people, ever ready to make sacrifices when prompted by honor or duty.

But we will not quarrel with popular predilections. It is useless to argue against these. Nor do we seek for reasons why Napoleon is an object of popular idolatry among our citizens. We love instinctively the heroic and the grand. We worship success. We bow down to strength. This is vulgar, but it is natural. The many are not discriminating, and never were, and never will be. We might croak, if we felt inclined, in view of the bad taste of majorities, but no good would come. We should be considered as "old fogies," who are not in very good repute in Young America, whose oracles are not the old, or experienced, or wise. We scarcely tolerate a judge, or a clergyman, or a statesman, when he has grown grey in services which in other countries are valued in proportion as men are experienced. If Napoleon had lived to be a moderate and wise monarch, we should lose sympathy with his character. But he was a meteor-blazing on the battle-field, heroic in action and strife, and we cannot resist the fascination of his deeds.

We are not disinclined to praise Napoleon until he was intoxicated with his successes and with the adulation he everywhere received. Until after the peace of Tilsit, his career, though stained by some crimes, was, on the whole, honorable as well as glorious. He was wonderful even as a youth, and early gave indications of future fame. He was not an amiable and loving youth, but he was studious, industrious, indefatigable, and unseduced by the ordinary follies of his companions. He was simply ambitious and aspiring, and consequently cold and calculating, although he had the tact to veil his selfishness with the mantle of occasional generosities. He never was sordid-never valued money except as a means to an end. Nor was he forgetful of favors. He remembered and rewarded his early benefactors. Mr. Abbott has enumerated many interesting anecdotes in proof of his generosity and kindness, the truth of which we do not question.

Nor was Napoleon ever a "sanguinary man," delighting in cruelty and bloodshed for their own sake. We even palliate the massacre of Jaffa, on the grounds of military necessity, of which Napoleon must be supposed to have been a judge. He knew his circumstances better than we possibly can know. It is very shal

We

low to sit in judgment on the military policy of the great masters of war. would no more condemn Napoleon for the measures which he pursued in his extremities, than we would Cromwell for his cruelties in Ireland. We do not think very highly of the wisdom of those Dutch deputies who undertook to lecture the great Marlborough on the art of war. The defence of war, if defence there be, is on the grounds of expediency. We cannot find many abstract truths from the gospel in its defence. Yet we believe in its lawfulness, when we consider the constitution of human society, and the nature of man. We do believe in the necessity for the confederation of the weak against the encroachments of the strong. We believe in the imperative duty of rulers and of governments to maintain law and order. Nor can we see how the strong are to be repelled, and evil doers punished, without resort to other weapons than that of love. The doctrine of non-resistance is fiting for an ideal state of society, such as never has been and never will be on our earth until the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

Hence we admire the early victories of Napoleon, since they were obtained against the enemies of his country-enemies who sought to invade its soil, and root out all reforming principles of government. We have admitted the stern necessity of the "whiff of grapeshot," that potent argument which Napoleon used to silence the disorganizing mob who sought to destroy the constituted authorities which France had, as a nation, decreed. He saved the convention, and restored order in a distracted country. This was a great service, and deserved a great reward.

And the Italian campaign was also a brilliant achievement, perhaps one of the most so in the history of war-a pure triumph of genius and praiseworthy enthusiasm a truly glorious victory over tyrannical powers. Napoleon humbled an ancient monarchy, when that monarchy sought to suppress useful reforms in another country, and to make a mockery of human rights. Nor were his victories stained with cruelties. He secured the respect even of the vanquished, and the admiration of neutral nations. It was natural that the French, threatened with overwhelming dangers from foreign enemies, should honor their deliverer. The laurels which encircled the brow of the conqueror of Italy were

fairly won. It would be mean and unjust to withhold from the youthful victor the honors he had earned.

But the campaign in Egypt should not be spoken of with such exalted praise. Here the cause was questionable. It was not a necessary war. It was dictated by lust of conquest. It was undertaken to head off England in her aggressions in the East. Napoleon sought to possess himself of oriental empires. We cannot praise any war which has for its object merely territorial aggrandizement. France did not need such conquests in the East. France was right in resisting those enemies who sought to invade her soil, or interfere with her revolution; but she was not right in seeking to add the Eastern world to her already extensive domains. No boasted interests of commerce can justify such an invasion as Napoleon projected. Nor did Providence smile on his undertaking. It is seldom that any enterprises signally unjust have, in these modern times, been permitted to thrive. Napoleon was prospered as the avenger of his nation's wrongs; and only such.

