fear of exhausting her own stock? For modern liberty is essentially moral, and does not betray its engagements. For example, what would not the poor Spaniards give her to free them from the yoke to which they have been again subjected? I am confident they would willingly pay any price to recover their freedom. It was I who inspired them with this sentiment: and the error into which I fell, might at least be turned to good account by another government. As to the Italians, I have planted in their hearts principles that never can be rooted out. What can England do better than to promote and assist the noble impulses of modern regeneration? Sooner or later this regeneration must be accomplished. Sovereigns and old aristocratic institutions may exert their efforts to oppose it, but in vain. They are dooming themselves to the punishment of Sisyphus; but, sooner or later, some arm will tire of resistance, and then the whole system will fall to nothing. Would it not be better to yield with a good grace?-This was my intention. Why does England refuse to avail herself of the glory and advantage she might derive from this course of proceeding? Every thing passes away in England as well as elsewhere. Castlereagh's administration will pass away, and that which may succeed it, and which is doomed to inherit the fruit of so many errors, may become great by only discontinuing the system that has hitherto been pursued. He who may happen to be placed at the head of the English cabinet, has merely to allow things to take their course, and to obey the winds that blow. By becoming the leader of liberal principles, instead of leaguing with absolute power like Castlereagh, he will render himself the object of universal benediction, and England will forget her wrongs. Fox was capable of so acting, but Pitt was not: the reason is, that, in Fox, the heart warmed the genius; while in Pitt, the genius withered the heart. But it may be asked, why I, all-powerful as I was, did not pursue the course I have here traced out?-how, since I can speak so well, I could have acted so ill? I reply to those who make this inquiry with sincerity, that there is no comparison between my situa tion and that of the English Government, England may work on a soil which extends to the very bowels of the earth, while I could labour only on a sandy surface. England reigns over an established order of things; while I had to take upon myself the great charge, the immense difficulty of consolidating and establishing. I purified a revolution in spite of hostile factions. I combined together all the scattered benefits that could be preserved; but I was obliged to protect them with a nervous arm, against the attacks of all partics; and in this situation it may truly be said, that the public interest, the state was myself.'

In connexion with a conversation on the difference in the several varieties of domestic affection, Las Cases relates the following peculiarities in his master's habits.

He would sometimes take his son in his arms, and embrace him with the most ardent demonstrations of paternal love. But most

frequently his affection would manifest itself by playful teazing or whimsical tricks. If he met his son in the gardens, for instance, he would throw him down, or upset his toys. The child was brought to him every morning at breakfast time, and he then seldom failed to besmear him over with every thing within his reach on the table.' On another occasion,

The Emperor accounted for the clearness of his ideas, and the facility he possessed of being able to protract the duration of his application to the utmost, by saying that the different ideas were put up in his head as in a closet. "When I wish to interrupt an affair," said he, "I close the drawer which contains it, and I open that which contains another. They do not mix together, and do not fatigue me, nor inconvenience me." He had never been kept awake, he said, by an involuntary pre-occupation of mind." If I wish to sleep, I shut up all the drawers, and I am asleep." So that he had always, he added, slept when he wanted rest, and almost at will.'

We purposely pass over the squabbles between Sir Hudson Lowe and his prisoners; it is an unpleasant subject, and we have no wish to recur to it. Count Las Cases takes an opportunity of giving his attestation to the general accuracy of Mr. O'Meara's journal, and states in connexion with that subject, the following singular piece of indiscretion on the part of Sir Hudson Lowe.

Whilst writing this, I have received from Sir Hudson Lowe some extracts of confidential letters, which he informs me he received at the time from Mr. O'Meara, in which, he observes to me, O'Meara spoke of me in a very improper manner, and made secret reports to him respecting me. What can have been the intention of Sir Hudson Lowe in acting thus with me? Considering the terms on which we are together, he cannot have been prompted by a very tender in. terest. Did he wish to prove to me, that Mr. O'Meara acted as a spy for him upon us? Did he hope so far to prepossess me against him, as to influence the nature and the force of my testimony in favour of his adversary? And, after all, are these letters in their original state? Have they not been altered after the fashion of St, Helena? But, even supposing their meaning to be true and explicit, in what respect can they offend me? What claim had I then on Mr. O'Meara's indulgence? What right had 1 to expect it? It is true that at a later period, after his return to Europe, seeing him persecuted and punished on account of the humanity of his conduct towards Napoleon, I wrote to him to express my heartfelt gratitude, and to offer him an asylum in my family, should injustice compel him to leave his own country; that he was welcome to share with me. But at Saint Helena, I hardly knew him, and I do not believe that I spoke to him ten times during my residence at Longwood. I considered him as being opposed to me by nation, by opinions, and by interest: such was the nature of my connexion with Mr. O'Meara. He was, there

fore, entirely at liberty with respect to me; he might then write whatever he thought proper, and it cannot now vary the opinion which I have since formed of him. Sir Hudson Lowe intends now to insinuate, that Mr. O'Meara was a double and a triple spy at the same moment, viz. for the Government, for Napoleon, and for him, Sir Hudson Lowe; but does that disprove the truth and destroy the authenticity of the facts mentioned in his book? On the contrary. And from which of the three parties could he expect to be rewarded for revealing these facts to the public? Napoleon is no more; he can expect nothing from him and his publication has rendered the two others his ardent enemies, who have deprived him of his situation, and threaten to disturb his repose; for his real crime, in their eyes, is the warm zeal which he has displayed, of a friend to the laws and to decorum; who, indignant at the mean and indecorous vexations to which Napoleon had been exposed, drags the true Authors of them to light, in order to exculpate his country. I have, therefore, considered this tardy communication of the confidential letters which Sir Hudson Lowe has just transmitted to me, at the moment of his action with O'Meara, as a kind of interested accusation, which every one will qualify as he thinks proper. I have never even acknowledged the receipt of these letters; and still less have I ever thought of complaining of their contents.'

