invective, on the other by favouritism. In the present volumes, as in the first, he is influenced too much in his appreciation of the emperor's character and acts by his personal feeling towards Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He exaggerates his weaknesses; he is severe, not beyond truth, but bitterly and in tones not precisely those of the historian; while, by way of contrast, he upholds the Bourbons, vaunts them to the skies, and lauds them in terms which their subsequent conduct never justified. But this is Lamartine's characteristic. He does nothing by halves. He is bitter, sarcastic, severe, or he is laudatory in the extreme. With regard to the Bourbons, they are the family of his ancient love, of his youth, and despite his somewhat poetical and sentimental republicanism, there is still a lingering affection in his heart for them.

Lamartine is not a republican, certainly, of the Roman school, nor indeed of the Athenian. His nature, except under exceptional circumstances, is too feminine, too poetical, too sensitive, to be that stern man, whose immutable principles are to him founded on faith and reason, and who is the only republican who can ever be permanently useful to his cause. He is essentially a vain man, he loves renown and glory as much as the most warlike of his countrymen; he loves show and glitter, and noise and bustle, where there are waving flags and smiles of beauty-but he has neither that combination of Danton and Washington which makes the republican of the European school, nor that patience, without which all degrees of liberalism are useless. He is an ambitious and an impulsive man. He describes himself to a certain degree in his sketches of Ney and Labédoyère. Carried away by his feelings, in 1848, he was a republican, and had he been elected president would have remained so, and done his duty honestly and sincerely. But any other republic than his own is to him insupportable, and hence a secret leaning towards the ancient race of kings. Alongside, beneath the traditional Bourbons, Lamartine would not feel himself in the shade, he would bow where all bended, but since he was arbiter of the destinies of France during two months, Lamartine has regarded all elected or usurping power as his rivals. Hence his really virulent opposition in 1848 to General Cavaignac, and hence, in part, the massive blows which he deals upon the head of the defunct empire and emperor. We should never, while studying the present work, lose sight of this-not that we consider the character of Napoleon, as here painted, either overdone or too black, but that we object to the way in which it is done.

With these few preliminary remarks we continue our analysis of a work, which deserves-as a specimen of style, a beautiful

picture, and an epic poem-a place in the library of every student of grave and light literature. Lamartine is magnificent as a writer, whatever may be his faults as an historian, or his peculiarities and weaknesses as a politician. Whether as royalist or democrat, conservative or radical, an impulsive man makes a feeble politician; but this very failing aids a poet in carrying away the feelings and imaginations of his readers.

Lamartine exaggerates the scorn and hatred of the people against Napoleon, as he fled like a great criminal to Elba, but does not probably overstate his own feelings:—

'He went not like Diocletian or Charles V., like those princes satiated by empire and weary of human grandeur, who only abandon a throne from the unchangeable disgust of ambition, and who only look back to deplore the years they have lost seeking happiness in ruling men. He went not to seek, full like them of a second illusion, peace in the gardens of Salona, or holiness in a monastery. He departed, conquered, humiliated, betrayed, abandoned, irritated, embittered, scarcely feigning, and feigning ill, a forced resignation to the ingratitude and cowardice of his lieutenants, accusing his people, cursing his brothers, regretting his wife, his son, his palaces, his crowns; incapable of bending to any private condition however splendid, and having so young and for so long a period contracted such a habit of power, that to live with him was to reign, and that not to reign was worse than to die. He went not then without hope of return, and without having plotted already in his thoughts, with himself and with his rare partisans, the first thread of the net which he hoped one day to cast from his island over the continent. Princes of royal blood, born upon thrones, abdicate sometimes sincerely, because they bear with them and find again, so to speak, their grandeur in their name and in their blood. Usurping powers who have raised themselves to empire, even by glory, never wholly abdicate, because descending from the throne they find nothing save their original condition, and because they look upon it as the humiliation of their pride. Such was Napoleon. The immense renown which he carried into exile, and which was to follow his name into posterity, sufficed him not. He wished to live in the possession of power, and to die on the eminence of the throne where he had ascended.'-Vol. iii. pp. 2, 3.

