Longwood. He appears in better health, and has been in good spirits. I called on him on Monday and had a long audience, in which he was very particular in his questions relating to our mess, entering into the most minute particulars, even so far as to ask who cooked for us, male or female, white or black?

On Friday I met him as I was marching with my regiment. He rides with a British officer every day within his bounds, but never exceeds them; this he cannot reconcile himself to.1

His attendants, as usual, are split into parties and have procured the removal of Bertrand from the superintendence of the household, though he has at least the merit of being Napoleon's oldest and most faithful servant.

January 1, 1816.-Last Tuesday I introduced all the officers of the 53rd to Bonaparte. It was evidently an effort on his part, although the proposal in the first instance came from himself. He asked a number of questions which were exceedingly absurd. He has been in great spirits lately; he has heard that All the Virtues,' 2 with Sir Francis Burdett at their head, were to advocate his cause and recall, and he sanguinely looks forward to the result.

8th. Since I last wrote, I have dined with Napoleon. It was a most superb dinner which lasted only forty minutes, at the end of which we retired into the drawing-room to play cards. The dessert service was Sèvres china, with gold knives, forks, and spoons. The coffee-cups were the most beautiful I ever saw; on each cup was an Egyptian view, and on the saucer a portrait of some Bey or other distinguished character; they cost twenty-five guineas the cup and saucer in France. The dinner was stupid enough; the people who live with him scarcely spoke out of a whisper; and he was so much engaged in eating, that he hardly said a word to anyone. He had so filled the room with wax candles that it was as hot as an oven. He said to me after I had entered the drawing-room, 'You are not accustomed to such short dinners.'

He has generally one or two officers of the 53rd to dinner, or rather supper, for it is half-past eight before he sits down.3

1 It became so intolerable to him that for years he never got upon a horse. 2 The Opposition in Parliament, so named after the precedent of Pitt's last Administration, which was known as All the Talents.'

He dined at first at seven, though he afterwards changed the hour to four. Just before Gourgaud left (March 1818) there was a new arrangement. The midday breakfast was abolished, there was dinner at three, and supper at ten,

February 14th.-Yesterday I went to call on Bonaparte; he was going out in his carriage, and insisted on my going with him, and we had a drive together of three miles. He always asks after you,' and to-day, when he heard a packet was arrived from England, he said,Now the Colonel will hear from Lady Bingham.'

April 19th.—I called on Bonaparte last Sunday, before the Phaeton had anchored, to announce to him the arrival of the new Governor. He received me in his bedroom en robe de chambre, and a dirtier figure I never beheld! He was pleased with the compliment.

He received Sir Hudson Lowe last Wednesday with marked attention, behaving at the same time in a manner pointedly rude to Sir George Cockburn.

You have no idea of the dirty little intrigues of himself and his set; if Sir H. Lowe has firmness enough not to give way to them, he will in a short time treat him in the same manner. For myself, it is said I am a favourite, though I do not understand the claim I have to such. Cockburn has certainly used great exertions to make him as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and for this and for the care he took of him on board the Northumberland he did not deserve to be treated as he was on that day. . . There have been the usual fracas continued in the family. About a week since it was intimated to Madame Bertrand that, as she was so fond of the English and partial to their society, she might save herself the trouble of attending at dinner. The Emperor had dined in his own room the day before, fearing he could not have kept his temper and have displayed a scene before the servants. Madame then made known that Napoleon was frequently in the habit of using language neither kingly nor even gentlemanly towards his attendants, and that the ladies even were not respected in these fits of rage. The interdiction lasted a week, at the end of which time it was signified that the Emperor permitted her to come to dinner.'

then a few days afterwards dinner is to be at two-changes suspected by Gourgaud as intended to suit the health and convenience of Madame de Montholon, but which were probably devised to beguile the long weariness of the day or to cheat the long wakefulness of the night. For he practically passed all his days in his hut, reading, writing, talking, but withal bored to death.' (Lord Rosebery's Napoleon, p. 151.)

'Lady Bingham.

Napoleon received the intelligence of the deaths of Murat and Ney with the greatest indifference. Of the former he observed that he was a fool and deserved his fate; he said he had behaved very ill to him, and had refused to lend him money when at Elba. Of the latter he said he had done him more harm than good, and did not appear to care the least about either.

[Sir George probably received this information from O'Meara, who, like Montholon and Gourgaud, claimed to be the first to bring him the news of Murat's execution. To O'Meara it is natural that Napoleon should not betray any emotion. With the others he was less reserved. He expressed to Las Cases, among others, his true appreciation of Murat as a cavalry commander. 'At Waterloo Murat had perhaps been worth a victory to us. What was wanted? To break three or four English squares? Murat was precisely the man for the job (l'homme de la chose).' Nevertheless he knew Murat's untrustworthiness also. In afterdays he observed to Gourgaud:- Murat only got what he deserved. But it is all my fault, for I should have left him a marshal, and never have made him King of Naples, or even Grand Duke of Berg.'

As to Ney and his fate, Gourgaud reports the Emperor as being alternately indignant and indifferent. Lord Rosebery concludes that Napoleon never forgot or really forgave his interview with Ney at Fontainebleau in April, 1814.]

(To be concluded.)

BLACKSTICK PAPERS. NO. 2.1

BY MRS. RICHMOND RITCHIE.

FELICIA FELIX.

Introduction.

It chanced that the proof of this little paper reached the writer as she passed in a yacht along the coast where for so many years Felicia Felix dwelt and sang her song. Some conditions should make poets of us all. From the lady who owns the s.s. Palatine and the captain on the upper deck, to the least experienced guest on board, all the fresh beauty appealed with an irresistible charm. The weather was very fair after storms; young sea-gulls and guillemots were disporting themselves upon the crystal of the waters; a porpoise's back flashed in the sunlight; a far-away ship was sailing towards Cherbourg beyond the horizon. Near at hand rose the delicate intricate cliffs of Wales. Rocks, bearing their crown of summer green, and their peaceful flocks and garlands, but at the same time rooted. bare and stern in their fastnesses below, and set at intervals with white fortresses.

From Southampton to Milford Bay the forts and lighthouses stand vigilant, while all the way the transparent waves dash along the shores, and the gulls' wings beat time to this beautiful natural concerto of strength and sweetness, to the measured chime, the thundering burst, of which Mrs. Hemans herself has written, and written so well that, though her poems were not to be found on the amply stocked bookshelf in the saloon, of the five guests on board the hospitable Palatine, four quoted with pleasure and from memory from her writings as we sat round the table in the cabin, and above, the winds dance lightly over the waters. Fate at the wheel stands passionless while the yacht speeds on its way.

It seems a long journey from Haydn's silent old age, in the grass-grown street, by the Schönbrunn Park in Vienna, to the western coast of England and the sentimental, emotional days of L. E. L. and of Keepsakes and Mrs. Hemans, when poetry was

Copyright, 1900, by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, in the United States of America.

paramount and poetesses in demand; but these are the Blackstick Papers, and we travel about as the Fairy directs us, and so from the ancient suburb where the honoured master sat waiting the end among his ever-enduring scores, we come off to the rockbound western shores and the coasts of Wales, where the poetess, whom we have called Felicia Felix, once sat writing, and weaving her own charming spells. They are in one respect like Vivien's spells-if we are to believe Mrs. Hemans' admirers-and made up of woven paces' and of poetry too. Thine agile step, the lightest foot e'er seen on earth,' wrote an old friend in his last days describing Felicia Hemans on her native cliffs.

Many years ago some one gave the writer a little miniature of Mrs. Hemans, by the help of which it is still quite possible to conjure up an outward semblance, and to put a shape to one's impression of the impulsive being who paid so dearly for her happiness, her sensibility, her undoubted powers and beauty, and her charming poetical gifts. Mrs. Hemans' touching lines To my own Portrait' may have applied to this very miniature

Yet look thou still serenely on,

And if sweet friends there be

That when my song and soul are gone
Shall seek my form in thee,

Tell them of one for whom 'twas best
To flee away and be at rest.

The picture represents a woman of about twenty-eight; she has dark glossy curls, delicately marked features, a high colour; her bright full sad eyes, her laughing lips, give one an impression of womanly predominance and melancholy and gaiety all at once. She wears a black dress with gigot sleeves and the jewellery of her time-the buckle, the hair chain and locket, and also a golden ornament in her dark hair. There is perhaps (but this is merest guess-work) a certain sense of limitation-shall I call it persistency?—in the general expression of the countenance. It is hard to generalise from so slight a sketch, but perhaps something of this impulsiveness and inadaptability may have been the secret of much of the trouble of her life.

Felicia Hemans, who had been married at twenty, and who at sixteen had first known and fallen in love with Captain Hemans, at twenty-five was already parted from her husband for ever; one of her children had died, the other four boys were left to her care, and she along with them had returned to her mother's home.