NAPOLEON.1

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.

A LITTLE While ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris - clutched like a wild beast banished to Elba. saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king,—and I saw him at

1 From Prose-Poems. Pages 97-99. Copyright by C. P. Farrell.

I

St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said: "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon my knees and their arms about me, I would rather have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great."

THE DEAD NAPOLEON.1

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY.

TELL me what find we to admire
In epaulets and scarlet coats,
In men because they load and fire,
And know the art of cutting throats?

1 From The Chronicle of the Drum.

And what care we for war and wrack,
How kings and heroes rise and fall?
Look yonder; in his coffin black,

There lies the greatest of them all!

He captured many thousand guns;

He wrote "The Great" before his name; And dying only left his sons

The recollection of his shame.

Though more than half the world was his,
He died without a rood his own;

And borrow'd from his enemies
Six foot of ground to lie upon.

He fought a thousand glorious wars;
And more than half the world was his,
And somewhere, now, in yonder stars,
Can tell, mayhap, what greatness is.

JOAN OF ARC.1

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

PURE, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for

1 From De Quincey's Works. Vol. III, pages 207, 208. Adam and Charles Black.

thy truth, that never once no, not for a moment of weakness didst thou revel in the visions of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honors, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee! When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long! Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long.

A MAN PASSES FOR THAT HE IS WORTH.1

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

A MAN passes for that he is worth. The world is full of judgment days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and 1 From "Compensation and Spiritual Laws,” Essays. First Series. Pages 99, 100, 106, 107, 149–151. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Copyright by Edward W. Emerson.

run in each yard and square, a newcomer is as well and accurately weighed in the course of a few days and stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed, and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions; an older boy says to himself, "It's of no use; we shall find him out tomorrow."

A man

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. passes for that he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it. A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts all blab. Be, and not seem. Justice is not postponed. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit,