were stirring him through and through. That stern intent made his sinews steel, and put an agony of power into every stride. The man never stirred, save sometimes to put a hand to that bloody blanket bandage across his head and temple. He had told his story; he had spoken his errand; he breathed not a word; but with his lean, pallid face set hard, his gentle blue eyes scourged of their kindliness, and fixed upon those distant mountains where his vengeance lay, he rode on like a relentless fate.

The great,

Next in the line I galloped. O my glorious black! killing pace seemed mere playful canter to him, — such as one might ride beside a timid girl, thrilling with her first free dash over a flowery common, or a golden beach between sea and shore. But from time to time he surged a little forward with his great shoulders, and gave a mighty writhe of his body, while his hind legs came lifting his flanks under me, and telling of the giant reserve of speed and power he kept easily controlled. Then his ear would go back, and his large brown eye, with its purple-black pupil, would look round at my bridle-hand and then into my eye, saying, as well as words could have said it, "This is mere sport, my friend and master. You do not know me. I have stuff in me that you do not dream. Say the word, and I can double this, treble it. Say the word! let me show you how I can spurn the earth.” Then, with the lightest pressure on the snaffle, I would say, "Not yet! not yet! Patience, my noble friend! Your time will come." At the left rode Brent, our leader. He knew the region; he made the plan; he had the hope; his was the ruling passion, stronger than brotherhood, than revenge. Love made him leader of that galloping three. His iron-gray went grandly, with white mane flapping the air like a signal-flag of reprieve. Eager hope and kindling purpose made the rider's face more beautiful than ever. He seemed to behold Sidney's motto written on the golden haze before him, "Viam aut inveniam aut feciam." I felt my heart grow great, when I looked at his calm features, and caught his assuring smile, a gay smile but for the dark, fateful resolve beneath it. And when he launched some stirring word of cheer, and shook another ten of seconds out of the gray's mile, even Armstrong's countenance grew less deathly as he turned to our leader in silent response.

So we galloped three abreast, neck and neck, hoof with hoof, steadily quickening our pace over the sere width of desert. We must make the most of the levels. Rougher work, cruel obstacles, were before. All the wild, triumphant music I had ever heard

came and sang in my ears to the flinging cadence of the resonant feet, tramping on hollow arches of the volcanic rock, over great, vacant chasms underneath. Sweet and soft around us melted the hazy air of October, and its warm, flickering currents shook like a veil of gauzy gold between us and the blue bloom of the mountains far away, but nearing now, and lifting step by step. On we galloped, the avenger, the friend, the lover, on our errand to save and to slay.

HE

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

E is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered among us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive — a will, despotic in its dictates - an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell.

Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank and wealth and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest - he acknowledged no criterion but success - he worshipped no God but ambition, and, with an Eastern devotion, he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry.

Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic; and, with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the

name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Cæsars! Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama.

Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory - his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny - ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind - if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmount - space no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity!

The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Skepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplaces in his contemplation; kings were his people - nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chess-board! Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant.

It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawing-room -with the mob or the levee-wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg - dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic - he was still the same military despot!

In this wonderful combination, his affectations of literature

must not be omitted. The jailer of the press, he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy- the persecutor of authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning! Such a medley of contradictions, and, at the same time, such an indi vidual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist a republican and an emperor- a Mohammedan a Catholic and a patron of the synagogue- -a subaltern and a sovereign a traitor and a tyrant—a Christian and an infidel — he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original - the same mysterious, incomprehensible self - the man without a model, and without a shadow.

S

EXTRACT FROM THANATOPSIS.

Ο live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

A

THE LESSON.

TEACHER sat in a pleasant room,

In the waning light alone;

Her head was bowed in anxious thought:

With the work and care the day had brought,

She had faint and weary grown.

And the task which seemed light in morning's ray,
As she thought of it now, at the close of the day,
When weary with toil and faint with care,
Seemed more than human strength could bear.

Since the scholars had left her, one by one,
Nearly an hour had flown;

She had given them each a kind good-night,
And while they lingered her eyes were bright,

But they dimmed with tears when alone.
She had borne the burden the day had brought,
The daily task she had faithfully wrought,
And now, to solace her weary mind,
A lesson of life she sought to find.

The work and cares of the day she scans,
But no lesson from them receives.

The day has no lesson for me; she said,
A lesson, I'll read, in the Book instead,

And she opened her Bible leaves.
When lo! the lesson she had sought in vain,
To draw from her fainting and weary brain,
At once from the holy page she drew,

Though always the same, yet ever new.

Establish Thou the work of our hands;

"T was this that met her gaze,

The words went up from her lips like prayer;
And as she read, she treasured there

A lesson for many days.

Not alone for her let the lesson be,

May it come as well to you and me.

Let our prayer be the words of holy writ,

"Yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it."

THE

THE FIREMAN.

HE city slumbers. O'er its mighty walls Night's dusky mantle, soft and silent, falls; Sleep o'er the world slow waves its wand of lead, And ready torpors wrap each sinking head.