light beginning to gleam up from within. They with simoom blast over the cities and the villages ran in and found that the lantern had fallen down, of France. Conflagrations had laid the palaces and that the straw was all in a blaze. They im- of the wealthy in ruins, and the green lawns mediately began to tread upon the fire and try to where their children had played, had been crimput it out, but the instant that they did so they soned with the blood of fathers and sons, mothers were all thunderstruck by the appearance of a and daughters. A gigantic system of robbery fourth person, who came rushing in among them had seized upon houses and lands and every spefrom the outside. They all screamed out with cies of property and had turned thousands of the terror and ran. Rodolphus separated from the opulent out into destitution, beggary, and death. rest and crouched down a moment behind the Pollution had been legalized by the voice of Godstone wall, but immediately afterward, feeling defying lust, and France, la belle France, had that there would be no safety for him here, he been converted into a disgusting warehouse of set off again and ran across some back fields and infamy. Law, with suicidal hand, had destroyed gardens, in the direction toward Mr. Kerber's. itself, and the decisions of the legislature swayHe looked back occasionally and found that the ed to and fro, in accordance with the hideous light was rapidly increasing. Presently he be- clamors of the mob. The guillotine, with gutters gan to hear cries of fire. He ran on till he reach-ever clotted with human gore, was the only ared the house; he scrambled over the fences into gument which anarchy condescended to use. the back yard, climbed up upon a shed, crept Effectually it silenced every remonstrating tongue. along under the chimneys to the window of his Constitution after constitution had risen, like room, got in as fast as he could, undressed him- | mushrooms, in a night, and like mushrooms had self and went to bed, and had just drawn the perished in a day. Civil war was raging with clothes up over him, when he heard a loud knock-bloodhound fury in France, Monarchists and Jaing at the door, and Mrs. Kerber's voice outside, cobins grappling each other infuriate with decalling out to him, that there was a cry of fire spair. The allied kings of Europe, who by their in the village, and that he must get up quick as alliance had fanned these flames of rage and ruin, possible and help put it out. were gazing with terror upon the portentous prodigy, and were surrounding France with their navies and their armies.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.*

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

THE RETURN FROM EGYPT.

THE Expedition to Egypt was one of the most magnificent enterprises which human ambition ever conceived. The Return to France combines still more, if possible, of the elements of the moral sublime. But for the disastrous destruction of the French fleet the plans of Napoleon, in reference to the East, would probably have been triumphantly successful. At least it can not be doubted that a vast change would have been effected throughout the Eastern world. Those plans were now hopeless. The army was isolated, and cut off from all reinforcements and all supplies. The best thing which Napoleon could do for his troops in Egypt was to return to France, and exert his personal influence in sending them succor. His return involved the continuance of the most honorable devotion to those soldiers whom he necessarily left behind him. The secrecy of his departure was essential to its success. Had the bold attempt been suspected, it would certainly have been frustrated by the increased vigilance of the English cruisers. The intrepidity of the enterprise must elicit universal admiration.

The people had been enslaved for centuries by the king and the nobles. Their oppression had been execrable, and it had become absolutely unendurable. "We, the millions," they exclaimed in their rage, "will no longer minister to your voluptuousness, and pride, and lust." "You shall, you insolent dogs," exclaimed king and nobles, "we heed not your barking." "You shall," reiterated the Pope, in the portentous thunderings of the Vatican. "You shall," came echoed back from the palaces of Vienna, from the dome of the Kremlin, from the seraglio of the Turk, and, in tones deeper, stronger, more resolute, from constitutional, liberty-loving, happy England. Then was France a volcano, and its lava-streams deluged Europe. The people were desperate. In the blind fury of their frenzied self-defense they lost all consideration. The castles of the nobles were but the monuments of past taxation and servitude. With yells of hatred the infuriated populace razed them to the ground. The palaces of the kings, where, for uncounted centuries, dissolute monarchs had reveled in enervating and heaven-forbidden pleasures, were but national badges of the bondage of the people. The indignant throng swept through them, like a Mississippi inundation, leav ing upon marble floors, and cartooned walls and ceilings, the impress of their rage. At one bound France had passed from despotism to anarchy. The kingly tyrant, with golden crown and iron sceptre, surrounded by wealthy nobles and dissolute beauties, had disappeared, and a manyheaded monster, rapacious and blood-thirsty, * Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year vulgar and revolting, had emerged from mines 1852, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the and workshops and the cellars of vice and penury, like one of the spectres of fairy tales to £3

Contemplate, for a moment, the moral aspects of this undertaking. A nation of thirty millions of people, had been for ten years agitated by the most terrible convulsions. There is no atrocity, which the tongue can name, which had not desolated the doomed land. Every passion which can degrade the heart of fallen man, had swept

District Court of the Southern District of New York.

