LXXXVI. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.-No. II. CHARLEMAGNE; pro. Shar-ly-main. WHAT remains of Napoleon's long reign? For this is the criterion by which God and man judge the political genius of founders. Life is judged by what survives it. Napoleon left freedom chained, human conscience resold, philosophy proscribed, the human mind diminished. He left schools converted into barracks, literature degraded by censorship, election abolished, the arts enslaved, commerce destroyed, navigation suppressed. He left the people oppressed, or enrolled in the army, paying, in blood or taxes, the ambition of an unequaled soldier, but covering, with the great name of France, the miseries and degradations of the country. This is the founder! This is the man! a man, instead of a revolution! a man, instead of an epoch! a man, instead of a country! a man, instead of a nation! Nothing after him! Nothing around him but his shadow. Personal glory will be always spoken of as characterizing the age of Napoleon. But it will never merit the praise bestowed upon that of Augustus, of Charlemagne, and of Louis XIV. There is no age. There is only a name. And this name signifies nothing to humanity, but himself. He was false in institutions, for he retrograded; false in policy, for he debased; false in morals, for he corrupted; false in civilization, for he oppressed; false in diplomacy, for he isolated. He was only true in war; for he shed torrents of human blood. But what can we, then, allow him? His individual genius was great; but it was the genius of materialism. His intelligence was vast and clear; but it was the intelligence of calculation. He counted, he weighed, he measured; but he felt not; he loved not; he sympathized with none; he was a statue rather than a man. All was solid; nothing gushed forth. In that mind nothing was moved. His metalic nature was felt even in his style. Much superior to Cæsar in the account of his campaigns, his style NEW EC. S.-15 is not the written expression alone; it is the action. Every sentence in his pages is, so to speak, the counterpart and counter-impression of the fact. His phrases concise, but struck off without ornament, recall those times when Bajazet and Charlemagne, not knowing how to write their names at the bottom of their imperial acts, dipped their hands in ink or blood, and applied them with all their articulations impressed upon the parchment. It was not the signature. It was the hand itself of the hero, thus fixed eternally before the eyes. And such were the pages of his campaigns, dictated by Napoleon; the very soul of movement, of action, and of combat. This celebrity, which will descend to posterity, and which is improperly called glory, constituted his means and his end. Let him therefore enjoy it. The noise he has made will resound through distant ages. But let it not pervert posterity, or falsify the judgment of mankind. This man, one of the greatest creations of God, applied himself with greater power than any other man ever possessed, to check the march of ideas, and make all received truths retrace their steps. But time has overleaped him. Truths and ideas have resumed their ordinary current. He is admired as a soldier. He is measured as a sovereign. He is judged as a founder of nations; great in action, little in idea, NOTHING in VIRTUE. Such is man! FROM LAMARTINE. LXXXVII.-LA FAYETTE'S VISIT TO AMERICA. LA FAYETTE, a wealthy French nobleman, who had devoted his fortune and his youth to the cause of American independence, revisited this country, after some 40 years' absence, as described in this most eloquent extract. IN 1824, a single ship furled her snowy sails in the harbor of New York. Scarcely had her prow touched the shore, when a murmur was heard among the multitude, which gradually deepened into a mighty shout, and that shout was a shout of joy. And again and again, were the heavens rent with the aspiring sound. Nor did it cease, for the loud strain was carried from city to city and from state to state, till not a tongue was silent throughout this wide republic, from the lisping infant to the tremulous old man. All were united in one wild shout of gratulation. The voices of more than ten millions of freemen gushed up toward the sky, and broke the stillness of its silent depths. And but one note, and but one tone went to form this acclamation. And up in those pure regions, clearly and sweetly did it sound, "Honor to La Fayette!" "Welcome to the Nation's Guest!" And it was La Fayette, the warworn veteran, whose arrival on our shores had caused this wide-spread joy. He came among us to behold the independence and the freedom which his young arm had well assisted in achieving; and never before did eye behold or heart of man conceive such homage paid to virtue. His whole stay among us was a continued