Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small]

O my luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie

ENERAL BONAPARTE made himself as conspicuous by his character and his intellect as by his victories, and the imagination of the French began to be touched by him [1797]. His proclamations to the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were talked of.... A tone of moderation and of dignity pervaded his style, which contrasted with the revolutionary harshness of the civil rulers of France. The warrior spoke in those days like a lawgiver, while the lawgivers expressed themselves with soldier-like violence. General Bonaparte had not executed in his army the decrees against the émigrés. It was said

That's sweetly played in tune.

character could not be defined by the words we are ac

customed to make use of: he was neither kindly nor

As fair thou art, my bonnie lass, violent, neither
So deep in luve am I;

1

gentle nor cruel, after the fashion

And I will luve thee still, my dear, of other men. Such
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt, wi' the sun;

that he loved his I will luve thee still, my dear,

wife, whose character is full of sweetness; it was asserted that he felt the

beauties of Ossian; it was a pleasure to

attribute to him all the generous qualities that form a noble background for extraordinary

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee weel, my only luve!

And fare-thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
"A Red, Red Rose," by Robert Burns

abilities. Such at least was my own mood when I saw him for the first time in Paris. I could find no words with which to reply to him when he came to me to tell me that he had tried to visit my father at Coppet, and that he was sorry to have passed through Switzerland without seeing him. But when I had somewhat recovered from the agitation of admiration, it was followed by a feeling of very marked fear. Bonaparte then had no power; he was thought even to be more or less in danger from the vague suspiciousness of the Directory; so that

a being, so unlike others, could neither excite nor

feel sympathy: he

was more or less than man. His bearing, his mind, his language have the marks of a foreigner's nature

-an advantage the more in subjugating Frenchmen..

Far from being reassured by seeing Bonaparte often, he always intimidated me more and more. I felt vaguely that no emotional feeling could influence him. He regards a human creature as a fact or a thing, but not as an existence like his own. He feels no more hate than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attach

ment to any idea whatsoever would have power to turn him from his path. He has the same devotion to his own interests that a good man has to virtue: if the object were noble, his persistency would be admirable.

to much greater advantage on horseback than on foot; in all ways it is war, and war only, he is fitted for. His manner in society is constrained without being timid; it is disdainful when he is on his guard, and vulgar when he is at ease; his air of disdain suits him best, and so he is not sparing in the use of it. He took pleasure already in the part of embarrassing people by saying disagreeable things: an art which he has since made a system of, as of all other methods of subjugating men by degrading them. -Madame de Stael

When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it-lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!

Every time that I heard him talk I was struck by his superiority; it was of a kind, however, that had no relation to that of men instructed and cultivated by study, or by society, such as England and France possess examples of. But his conversation indicated that quick perception of circumstances the hunter has in pursuing his prey. Sometimes he related the political and military events of his life in a very interesting manner; he had even, in narratives that admitted gaiety, a touch of Italian imagination. Nothing however, could conquer my invincible alienation from what I perceived in him. I saw in his soul a

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair; They shall find real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are! "L'Envoi," by Rudyard Kipling

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

HE most joyful thing I know is the peace, the silence, that one enjoys in the woods or on the tilled lands. One sees a poor, heavily laden creature with a bundle of fagots advancing from a narrow path in the fields. The manner in which this figure comes suddenly before one is a momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human life, toil. On the tilled land around, one watches figures hoeing and digging. One sees how this or that one rises and wipes away the sweat with the back of his hand. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Is that merry, enlivening work? And yet it is here that I find the true humanity, the great poetry.

[ocr errors]

-Jean Francois Millet.

[graphic]

ND now, having seen a great military march through a friendly country, the pomps and festivities of more than one German court, the severe struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the triumph of victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops entering the enemy's territory and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised; you pretty maidens that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call you, and huzza for the British Grenadiersdo you take account that these items go to make up the amount of triumph you admire, and form part of the duties of the heroes you fondle?

Our chief (the Duke of Marlborough), whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped almost, had this of the god-like in him: that he was impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid, of an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing corpses round about him-he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness

always and having no more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy's officers say the prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury: his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of the hunt. Our duke was as calm at the mouth of a cannon as at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was had he had a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. He achieved the highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he performed the very meanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature. His qualities were pretty well-known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured-for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as his instruments, alike, and took something of theirs, either some quality or some property: the blood of a soldier, it might be, or a jeweled hat or a hundred thousand crowns from the king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three farthings; or when he was young, a kiss from a woman, and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either.

Not that he had no tears, he could always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoeblack, and he would

flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion-but yet those of the army who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his will made them irresistible. After the great victory of Blenheim, the enthusiasm of the army for the duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a sort of rage: nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts were among the most frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of admiration to such a victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a man may profess to be ever so much a philosopher, but he who fought on that day must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it.

-William M. Thackeray.

Soft is the music that would charm forever.-William Wordsworth.

HERE is, finally, a philosophic piety which has the universe for its object. This feeling, common to ancient and

doing things, not wholly rational nor ideally best, but patient, fatal, and fruitful. Great is this organism of mud and fire, terrible this vast, painful, glorious experiment. Why should we not look on the universe with piety? Is it not our substance? Are we made of other clay? All our possibilities lie from eternity hidden in its bosom. It is the dispenser of all our joys. We may address it without superstitious terrors; it is not wicked. It follows its own habits abstractedly; it can be trusted to be true to its word. Society is not impossible between it and us, and since it is the source of all our energies, the home of all our happiness, shall we not cling to it and praise it, seeing that it vegetates so grandly and so sadly, and that it is not for us to blame it for what, doubtless, it never knew that it did?-George Santayana.

Industry, economy, honesty and kindness form a quartette of virtues that will never be improved upon.-James Oliver.

HE main thing about a book is not

in what it says, but in what it asks and suggests. The interrogation-point is the accusing finger of orthodoxy, which would rather be denounced than questioned.-Horace Traubel.,

modern Stoics, has an obvious justifica-Y philosophy makes life the system

tion in man's dependence upon the natural world and in its service to many sides of the mind. Such justification of cosmic piety is rather obscured than supported by the euphemisms and ambiguities in which these philosophers usually indulge in their attempt to preserve the customary religious unction For the more they personify the universe and give it the name of God the more they turn it into a devil. The universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive. If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror, and amusement, so magnificent is that spirit, so prolific, inexorable, grammatical, and dull. Like all animals and plants, the cosmos has its own way of

of feelings and desires-supreme; and leaves knowledge merely the post of observer. This system of feelings is a fact in our minds about which there can be no dispute, a fact of which we have intuitive knowledge, a knowledge not inferred by arguments, nor generated by reasonings which can be received or neglected as we choose. Only such faceto-face knowledge has reality. It alone can get life in motion, since it springs from life.-Fichte.

[blocks in formation]
[graphic]

T had been part of Nelson's prayer, that the British fleet might be distinguished by humanity in the victory which he expected. Setting an example himself, he twice gave orders to cease firing on the Redoubtable, supposing that she had struck, because her guns were silent; for, as she carried no flag there was no means of instantly ascertaining the fact From this

ship, which he had thus twice spared, he received his death. A ball fired from her mizzentop, which, in the then situation of the two vessels, was not more than fifteen yards from that part of the deck where he was standing, struck the epaulet on his left shoulder, about a quarter after one, just in the heat of action. He fell upon his face, on the spot which was covered with his poor secretary's blood. Hardy, who was a few steps from him, turning round, saw three men raising him up "They have done for me at last, Hardy," said he." I

[ocr errors]

crew, he took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars. Had he but concealed these badges of honor from the enemy, England perhaps would not have had cause to receive with sorrow the news of the battle of Trafalgar. The cockpit was crowded with wounded

What is this, the sound and rumor?
What is this that all men hear,
Like the wind in hollow valleys when
the storm is drawing near,
Like the rolling on of the ocean in the
eventide of fear?

'Tis the people marching on.
Whither go they, and whence come they?
What are these of whom ye tell?
In what country are they dwelling 'twixt
the gates of heaven and hell?
Are they mine or thine for money? Will
they serve a master well?

Still the rumor's marching on.
Hark the rolling of the thunder?
Lo, the sun! and lo, thereunder
Riseth wrath and hope and wonder,
And the host comes marching on.

Forth they come from grief and torment;
on they wend towards health and
mirth,

All the wide world is their dwelling,
every corner of the earth,
Buy them, sell them for thy service!
Try the bargain what 'tis worth,
For the days are marching on.
These are they who build thy houses,
weave thy raiment, win thy wheat,
Smooth the rugged, fill the barren, turn
the bitter into sweet,

and dyingmen; over whose bodies he

was with some diffi

culty conveyed, and laid upon a pallet in the midshipmen's berth

It was soon perceived, upon examination, that the wound was mortal. This, however, was

concealed from all except Captain lain, and the mediHardy, the chapcal attendants. He himself being certain, from the sensation in his back, and the gush of blood he felt momentarily within his breast, that no human care could avail him, insisted that the surgeon should leave him, and attend to those to whom he might be useful; "for," said he, "you can do nothing for me." All that could be done was to fan him with paper, and frequently to give him lemonade to alleviate his intense thirst. He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the action, which now began to declare itself. As often as a ship struck, the crew of the Victory hurrahed; and at every hurrah a visible expression of joy gleamed in the eyes and marked the countenance of the dying hero. But he became impatient to see Hardy; and as that officer

All for thee this day-and ever. What
reward for them is meet

Till the host comes marching on?
(Concluded on next page)

hope not," cried Hardy. "Yes," he replied;" my backbone is shot through." Yet even now, not for a moment losing his presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down the ladder, that the tiller ropes, which had been shot away, were not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove immediately: then, that he might not be seen by the

« PreviousContinue »