his place. France had passed from Monarchy, | and lost in thought, for a long time walked the not to healthy Republicanism, but to Jacobinism, to the reign of the mob. Napoleon utterly abhorred the tyranny of the king. He also utterly abhorred the despotism of vulgar, violent, sanguinary Jacobin misrule. The latter he regarded with even far deeper repugnance than the former. "I frankly confess," said Napoleon, again and again, "that if I must choose between Bourbon oppression, and mob violence, I infinitely prefer the former.

quarter deck of the ship, gazing upon the low outline of Egypt as, in the dim starlight, it faded away. His companions were intoxicated with delight, in view of again returning to France. Napoleon was neither elated nor depressed. Serene and silent he communed with himself, and whenever we can catch a glimpse of those secret communings we find them always bearing the impress of grandeur. Though Napoleon was in the habit of visiting the soldiers at their camp fires, of sitting down and conversing with them with the greatest freedom and familiarity, the majesty of his character overawed his officers, and adoration and reserve blended with their love. Though there was no haughtiness in his demeanor, he habitually dwelt in a region of ele

Such had been the state of France, essentially, for nearly ten years. The great mass of the people were exhausted with suffering, and longed for repose. The land was filled with plots and counterplots. But there was no one man of sufficient prominence to carry with him the nation. The government was despised and disregarded. | vation above them all. Their talk was of cards, France was in a state of chaotic ruin. Many voices here and there, began to inquire "Where is Bonaparte, the conqueror of Italy, the conqueror of Egypt? He alone can save us." His world-wide renown turned the eyes of the nation to him as their only hope.

of wine, of pretty women. Napoleon's thoughts were of empire, of renown, of moulding the destinies of nations. They regarded him not as a companion, but as a master, whose wishes they loved to anticipate; for he would surely guide them to wealth, and fame, and fortune. He contemplated them, not as equals and confiding friends, but as efficient and valuable instruments for the accomplishment of his purposes. Murat was to Napoleon a body of ten thousand horsemen, ever ready for a resistless charge. Lannes was a phalanx of infantry, bristling with bayonets, which neither artillery nor cavalry could

column of invincible troops, black, dense, massy, impetuous, resistless, moving with gigantic tread wherever the finger of the conqueror pointed. These were but the members of Napoleon's body, the limbs obedient to the mighty soul which swayed them. They were not the companions of his thoughts, they were only the servants of his will. The number to be found with whom the soul of Napoleon could dwell in sympathetic friendship was few-very few.

Under these circumstances Napoleon, then a young man but twenty-nine years of age, and who, but three years before, had been unknown to fame or to fortune, resolved to return to France, to overthrow the miserable government, by which the country was disgraced, to subdue anarchy at home and aggression from abroad, and to rescue thirty millions of people from ruin. The enter-batter down or break. Augereau was an armed prise was undeniably magnificent in its grandeur and noble in its object. He had two foes to encounter, each formidable, the royalists of combined Europe and the mob of Paris. The quiet and undoubting self-confidence with which he entered upon this enterprise, is one of the most remarkable events in the whole of his extraordinary career. He took with him no armies to hew down opposition. He engaged in no deeplaid and wide-spread conspiracy. Relying upon the energies of his own mind, and upon the sympathies of the great mass of the people, he went alone, with but one or two companions, to whom he revealed not his thoughts, to gather into his hands the scattered reins of power. Never did he encounter more fearful peril. The cruisers of England, Russia, Turkey, of allied Europe in arms against France, thronged the Mediterranean. How could he hope to escape them? The guilloţine was red with blood. Every one who had dared to oppose the mob had perished upon it. How could Napoleon venture, single-handed, to beard this terrible lion in his den?

It was ten o'clock at night, the 22d of August, 1799, when Napoleon ascended the sides of the frigate Muiron, to sail for France. A few of his faithful Guards, and eight companions, either officers in the army or members of the scientific corps, accompanied him. There were five hundred soldiers on board the ships. The stars shone brightly in the Syrian sky, and under their soft light the blue waves of the Mediterranean lay spread out most peacefully before them. The frigates unfurled their sails. Napoleon, silent VOL. IV.-No. 23.—P p

Napoleon had formed a very low estimate of human nature, and consequently made great allowance for the infirmities incident to humanity. Bourrienne reports him as saying, “Friendship is but a name. I love no one; no, not even my brothers. Joseph perhaps a little. And if I do love him, it is from habit, and because he is my elder. Duroc! Ah, yes! I love him too. But why? His character pleases me. He is cold, reserved, and resolute, and I really believe that he never shed a tear. As to myself, I know well that I have not one true friend. As long as I continue what I am, I may have as many pretended friends as I please. We must leave sensibility to the women. It is their business. Men should be firm in heart and in purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war or government. I am not amiable. No; I am not amiable. I never have been. But I am just."

In another mood of mind, more tender, more subdued, he remarked, at St. Helena, in reply to Las Casas, who with great severity was condemning those who abandoned Napoleon in his hour of adversity: “You are not acquainted with