of the volcanoes in the Cordilleras of South America, those of Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, and nearly all in the islands of the Pacific, in all of which we hear of terrific eruptions occasionally breaking out from mountains which were not previously suspected to be of volcanic nature, or from the adjacent waters. ART. IV. Histoire de Napoléon, par M. DE NORVINS. Deuxième Édition en quatre Tomes, à Paris et à New York. 1829. History of Napoleon, by M. DE NORVINS. THOUGH Scarcely known in this country, the History of M. de Norvins is generally esteemed in Europe the most valuable work hitherto published on Napoleon and his age. It has been rendered into several of the continental languages, and should before now have been placed, in a good translation, in the hands of English and American readers. We refer to it, however, at the present time, for a different purpose from that either of analysis or criticism. We propose to throw together some notices of a personage, who, for a brief space, occupied a prominent position in that eventful history; one of those many actors on a busy scene, whom time silently sweeps away, and whom the world so easily forgets, as soon as they have ceased to be the immediate objects of hope or fear, of admiration or animosity. In a newspaper of last autumn, among the scraps of foreign intelligence, our eye fell upon a hasty announcement of the death of Maria Louisa, Archduchess of Parma, widow of Napoleon Bonaparte; one, who, had she been so happy as to have died twenty-seven years ago, in giving birth to the heir of that splendid royalty which then she shared, would have had her praises proclaimed from the pulpits of all Christendom, and her last words registered in the annals of nations. But she outlived her fair destinies. Clouds settled round the sunset of her day; and she went down in silence and loneliness, unheeded and unlamented, lost in the crowd. of monarchs, an outcast from renown. In giving a short biographical sketch of this princess, it would be unreasonable, as well as fruitless, to aim to revoke the sentence which condemns her name, if not to oblivion, to obscurity. The writer of this notice (born her subject, though not interested in her memory by any benefit or injury) might be pardoned a momentary feeling for the indifference with which she is dismissed; but no one certainly has a right to wonder, that other interests should so absorb the attention of our sober and peaceful contemporaries, as to leave them no leisure to look at the exit of such personages as played the tragedy on the same stage where we are now acting the comedy; whose errors and follies, whose stormy vicissitudes, prepared this blessed period of tranquillity in which we are privileged to live. Still it may be thought worth while to place on record some notices of such a life, that, if curiosity should at any time be rekindled concerning it, an humble monument may remain to guide others in their researches. The life of Maria Louisa, during the period of early womanhood, is already in the charge of history. As long as she was sailing on board the lofty ship, that seemed for a time to have chained the winds at its stern, the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon her. When that proud vessel went down, and she was cast ashore amidst the wreck of that sudden disaster, the world lost sight of her; and the last page of her biography is blank, like that of the seaman thrown by the waves on the coast of a desert island, and effaced from the roll of the living. But, before we come to our subject, before we endeavour to fill up that blank page, we must recall to the memory of our readers what most of them well know, and what in consequence we shall give in few words, the life of our heroine from her birth to the fall of Napoleon. Maria Louisa Leopoldine Caroline, Archduchess of Austria, eldest daughter of the Emperor Francis the First, and of the second of his four wives, Maria Theresa of Naples, was born at Schönbrunn, in 1791. She was bred like other daughters of monarchs. She was taught to speak French and Italian, and to play on the piano, with all the other appendages of drawing, dancing, and riding. Born at the very dawn of those tempestuous events, in which Austria was so long and so disastrously engaged, and in which, by a succession of disgraceful campaigns, her father lost, one after another, the best provinces that a succession of marriages had added one after another to the possession of his ancestors, Maria Louisa had learnt from her nurse never to think of the French without shuddering with horror, never to finish her prayers till she had added a curse upon the name of Napoleon. But fortune favored the brave. The ruffians, who had shed torrents of blood, who had overturned altar and throne, who had led her aunt Maria Antoinette to the scaffold, and, by long outrages and famine, coldly murdered her child, -now they had come. The blond youth of Austria had perished on the fields of fair Italy, on the Raab, at Essling, at Wagram, in a vain attempt to oppose their progress. The squares of Vienna were still silent and desolate, where the French had pitched their tents. Schönbrunn was still polluted, where the insolent Corsican had established his head-quarters. The crowd of archdukes were just returning from Buda, where, fugitive and exiled, they had received laws, such as it had pleased the proud conqueror to dictate. Yet that conqueror was not inexorable. Her imperial family, in their haste to escape from imminent danger, had abandoned her, sick, alone, in distress, in the palace of the capital, in a besieged city, almost at the mercy of the enemy; and the generous enemy, in a moment of chivalrous