We have omitted to state, in its proper place, that at the end of the volume of "Memoirs," there is inserted a short but interesting correspondence between Marshal Jourdan and General Gourgaud, as also between the latter and the Saxon General de Gersdoff. It had been stated in the former volume, that Jourdan had been an active member of the Societé du Manége, and that, in conjunction with Augereau, he had offered the Dictatorship to Napoleon in the name of that association. Both these facts Jourdan positively denies; and Gourgaud, in reply, very intelligibly, though very courteously intimates, that he puts no faith in his disavowal. The letter of de Gersdorff is in vindication of the behaviour of the Saxon troops at the battle of Wagram, which had been spoken of by Napoleon in terms of reproach.

Art. IV. 1. Narrative of a Journey in the Morea. By Sir William Gell, M.A. F.R.S. F.S.A. 8vo. pp. 412. (9 plates.) London.

1823.

2. A Further Appeal to the British Public in the Cause of the Persecuted Greeks. By the Rev. Robert Chatfield, LL.D. Vicar of Chatteris, &c. 8vo. pp. 124. London. 1823.

3. A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, on the Subject of the Greeks. By Thomas Lord Erskine. Second Edition. 8vo. pp. 40. Lon

don. 1822.

WE have not heard that Sir William Gell has actually been circumcised, but the zeal with which he espouses the cause of the Turks, is a very suspicious circumstance. The Mahommedans are at least great favourites with him, and he gives a decided preference to their religion, or rather no religion, in comparison with that of the Greeks. It appears to me,' he says, (speaking of the latter,) that their idea of Christianity is 'infinitely more estranged from the precepts of the Gospel than the Koran itself.' We are very glad to gather from this sentence, that Sir William admits the superiority of the Gospel to the Koran so then, he is not quite a Turk.

There is much that is palpably unfair, and still more palpably unfeeling, in this gentleman's ill-timed attack upon the Greeks.

I was once,' he says, very enthusiastic in the cause of Greece: it is only by knowing well the nation, that my opinion is changed. All the attempts to excite a crusade in favour of the Greeks, have been backed by the most gross misrepresentations of their readiness to learn and improve, and of their present progress. Whoever em. barks in their cause, will fail, and will end by retiring in disgust. It is only Russia that can save them from themselves; and that must be done by exercising upon them for a whole generation the most despotic and coercive measures, and making them happy by force.'

p. 306.

We suppose that Sir William founds his opinion of the beneficial effects of Russian despotism, upon the present state of Poland. Russia, that has saved the Poles from themselves, would doubtless be the most natural benefactor of the Greeks; and the result of the former experiment must convince every body, of the wisdom of soliciting that most civilized of Christian powers, the Muscovite, to undertake their emancipation. But one thing puzzles us in this oracular opinion of Sir William's; to wit, how it comes to pass that, since the Greeks can be made happy only by the most despotic and coercive measures exercised upon a whole generation, such measures

have hitherto failed to produce this effect, though employed by the Turks during a series of generations. We have his own shewing, that the Mahommedans are the better Christians, and their despotism would seem only to have been too mild. Unless the failure be attributable to this last circumstance, we cannot understand why the Greeks should be made happy by Russian despotism and coercion, rather than by Turkish. We should have thought that the happifying effects (to use for onee a barbarous Americanism) of despotic measures, had been sufficiently tried, to warrant the experiment of a different course of treatment. But Sir William Gell gives it as his opinion, that there is something in the climate of Greece—yes, of Greece-which renders it impossible for freedom and independence to live there.

"It will be time,' he sagely remarks, to believe that the nations of the South are capable of a just enjoyment of liberty, when we see a single quiet example of it............ With regard to the people themselves, I have little hesitation in saying, they were better even under the Turks than they would be under a government of their own choosing, in their present state. A foreign force might indeed compel them to be happy for a time, but they must then submit to multiplied taxes and personal conscription, from which they have hitherto been almost exempt, till they had gained strength to break out again. Before that period, however, luxury would have made so great a progress, that the rich would unite with the strangers, preferring any chains to the convulsion which might break them; and this is the general course of events in the South, where the bounties of nature render the world worth living for even in chains, provided they be splendid. In the North, where nothing less than freedom could render existence supportable, the circle of events may perhaps pass through corresponding phases, though at a slower rate; for those who have once acquired the blessings of liberty under a cloudy sky, are more likely to preserve it. It is with great facility that political changes take place in the nations of the South, and the consequence is the easy subversion of the existing governments; but to build up a new and better system is not in in the power of a people who act neither on reason nor experience, but from present impulse of feeling.

• Whether the same reasons, which will ever prevent the nations of the South from remaining independent, will not in time act on those of the North, where long security and luxury may effect by degrees that sort of indifference, which prefers comforts and fashions to any advantages which might arise from the momentary deprivation of them, only time can shew. Individual independence, and in time the public liberty, may be attacked in more ways than one. In Turkey they would set about it openly with the purse in their hands. In the North it might be attacked with more security by those in power, if they were ingenious enough to render themselves, at the same time, the models of fushion; for all the world would rather be thought even