That the people rejoiced at peace, and were utterly weary of the reign of the genius of war is true, but that generally they wished, as at Orgen, to hang him, is doubtful. Lamartine describes Napoleon leaving France, followed by universal execration, and returning amid doubtful enthusiasin. But the most interesting portion of the present volumes is the return; we cannot pass it over:—

On the 26th February, in the night, he was present, with a serene brow, his mind seemingly at ease, his conversation free and floating, at a ball which the Princess Pauline Borghèse gave to the officers of his army,

to the foreigners, and the principal inhabitants of the island. He spoke at some length on divers subjects with some English travellers, whom curiosity had brought from the continent to this fête. He went away late, taking with him General Bertrand and General Drouot. "We start to-morrow," said he, in a tone which prohibited discussion and commanded mute obedience; "seize in the night all the ships at anchor, let the commander of the brig the 'Inconstant' receive orders to go on board, to take the command of my fleet, and to prepare everything for the embarking of the troops; let my guard go on board to-morrow in the day; let no sail leave the ports or the bays until we are at sea. Until to-morrow, let no one, save yourselves, know my design." The two generals passed the rest of the night in preparing for the execution of the orders they had received. The fête of the Princess Pauline could still be heard in the stillness of the night, when the thoughts of the emperor had already crossed the sea, and all was preparing in his residence for departure. The officers and troops received, at sunrise, without astonishment and without hesitation, orders to prepare for embarking. They were in the habit of never reasoning about obedience, and of confiding in the name which, for them, was destiny. In the middle of the day, the chaloupe of the brig 'Inconstant' came for the emperor himself. He went on board, saluted by cannon, by the acclamations of the people, by the tears of his sister, and was received on board the brig by four hundred grenadiers of his guard, already embarked. The three little trading vessels scized in the night had received the rest of his troops, amounting in all to about a thousand men. certainty of success illumined the face of Napoleon, and this confidence was reflected upon the face of his soldiers. The sea was propitious.'— Ib. pp. 34-36.

The

His fleet carried four hundred grenadiers, two hundred infantry of the guard, two hundred Corsican chasseurs, and a hundred Poles. Shortly after their departure, they were all busily copying the proclamations of their emperor; while doing so a French brig of war hailed the 'Inconstant,' and asked news of Napoleon, who himself, through a speaking trumpet, assured them that he was well. On the first of March they reached the Golfe Juan and landed, and were received coolly by the people, and at Antibes twenty-five of his men, sent to proclaim the government of Napoleon, were taken prisoners. Leaving these, and astounded at his first failure, he began his march on Lyons, distributing his proclamations. After numerous failures at Cannes, Grasse, Černan, Bareme, Digne, Gap, Corps, at none of which places did he recruit a man, he left Mure::

The emperor, on leaving la Mure, composed his vanguard of a hundred picked men, under the orders of Cambronne. Cambronne, advancing towards a bridge at some distance from la Mure, found himself face to face with a new battalion. The envoy he sent forward to treat was repelled. The emperor informed of this, sent again one of his officers, the chef d'escadron Raoul, to address the battalion which refused to open

the road to him. Raoul, menaced by the fire of the battalion, came back without his voice being heard. Napoleon felt that the time was come to try the effect of his personal ascendancy in the eyes of his own soldiers. He passed through his column, ordering it to halt, and advanced at a walk on his horse, almost alone, in front of his army. The peasants scattered through the field, made a hedge upon the sides of the road, seemed to remain neuter between the two causes, looking on only with the curious indifference of the people at the combat of audacity, of which they were the price. Some rare cries of Vive l'Empereur rose here and there from the popular groups. Some encouragements in a low tone bade Napoleon dare everything. It was one of those solemn moments when a whole people seem to hold their respiration, not to trouble by their breath the hesitating decree of destiny which is about to be pronounced, and when the scales of the balance, ready to lean to one of two causes, are about to carry the whole world along under the influence of the slightest chance. A cry may awake a nation, a silence repel an audacity, a ball shot by chance from the gun of a soldier may shatter an enterprise with the loss of the great man in whose breast it was conceived. Such was at this moment the mute and wavering situation of the two armies, of Napoleon and of the people.