Again, it must be confessed, there were many palliations for his usurpation of sovereign power; but they are only palliations, after all. We urge for him the same excuses that we do for Cromwell when he overturned the government which he professed to serve. France, perhaps, was not fit for liberty, and Napoleon knew it. He believed that he was the only man who could rule France. Therefore he seized what, constitutionally, he had no right to claim. His only plea was that of revolutionary necessity. But even this is disputed. It is not certain that France was not fit for self-government. If she was not, her great revolution was a mockery and a blunder. Yet her revolution is the most glorious event in her history, and was productive of permanent blessings which even Napoleon could not pervert or take away. The horrid atrocities of that revolution are only one side of the question-a partial and incomplete view of the picture. Robespierre and Danton were not the heroes of that wonderful rising. The true heroes were the insulted millions, clamoring for justice.

Those who demolished the Bastille, who formed the first National Assembly, who abolished the old feudal distinctions, and the unequal privileges of the aristocracy, and the régime of priests, were the heroes.

Napoleon did not seek to destroy the work of the Reformers. He rather sanctioned and perpetuated it in his "code" and in his various regulations. As First Consul, his reign was beneficent. We need not enumerate his great works as a legislator, and as the restorer of domestic tranquillity. His enlightened mind perceived the necessities of France, and he devoted his energies for the public good, by works of internal improvement, and various schemes to develop the resources of his country. And he probably desired peace. He wished to reign as an imperial benefactor, arbitrarily, it is true, and by military force, still with a view of making France powerful and prosperous.

But the nations would not allow him to prosecute his work. They combined against him. They were jealous of him, and they detested the ideas of his government. They sought the restoration of the Bourbons, and the reign of legitimacy.

Then followed a great military career as supreme leader of the armies of France. Again he gained glorious victories, again humbled his adversaries -again taught useful lessons to the old tyrants of mankind. The second conquest of Italy was more brilliant than the first. The battle of Marengo was the greatest of the successes he had gained in war. He became the arbiter of Europe.

Then he seized the imperial crown, and sought to establish a new dynasty of princes, and to erect a proud monarchy on the ruins of the other states of Europe. We cannot tolerate this increased ambition. We cannot excuse this new usurpation. He now insulted the nation he had saved: he was a traitor to the great cause which he had early espoused; he became a Nebuchadnezzar, unapproachable from pride, a second Louis XIV., whom he now resembled. Intoxicated with success and flattery, he not only aspired at universal dominion, but made great blunders. The invasion of Russia, and his seizure of the Spanish monarchy, were crimes of such magnitude that they infuriated the nations of Europe.

Had it not been for these two blunders, he might have perpetuated his power, and left his magnificent empire to his heirs. But for these, all Europe could not have contended against hiin, with any hope of success.

But Providence baffled his schemes.

His armies were buried amid the snows of Russia, and could not be restored. France lost her gallant defender. The sturdy veterans of Jena and Austerlitz and Eylau had perished, and there were none to take their place. The mighty usurper was defenceless. He lost the game in which were staked his hopes of universal empire.

Then the nations rose a second time, and this time they were successful, for they fought a crippled hero, whom the elements, not man, had beaten. The battles of Dresden and Waterloo finished the military career of Napoleon, and he was sent to a lonely rock in the oceanto meditate and to die. The greatness of his fortunes was only exceeded by the bitterness of his humiliation. Never before, in the history of mankind, has mortal climbed so high, never before did hero fall so low. Yet he died, a proud pharisee, justifying his courses, without recognizing the arm which had visited him with its chastising rod.

"A single step into the right had made

This man the Washington of worlds betrayed;
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven."

It is, however, one of the virtues of

our humanity to forget injuries and remember services. Thus we palliate those great mistakes and crimes which Napoleon, intoxicated by unparalleled successes, committed against society in his latter days, and dwell on those early and magnificent feats of heroism which restored the glory of an afflicted nation.

Napoleon, as a great man, claims to be judged by his services, not by his defects and faults. The question for us to solve is, whether his undoubted services should counterbalance the great crimes which must be laid at his door. And when we have settled this hard and knotty point, we may indulge in a few reflections such as philosophical history suggests.