triumph. Every day's march was an ovation. The United States became for months one great festive hall. People forgot the usual occupations of life, and crowded to behold the benefactor of mankind. The old iron-hearted, gray-haired veterans of the Revolution, thronged around him to touch his hand, to behold his face, and to call down heaven's benison upon their old companion in arms. Lisping infancy and garrulous old age, beauty, talents, wealth, and power; all, for a while, forsook their usual pursuits, and united to pay a willing tribute of gratitude and welcome to the Nation's Guest. The name of La Fayette was upon every lip, and wherever was his name, there too was an invocation for blessings on his head. What were the triumphs of the classic ages, compared with this unbought love and homage of a mighty people? Take them in Rome's best days, when the invincible generals of the eternal city returned from their foreign conquests, with captive kings bound to their chariot wheels, and the spoils of nations in their train, followed by the stern and bearded warriors, and surrounded by the interminable multitudes of the seven-hilled city, shouting a fierce welcome home; what was such a triumph compared with that of La Fayette? Not a single city, but a whole nation, rising as one man, and greeting him with an affectionate embrace! One single day of such spontaneous homage, were worth whole years of courtly adulation. One hour might well reward a man for a whole life of danger and of toil. Then, too, the joy with which he must have viewed the prosperity of the people for whom he had so deeply struggled! To behold the nation which he had left a little child, now grown up in the full proportions of lusty manhood! To see the tender sapling which he had left, with hardly shade enough to cover its own roots, now waxing into the sturdy and unwedgeable oak, beneath whose grateful umbrage the oppressed of all nations find shelter and protection! That oak still grows on in its majestic strength, and wider and wider still extends its mighty branches. But the hand that watered and nourished it, while yet a tender plant, is now cold. The heart that watched, with strong affection, its early growth, has ceased to beat. FROM S. S. PRENTISS. LXXXVIII.-LA FAYETTE AND NAPOLEON. WHEN the doors of the Austrian dungeon were at length thrown open, La Fayette returned to France. Great changes, however, had taken place in his absence. The flood of the revolution had subsided. The tempest of popular commotion had blown over, leaving many and fearful evidences of its terrible fury; and the star of the child of destiny had now become lord of the ascendant. Small was the sympathy between the selfish and ambitious Napoleon, and La Fayette, the patriot and philanthropist. They could no more mingle than the pure lights of heaven and the unholy fires of hell. La Fayette refused with scorn the dignities proffered by the First Consul, and, filled with virtuous indignation at his country's fate, retired from the capital, and, devoting himself awhile to the pursuits of private life, awaited the return of better times. And here we pause to compare these two wonderful men, belonging to the same age and to the same nation: Napoleon and La Fayette. Their names excite no kindred emotions: their fates, no kindred sympathy. Napoleon, the child of destiny, the thunderbolt of war, the victor in a hundred battles, the dispenser of thrones and dominions; he, who scaled the Alps and reclined beneath the pyramids, whose word was fate, and whose wish was law! La Fayette, the volunteer of freedom, the advocate of human rights, the defender of civil liberty, the patriot, the philanthropist, the beloved of the good and the free! Napoleon, the vanquished warrior ignobly flying from the field of Waterloo, the wild beast, ravaging all Europe in his wrath, hunted down by the banded and affrighted natives, and caged far away upon the ocean-girded rock! La Fayette, a watch-word by which men excite each other to deeds of worth and noble daring; whose home has become the Mecca of freedom, toward which the pilgrims of liberty turn their eyes from every quarter of the globe! Napoleon was the red and fiery comet, shooting wildly through the realms of space, and scattering terror and pestilence among the nations. La Fayette was the pure and brilliant planet, beneath whose grateful beams the mariner directs his bark, and the shepherd tends his flocks. Napoleon died, and a few old warriors, the scattered relics of Marengo and of Austerlitz, bewailed their chief. La Fayette is dead, and the tears of a civilized world attest how deep is the mourning for his fate. FROM S. S. PRENTISS. DREAD Winter spreads his latest glooms, How dumb the tuneful! horror wide extends Behold, fond man! See here thy pictured life! Pass some few years, |