this fond and tried soul is woman.

A hand supports you, it is hers; a mouth touches your forehead, it is hers; you hear a breathing close to you, it is she.

To have everything she has, from her worship to her pity, to be never left, to have this gentle weakness to succor you, to lean on this unbending reed, to touch providence with her hands, and be able to take her in your arms-oh! what rapture this is! The heart, that obscure celestial flower, begins to expand mysteriously, and you would not exchange this shadow for all the light! The angel soul is thus necessarily there; if she go away, it is to return; she disappears like a dream, and reappears like a reality. You feel heat approaching you, it is she. You overflow with serenity, ecstacy, and gayety; you are a sunbeam in the night. And then the thousand little attentions, the nothings which are so enormous in this vacuum! The most ineffable accents of the human voice employed to lull you, and taking the place of the vanished universe! You are caressed with the soul; you see nothing, but self adored; it is a paradise of darkness.

you feel

your

Napoleon Buonaparte

[The selection given below occurs in a conversation between two Frenchmen. One, a Republican, holds up his country by saying, "France requires no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France." The other, one of "The Old Guard," with a strangely tremulous voice, produced by his internal emotion, answers, "Heaven forbid that I should diminish France; but it is not diminishing her to amalgamate Napoleon with her."]

*

*

you

do

Come, let us talk. I am a new-comer among you, but I confess that you astonish me. I fancied you young men, but where do you keep your enthusiasm, and what do with it? Whom do you admire, if it is not the Emperor, and what more do you want? If you will not have that great man, what great man would you have?

He had everything, he was complete, and in his brain was the cube of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, and dictated like Cæsar; his conversation blended the lightning of Pascal with the thunder of Tacitus; he made history and wrote it, and his bulletins are Iliads; he combined the figures of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet.

He left behind him in the east worlds great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught majesty to emperors, at the Academy of Science he answered Laplace, at the Council of State he held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry of one and to the sophistry of others, for he was a legist with the lawyers, a sidereal with the astronomers. Like Cromwell, blowing out one of two candles, he went to the temple to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything, knew everything, but that did not prevent him. from laughing heartily by the cradle of his new-born son. And, all at once, startled Europe listened, armies set out, parks of artillery rolled along, bridges of boats were thrown over rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the hurricane, and shouts, bugles, and crashing of thrones could be heard all around. The frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a superhuman sword being drawn from its scabbard could be heard, and he was seen, standing erect on the horizon, with a gleam in his hand, and a splendor in his eye, opening in the thunder of his two wings, the Grand Army and the Old Guard. He was the archangel of war.

Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny it is for a people to be the empire of such an emperor, when that people is France and adds its genius to the genius of that man. To appear and reign; to march and triumph; to have as bivouacs every capital; to select grenadiers and make kings of them; to decree the downfall of dynasties; to transfigure Europe at double quick steps; to feel when you threaten that you lay your hand on the sword-hilt of God; to follow in one man Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne; to be the people of a ruler who accompanies your every day-break with the brilliant announcement of a battle gained; to be aroused in the morning by the guns of the Invalides; to cast

into the abysses of light prodigious words which are eternally luminous--Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram!-to produce at each moment on the zenith of centuries constellations of victories; to make the French Emperor a pendant of the Roman Empire; to be the great nation, and give birth to the great army; to send legions all over the world, as the mountain sends its eagles in all directions to conquer, rule, and crush; to be in Europe a people gilt by glory; to sound a Titanic flourish of trumpets through history; to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by amazement all this is sublime.

A Heart Beneath a Stone.

[The sentiments which we copy here are extremely beautiful. A Frenchman, who by his political opinions was obliged to live in secret, communicated with his lady by leaving a letter beneath a stone. The rest is fully explained in the following:]

She raised the stone, which was of some size, and there was something under it that resembled a letter; it was an envelope of white paper. Cosette seized it; there was no address on it, and it was not sealed up. Still the envelope, though open, was not empty, for papers could be seen inside. Cosette no longer suffered from terror, nor was it curiosity: it was a commencement of anxiety. Cosette took out a small quire of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore several lines written in a very nice and delicate hand, so Cosette thought. She looked for a name, but there was none; for a signature, but there was none, either. For whom was the packet intended? probably for herself, as a hand had laid it on the bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination seized upon her. She tried to turn her eyes away from these pages, which trembled in her hand. She looked at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons circling round an adjoining roof, and then her eyes settled on the manu

script, and she said to herself that she must know what was inside it. This is what she read:

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the dilation of a single being as far as God, such is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad is the soul when it is sad through love! What a void is the absence of the being, who of her own self fills the world. Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God! We might understand how God might be jealous of her, had not the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.

God is behind everything, but everything conceals God. Things are black and creatures are opaque, but to love a being is to render her transparent.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when the soul is kneeling, no matter what the attitude of the body may be.

O love, adoration! voluptuousness of two minds which comprehend each other, of two hearts which are exchanged, of two glances which penetrate one another. You will come to me, O happiness, will you not? Walks with her in the solitudes, blest, and radiant days! I have dreamed that from time to time hours were detached from the lives of angels, and came down here to traverse the destinies of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except giving them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is in truth an augmentation; but it is impossible even for God to increase in its intensity the ineffable felicity which love gives to the soul in this world. God is the fullness of heaven, love is the fullness of man.

You gaze at a star for two motives: because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have by your side a sweeter radiance and greater mystery-woman.

When love has blended and molded two beings in an angelic and sacred union, they have found the secret of life; henceforth they are only the two terms of the same destiny, the two wings of one mind. Love and soar!

If you are a stone, be a magnet; if you are a plant, be sensitive; if you are a man, be love.

Love is the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.

I have met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his coat was out at elbows, the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a grander thing still to love! The heart becomes heroic by the might of passion. Henceforth it is composed of nought but what is pure, and is only supported by what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it than a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and serene soul, inaccessible to emotions and vulgar passions, soaring above the clouds and shadows of the world, follies, falsehoods, hatreds, vanities, and miseries, dwells in the azure of the sky, and henceforth only feels the profound and subterranean heavings of destiny as the summit of the mountains feels earthquakes.

If there were nobody who loved, the sun would be extinguished.