Napoleon's career teaches the vanity of military glory, when warfare is not carried on in defence of the great permanent rights of mankind, and also speaks volumes of the retributive justice of the overruling Power. But we will not dwell on these truths. The verdict of enlightened humanity is yet to be given, although we think that this verdict must have been anticipated by the lonely exile at St. Helena, when the curses of widows and orphans were wafted over oceans and continents to the rock on which he was chained.

D'

CURSIVE AND DISCURSIVE.

as

a

ICKENS once described us tongue-y people." The phrase was expressive. Our American Democracy is a gift of tongues. Our whole company prophecies in a Pentecostal outburst of intellectual, freedom which is quite inconceivable to the European mind, over-ridden as it is with despotism in government, fashion, intellect and business. Accordingly, everybody writes. In newspapers, magazines, or books, an astonishingly large proportion of the entire population aspires to speak to his or her fellow-men with the presumed emphasis of set publication; insomuch that print now being almost the rule, publication is not emphatic. Ninety in the hundred of books now published are such as do actually require to be read with strict

watchfulness against remembering either their matter or their manner. There is a frightful eruption of literary humors upon us. Every person who has indited words enough to make a book, straightway makes a book. The thoughts may already have fluttered before the public eye, upon the wings of a magazine, or the more transient pinions of a newspaper. Perhaps the material is so vapid or so ragged that the author stultifies himself by broadly avowing carelessness or incompetence in his preface. Even farragos of disjointed newspaper paragraphs, with no more coherence or significance than the sandy ridges which the Scottish wizard set his troublesome servant-fiend to twist into ropes, must needs be concatenated into a book. If the words have been written, they must be worth printing. It would not do at all to have written them out for

nothing. Therefore away they go to the printer.

A literary friend had prepared for publication a short pamphlet, discussing the matter of which we complain, which, however, we persuaded him to withhold. We apprehended ill results to our friend's literary success, if he should be recognized as the utterer of such virulent and unjustifiable truths against literary men and literary things. Yet our friend spoke truth; except that he spoke it too bluntly. We have his permission to extract a few paragraphs, which we cull from the milder and more genial portions of his diatribe:

"American literature is degenerating into a vast stream of milk and water. A Great Literary Apostacy is demoralizing it. Authors write, not because they have a true or a beautiful word to say, and because the astrus of their conception drives them to speak, but because they see with the sharp little eyes of business men that the popular throat is agape for such or such a morsel, and that they can prepare the morsel. A whole book to proclaim the Apotheosis of Humbug! A whole book whose staple is the unblushing narrative, by a discarded suitor, of the details of his chase! What a culmination of literary immorality!

"It is no impertinent inquiry, whether publishers are justifiable in introducing such works to the public. Shall it be claimed that the question of morality is for the author to settle, and not for the publisher? No, indeed. If there is only one question for the publisher to ask (namely, 'Will it sell?'), then there is no other for any man to ask; and poison or rum, or printed filth may be manufactured and vended, provided only that somebody will buy.

"The men who criticise books are the third person of this unlucky trinity. Read a criticism upon a book. Can you presume that the critic has read the book? Remember the recantations that set back in an absurd reaction, down the laudatory throats of great and small the critics who praised Hot Corn.' Never, in this world, were so many words eaten before in so small a time. There are publishers who prepare notices after their own hearts-not generally very condemnatory--for their own books, and have them inserted bodily in compliant columns. Sometimes the gentleman upon the strength of whose recommendations a book was printed, has

the privilege of writing the notices of it in an influential paper. These notices are usually not unfavorable. If a publisher spies an adverse verdict upon some work of his issuing, his first question-according to the trade-instinct-is, not whether the man criticised honestly, and what are his abilities, but, what was his motive for criticising unfavorably? What personal spite has he? How have we slighted him? What rival has hired him? What favor does he want? I proclaim to all the inhabitants of the land that they cannot trust to what the periodicals say of new books. Instead of being able by reading the criticism to judge of the book, it is now necessary to read the book in order to judge of the criticism.

66

Perhaps I may not unreasonably give a sly kick to another, but now dying imposition. This is the great blast of advertisements with which every successive book is driven forth to life; as it shot out of a prodigious wind-gun. Every book is The Greatest Book of the Age. Twenty Thous and Copies are Ordered in Advance of Publication. Fifty Thousand Copies are Sold in Two Weeks after Publication. There is a Tremendous Excitement. Everybody is Talking About It.

Newspapers manufacture the peculiar little epigrammatic remarks that appear well in quotation; such as A Great Book ;. Full of true Genius; The most Delightful Thing we ever Read; Should be on Every Table; Drawn with a Master Hand; and the like lingo. These pin-wheels of adulation, again, are worked off in the advertisements, and the 'pensive public' buys, whether it list or list not.

"This factitious excitement is arranged somewhat as follows. First, advance copies ' are sent to the papers. From among their notices, the available ones are picked out as above mentioned. Sometimes mysterious little announcements have been received in advance, to tickle curiosity. Then come the regular advertisements, blazing with recommendations. These little machinations usually secure a fair amount of orders. The advertisements immediately announce that, owing to enormous pressure of orders, publication day is unavoidably postponed. Country booksellers, hereupon, say to themselves, 'Must be something rich. Great book, undoubtedly. Must have some.' And they send new orders, or enlarge the old. Then, after the

publication, this torrent of orders, so artificially raised and dammed, is let loose all at once, and glorified by the disingenuous brag that so many Thousand Copies were sold in a week. This again tends to make all the outsiders believe in the book, and again the orders come in.

"Thus it appears that the writers and publishers of books are leagued in a great company, who for their own selfish ends are cramming all sorts of trash into the public mouth, only provided that the foolish purchaser will pay for it. They do not hesitate to break down whatever of healthy tone remains in the American mind, or to degrade still further its already sufficiently low standard of morals. The sole and single desideratum is money.

"And the equally disgraceful complementary truth must be stated; that the nation is not honest enough nor intelligent enough to choose between the good and the bad; even to that extent that a certain Percentage of the claims of the advertisements, of overwhelming demand, are actually true.

"For these evils, perhaps there is no remedy. It may be that men of pure hearts and high aspirations must stand still and see their country-men and country-women go sliding down the gutter into which the authors and "the trade" have been decoying them. One is almost tempted to invoke the majestic interference of the law; to wish that the publication of a useless or ill-written book might be made a high misdemeanor against the State, and that a smart fine and imprisonment should be meted out to all concerned. That a Board of Censors should be appointed from among the facile principes of American literature, who should have heavy salaries, and much honor, as entrusted with the charge of the American intellect and morals; and who should make thorough prelibation of all compositions intended for publication, and give the exclusive authorization of such publication; any book published without it to subject the parties to condign punishment under the law."

Our pamphleteering friend goes on to vary and amplify his statements and arguments in a manner much too spicy for our use. Yet no honest man can deny that there is a very large share of truth in what he says. He is quixotic, of course, and impracticable. As for his Board of Censors and his legislation, we might as well

have the Czar imported at once, with his knout in his pocket. We cannot legislate against Balderdash. Nor is he wiser in his invectives against advertisements. People who fight against windmills have ever been overthrown, from Don Quixote downwards. Suppose advertisements do offer unreliable statements? The more brazen-faced the humbug, the more danger to the brain-pan of him who runs his head against it. He who begins thus, would soon be found absorbed in the useful task of strenuously refuting those popular legends which one may descry on fences and sidewalks, and which put forth the groundless claim that We all use Sniddicker's Liver Pills and Worm Syrup." Yet there is a body of doctrine, a Corpus Juris, a system of ethics concerned about literature. We may properly venture a few suggestions towards it, although it may be long before any theory of Literary Ethics shall be established and recognized.

Thought is free," ever since the days of Caliban, that down-trodden man and brother. By the way, has any one investigated the morals of the relations between the foreign Prospero and his native subjects? Is not the Tempest the Epic of "Sam?"

Speech is free, also, in our Democratic country, at least to any man who fears neither enmity nor contempt, and who seeks neither office nor influence. Perhaps we have as much free speech as heart could wish. For literary utterances, properly so called, we have. Yet it does by no means follow that every man has a right, by fair means or foul, with indiscriminate unscrupulosity, to gather other people's dollars for his words, or to waste their time in the examination of them. Consider the "poets of America"--that vast and undistinguishable throng. How many men and women are there who might write prose, both true and good; but who will aspire to rise into that high imaginative sphere, the bright poet-kingdom of the Vates, and who thereupon only utter nonsense. They can talk fair common sense; but they endeavor, with frantic efforts, to chant in the choir of the poets; but their effusions compare with the songs of the "bards sublime," as the nauseous contortions and gibberings of a high-tragedy rage, with the still and awful fire, the great waves of divine inspiration, and the mighty utterances, of the older and the later prophets. It is in vain to