gallantry, had ordered the palace to be respected, and his bombs to be directed elsewhere. The conqueror was not inexorable. Twice had Austria lain prostrate at his feet, and twice had she been spared; and now, when, availing herself of favorable circumstances, she had broken all faith and truce, and provoked the vengeance of her enemy, when revenge would have seemed as just as it was profitable and easy, the magnanimous enemy still listened to proposals of peace, and granted it on such moderate terms as Austria had not dared to expect. Austria had lost all. She had no longer any provinces to give up. She could not pretend to bestow on the invader what was already indisputably his. There was only one gift by which the vanity of the Corsican parvenu could still be won upon. Austria, now struggling for her very existence, did not hesitate. She stained by a mésalliance the arms of the proud house of Hapsburg. She gave up her blood and * "Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; flesh. She gave up Maria Louisa; the peace of Vienna was sealed; Cesar was restored to his throne. And now the enemy of her father, of her country, and of her God, must acquire over her the most sacred rights. She must look upon him with fondness and deference; she was the fairest of his conquests, the wife of his choice; she must be the mother of his children. The language of the court was changed. The brigand chief had become a leader of heroes. His pedigree was found to ascend to a prodigious antiquity. The jacobin general was now the anointed of the Lord. He had restored order to France, and peace to Europe. The Aulic Council called him their friend. Francis the First called him his brother. He was as generous as fortunate. He was the Alexander of our days; and, like Alexander, he was to choose among his enemies a bride, who should endear to him the shade of his laurels, who should make him love the security of peace, and the comforts of home. Maria Louisa listened, and prepared for the sacrifice. The mild creature never knew how to show any repugnance to other people's desires. She had been taught to hate, and she hated; she was now hidden to love, and she married. On the 11th of March, 1810, the nuptials were celebrated at Vienna, Berthier prince of Neufchatel representing the person of Napoleon. Two days afterward the bride proceeded towards France. In a little village near Soissons, a single horseman, in plain dress, rode by her carriage, and approached as if to reconnoitre more closely. The carriage stopped, the door was opened, the cavalier entered, and they proceeded together. Thus did Napoleon, by an unceremonious surprise, introduce himself to his bride; thus was her love romance commenced and finished. During the three following days, she was led through all the ceremonies of the French court, and, March 31st, she received the nuptial benediction from Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon. Her Maria Louisa was then in the flower of her age. stature was above the middle size; her complexion fresh and blooming; she had auburn hair, Austrian eyes and lips; her hand and foot served as a model for the Concord, a statue of Canova. Her temper was sweet and gentle. An obedient and dutiful wife, she won the affection of her warrior, by all VOL. XLVI. - NO. 99. 50 the charms of youth and innocence. Her modest and artless deference could not fail to conciliate his despotic and wilful temper, and her unaffected tenderness was repaid with kindness and regard. Her intellectual faculties, it is true, were far from equalling those of her unfortunate rival Josephine, who exerted a useful influence upon the mind of her consort. Maria Louisa could do little more than bless and smile. Napoleon loved her the better for it. His ideas of the sex he had expressed to Madame de Staël, when that ambitious lady asked him who was the woman he liked best in the world. "Celle que fait plus d'enfants," replied the destroyer. A year had scarcely elapsed, when Maria Louisa made him father of a son. Never was a child more noisily greeted at his coming into the world, nor could ever a woman be prouder of her offspring, than was the fortunate mother of the king of Rome. All Europe was awakened by the thunders announcing her happy accouchement. High mass was celebrated at all altars. Monarchs and princes came to attend the baptismal solemnity. Napoleon felt as if the revolving wheel of fortune had by that event been stopped for ever. Alas for him, that event was the last of unmingled prosperity. His impious war of Spain raised against him the execration of the just; the imprisonment of the pope excited against him the zeal of the pious; his campaign of Russia armed heaven and earth against him. His hour had come. The Divinity, that had determined his destruction, maddened him first, and made his bewildering greatness the instrument of his fall. While starting for his last campaign of Germany in 1813, with the vain hope of conciliating his father-in-law, he placed his dutiful wife at the head of the regency which was to govern in his absence. His ingenuous empress, his mild and inexperienced companion, whom he had always called ma petite oie, "my little goose," was raised at once to the government of a tottering empire, in the midst of intrigues and factions, in days of perils and storms. Her task, however, was not so difficult as might be supposed. She received, by the mail from her husband, the speeches she was occasionally to deliver before the Senate; by her side was constantly sitting Cambacérès, the archchancellor, the right eye of Napoleon in all political transactions; and the yea and the nay, by which the regent answered all questions, were always dictated by the nod of the |