'Napoleon at this moment was equal to his design. The man so feeble on the 18th Brumaire, retreating disconcerted and almost fainting in the arms of his grenadiers; the man so perplexed at Fontainebleau before the insolence of his revolted marshals; the man so powerless and so subjugated since at the Elysee by the pressure of some legislators and some traitors, was without effort and without display a hero before the bayonets of the fifth regiment. Whether he felt the certainty, given him by his accomplices of Grenoble, that all hearts beat for him in this battalion, or whether the habit of arms on the field of battle made him fear death less by fire than by the sword, or whether his soul had, since his residence in Elba, concentrated all its forces, in expectation of this supreme moment, and that he judged his design well worth a life, he hesitated not. He neither pressed nor slackened his march. He advanced to within a hundred yards of the row of bayonets that made a wall across the road. He alighted from his horse, gave the reins to one of his Poles, folded his arms upon his breast, and advanced with a measured step like a man going to execution. It was the phantom of the imagination of the people and the army, appearing suddenly and as if leaving the tomb between the two Frances. He wore the costume under which all remembrances, legends, and pictures had engraven him in every heart, the military hat, the green uniform of the chasseurs of the guard, the riding-coat of dark coloured cloth, open and floating over his coat, high boots, and spurs sounding on the ground; his attitude was that of reflection which nothing moves, and of peaceable command that doubts not it will be obeyed. He descended a slope of the road, inclined towards the regiment he was about to address. No group, either before him, or on one side, or behind, prevented his being seen in his prestigieux loneliness. His face stood out alone and marked against the background of the road and in the blue of the sky. To strike such a man was, for the soldiers who recognised in him their ancient idol, not com

bating but assassinating. Napoleon had calculated afar off this challenge of glory to the humanity and heart of the French soldier. He was not deceived, but it was necessary to be a profound genius to dare it, and Napoleon to execute it. His grenadiers at a great distance from him had their guns under their arms and reversed in sign of peace.

The chef de bataillon of the fifth regiment, perhaps using violence against his feelings from duty, or knowing beforehand the resolution of the soldiers not to strike their emperor, and wishing only to intimidate the army of Napoleon by the literal gesture of discipline, ordered his battalion to fire. The soldiers appeared to obey and levelled their guns at Napoleon. But he, without stopping or showing the least emotion, advanced to within ten steps of the arms presented at his breast, and raising that ringing voice which had frequently commanded manœuvres in the field of review and battle: "Soldiers of the fifth regiment of the line," said he, slowly opening his breast and presenting it to their shots, "if there be one amongst you, who would kill his emperor, he can do so. Here I am.'

'None answered. All remained motionless and silent. The soldiers had not loaded their arms. They feared themselves. They had made the gesture of obedience and of fidelity to discipline, and they thought their duty done. The heart could now freely burst forth. It alone burst forth. At first a thrill of feeling was felt in the battalion, some of the arms were levelled, then many more, then all. Some officers went away and took the road to Grenoble, not to be led away by the emotions of their companions, others wiped their eyes, and carried away by their soldiers, put their swords in the sheath. A cry of Vive l'Empereur burst from the battalion, answered by the cry of Vive le cinquième de ligne from the grenadiers of the guard afar off. The ranks broke, the soldiers rushed with the people around the emperor, who opened his arms to them; his own soldiers rushed forward and mingled in one exclamation and in one group with those of the fifth.'-Ib. pp. 59-65.

This opened the way to Grenoble, where he was rapturously received by soldiers and people, by Labédoyère and Dumoulin, while the royalist authorities went out at the opposite gate to Bourgoing. The people fraternized with the soldiers, and the Emperor ultimately reached Paris, where the king, unlike his confident ministers, was in a state of the greatest consternation. Lamartine narrates with vigour the preparations for defence, the departure of the princes for the army, the equivocal position of Louis Philippe, the solemn declarations of Soult and Ney against Napoleon, the stupor of Paris at the news, the secret uneasiness of the army, and the vacillation of the civil functionaries, the nobility, the mercantile and the working classes, all of whom were horror-struck at the idea of war:

'Mothers, whom conscriptions had robbed of their sons, saw them again torn from their homes, to die on the frontiers or in a foreign land. The emigrants who had returned with the princes foresaw new exile. The