with his note-book nigh? (2)
Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great;
How low, how little, was this middle state,
Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,-my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime!
And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's ap-
plause. (3)

But smile—though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind:
Smile-for the fetter'd eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again. (4)
IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must he smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was or sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound?
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape;
How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,

Refusing one poor line along the lid,
To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:
The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust,
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.
But what are these to him? Can glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Nought if he sleeps-nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,
As if his ashes found their latest home
In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.
He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant;
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;

Or carried onward in the battle's van,

To form, like Guesclin's (5) dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is-the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum.(6)
V.

O heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
O earth! of which he was a noble creature;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights!

Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast, Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Cæsar's deeds outdone!

(1) Sir Hudson Lowe.-E.

(2) Captain Basil Hall's interesting account of his interview with the ex-emperor occurs in his Voyage to Loo-choo.-E.

to have lost moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the
spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lordships. An
overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply involving, not
merely the personal character of the governor, but the honour of
the nation, and the important interest committed to his charge,
should not have been reserved in your own breast for two years,
to be produced at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of
public duty, but in furtherance of your own personal hostil ty
against the governor. Either the charge is in the last degree
false and calumnious, or you can have no possible excuse for
having hitherto suppressed it. In either case, and, without ad-
verting to the general tenour of your conduct, as stated in your
letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person to con-
tinue in his Majesty's service; and they have directed your name
to be erased from the list of naval surgeons accordingly."-E.
(4) Bonaparte died the 5th of May, 1821.-E.

(3) The circumstances under which Mr. O'Meara's dismissal from his Majesty's service took place will suffice to show how little "the stiff surgeon" merited the applause of Lord Byron. In a letter to the Admiralty Board by Mr. O'M., dated Oct. 28, 1818, there occurred the following paragraph:-"In the third interview which Sir Hudson Lowe had with Napoleon Bonaparte, in May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to send me away, and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers. Failing in this attempt, he adopted the resolution of manifesting great confidence in me, by loading me with civilities, inviting me constantly to dine with him, conversing for hours together with me alone, both in his own house and grounds, and at Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occasions he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte: of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was peculiarly distressing to me." The Secretary to the Admiralty was in-pectfully laid the keys of the fortress on the bier, so that it might structed to answer in these terms:-"It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey; and my Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood: but if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not

(5) Guesclin, constable of France, died in the midst of his triumphs, before Châteauneuf de Randon, in 1380. The English garrison, which had conditioned to surrender at a certain time, marched out the day after his death: and the commander res

appear to have surrendered to his ashes.

(6) John Ziska-a distinguished leader of the Hussites. It is recorded of him, that, in dying, he ordered his skin to be made the covering of a drum. The Bohemians hold his memory in su perstitious veneration.-E.

Alas! why pass'd ne too the Rubicon-
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their Pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood; (1)
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren sand
To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared, to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!-Frederics but in name
And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame;
Who crush'd at Jena, crouch'd at Berlin, fell
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel pass'd,
But left thee, as he found thee, still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear-
Kosciusko! On-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar.
The half-barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 't is a sun that sets!
Moscow ! thou limit of his long career,

For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain he saw thee-how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

To this the soldier lent his kindling match,
To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall-and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanos! Etna's flame

Thou other element! all strong and stern,
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!—
Whose icy wing flapp'd o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang
Pierce, till hosts perish'd with a single pang!
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks!
In vain shall France recall beneath her vines
Her youth their blood flows faster than her wines;
Or stagnant in their human ice remains
In frozen mummies on the Polar plains.
In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken
Her offspring chill'd; its beans are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gather'd from the war,
What shall return?—the conqueror's broken car!
The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain.
Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory, (2)
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die:
Dresden surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign,-sovereign as before;
But there exhausted Fortune quits the field,
And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield;
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side

To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide;
And backward to the den of his despair
The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!
Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh France! who found
Thy long fair fields, plough'd up as hostile ground,
Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still
His only victor, from Montmartre's hill
Look'd down o'er trampled Paris! and thou Isle,(3)'
Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
Thou momentary shelter of his pride,

Till woo'd by danger, his yet weeping bride!
Oh, France! retaken by a single march,
Whose path was through one long triumphal arch!
Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!
Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won half by blunder, half by treachery:
Oh, dull Saint Helen! with thy gaoler nigh

Pales, before thine, and quenchless Hecla's tame; Hear! hear Prometheus (4) from his rock appeal

Vesuvius shows his blaze, a usual sight

For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height:
Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd till the fire

To come, in which all empires shall expire!

(1) At the battle of the Pyramids, in July, 1798, Bonaparte said, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty ages behold you."-E.

(2) Gustavus Adolphus fell at the great battle of Lutzen, in November, 1632.-E.

(3) The Isle of Elba.-E.

(4) I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in Eschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the arrival of the Chorus of Sea-Nymphs.

"Etherial air, and, ye swift-winged winds;

Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves,

To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel
His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year;

He teaches them the lesson taught so long,

The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reap'd, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerrage;
The Zegri, and the captive victors, flung
Back to the barbarous realm from whence they
sprung.

But these are gone their faith, their swords, their
Yet left more anti-christian foes than they: [sway,
The bigot monarch and the butcher priest,
The inquisition, with her burning feast,
The faith's red "auto," fed with human fuel,
While sate the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,

That fiery festival of agony!

The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both

The unerring rifle of the Catalan ;
The Andalusian courser in the van;
The torch to make a Moscow of Madrid;
And in each heart the spirit of the Cid :—
Such have been, such shall be, such are. Advance,
And win-not Spain, but thine own freedom,
France!

VILL

But lo! a Congress! (4) What! that hallow'd name
Which freed the Atlantic? May we hope the same
For outworn Europe? With the sound arise
Like Samuel's shade to Saul's monarchic eyes,
The prophets of young Freedom, summon'd far
From climes of Washington and Bolivar;
Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas; (5)
And stoic Franklin's energetic shade,

By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth: Robed in the lightnings which his hand allay'd ;

The long degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm ;
The once impervious phalanx disarray'd;
The idle forge that form'd Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flow'd on every shore,
Save hers who earn'd it with the natives' gore;
The very language, which might vie with Rome's,
And once was known to nations like their homes,
Neglected or forgotten:-such was Spain;
But such she is not, nor shall be again.
These worst, these home invaders, felt and feel
The new Numantine soul of old Castile.
Up! up again! undaunted Tauridor!
The bull of Phalaris renews his roar;
Mount, chivalrous Hidalgo! not in vain
Revive the cry-"Iago! and close Spain !" (1)
Yes, close her with your armed bosoms round,
And form the barrier which Napoleon found,-
The exterminating war, the desert plain,
The streets without a tenant, save the slain;
The wild sierra, with its wilder troop
Of vulture-plumed guerillas, on the stoop
For their incessant prey; the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade; (2)
The knife of Arragon, (3) Toledo's steel;
The famous lance of chivalrous Castile;

(1) "Santiago y cierra Espana!" the old Spanish warcry. (2) See Childe Harolde, c. 1. st. 54.

(3) The Arragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French wars. (4) The congress of the Sovereigns of Russia, Austria, Prussia, etc. etc. etc. which assembled at Verona, in the Autumn of 1822. -E.

And Washington, the tyrant-tamer, wake,
To bid us blush for these old chains, or break.
But who compose this senate of the few
That should redeem the many? Who renew
This consecrated name, till now assign'd
To councils held to benefit mankind?
Who now assemble at the holy call?
The blest Alliance, which says three are all!
An earthly trinity! which wears the shape
Of heaven's, as man is mimick'd by the ape.
A pious unity! in purpose one-
To melt three fools to a Napoleon.
Why, Egypt's gods were rational to these;
Their dogs and oxen knew their own degrees,
And, quiet in their kennel or their shed,
Cared little, so that they were duly fed;
But these, more hungry, must have something more,
The power to bark and bite, to toss and gore.
Ah! how much happier were good Æsop's frogs
Than we! for ours are animated logs,
With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,
And crushing nations with a stupid blow:
All dully anxious to leave little work
Unto the revolutionary stork.

IX.

Thrice-blest Verona! since the holy three
With their imperial presence shine on thee;
Honour'd by them, thy treacherous site forgets
The vaunted tomb of all the Capulets;" (6)

Third-" Henry was interrupted with a shout of "Treason! treason!"-but coolly finished the sentence with-" George the Third may profit by their example.”—E.

(6) "I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful-beats even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story, they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact-giving a date (1305), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly-decayed sar

(5) Patrick Henry, of Virginia, a leading member of the Ame-cophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conrican Congress, died in June, 1797. Lord Byron alludes to his famous speech in 1765, in which, on saying, "Cæsar had his Brutus-Charles the First had his Cromwell-and George the

ventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love. I have brought away a few pieces of the