Forgive me.

Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this; and we sit on, forlorn, When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both, both my boys! If, in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,

Let none look at me!

MRS. BROWNING.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

HE is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered among us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive, a will despotic in its dictates, an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character - the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world ever rose, or reigned, or fell.

Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest he acknowledged no criterion but success - he worshipped no God but ambition, and, with an Eastern devotion, he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry.

Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic; and, with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse and wore without shame the diaIdem of the Cæsars. Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama.

Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny - ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind - if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmount space no opposition that he did not spurn and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity?

The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag

over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplace in his contemplation; kings were his people nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chess-board. Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant.

It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawingroom with the mob or the levee — wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown — banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg - dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic he was still the same military despot.

In this wonderful combination his affectations of literature must not be omitted. The jailor of the press, he affected the patronage of letters - the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy - the persecutor of authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning. Such a medley of contradictions, and, at the same time, such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist-a republican and an emperor a Mohammedan -a Catholic and a patron of the synagogue traitor and a tyrant

a subaltern and a sovereign -a a Christian and an infidel — he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self— a man without a model, and without a shadow. CHARLES PHILLIPS.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend

"If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church tower, as a signal-light-
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm.
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the. Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison bar,

And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack-door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade

Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the quiet town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the church-yard, lay the dead
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread
The watchful night-wind as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay -
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,

Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.

And lo! as he looks on the belfry's height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in the village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet: