Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

NAPOLÉON.

FAMOUS
LEADERS AMONG MEN

BY

SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON

AUTHOR OF "POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," "GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS,"
"FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS," "FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN,"
"FAMOUS MEN OF SCIENCE," "FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS,"
"FAMOUS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD," "STORIES FROM LIFE,"
"FROM HEART AND NATURE" (POEMS), "FAMOUS
ENGLISH AUTHORS," "FAMOUS ENGLISH
STATESMEN," ETC., ETC.

The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference between men,
the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible
determination.—Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton.

NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street

Copyright, 1894,
BY
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

C. J. Peters & Son,
Type-Setters and Electrotypers,
145 High Street, Boston.

TO MY SON

Charles Knowles Bolton.

PREFACE.

Napoleon said, "My maxim has always been, a career open to talent without distinction of birth." It will be seen in these pages that most of these men rose to leadership by their own efforts. Napoleon was poor, and often without employment in early life, but his industry, good judgment, will, and ambition carried him to the heights of power.

Nelson was the son of a minister, whose salary did not support his numerous family, but his boy had the energy and force that won success.

Bunyan, a travelling tinker, twelve years a prisoner in Bedford jail, could, while poor and in prison, write a book that is read more than any other in the world, save the Bible.

Arnold, through love for his work, and his untiring energy and good sense, became the ideal teacher.

Phillips and Beecher, both eloquent, the latter beginning his labors on a salary of $200 a year, were led into their great careers through a great motive,—their hatred of slavery.

Kingsley, the Christian socialist, knowing that the pulpit must help in the solution of the labor problem, lived and preached the brotherhood of man.

Sherman, the son of a widow, adopted by his father's friend, had early failures, and won his place of distinction with Grant and Sheridan by his own ability.

Spurgeon, whose work was marvellous, was poor, and without a college education.

Phillips Brooks, whose death was an irreparable loss, made his way even more by his sincerity and unselfishness than by his eloquence.

Napoleon, who was especially fond of biography and history, was always eager to learn what qualities produced greatness or success. Perhaps some will find it interesting to trace in these pages what enabled these men to be leaders in various fields.

S. K. B.

CONTENTS.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

"The series of Napoleon's successes is absolutely the most marvellous in history. No one can question that he leaves far behind the Turennes, Marlboroughs, and Fredericks; but when we bring him up for comparison an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Cæsar, a Charles, we find in the single point of marvellousness Napoleon surpassing them all....

"Every one of those heroes was born to a position of exceptional advantage. Two of them inherited thrones; Hannibal inherited a position royal in all but the name; Cæsar inherited an eminent position in a great empire. But Napoleon, who rose as high as any of them, began life as an obscure provincial, almost as a man without a country. It is this marvellousness which paralyzes our judgment. We seem to see at once a genius beyond all estimate, a unique character, and a fortune utterly unaccountable."

Thus wrote John Robert Seeley, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, of the man whom he regarded as the greatest enemy England has ever known.

Napoleon has been more praised and villified, probably, than any man in history. Lanfrey, though careful as to facts, and Taine, are bitter, always ready to impute sinister motives. John S. C. Abbott is adulatory; Walter Scott cannot be impartial; and Bourrienne, the discarded private secretary, Madame de Rémusat, and the Duchess d'Abrantès, must be read with allowance for prejudice. Thiers, in his twenty volumes on "The Consulate and the Empire," gives a most valuable picture of the times, friendly to the great leader; John Codman Ropes's "First Napoleon" is able; and the life by William O'Connor Morris of Oxford is generally fair and interesting.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in the Island of Corsica, Aug. 15, 1769. This date has been disputed by some authors, who claim that Napoleon was born Jan, 7, 1768. Colonel Jung, in "Bonaparte et son Temps," thinks the dates of birth of Napoleon and his brother Joseph were exchanged by the parents, who wished, in 1778, to send Napoleon to a military school at Brienne supported by the State, and he must needs be under ten years of age.

As Corsica became subject to France in June, 1769, some persons believe that Napoleon himself changed the date of his birth from 1768 to 1769, that he might appear to the French nation as a French subject; but the date, Aug. 15, 1769, is usually accepted as correct.

The Bonaparte family were originally from the nobility of Florence, where they had taken a somewhat prominent part in politics and literature. They had lost their fortune; and Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, earned his living by the law. He was an eloquent man, and an adjutant under Pasquale Paoli, a patriot of Corsica. This island, in the fourteenth century, was under Genoa. When it gained its independence under Paoli, such rights as Genoa still possessed she sold to France. As a result, in 1769 a French army of twenty-two thousand subjugated the island, and Paoli fled to England, where he lived for twenty years.

Charles Bonaparte, at eighteen, married a girl not yet fifteen, Letizia Ramolini, descended from a noble family of Naples, a person of unusual beauty and strength of character. Although so young, she entered heartily into the warfare for Corsican independence, and shared the perils of her husband at the front.

Napoleon was the fourth of her thirteen children, the eldest, a son, and the second, a daughter, both dying young. He was born in the midst of war. He wrote Paoli, in 1789, when he was twenty years old, "I was born when my country was sinking; the cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, and the tears of despair surrounded my cradle from my birth."

The Duchess d'Abrantès tells this story of Napoleon's boyhood. When he was seven years old, being accused by one of his sisters of eating a basket of grapes and figs, although he denied the offence, he was whipped and kept on bread and cheese for three days.

On the fourth day a little friend of the family arrived at the home, and confessed that she and Napoleon's sister, Marianna (afterward Elisa) had eaten the fruit. The lad was asked why he had not accused his sister, and replied that he suspected that she was guilty, but said nothing out of consideration for the friend.

After the submission of Corsica to France in 1769, Count Marbœuf was appointed viceroy of the island. He became a friend of the Bonapartes; and Charles, the father, was made king's assessor to the Judicial Court for Ajaccio. Through Marbœuf's influence three of the Bonaparte children were placed in fine schools,—Joseph, Marianna, and Napoleon, the last at the military school of Brienne, near Paris. Here he remained for five years. He was a quiet, studious lad, devoted to Plutarch's Lives and Cæsar's Commentaries. He was always trying to find out what made certain men great. He was easily at the head of his class in mathematics. His industry and perseverance were astonishing.

"During play-hours," says Bourrienne, "he used to withdraw to the library, where he read works of history, particularly Polybius and Plutarch. I often went off to play with my comrades, and left him by himself in the library."

He was cold in manner, talked very little with his classmates, and felt keenly his poverty and the submission of his country to France.

Most of the boys at the school were rich, and they often ridiculed Napoleon and his country. And yet he bore them no ill-will; and, says Bourrienne, "when he had the supervision of any duty which they infringed, he would rather go to prison than denounce the criminals." During the winter of 1783-84, when the fall of snow was unusually heavy, Napoleon, then fourteen, suggested to his mates that they build a snow fort, "divide ourselves into sections, form a siege, and I will undertake to direct the attacks." This sham war was carried on with great enthusiasm for a fortnight.

Three of the best scholars were sent every year from each of the twelve provincial military schools of France to the Military College of Paris. Napoleon was one of the three sent from Brienne.

Here the young men lived so expensively that the youth of fifteen wrote a letter of protest to the Vice-Principal Berton of Brienne. He urged that, instead of so many attendants, and two-course dinners, they should wait upon themselves, clean their own boots, and eat the coarse bread made for soldiers. Temperance and activity would fit them, he said, for the hardships of war.

Napoleon won the admiration of his teachers. The professor in history, M. de l'Eguille, said: "A Corsican by birth and character, he will do something great if circumstances favor him."

After a year at this school, he was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of La Fère, in 1785. The next five years he passed at different military stations in France. He was always studying. He pored over maps and plans of fortresses. He read with avidity books on law, philosophy, theology, political economy, and various forms of government. He wrote an essay on the question, "What are the institutions most likely to contribute to human happiness?" He also wrote a history of Corsica and her wrongs.

Abbott relates that on a day of public festivity at Marseilles, Napoleon was criticised because he did not join in the amusements. He replied, "It is not by playing and dancing that a man is to be formed."

At Auxonne, Napoleon and some other officers boarded with a plain barber. The wife of the barber did not like the taciturn young Napoleon, who stayed in his room and devoured his books, while the other officers pleased her from their social ways, and enjoyment of the gossip of the town.

Years after, Napoleon, who had won several victories, passed that way. He asked the barber's wife if she remembered an officer by the name of Bonaparte in her home. "Indeed I do," was the reply, "and a very disagreeable inmate he was. He was always either shut up in his room, or, if he walked out, he never condescended to speak to any one."

"Ah, my good woman," said Napoleon, "had I passed my time as you wished to have me, I should not now have been in command of the army of Italy."

Napoleon was at this time very slight in physique, five feet six and a half inches tall, with a very large head, pale face, piercing eyes of grayish blue, brown hair, a smile that could be sweet and captivating, and beautiful hands.

In 1791, when he was twenty-two years old, Napoleon, now first lieutenant, visited Corsica on furlough. Remaining too long, his name was struck off the army lists. He returned to Paris, and anxiously looked about for some way to earn a living. He met his schoolmate, Bourrienne, who usually paid for any meal they took together at a restaurant, as, although poor, he was richer than Napoleon. Each day they had projects for earning money. They found some houses building, and desired to rent them, and then underlet them, but the owners asked too much to realize any profit. Napoleon solicited employment at the war office. "Everything failed," says Bourrienne.

Bonaparte's mother, left a widow with eight children in 1785, was, of course, powerless to help Napoleon. Her husband had gone on business to Montpellier in the south of France, and died of a cancerous ulcer in the stomach in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His wife was only thirty-five. Madame Bonaparte was possessed of wonderful energy, great strength of will, and excellent judgment. These her son Napoleon inherited in a marked degree.

She proved equal to the care of her fatherless children. "She managed everything," said Napoleon, "provided for everything with a prudence which could neither have been expected from her sex nor from her age. Ah, what a woman! Where shall we look for her equal? She watched over us with a solicitude unexampled. Every low sentiment, every ungenerous affection, was discouraged and discarded. She suffered nothing but that which was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful understandings. She abhorred falsehood, and would not tolerate the slightest act of disobedience. None of our faults were overlooked. Losses, privations, fatigue, had no effect upon her. She endured all, braved all. She had the energy of a man, combined with the gentleness and delicacy of a woman."

When Bonaparte was waiting in Paris for some position to open, the French Revolution had begun. On June 20, 1792, a ragged mob of five or six thousand men surrounded the Tuileries, put a red cap on the head of Louis XVI., and made him show himself at the windows to the crowd in the garden. Napoleon was indignant, and said to Bourrienne, "Why have they let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with the cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough."

Napoleon also witnessed the storming of the Tuileries on Aug. 10, when the Swiss guards were massacred. Although a Republican in sentiment, he had no sympathy with the extreme democracy of the Jacobins, and said: "If I were compelled to choose between the old monarchy and Jacobin misrule, I should infinitely prefer the former."

Years later, when Napoleon was Emperor, when asked to allow a person to return to France who had been prominent in the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, he said, "Let him know that I am not powerful enough to protect the wretches who voted for the death of Louis XVI. from the contempt and indignation of the public."

Corsica and Paoli (who had returned and become her governor) were shocked at the excesses of the French Revolution, and hoped and planned once more for independence. Finding themselves unable to achieve it alone, they sought the aid of England. Bonaparte and his family favored adherence to France, and were banished from the island, their home plundered, and they made their escape at midnight to Marseilles. Here they were for some time in extreme poverty. Joseph, the eldest son, found employment as a clerk in an office, and in August, 1794, married Julia Clari, the daughter of one of the richest merchants of Marseilles. This was a great pecuniary benefit to the whole family.

Napoleon had finally been reinstated in the army; for with the Reign of Terror at home, and wars with monarchies abroad, all fearful of the growth of republican sentiments and consequent revolutions, the French army was in need of all its able young men.

Napoleon's first important work was at the siege of Toulon. This was the great naval depot and arsenal of France. The Royalists, or followers of the Bourbon king, Louis XVI., had centred here, and, opposed to the republic, had surrendered the city, with its forts and ships, to England.

The place must be retaken; and the Republic sent out an army under Carteaux, a portrait painter. For some months the siege was carried on, but almost nothing was accomplished. Sixty thousand men were needed, and Carteaux had but twenty-five thousand.

Napoleon, on his way from Avignon to Nice, passed through Toulon, stopping to see a friend who introduced him to Carteaux. The young officer saw at once the mistakes of the campaign. "Instead of attacking the town," said Napoleon, "try and establish batteries which shall sweep the harbor and the roadstead. If you can only drive away the ships, the troops will not remain."

Cape l'Eguillette separates the two harbors, and here batteries were placed to sweep the sea; for Napoleon had said, putting his finger on the map, at the cape, "Toulon is there!"

As he predicted, the English ships were driven off after a terrible bombardment; fifteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon in dismay fled to the ships of the allies; the plan of Napoleon had proved a great success.

He was not responsible for the horrors which followed. The Royalists set fire to the arsenal and ships before their departure; while the town was in flames, cannon from the shore sunk boat-loads of fugitives, and hundreds in the city who could not escape were deliberately shot in the streets and in their homes, so desperate had become the hate between Royalists and Republicans, or really Jacobins.

Fouché, afterwards prominent under the Empire, wrote to a friend, Dec. 23: "We have only one way of celebrating victory. This evening we shoot two hundred and thirteen rebels. Adieu, my friend; tears of joy run down my cheeks, and my heart is overflowing."

"It was," says Walter Scott, concerning this taking of Toulon, Dec. 17, 1793, "upon this night of terror, conflagration, tears, and blood, that the star of Napoleon first ascended the horizon; and, though it gleamed over many a scene of horror ere it set, it may be doubted whether its light was ever blended with that of one more dreadful."

For this brilliant undertaking Napoleon was made General of Artillery. General Dugommier, who commanded at Toulon, said, "Promote this young officer, or he will promote himself." Napoleon was wounded in his thigh by a bayonet thrust in one of the charges. He was at this time but twenty-four years of age, poor, ambitious, and with little prospect of his future wonderful career.

He was sent to defend the coast of Provence, and was denounced by the Jacobins, who said he was building a bastile at Marseilles to enslave the people. In March, 1794, he rejoined the army of Italy at Nice, and was so useful that the commander-in-chief wrote: "I am indebted to the comprehensive talents of General Bonaparte for the plans which have insured our victory."

In July, 1794, he was sent on a mission to Genoa, to examine the fortresses and the neighboring country. Meantime, one set of French leaders had been superseded by a set equally bad. Through jealousy, and as a friend of the younger Robespierre, Napoleon was arrested as a "suspected person," was two weeks in prison, and nearly lost his life. He seems to have been spared for the selfish reason, "the possible utility of the military and local knowledge of the said Bonaparte." He addressed an eloquent letter to his accusers, quoted by Lanfrey, in which he says: "Remove the oppression which surrounds me; give me back the esteem of patriots. An hour afterwards, if bad men wish for my life, I care so little for it, I have so often counted it for nothing.... Yes, nothing but the idea that it may be of use to the country gives me courage to bear its weight."

Soon after this, to scatter such officers as himself, who were supposed to be Jacobin in tendency, Napoleon was ordered to La Vendée to put down civil dissensions. He rebelled against being separated from the army of Italy. "You are too young," said Aubrey, the Girondist deputy, "to be commander-in-chief of artillery."

"Men age fast on a field of battle," said Napoleon, "and I am no exception."

For refusing to proceed to his post, Napoleon's name was struck off the army lists, and again he was in Paris, out of employment. When he and Bourrienne took a stroll at evening on the Boulevards, and saw the rich young men on horseback, apparently living a life of ease and luxury, "dandies with their whiskers," says Madame Junot (Duchess d'Abrantès), Napoleon would exclaim bitterly, "And it is on such beings as these that Fortune confers her favors. How contemptible is human nature!"

He told Count Montholon, when in exile at St. Helena, that at this time he came near committing suicide by throwing himself into the river. With head down, and meditating upon his determination, he ran against a plainly dressed man, who proved to be Démasis, a former comrade in the artillery.

"What is the matter?" he said to Napoleon. "You do not listen to me! You do not seem glad to see me! What misfortune threatens you? You look to me like a madman about to kill himself."

Napoleon told him his needs, and his mother's poverty. "Is that all?" said Démasis. "Here are six thousand dollars in gold, which I can spare without any inconvenience. Take them, and relieve your mother."

Hardly aware of what he was doing, Napoleon grasped the money, and sent it to his mother. Afterwards he could find nothing of Démasis. Fifteen years later, when the Empire was near its fall, Napoleon met him, made him accept sixty thousand dollars to repay the loan of six thousand, and appointed him director-general of the crown gardens, at a salary of six thousand dollars a year, and the honors of an officer in the household. He also provided a good situation for Démasis' brother.

He never forgot a kindness. A humble shoemaker, who worked for him in these days of poverty, and waited for his pay, was always employed by Napoleon after he became Emperor, though he was urged to go to some one more fashionable. A jeweller, who once trusted him, was remembered in Napoleon's days of prosperity, and thus made his fortune. To a lady, a stranger to him, who once was kind to him in sickness in these early years, he sent two thousand dollars, hearing that her circumstances had changed. To an old man in Jersey, who had once loaned his father twenty-five louis, he sent ten times that sum.

Reverses began to attend the army of Italy. Whenever it was convenient to use his services, it seemed always to be remembered that he had knowledge and sagacity. Napoleon was asked by the director of military affairs to draw up a plan of operations for the army. It was sent to Kellermann, commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, who rejected it, saving, "The author is a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum." Lanfrey and other historians consider the plan altogether brilliant and admirable.

Napoleon, by years of study, had made himself a master in the science of war, as well as along other lines. He had made himself ready for a great opportunity, and a great opportunity came to him.

France, in her struggle for self-government, had adopted a new constitution, under a Directory of five persons, with a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients, and a Council of Five Hundred, somewhat like our House of Representatives. The new government, though acceptable to the provinces, did not please either the Royalists or Jacobins of Paris, and the people, now so used to bloodshed, resorted to force to destroy the Directory.

Barras, one of the Directors, who knew Napoleon, immediately thought of him as a young man who could quell a mob. "It is that little Corsican officer," he said, "who will not stand upon ceremony!" The Directory had but about eight thousand soldiers; the National Guard numbered forty thousand. Napoleon spent the whole night in turning the Louvre and the Tuileries into a sort of camp, with artillery posted at all the outlets. He armed all the members of the government, that they might defend themselves if the necessity arose, and he took care to leave a way of retreat open to St. Cloud.

The National Guards appeared on the morning of Oct. 5, 1795 (13th Vendémiaire, as the month was called by the Revolutionary Calendar), in front of Napoleon's troops. All day the two armies were within fifteen paces of each other. At four o'clock in the afternoon, General Danican of the National Guards gave the signal for attack. Napoleon mounted his horse, and the fight began at several places.

The cannon swept them down at every point. At six o'clock the battle was over, and order was restored in Paris. About eighty only were killed, and three or four hundred wounded, as the guns were loaded with powder after two discharges. Napoleon was, as he deserved to be, the hero of the hour. With the utmost self-possession, with a clear brain and never-failing courage, he had been equal to the emergency.

Napoleon was made General of the Interior, with the command of Paris. The days of poverty were over. He found places for several of his family, and was much sought after by those in high position. He was especially good to the poor, and the Duchess d'Abrantès tells how he climbed to attics and went down into cellars to feed the hungry. As he was stepping out of his carriage one day at the home of the Duchess, a woman held her dead child before him. It had died from want. She had come to ask him to save her other children. "If nobody will give me anything," she said, "I must even take them all five and drown myself with them." Napoleon remembered how near he had been to drowning himself only a little time before. He obtained the wages due to her husband, who had been killed while at work on the roof of the Tuileries, and a pension was granted her.

Soon after this an attractive boy about fourteen years of age came to Napoleon and asked for the sword of his father, who was a general of the Republic, and had been put to death by the Jacobins, because he was a Girondist, or moderate Republican.

"I was so touched by this affectionate request," said Napoleon, "that I ordered it to be given to him. This boy was Eugène Beauharnais. On seeing the sword he burst into tears. I felt so affected by his conduct, that I noticed and praised him much. A few days afterwards his mother came to return me a visit of thanks. I was struck with her appearance, and still more with her esprit."

The young general of twenty-six became thoroughly in love with the graceful and lovable widow of thirty-two. Josephine Tascher, the only child of French parents, had been born in the Island of Martinique, Jan. 24, 1763. She was married when sixteen to Viscount de Beauharnais, a major in the army, who introduced her to the court of Marie Antoinette, but who, with all his wealth and position, did not make her life a happy one. After four years of marriage and the birth of two children, Hortense and Eugène, to whom she was most tenderly attached, she and Beauharnais separated, and she returned to Martinique, but at his persistent request she came back to him after three years.

On his imprisonment during the Reign of Terror she attempted to save him and was thrown into prison, where she narrowly escaped the guillotine. He was beheaded July 23, 1794.

"Josephine," says Meneval, the secretary of Napoleon after Bourrienne, "was irresistibly attractive.... Her temper was always the same. She was gentle and kind, affable and indulgent with every one, without difference of persons. She had neither a superior mind nor much learning; but her exquisite politeness, her full acquaintance with society, with the court, and with their innocent artifices, made her always know the best things to say or do."

Napoleon found at the home of Madame de Beauharnais the most noted persons in Paris, and, what was more important for his happiness, the one woman whom he ever after loved.

Years later he said, "Josephine was truly a most lovely woman, refined, affable, and charming.... She was so kind, so humane—she was the most graceful lady and the best woman in France. I never saw her act inelegantly during the whole time we lived together. She possessed a perfect knowledge of the different shades of my character, and evinced the most exquisite tact in turning this knowledge to the best account....

"I was the object of her deepest attachment. If I went into my carriage at midnight for a long journey, there, to my surprise, I found her, seated before me and awaiting my arrival. If I attempted to dissuade her from accompanying me, she had so many good and affectionate reasons to urge, that it was almost always necessary to yield. In a word, she always proved to me a happy and affectionate wife, and I have preserved the tenderest recollections of her."

Barras, the ardent friend of Josephine, urged her marriage with Napoleon, and her children favored it. She admired him, but hesitated. She wrote a friend, "Barras assures me that if I marry the general, he will obtain for him the appointment of commander-in-chief of the army of Italy. Yesterday Bonaparte, speaking to me of this favor, which has already caused some jealousy among his companions in arms, although it is not yet granted, said, 'Do they think I need patronage to insure my success? Some day they will be only too happy if I grant them mine. My sword is at my side, and that will carry me a long way.'"

They were married March 9, 1796, Napoleon having been appointed to the command of the army of Italy on the preceding 23d of February. He remained in Paris but a few days, and then hastened to his army, reaching Nice towards the last of March.

He found an army of about thirty thousand men, "without pay, without provisions, without shoes," opposed to about twice their number of Austrians and Sardinians. He issued an address to them: "Soldiers, you are poorly fed and half-naked. The government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honor, but they bring you no advantage, no glory. I am about to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world; there you will find larger cities and rich provinces; there you will find honor, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, shall you lack courage?"

His soldiers, who till his death idolized him and would die for him, were soon to prove on scores of battle-fields that they never lacked courage.

This slight, boyish-looking general of twenty-six said to his veteran officers, "We must hurl ourselves on the foe like a thunderbolt, and smite like it."

And this was done. The first battle was on April 12, at Montenotte. The Austrians were routed, leaving their colors and cannon with the French, and three thousand dead and wounded. Napoleon afterwards said to the Emperor of Austria, "My title of nobility dates from the battle of Montenotte."

The battles of Millesimo and Mondovi quickly followed. On the heights of Monte Zemolo, Napoleon looked out upon the fertile plains of Italy, and exclaimed, "Hannibal crossed the Alps, but we have turned them!"

Then he addressed his enthusiastic soldiers: "In fifteen days," he said, "you have won six victories; captured twenty-one flags, fifty cannon, many fortified places; conquered the richest part of Piedmont; you have captured fifteen thousand prisoners, and killed and wounded ten thousand men. You lacked everything; you have gained battles without cannon; crossed rivers without bridges; made forced marches without shoes; often bivouacked without bread; the Republican phalanxes were alone capable of such extraordinary deeds. Soldiers, receive your due of thanks!"

Murat, his aide-de-camp, who afterwards married Napoleon's sister Caroline, and became King of Naples, was sent to Paris with the armistice proposed by the King of Sardinia, and Junot with the flags, which caused the greatest rejoicing. Fêtes were celebrated at the Champ de Mars, and Napoleon's name was honored as the conqueror of Italy.

Napoleon writes to his bride: "Your letters are the delight of my days, and my happy days are not very many. Junot is carrying twenty-two flags to Paris. You must come back with him; do you understand? It would be hopeless misery, an inconsolable grief, continual agony, if I should have the misfortune of seeing him come back alone, my adorable one.... You will be here, by my side, on my heart, in my arms! Take wings, come, come! But travel slowly; the way is long, bad, and tiresome."

Almost daily he writes to his wife: "My only Josephine, away from you, there is no happiness; away from you, the world is a desert, in which I stand alone, with no chance of tasting the delicious joy of pouring out my heart. You have robbed me of more than my soul; you are the sole thought of my life. If I am worn out by all the torment of events, and fear the issue; if men disgust me; if I am ready to curse life, I place my hand on my heart,—your image is beating there."

She is not well, and does not come to him, and again he writes: "My dear, do remember to tell me that you are certain that I love you more than can be imagined; ... that no hour passes that I do not think of you; that it has never entered my mind to think of any other woman; ... that you, as I see you, as you are, can please me and absorb my whole soul; that you have wholly filled it; that my heart has no corner that you do not see, no thoughts that are not subordinate to you; that my strength, my arms, my intelligence, are all yours; ... and that the day when you shall have changed, or shall have ceased to live, will be the day of my death; that nature, the earth, is beautiful, in my eyes, only because you live on it."

General Marmont says in his memoirs: "Bonaparte, however occupied he may have been with his greatness, the interests intrusted to him, and with his future, had, nevertheless, time to devote to feelings of another sort; he was continually thinking of his wife.... He often spoke to me of her, and of his love, with all the frankness, fire, and illusion of a very young man.... During a trip we made together at this time, to inspect the places in Piedmont that had fallen into our hands, one morning, at Tortona, the glass in front of his wife's portrait, which he always carried with him, broke in his hands. He grew frightfully pale, and suffered the keenest alarm."

Again he says, "Never did a purer, truer, or more exclusive love fill a man's heart, or the heart of so extraordinary a man."

Lanfrey says, "In this love, which has been said to be the only one that touched his heart, all the fire and flame of his masterful nature showed itself."

Napoleon pushed on his troops to conquer the Austrian Beaulieu, crossed the river Po at Piacenza, and overtook the enemy at the town of Lodi on the Adda River. The town was taken by the French; nut, to cross the Adda and reach Beaulieu, it was necessary to storm a narrow wooden bridge, which was defended by artillery and by from twelve to sixteen thousand Austrians. Napoleon immediately placed a battery on his own side of the river, sent a detachment of cavalry to ford the river and attack the enemy's rear, and then, at the head of several thousand men, bade them force a passage across the bridge.

The French were mowed down by the Austrian cannon. They wavered, when Napoleon seized a standard, and, with Lannes and one or two other officers, rushed among the troops and inspired them to gain a complete victory. Lannes was the first to cross the bridge and reach the Austrian gunners, who were sabred at their guns, and Napoleon the second. Lannes was promoted on the spot for his valor. So proud were the troops that their general should fight in the ranks, that they ever after called him their "Little Corporal." The conflict was a bloody one. The Austrian loss was much heavier than the French.

Napoleon said, "It was not till after the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi that the idea shot across my mind that I might become a decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose, for the first time, the spark of great ambition."

He said to his aide-de-camp, Marmont, "In our time, no one has devised anything great; I must set an example."

On May 15, 1796, Napoleon entered Milan in triumph. The people hated the rule of Austria, and hoped for liberty under the French Republic. A triumphal arch was erected in the city, and flowers were scattered in the path of the French. To his soldiers, "who had rushed," he said, "like a torrent from the height of the Apennines," Napoleon gave all the glory.

In accordance with the wishes of the Directory in France, he levied twenty million francs on Milan, and took some of her best art works to Paris. The army was supported by the countries through which it passed, as was Sherman's in our Civil War.

Late in June, Josephine reached Milan, and for a brief period they were happy; but Napoleon was obliged very soon to be at the front. The war now centred about Mantua, which was strongly fortified. Seven or eight thousand French troops were besieging it, when it was ascertained that Würmser, the Austrian general, was marching against the French with seventy thousand men, in three armies, while Napoleon had but about forty-five thousand.

At once the siege of Mantua was raised, the gun-carriages burned, the powder thrown into the river, the cannon spiked, and the French forces were led against Würmser.

Napoleon, with his usual celerity and tact,—he used to say, "War, like government, is mainly decided by tact,"—managed to defeat each of the three Austrian armies in turn.

At Lonato the Austrians lost ten thousand in killed, wounded, and prisoners. The day after the battle, one of the Austrian divisions, reduced to four thousand men, wandered into Lonato, and demanded the surrender of the garrison of twelve hundred. Napoleon called his staff together; and when the bandage was removed from the eyes of the officer, he said with authority, "Go and tell your general that I give him eight minutes to lay down his arms!" The Austrians surrendered, and were soon chagrined to find that four thousand had succumbed to twelve hundred Frenchmen.

Napoleon said at Lonato, "I was at ease; the Thirty-second was there!" So rejoiced were the men at these words that they had them embroidered on their regimental flag.

In this short campaign twenty thousand Austrians had been killed and wounded, fifteen thousand taken prisoners, with seventy pieces of artillery, and twenty-two stands of colors. The latter were sent to Paris.

Early in September, Napoleon again defeated Würmser at Bassano. After the battle, at midnight Napoleon rode over the battle-field by moonlight, the quiet broken only by the moans of the wounded and dying. Suddenly a dog sprang from beneath the cloak of his dead master, rushed to Napoleon as though asking aid, and then back to the body, licking the face and hands of the dead, and howling piteously.

Napoleon was strongly moved, and said years afterward, "I know not how it was, but no incident upon any field of battle ever produced so deep an impression upon my feelings. 'This man,' thought I, 'must have had among his comrades friends, and yet here he lies forsaken by all except his faithful dog.' ... Certainly, in that moment, I should have been unable to refuse any request to a suppliant enemy."

When at St. Helena, Madame Montholon, seeming to be afraid of a dog, Napoleon said, "He who does not love a dog has never known what real fidelity means."

Austria soon put another general in the field with over sixty thousand men. She was determined not to lose Italy. At first the French army lost some battles, the general-in-chief not being with them. When he came to his army, he said to some regiments, "Soldiers, I am not satisfied with you. You have shown neither discipline, constancy, nor courage.... Let it be written on the colors, 'They are not of the army of Italy.'"

The men seemed heart-broken. "Place us in the van of the army," they said, "and you shall then judge whether we do not belong to the army of Italy."

They were soon put to the test. Napoleon marched out of Verona on the night of Nov. 14, descended the Adige river, and fell upon the rear of Alvinzi, the Austrian general, at Arcola. The village is surrounded by marshes, crossed by causeways or bridges.

When the French rushed upon the bridges, they were repulsed by the guns of the Austrians. Napoleon sprang from his horse, seized a standard, and shouted, "Follow your general!" but he was borne by the struggling soldiers off the bridge into the marsh.

Frenzied at the probable loss of their general, the French fought desperately. Muiron, who had saved Napoleon at Toulon when he was wounded in the thigh, covered his general with his own body, and received his death wound from a shell. Lannes received three wounds in endeavoring to protect Napoleon, who was finally extricated, and was again at the head of the column. After three days of battle, the French were victorious. It is estimated that twenty thousand men perished in the swamps of Arcola.

Napoleon wrote a letter of sympathy to the young widow of Muiron, who in a few weeks died at the birth of a lifeless child.

To the Directory he wrote: "Never was a field of battle more valiantly disputed than the conflict at Arcola. I have scarcely any generals left. Their bravery and their patriotic enthusiasm are without example."

In the midst of this toil and carnage, Napoleon could find time to write to Josephine. She had followed him for a while after coming to Milan, but her dangers were so great that it was soon found to be impossible.

After Arcola he writes her: "At length, my adored Josephine, I live again. Death is no longer before me, and glory and honor are still in my breast.... Soon Mantua will be ours, and then thy husband will fold thee in his arms, and give thee a thousand proofs of his ardent affection. I shall proceed to Milan as soon as I can; I am a little fatigued. I have received letters from Eugène and Hortense. I am delighted with the children.... Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. Death alone can break the union which sympathy, love, and sentiment have formed. Let me have news of your health. A thousand and a thousand kisses."

If she does not write often he is distressed; "Three days without a word from you," he writes, "and I have written you several times. This absence is horrible; the nights are long, tiresome, dull; the days are monotonous.... I don't really live away from you; my life's happiness is only to be with my sweet Josephine. Think of me! write to me often, very often; it is the only balm in absence which is cruel, but I hope will be short.... Day before yesterday I was in the field all day. Yesterday I stayed in bed. A fever and a raging headache prevented me from writing to my dear one; but I received her letters. I pressed them to my heart and my lips; and the pang of absence, a hundred miles apart, vanished."

Yet, with all this intensity of feeling, Napoleon had wonderful self-command. He said, "Nature seems to have calculated that I should endure great reverses. She has given me a mind of marble. Thunder cannot ruffle it. The shaft merely glides along."

Austria made another desperate effort to overcome Napoleon and save Würmser, shut up in Mantua. At four o'clock in the morning, Jan. 14, 1797, the battle of Rivoli began. For twelve hours Napoleon was in the hottest of the fight. Three horses were shot under him.

After a desperate but victorious battle, the troops marched all night, conquered Provera before Mantua the next day, and La Favorita on the third day. The Austrian army had lost thirty thousand men in three days, of whom twenty thousand were taken prisoners. Napoleon, in his report of the battle of Favorita, spoke of the terrible Fifty-seventh. Thereafter the Fifty-seventh adopted the name of "The Terrible," proud of this distinction of their chief.

Massena's men had marched and fought incessantly for four days and nights. No wonder the Austrians said, "The French do not march, they fly." Napoleon wrote, "The Roman legions used to make twenty-four miles a day; our men make thirty, and fight in the intervals." ...

Würmser surrendered Mantua Feb. 3, 1797. Twenty-seven thousand men had died of wounds or sickness since the commencement of the siege. The horses had all been eaten, and the city could sustain itself no longer. Würmser had declared that he could hold out for a year. But Napoleon knew that so brave a marshal as Würmser would not surrender unless reduced to the last extremity.

He therefore allowed Würmser to retire with all his staff and two thousand cavalry. He surrendered to France eighteen thousand prisoners. Würmser wished to salute the young conqueror of twenty-seven; but Napoleon had gone to Bologna, not liking to subject the marshal of seventy to humiliation. Lanfrey thinks this was done for effect, but there seems no good reason for always imputing bad motives to Napoleon. A man so worshipped by his soldiers, and, indeed, by the nation, had much that was noble and refined in his nature.

Würmser, out of gratitude to Napoleon, saved his life at Bologna, by making known to him a plot to poison him.

Napoleon now turned his attention towards the Papal States. The Pope had no love for the "godless Republic." Thousands of priests had fled from France to Rome. Austria and Rome were closely allied, and both ready to sustain war against France whenever an opportunity offered.

The Directory had written to Napoleon "that the Roman Catholic religion would always be the irreconcilable enemy of the Republic," but Napoleon bore no ill-will towards his mother's faith and the faith in which he himself died.

He issued a proclamation in which he said, "The French soldier carries in one hand the bayonet, the guaranty of victory, and in the other an olive branch, the symbol of peace and pledge of his protection."

When within three days' march of Rome, the Pope sued for peace, and the treaty of Tolentino was signed Feb. 19, 1797.

Napoleon writes to Josephine on the same day: "Peace has just been signed with Rome. Bologna, Ferrara, the Romagna, are ceded to the Republic. The Pope gives us shortly thirty million [francs] and many works of art....

"My dear, I beg of you think of me often, and write me every day.... You, to whom nature has given intelligence, gentleness, and beauty, you, who rule alone over my heart, you, who doubtless know only too well the absolute power you exercise over my heart, write to me, think of me, and love me. Ever yours."

Austria was not yet humbled. Napoleon determined to march against Vienna. The young Archduke Charles, brother of the ruler of Austria, was in command of the Austrian army. "He is a man," said Napoleon, "whose conduct can never attract blame.... More than all, he is a good man, and that includes everything when said of a prince."

Charles had beaten Napoleon's generals on the Rhine, but he could not beat the "Little Corporal." His fifty thousand men melted away as they fled, wounded and distracted, over the Alps.

When within sight of Vienna, Napoleon proposed peace; and Austria, tired of war for a time at least, accepted the conditions.

Early in May, France declared war against the Venetian Republic. The latter had been neutral, although both Austrians and French had crossed her territory. Her aristocracy had no sympathy with the French Republic, and preferred Austria. Perhaps to guard herself from both nations, she raised an army of sixty thousand men, and put herself in the attitude of armed neutrality. She refused to ally herself to France. "Be neutral, then," said Napoleon; "but remember, if you violate your neutrality, if you harass my troops, if you cut off my supplies, I will take ample vengeance.... The hour that witnesses the treachery of Venice shall terminate her independence."

Whether or not her government desired to keep the peace, insurrections arose among the people in Verona and elsewhere, French soldiers were killed, Napoleon took "ample vengeance," and in the treaty of Campo Formio, Oct. 17, 1797, Venice was handed over to Austria. The Republic ceased to exist. In taking the hated oath of allegiance to Austria, the ex-Doge of Venice became insensible, and died soon after.

Napoleon now returned to Milan, and for a time lived in peace and happiness at the Serbelloni Palace. Josephine won every heart by her grace and her kindness. Napoleon said, "I conquer provinces, but Josephine wins hearts."

Madame de Rémusat wrote: "Love seemed to come every day to place at her feet a new conquest over a people entranced with its conqueror."

The people waited to see Napoleon pass in and out of his palace. They did him honor as though he were a king. He had sent for his mother, his brothers Joseph and Louis, and his beautiful sister Pauline, sixteen years of age, of whom Arnault, the poet, said, "if she was the prettiest person in the world, she was also the most frivolous."

Imbert de Saint-Amand, in his "Citizeness Bonaparte," quotes this incident to show Josephine's power over her husband. "He was absolutely faithful to her," says Saint-Amand, "and this at a time when there was not a beauty in Milan who was not setting her cap for him."

Josephine owned a pug dog, Fortuné, which, when she was imprisoned in the Reign of Terror, was brought to her cell with a letter concealed in his collar. Ever since she had been extremely fond of him. They were all at the Castle of Montebello, a few leagues from Milan, during the warm weather. "You see that fellow there?" said Napoleon to Arnault, pointing to the dog who lay on the sofa beside his mistress, "he is my rival. When I married I wanted to put him out of my wife's room, but I was given to understand that I might go away myself or share it with him. I was annoyed; but it was to take or to leave, and I yielded. The favorite was not so accommodating, and he left his mark on my leg."

Fortuné barked at everything, and used to bite other dogs. The cook's dog, a mastiff, returned the bite one day, and killed Fortuné. Josephine was in despair; but the mischief was done, and there was no help for it.

Nov. 17 Napoleon left Milan, and, after a continued ovation along the route, reached Paris Dec. 5, where, a change having taken place in the government, he thought it wise to be for a time. Though the Directory was jealous of the rising power of Napoleon, the people demanded a magnificent reception for him, which was prepared in the Luxembourg.

Napoleon made an address which was eagerly listened to, and the people were wild with enthusiasm. Thiers says, "All heads were overcome with the intoxication." Talleyrand gave a great ball costing over twelve thousand francs. Bourrienne, his secretary, remarked that it must be agreeable to "see his fellow-citizens so eagerly running after him."

"Bah! the people would crowd as fast to see me if I were going to the scaffold," was Napoleon's reply. So well did he understand human nature.

He said to Bourrienne, "Were I to remain in Paris long, doing nothing, I should be lost. In this great Babylon one reputation displaces another. Let me be seen but three times at the theatre and I shall no longer excite attention; so I shall go there but seldom."

Napoleon was made a member of the Institute, in the class of the Sciences and Arts. This honor he greatly valued, writing to the president of the class, "I feel well assured that, before I can be their equal, I must long be their scholar.... True conquests—the only ones which leave no regret behind them—are those which are made over ignorance. The most honorable, as well as the most useful, occupation for nations is the contributing to the extension of human knowledge."

"He had," says Bourrienne, "an extreme aversion to mediocrity," or to people who are too indolent to read and improve themselves. "Mankind," he said, "are, in the end, always governed by superiority of intellectual qualities."

The Directory were anxious for an attack upon England, which had joined the Coalition against France in 1793, and was her most formidable enemy. "Go there," said Barras, "and capture the giant Corsair that infests the seas; go punish in London outrages that have too long gone unpunished."

Arnault said to Napoleon, "The Directory wishes to get you away; France wishes to keep you."

"I am perfectly willing to make a tour of the coast," said Napoleon to Bourrienne. "Should the expedition to Britain prove too hazardous, as I much fear that it will, the army of England will become the army of the East, and we will go to Egypt." He spent a week in looking over the ground, and said, "I will not hazard it. I would not thus sport with the fate of France."

He determined to colonize Egypt. He would take with him men of science, artists, and artisans. He said to Montholon at St. Helena, "Were the French once established in Egypt, it would be impossible for the English to maintain themselves long in India. Squadrons constructed on the shores of the Red Sea, provisioned with the products of the country, and equipped and manned by the French troops stationed in Egypt, would infallibly make us masters of India, and at a moment when England least expected it."

The fleet set sail from Toulon May 19, 1798, with forty thousand men besides ten thousand sailors. Josephine came to Toulon to say good-by, and wished to go with her husband, but this would have been most unwise.

The fleet arrived off Malta June 10, which, with almost no opposition, surrendered to the French its twelve hundred pieces of cannon, its ten thousand pounds of powder, its ships, and its forty thousand muskets.

On June 30 the fleet appeared before Alexandria, which was soon captured. Then the army set out to cross the desert towards Cairo.

The heat was intense, they suffered for lack of water, and murmured at the Directory. Napoleon bivouacked in their midst, and dined on lentils.

On July 21 they came in sight of the Pyramids. The whole army halted. "Soldiers," said Napoleon, "from the summit of those pyramids forty centuries look down upon you!"

Before them lay the intrenched camp of Embabeh, with ten thousand Mameluke horsemen under Mourad Bey. These charged upon the immovable squares of the French only to be cut to pieces by bayonets.

They fought desperately, but were routed, and many of them driven into the Nile. Over two thousand perished, while the French did not lose over one hundred and fifty in killed and wounded. "The banks of the Nile," says Bourrienne, "were strewed with heaps of bodies, which the waves were every moment washing into the sea." The soldiers bent their bayonets into hooks, and for days fished up the bodies of the Mamelukes, on each of which they found from five to six hundred louis in gold.

Ten days after this battle of the Pyramids, the French fleet was destroyed by Nelson in the terrible battle of the Nile. Admiral Brueys was killed, and the bodies of his men seemed to fill the Bay of Aboukir.

Napoleon was virtually a prisoner in Egypt. The blow was irreparable. The army was despondent, but Napoleon was calm. "Unfortunate Brueys," he said, "what have you done!"

It was evident that he must organize Egypt as soon as possible. He established in Cairo an Institute of Arts and Sciences, he built factories, and he planned two canals, one uniting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean across the Isthmus of Suez, and the other connecting the Red Sea with the Nile at Cairo.

Meantime France was threatened with war on every side. Russia and Turkey had joined hands with England and Austria. They were sweeping over Italy. Turkey had raised an army in Syria, and Napoleon hastened thither with thirteen thousand men over a desert of seventy-five leagues.

He took El Arish Feb. 20, 1799, then Gaza; then Jaffa was taken by assault, as the garrison refused to yield, and beheaded the messenger sent to them, putting his head on a pole. The massacre which followed was horrible. Some two thousand prisoners were taken to the seashore and shot by Napoleon's order. Bourrienne says, Napoleon "yielded only in the last extremity, and was one of those, perhaps, who beheld the massacre with the deepest pain."

Napoleon has been greatly blamed for this act. These men would, of course, have gone back to the enemy, and the Turks themselves give no quarter; and yet, for humanity's sake, one wishes that they could have been spared.

After the battle at Jaffa the French began the siege of St. Jean d'Acre, where Djezzar, which name signifies butcher, the head of the army, resided. The siege lasted sixty days. Sir Sidney Smith of England, with two ships of war, assisted the fort, and Phélippeaux, an old schoolmate of Napoleon at Brienne, directed the artillery. Napoleon's battering train, sent forward by sea, had been taken by the English. The siege had to be raised, four thousand of the French being disabled, and the army retreated to Jaffa. The plague was decimating the ranks; and Napoleon, to inspire his men, went among the plague-stricken soldiers and often touched them. The wounded and sick were carried on horses, while Napoleon and all his officers went on foot. Napoleon said, "Sir Sidney Smith made me miss my destiny."

Napoleon defeated the Turks at Aboukir, July 25, with a loss to them of ten thousand men, and then, learning of the perilous condition of France in her wars with the allied powers, hastened to Paris, leaving General Kléber in charge in Egypt. Napoleon narrowly missed being captured by the English cruisers.

France was overjoyed at his return. Bells were rung and bonfires kindled. He reached Paris Oct. 16, 1799. Josephine had gone to Lyons to meet him. He had started for Paris by a different route, and she missed him.

When she returned Napoleon refused to see her. While in Egypt Junot had foolishly told him some gossip about Josephine, who was obliged to be courteous to everybody, which had made him jealous. It probably came from Napoleon's brothers, who disliked her great influence over him.

Josephine was nearly heart-broken. She had not seen Napoleon for a year and a half. Both Eugène and Hortense begged that Napoleon would take their mother back into his heart.

Finally he opened his door, and with a stern look at Josephine, said to Eugène, then eighteen, who had just returned with him from Egypt, "As for you, you shall not suffer for your mother's misdeeds; I shall keep you with me."

With commendable spirit, the boy, who idolized his mother, replied, "No, General; I bid you farewell on the spot."

Seeing his mistake, he pressed Eugène to his heart, folded Josephine in his arms, and sent for his brother Lucien, to show him how thoroughly he and Josephine were reconciled to each other.

Napoleon had reached Paris at an opportune moment. The Directory were disliked, and he had made up his mind to overturn the government. A dinner was given to Napoleon at the Temple of Victory by five or six hundred members of the two Councils, the Ancients, and the Five Hundred. In the evening Josephine did the honors of the drawing-room at their own house. "She fascinated every one who came near her," says Saint-Amand, "by her exquisite grace and charming courtesy. All the brusqueness and violence of Bonaparte's manners were tempered by the soothing and insinuating gentleness of his amiable and kindly wife."

Only a few persons were in Napoleon's secret. By a provision of the Constitution, the Council of the Ancients, in case of peril to the Republic, could convoke the Legislative Body (the two Councils) outside the capital to avoid the influence of the multitude, and choose a general to command the troops to defend the legislature.

The 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9) was the day set for this Council at the Tuileries to vote to change the place of meeting to St. Cloud. It was given out that he was to take a journey, so his officers and some cavalry were to be at his house at six o'clock in the morning to go with him to the Tuileries, that he might review the troops, to be gathered there at seven.

At six o'clock, Lefebvre, the commander of the military division, had arrived. Napoleon said to him, "Here is the Turkish sabre which I carried at the battle of the Pyramids. Do you, who are one of the most valiant defenders of the country, accept it? Will you let our country perish in the hands of the pettifoggers who are ruining it?" It was gladly accepted.

All rode to the Tuileries. The Ancients voted to meet at St. Cloud on the morrow, and gave Napoleon the command of the troops.

On the 19th Brumaire the way to St. Cloud was crowded with troops and carriages. All was excitement and confusion. Napoleon's friends said, "You are marching to the guillotine." "We shall see," was his cool reply. When Napoleon arrived at St. Cloud he entered the hall of the Council of the Ancients and made a brief address. Then he went to the Council of the Five Hundred. It was five in the afternoon. At the sight of him they shouted, "Down with the Dictator! Down with the tyrant!" They brandished daggers and threatened his life. His soldiers hastened to his aid; and one grenadier, Thomé, had his clothes cut by a dagger. Bourrienne says they were simply torn. Lucien Bonaparte, the president of the Five Hundred, left his seat in disgust at the tumult. He called upon the general and the soldiers "to execute the vote of the Ancients." The drums were beaten, the soldiers entered the hall, the deputies fled in every direction, and the old government was a thing of the past. Three consuls were elected, of whom Napoleon was the First Consul. He rode home at three in the morning. At thirty he had conquered France as well as Italy.

There is no doubt that a large majority of the people of France were rejoiced at the change in government. "Napoleon," says Alison in his History of Europe, "rivalled Cæsar in the clemency with which he used his victory. No proscriptions or massacres, few arrests or imprisonments, followed the triumph of order over revolution. On the contrary, numerous acts of mercy, as wise as they were magnanimous, illustrated the rise of the consular throne. The elevation of Napoleon was not only unstained by blood, but not even a single captive long lamented the ear of the victor."

On the 19th of February, 1800, Napoleon took up his residence in the Tuileries. His salary was five hundred thousand francs a year. Ten days before his removal to the Tuileries, Feb. 9, when the seventy-two flags taken from the Turks at Aboukir were placed in the Hôtel des Invalides, a funeral oration was pronounced on Washington, who had died Dec. 14, 1799. Napoleon issued this order to his army: "Washington is dead! That great man fought against tyranny. He established the liberty of his country. His memory will be ever dear to the freemen of both hemispheres, and especially to the French soldiers, who, like him and the American troops, have fought for liberty and equality. As a mark of respect, the First Consul orders that, for ten days, black crape be suspended from all the standards and banners of the Republic."

Feb. 20 he received a letter from Louis XVIII., in which the Bourbon King said, "Save France from her own violence, and you will fulfil the first wish of my heart. Restore her king to her, and future generations will bless your memory." But Napoleon knew that the French did not want the House of Bourbon. They had put Louis XVI. to death, and still celebrated that anniversary.

Napoleon devoted all his time to the improvement of the state. He drew around him the ablest persons. "The men whom he most disliked," says Bourrienne, "were those whom he called babblers, who are continually prating of everything and on everything." He often said, "I want more head and less tongue."

He gave France a new constitution, which was accepted by the votes of the people almost unanimously, over 3,000,000 in the affirmative, and a few hundreds in the negative. He abolished the annual festival celebrating the death of Louis XVI. He opened the prisons where those opposed to the state were confined; hundreds of exiles returned to France. The country was bankrupt; but now that confidence was restored, with the help of the best financiers, the Bank of France was established, a sinking fund provided, judicious taxation adopted, and an era of prosperity began. Napoleon built canals, roads, and bridges, and splendid monuments. He restored Sunday as a day of rest, which had been set aside when the Goddess of Reason was worshipped during the Revolution.

A little later, duly 15, 1801,—by the Concordat,—he recognized the Roman Catholic religion as the religion of France. He said, "I am convinced that a part of France would become Protestant, were I to favor that disposition. I am also certain that the much greater portion would continue Catholic, and that they would oppose, with the greatest zeal, the division among their fellow-citizens. We should then have the Huguenot wars over again, and interminable conflicts. But by reviving a religion which has always prevailed in the country, and by giving perfect liberty of conscience to the minority, all will be satisfied."

He did not like numerous festival days. "A saint's day," he said, "is a day of idleness, and I do not wish for that. People must labor in order to live."

Nobody labored harder than Napoleon. He kept several secretaries busy. Writing fatigued him, and he wrote so hurriedly that the last half of the word was usually a dash, or omitted. He could go without sleep, snatching a few minutes in his chair, or in his saddle before a battle. He seldom took over twenty minutes for dinner, even when he was Emperor, and rose from the table as soon as he had finished. His time was too precious to wait long for others. He was very prompt, and required others to be so.

He said, "Occupation is my element.... I have seen the extent to which I could use my eyes, but I have never known any bounds to my capacity for application."

Lanfrey says he "had a prodigious power of work," and "a rapidity of conception that no other man has probably ever possessed to the same extent." He used often to say, "Succeed! I judge men only by results."

Nobody knew better the value of time. "I worked all day," said a person to him, in apology for not having completed some duty. "But had you not the night also?" was the reply.

"Ask me for whatever you please except time," he said to another; "that is the only thing which is beyond my power."

While taking his bath, Bourrienne read to him. While being shaved, he read, or somebody read to him. He ate fast, and was irregular at his meals, sometimes passing a whole day without eating. He always walked up and down the room, with his arms folded behind him, when dictating to his secretaries. "He was exceedingly temperate," says Bourrienne, "and averse to all excess."

"The institutions of modern France date not, as is often said, from the Revolution, but from the Consulate," says Professor Seeley. "The work of reconstruction which distinguishes the Consulate, though it was continued under the Empire, is the most enduring of all the achievements of Napoleon."

"The institutions now created," says Seeley, "and which form the organization of modern France, are, 1. The Restored Church, resting on the Concordat; 2. the University; 3. the judicial system; 4. the Codes: Code Civil, called Code Napoléon Sept. 3, 1807, Code de Commerce, Code Pénal, Code d'Instruction Criminelle; 5. the system of local government; 6. the Bank of France; 7. the Legion of Honor."

"My code will outlive my victories," said Napoleon, truly. He put the best minds of France upon the codification and improvement of her laws, and he carefully watched every detail.

"Bourrienne," Napoleon used to say, "it is for France I am doing all this! All I wish, all I desire, the end of all my labors, is, that my name should be indissolubly connected with that of France!"

Now that France was prosperous and settled, Napoleon wrote to George III., King of England, proposing peace. Lord Grenville, for his nation, which had grown more confident since the battle of the Nile and the successes in Egypt, declined to treat with the Consular Government of France. Canning spoke of this "new usurper, who, like a spectre, wears on his head a something that has a phantom resemblance to a crown." Who would have prophesied then that young Napoleon IV. would have died fighting the battles of England in Zululand?

He proposed peace to Austria, but she decided like her ally, England. Napoleon said bitterly, "England wants war. She shall have it. Yes! yes! war to the death."

He immediately sent General Moreau with one hundred and thirty thousand men against the Austrian army on the Rhine, and took forty thousand himself to Italy, crossing the Alps over the Great St. Bernard. The carriages and wheels were slung on poles; the ammunition boxes were borne on mules; the cannon were carried in trees hollowed out, each dragged up the heights by a hundred men; the soldiers crept up the icy steeps each with sixty or seventy pounds upon his back. At the well-known Hospice kept by the monks, Napoleon had sent forward supplies for his men, who, cold and exhausted, were overjoyed at the repast.

The story is told that the young guide who led Napoleon's mule over the Alps confided to the sympathetic stranger his poverty, his desire to marry the girl of his choice, and his inability to provide her a home. The small man in a gray overcoat gave him a note to the head of the convent. To his astonishment, it provided him with a house and a piece of ground.

The army then swept down upon Italy. The First Consul entered Milan June 2; Lannes was victorious at Montebello June 9, and on the morning of June 14 forty thousand Austrians were opposed to a much smaller number of French on the plain of Marengo. The battle was hotly contested for twelve hours. At first the Austrians seemed victorious, till Desaix, who had just come back from Egypt, rushed upon the field with his reserves. He was shot dead, but his columns were soon avenged.

Six thousand Austrians threw down their arms, a panic spread through their troops, the cavalry plunged over the infantry to be first in crossing the Bormida, and thousands perished in the dreadful confusion. Marengo is regarded by many as Napoleon's most masterful battle.

Desaix's death was a sad blow to Napoleon. Savary found his body stripped of clothing, wrapped it in a cloak, laid it across a horse, and Napoleon had it carried to Milan to be embalmed. He said, "Victory at such a price is dear." Kléber was killed in Egypt on the same day. At St. Helena, Napoleon said, "Of all the generals I ever had under my command, Desaix and Kléber possessed the greatest talent—in particular Desaix.... Kléber and Desaix were irreparable losses to France."

Napoleon returned to Milan and went in state to the Cathedral to the Te Deum, four days after the battle of Marengo. The people everywhere gave him an ovation. "Bourrienne," he said, "do you hear the acclamations still resounding? That noise is as sweet to me as the sound of Josephine's voice." Napoleon reached Paris late in June.

Dec. 3 of this same year, 1800, Moreau fought the famous battle of Hohenlinden, in the black forests of Germany, at midnight. In the blinding snowstorm both armies got entangled in the forests. The Austrians left ten thousand in dead and wounded on the field, with seven thousand prisoners. The poem of Campbell is well known:—

"On Linden, when the sun was low,

All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,

And dark as winter was the flow

Of Iser rolling rapidly."

Finally a treaty of peace between France and Austria was signed at Lunéville, Feb. 9, 1801, followed March 27, 1802, by the treaty of Amiens, between France and England.

Both countries rejoiced in the cessation of hostilities. Fox came over from England and was received with great cordiality. Napoleon said, "I considered him an ornament to mankind, and was very much attached to him."

Four months later, Aug. 4, 1802, by an overwhelming majority of the votes of the people, over three and a half millions in favor to about eight thousand against it, Napoleon was declared Consul for life. La Fayette could not conscientiously favor it, unless liberty of the press were guaranteed. He said to Napoleon, "A free government, and you at its head—that comprehends all my desires."

Napoleon said, "He thinks he is still in the United States—as if the French were Americans. He has no conception of what is required for this country." Napoleon felt, no doubt sincerely, that France was more stable under an Emperor than a President. And yet since the fall of Napoleon III. France has shown that she can live and prosper as a republic.

All through these years the Royalists were plotting to return to the throne; for when did ever a king reign who did not think it was by "Divine right"?

Louis XVIII. wrote another letter to Napoleon: "You must have long since been convinced, General, that you possess my esteem.... We may insure the glory of France. I say we, because I require the aid of Bonaparte, and he can do nothing without me. General, Europe observes you; glory awaits you; I am impatient to restore peace to my people." In answer to this letter, Napoleon wrote, "You must not seek to return to France. To do so, you must trample over a hundred thousand dead bodies."

Several attempts were made to assassinate Napoleon. Possibly some of these were the work of Jacobins, who feared that the republic was slipping into an empire; but they were for the most part traced to Royalists, the leaders of whom lived in England, and were receiving yearly pensions, because they had aided her in former wars.

On the evening of Dec. 24, 1800, as Napoleon was going to the opera to hear Haydn's Oratorio of "The Creation," he was obliged to pass through the Rue Saint-Nicaise, where an upturned cart covered a barrel of gunpowder, grape-shot, and pieces of iron. The "infernal machine" exploded two seconds after he had passed in his carriage. The carriage was uplifted from the ground, four persons were killed, sixty wounded, of whom several died, and forty-six houses were badly damaged. One of the horses of Napoleon's escort was wounded.

Other plans were soon discovered, concocted by Georges Cadoudal, General Pichegru, and others, all in the confidence of the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X., the brother of Louis XVIII. He lived in or near London.

Cadoudal, or Georges as he is usually called, was to meet Napoleon in the streets, and, with a band of thirty or forty followers, kill him and his staff. When all was ready, the Bourbon princes were to be near at hand to head the revolt of the people. Georges was arrested and executed with eleven of his companions.

The Duke d'Enghien, Louis Antoine, Henri de Bourbon, son of the Duke of Bourbon, and a descendant of the great Condé who had done so much for France in her wars, was living at Ettenheim, under the protection of the Margrave of Baden, to be near the lady whom he loved, the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, and "to be ready," says Walter Scott, "to put himself at the head of the royalists in the east of France," if opportunity offered.

It was reported to Napoleon that the duke came over into France probably on political errands, and that he was corresponding with disaffected persons in France.

Napoleon sent some officers to seize the duke on the night of March 15, 1804; he was carried to Strasburg, and thence to the Castle of Vincennes, near Paris, arriving on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 20. He was aroused from sleep a little before six on the morning of the 21st, and innocently asked if he were to be imprisoned. He was conducted outside the castle; by the light of a lantern his sentence was read to him. He denied any complicity in the conspiracy against the life of the First Consul, which was doubtless true; requested to see Napoleon, which was refused; asked an officer to take a ring, a lock of hair, and a letter to his beloved, and was shot at six in the morning, by his open grave, his devoted dog by his side. Bourrienne says, "This faithful animal returned incessantly to the fatal spot.... The fidelity of the poor dog excited so much interest that the police prevented any one from visiting the fatal spot, and the dog was no longer heard to howl over his master's grave."

Josephine had heard of Napoleon's intention to send terror among the Bourbon conspirators, and had begged him, on her knees and with tears, to save the life of the young prince. It would have been well for him had he listened to her entreaties.

France, and Europe as well, were shocked at this death. The Russian court went into mourning for the Bourbon prince. No doubt Napoleon was incensed by the Bourbon plots, and after this death these ceased; but Las Cases, at St. Helena, said Napoleon always regretted it, saying, "Undoubtedly, if I had been informed in time of certain circumstances respecting the opinions of the prince, and his disposition, if, above all, I had seen the letter which he wrote to me, and which, God knows for what reason, was only delivered to me after his death, I should certainly have forgiven him."

Napoleon has been blamed for another matter,—the taking of Saint Domingo, and the imprisonment of Toussaint L'Ouverture. This remarkable colored man, who had been a slave, had acquired the control of the island by driving the French and Spanish troops out, and making it a republic, with a nominal dependence upon France. Napoleon, with a desire unfortunately shown and carried out by other nations, wished to enlarge his colonies and also to settle some dissensions in the island, and sent Dec. 14, 1801, General Leclerc, who had married his pretty sister Pauline, with 25,000 men to Saint Domingo to re-establish French sovereignty. He was to send back to France any who rebelled. Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was among them, was imprisoned in the fortress of Joux, near Besançon, in Normandy, and died in ten months, away from his own people, the victim of the spirit of conquest, which is not dead even in the nineteenth century. The climate destroyed the French army. Only two or three thousand ever returned. General Leclerc died, like the rest, of yellow fever.

Napoleon said at St. Helena, "I ought to have been satisfied with governing it [Saint Domingo] through the medium of Toussaint.... The design of reducing it by force was a great error."

Only a year after the treaty of Amiens was concluded, it became evident that it would not last. It was said that Napoleon's power was becoming too great for the security of Europe. England had determined not to give up Malta to the Knights as she had promised. Under Pitt's guidance she was arming and making herself ready for a great combat. The Royalists were using their pens in their English homes, to abuse the head of the French nation, held there by the votes of the French people. It was, of course, exasperating, and tended to produce revolt. Napoleon called attention to the terms of the treaty, which stipulated that neither of the two nations should give any protection to those who were injuring the other. Commercial tariffs bred dislike. English pride was stirred because Napoleon said, "England, single-handed, is unable to cope with France."

Finally in May, 1803, the war began. Alison says, and Scott agrees with him, "Upon coolly reviewing the circumstances under which the contest was renewed, it is impossible to deny that the British government manifested a feverish desire to come to a rupture, and that, as far as the transactions between the two countries are concerned, they are the aggressors."

Napoleon was determined to invade England,—Bourrienne thinks it was only a feint, and that his real motive "was to invade Germany and repulse the Russian troops,"—and he gathered an army of 150,000 in and around Boulogne, and an immense flotilla which should be able to transport these men ten leagues across the channel to the English coast.

While these preparations were going on, the French Senate, undoubtedly in accord with the views of the First Consul, suggested publicly the idea of an empire over which Napoleon should be the hereditary ruler. The people were tired of Bourbon plottings, and, if Napoleon were killed, the scenes of the Revolution might again be witnessed in the streets of Paris. Napoleon was declared Emperor of the French, May 18, 1804, and publicly crowned by Pope Pius VII., at Notre Dame, Dec. 2 of the same year.

Paris was thronged with people on the day of the coronation. At half-past ten in the morning Napoleon and Josephine drove to the cathedral in a carriage largely of glass, surmounted by a golden crown upheld by four eagles with outstretched wings, drawn by eight superb horses. Twenty squadrons of cavalry led the procession, Marshal Murat at the head. Eighteen carriages, each drawn by six horses, followed.

Napoleon wore a coat of crimson velvet faced with white velvet, white velvet boots, a short cloak of crimson lined with white satin, and a black velvet cap with two aigrettes and several diamonds.

At the Archbishop's Palace, Napoleon put on his coronation robes. These were a tight-fitting gown of white satin, a crimson mantle covered with golden bees, having an embroidered border with the letter N, and a crown above each letter, the lining and cape of ermine, the whole weighing eighty pounds, and held up by four persons. His crown was of golden laurel; his sword at his left side was in a scabbard of blue enamel, covered with eagles and bees.

Josephine wore a white satin gown, with a train of silver brocade covered with bees, a girdle of very expensive diamonds, necklace, bracelets, and earrings of precious stones and antique cameos, and a diadem of four rows of pearls with clusters of diamonds. The Emperor was much struck with Josephine's beauty, and said to his brother Joseph, "If father could see us!"

As Napoleon entered the cathedral, which was draped in crimson and gold, twenty thousand spectators shouted, "Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor and Empress knelt on blue velvet cushions before the Pope, who anointed Napoleon on the head and hands, and the Empress in the same way. Then high mass began with three hundred performers. When the moment came for the Pope to crown the Emperor, Napoleon took the crown from his hands and placed it upon his own head, and then crowned Josephine. Her crown was formed of eight branches set in diamonds, emeralds, and amethysts, under a gold globe surmounted by a cross. Then they proceeded to the great throne reached by twenty-four steps, Josephine sitting one step lower than her husband. France had placed her all in the hands of one man; and Lanfrey justly remarks, "A nation that carries love of ease so far as to thrust the whole burden of duties and responsibility on a single man is always punished for it."

After the gorgeous ceremony was over, Napoleon and the Empress dined alone, and were happy. He said to David, who had painted the coronation scene at the moment when Napoleon was placing the crown upon the head of the lovely Josephine, "I thank you for transmitting to ages to come the proof of affection I wanted to give to her who shares with me the pains of government." Then he raised his hat to the artist, and said, "David, I salute you." Josephine had opposed Napoleon's becoming Emperor, because it meant hereditary succession, and she had no child by Napoleon. His brothers had for some years urged a divorce, so that Josephine's life had been one of much sorrow.

Napoleon had said to Bourrienne, "It is the torment of my life not to have a child. I plainly perceive that my power will never be firmly established until I have one. If I die without an heir, not one of my brothers is capable of supplying my place. All is begun, but nothing is ended. God knows what will happen!"

Josephine had urged her young daughter Hortense into a marriage with Louis, the brother of Napoleon, Jan. 2, 1802, with the hope that their child might be the heir to the empire. Each loved another person before marriage, and their married life was one of constant misery.

Their first child, Charles Napoleon, born Oct. 10, 1802, whom Napoleon would have adopted, a beautiful and most intelligent boy, died when he was four years and a half old, of croup, May 5, 1807. "Sometimes when his parents were quarrelling," says Saint-Amand, "he succeeded in reconciling them. He used to take his father by the hand, who gladly let himself be led by this little angel, and then he would say in a caressing tone: 'Kiss her, papa, I beg of you;' then he was perfectly happy when his father and mother exchanged a kiss of peace."

Hortense, the mother, was so prostrated with grief, that it was feared she would lose her reason. Madame de Rémusat says of her, "The Queen has but one thought, the loss she has suffered; she speaks of only one thing, of him. Not a tear, but a cold, calm, and almost absolute silence about everything, and when she speaks she wrings every one's heart. If she sees any one whom she has ever seen with her son, she looks at him with kindliness and interest, and says, 'You know he is dead.' When she first saw her mother, she said to her, 'It's not long since he was here with me. I held him on my knees thus.' ... She heard ten o'clock strike; she turned to one of the ladies and said, 'You know it was at ten that he died.' That is the only way she breaks her almost continual silence."

Josephine was doubly crushed by the blow. She saw her hopes for the future blighted. The Emperor wrote to her from the seat of war; "I can well imagine the grief which Napoleon's death must cause. You can understand what I suffer. I should like to be with you, that you might be moderate and discreet in your grief.... Let me hear that you are calm and well! Do you want to add to my regret? Good-by, my dear."

Napoleon was not cold-hearted, but believed that only those accomplish much in life who have self-control. Two of his soldiers having committed suicide on account of love affairs, Napoleon caused it to be inserted in the order-book of the guard, that "there is as much true courage in bearing up against mental sufferings with constancy as in remaining firm on the wall of a battery."

Nearly six months after the crowning in Notre Dame, the Emperor was crowned King of Italy in the cathedral of Milan, May 26, 1805, with the iron crown of Charlemagne. This crown of gold and precious stones covers an iron ring said to have been made from a spike which pierced the Saviour's hand at the crucifixion. Napoleon and the Empress were both gorgeously arrayed. He placed the crown upon his own head, repeating the words used in ancient times: "God has given it to me—woe to him that touches it."

Everywhere Napoleon and Josephine were adored by the people. They went into the cabin of a poor woman, who was anxious and needy because her husband could not get work. "How much money would make you perfectly happy?" asked Napoleon. "Ah, sir, a great deal! As much as eighty dollars."

The Emperor gave her several hundreds, and told her to rent a piece of ground and buy some goats.

"Josephine," says Saint-Amand, "had all the qualities that are attractive in a sovereign,—affability, gentleness, kindliness, generosity. She had a way of convincing every one of her personal interest. She had an excellent memory, and surprised those with whom she talked by the exactness with which she recalled the past, even to details they had themselves nearly forgotten. The sound of her gentle, penetrating, and sympathetic voice added to the courtesy and charm of her words. Every one listened to her with pleasure; she spoke with grace and listened courteously. She always appeared to be doing a kindness, and thus inspired affection and gratitude."

"Her only fault," says Saint-Amand, "was extravagance." But it must be remembered that Napoleon wished her to dress elegantly. It seemed as though everybody came to ask her to buy, and she bought, says Saint-Amand, "simply to oblige the dealers. There was no limit to her liberality. She would have liked to own all the treasures of the earth in order to give them all away." ... Napoleon, economical by nature, scolded and forgave. "He could refuse Josephine nothing," says the same writer, "and she was really the only woman who had any influence over him."

Napoleon made Josephine's son, Eugène, Viceroy of Italy,—he often said, "Eugène may serve as a model to all the young men of the age,"—returned to Paris, and then started for his troops at Boulogne. There he waited for some days for his feet under Villeneuve, who, having been watched by the English, and in part crippled by them, failed to appear. He dared not proceed to Brest, which the English blockaded, and so repaired to Cadiz, to be crushed soon after by that Napoleon of the sea, Horatio Nelson, at the battle of Trafalgar. Villeneuve afterwards committed suicide, stabbing himself to the heart. He left a letter for his wife in which he said, "What a blessing that I have no children to reap my horrible heritage and bear the weight of my name!"

Meantime, Russia, Austria, and Sweden had joined themselves to England to defeat Napoleon. The Emperor, with that quickness of decision and rapidity of execution for which he was phenomenal, managed to separate the armies of his foes, and beat them in turn. At Ulm, Oct. 20, 1805, over thirty thousand Austrians under General Mack, led by sixteen generals, surrendered, laid down their arms, and retired to the rear of the French army. More than twenty thousand Austrians had been taken prisoners in the few days preceding, and the Austrian army of eighty thousand was well-nigh destroyed.

Napoleon wrote to Josephine Oct. 21: "I am very well, my dear. I have made an army of thirty-three thousand men surrender. I have taken from sixty to seventy thousand prisoners, more than ninety flags, and more than two hundred cannon. In the military annals there is no such defeat."

Napoleon pushed on to Vienna, which he entered Nov. 14, and went to the palace of Schönbrunn. The Emperor Francis had fled, and joined the Tsar and the Russian army at Brunn. Thither Napoleon marched at once. On the night of Dec. 1, 1805, he mounted his horse to reconnoitre the enemy's lines. As he returned, going on foot from one watch-fire to another, he fell to the ground over the stump of a tree. A grenadier lighted a torch of straw, then the whole line did the same and cheered the Emperor. They remembered that the next day, Dec. 2, was the anniversary of the coronation. The Russians thought the French were retreating. Then all slept for a few hours, and awoke to the battle of Austerlitz.

At daybreak there was a heavy mist, then the sun shone out full and clear, and the French believed they would win a glorious victory. They were not disappointed. During the terrible conflict the Russians and Austrians lost over thirty thousand in killed and wounded, treble the number of the French. The enemy fled across the lakes, the ice of which being broken by the French batteries, thousands were ingulfed. Their cries and groans, says Lanfrey, were heard on the following day.

Napoleon said, "I have fought thirty battles like that, but I have never seen so decisive a victory, or one where the chances were so unevenly balanced." The Russian and Austrian forces greatly outnumbered the French. To his soldiers Napoleon said, "I am satisfied with you; you have covered your eagles with undying glory."

To Josephine he wrote: "The battle of Austerlitz is the greatest I have won; forty-five flags, more than one hundred and fifty cannon, the standards of the Russian guards, twenty generals, more than twenty thousand killed,—a horrid sight! The Emperor Alexander is in despair, and is leaving for Russia. Yesterday I saw the Emperor of Germany in my bivouac; we talked for two hours, and agreed on a speedy peace.... I shall see with pleasure the time that will restore me to you."

The defeat of the allies at Austerlitz hastened the death of William Pitt of England. He looked long on the map of Europe, and said, "Henceforth we may close that map for half a century." He died Jan. 23, 1806.

On Napoleon's return to Paris he erected a column in the Place Vendôme to the Grand Army. It was constructed of cannon taken from the enemy, and has illustrations upon it of the campaigns of Ulm and Austerlitz. W. O'Connor Morris calls Austerlitz "the most perfect of battles on land, as the Nile was the most perfect on sea." Seeley thinks, in its historical results, Austerlitz "ranks among the great events of the world."

The peace of Pressburg was effected between France and Austria, Dec. 26, 1805. Charles James Fox, who had succeeded Pitt in England, was favorable to peace between the nations, but the war party in England was strong. Fox soon died, and the peace negotiations failed.

Napoleon said at St. Helena, "The death of Fox was one of the fatalities of my career. Had his life been prolonged, affairs would have taken a totally different turn. The cause of the people would have triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."

Meantime Napoleon had placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples, Louis on the throne of Holland, and had formed a Confederation of the Rhine out of several states in the valley of the Rhine, which had fourteen million people. Napoleon was elected Protector of the Confederation.

Russia now became an ally of Prussia, and war was declared against France Oct. 14, 1806. The double battle of Jena and Auerstädt was fought, and the Prussians were completely defeated. Alison says, "The loss of the Prussians was prodigious; on the two fields there fell nearly twenty thousand killed and wounded, besides nearly as many prisoners.... Ten thousand of the killed and wounded fell at Auerstädt."

Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph Oct. 27, 1806, and established himself in the king's palace. He did not like the beautiful Queen Louise, because he felt that she had inspired the soldiers by her presence, and urged her husband to make war. He was unjust to her in his bulletins, and Josephine reproached him for "speaking ill of women."

Napoleon visited the palace of Sans Souci to see the room where Frederick the Great died, still preserved as he left it, and then went to the church where he is buried. At the tomb, says General de Ségur, "Napoleon paused at the entrance in a grave and respectful attitude. He gazed into the shadow enclosing the hero's ashes, and stood thus for nearly ten minutes, motionless, silent, as if buried in deep thought." The sword of Frederick he took with him, and gave it to the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, with the flags carried by his guard in the Seven Years' War.

Early in November, Prince Hohenlohe surrendered twenty thousand Prussians to the French; and Blücher, whom Napoleon was to meet again at Waterloo, surrendered twenty thousand men and over five hundred officers.

With all this victory, Josephine was not happy. Napoleon wrote her Nov. 1: "Talleyrand has come, and tells me you do nothing but cry." She wrote to Hortense, more miserable than herself, that she could not be happy so far from the Emperor.

Napoleon, while at Berlin, issued, Nov. 21, 1806, his famous "Berlin Decree," wherein he declared the British Islands blockaded. All commerce with England and her colonies was prohibited; all property belonging to an English subject confiscated; every native of England found in a country occupied by French troops to be made prisoner of war.

Napoleon declared that this was a retaliatory measure against England. Every French port was, in fact, blockaded by English vessels from the Elbe to Brest, by a decree of the British Government, passed in May, 1806, according to Alison. Some months after the Berlin Decree, England issued further prohibitory acts, called Orders in Council. The consequence of all this was that hate between the two nations was increased.

After the humiliation of Prussia, the war went on with Russia. After some minor battles, both armies met on the bloody field of Eylau, Feb. 7, 1807. Jomini thinks the forces about equal, though some historians place the number at eighty thousand Russians, and sixty thousand French. Part of Feb. 7 and all of Feb. 8, the armies were in deadly conflict. A blinding snowstorm part of the time prevented the armies from seeing each other. The snow and ice were so thick that men fought on ponds and did not know it.

Fifty thousand dead and wounded lay on the snow. Marshal Augereau's corps was almost destroyed; three thousand only remained out of fifteen thousand. Napoleon wrote in his bulletins: "Imagine, on a space a league square, nine or ten thousand corpses; four or five thousand dead horses; lines of Russian knapsacks; fragments of guns and sabres; the earth covered with bullets, shells, supplies; twenty-four cannon surrounded by their artillerymen, slain just as they were trying to take their guns away; and all that in plainest relief on the stretch of snow."

He said, as he looked upon the ghastly field, "This sight is one to fill rulers with a love of peace and a horror of war." At three o'clock in the morning of Feb. 9, he wrote to Josephine: "We had a great battle yesterday. I was victorious, but our loss was heavy; that of the enemy, which was even greater, is no consolation for me. I write you these few lines myself, though I am very tired, to tell you that I am well and love you.

Ever yours."

Baron de Marbot, in his most interesting memoirs, tells of his thrilling experiences in this battle. He was at that time an officer under Augereau. His horse, Lisette, of whom he was extremely fond, was addicted to biting, but valued for her speed. At great risk, Marbot carried a message to the Fourteenth. "I see no means of saving the regiment," said the major; "return to the Emperor, bid him farewell from the Fourteenth of the line, which has faithfully executed his orders, and bear him the eagle which he gave us, and which we can no longer defend; it would add too much to the pain of death to see it fall into the hands of the enemy."

Marbot took the eagle, when a cannon ball went through the hinder part of his hat, forcing, by the shock, the blood from his nose, ears, and even eyes. His limbs were almost paralyzed. A hand to hand combat raged around him. Several Frenchmen, not to be struck from behind, set their backs against the sides of Lisette, who stood quite still. One of the Russians thrust his bayonet into Marbot's left arm, and then into Lisette's thigh.

"Her ferocious instincts being restored by the pain," says Marbot, "she sprang at the Russian, and at one mouthful tore off his nose, lips, eyebrows, and all the skin of his face, making of him a living death's-head, dripping with blood. Then, hurling herself with fury among the combatants, kicking and biting, Lisette upset everything that she met on the road."

She seized another Russian who had tried to hit Marbot, "tore out his entrails, and mashed his body under her feet, leaving him dying on the snow."

When Lisette and her rider reached the cemetery of Eylau, where the battle was hottest, the poor creature fell exhausted. The young Marbot, supposed to be dead amid the piles of dead and wounded, was stripped of his clothing. He was marvellously rescued by a servant, who cut up the shirt of a dead soldier and bandaged the leg of Lisette, by which she also was saved. Lisette, after doing service just before Friedland by galloping twelve leagues on a hot day to carry a message of warning to the Emperor, was cared for by the wife of an officer, and died of old age.

Napoleon shared with his soldiers all the dangers and privations of war. He wrote to his brother Joseph: "The staff-officers have not taken off their clothes for two months, and some not for four. I have myself been a fortnight without taking off my boots. We are deep in the snow and mud.... The wounded have to be carried in open sleighs for fifty leagues."

Josephine wished to come to him. He wrote: "You couldn't be racing through inns and camps. I am as anxious as you can be to see you and be quiet.... All my life I have sacrificed everything—peace, interest, happiness—to my destiny."

The next great battle was at Friedland, when eighty thousand French met seventy-five thousand Russians. "This is the anniversary of Marengo," said Napoleon, June 14, 1800, "and to-day fortune is with me."

And so it proved. The Russians fought desperately, but they were overpowered. They retreated towards the river, and thousands who were not captured were drowned. They lost twenty-six thousand, says Marbot, in dead and wounded, and the French about half that number.

The conquered were glad to make peace, which was concluded at Tilsit, July 7, 1807, between Alexander I. of Russia, Frederick William III. of Prussia, and Napoleon. By this treaty, among other articles, some provinces west of the Elbe were made into the kingdom of Westphalia, and another brother of Napoleon, Jerome, was placed upon a throne. He had married, when nineteen, Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore; but through Napoleon's influence the union was annulled, and he married, at twenty-three, Aug. 23, 1807, the daughter of the king of Würtemberg. She proved a noble woman. When her husband was dethroned in 1814, she refused to obtain a divorce, writing to her father: "Having been forced, by reasons of state, to marry the king, my husband, it has been granted me by fate to be the happiest woman in the world."

Napoleon said of her at Saint Helena, "Princess Catherine of Würtemberg has, with her own hands, written her name in history."

Napoleon returned to Paris after the peace of Tilsit, and was received with unbounded love and honor. He made Paris more beautiful with arches and churches, he developed her industries, and he established schools and colleges. He said, "We must not pass through this world without leaving traces which may commend our memory to posterity."

England was still the bitter enemy of Napoleon. The decrees of both regarding commerce were soon to plunge nearly all Europe into war. By agreement of Alexander and Napoleon, if England did not consent to peace, they were to summon Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, and perhaps Austria, to close their ports against her. Denmark wished to be neutral. While she hesitated, England, having heard of this project, sent a fleet against Copenhagen and bombarded it.

Napoleon sent an army under Junot into Portugal to compel her assent, and Murat into Spain, which at that time was friendly with France, though distracted by royal dissensions. Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on the throne. Mr. Ropes thinks, and probably correctly, that Napoleon supposed "the population of the Spanish peninsula was ready for the great reforms in government in which France had led the way, and in which Holland, Western Germany, and Italy were then cheerfully and hopefully marching, and that the better and more enlightened part of the Spanish people would be thankful to see a liberal, intelligent, and conscientious man like Joseph take the place of the bigoted and profligate Charles IV."

Napoleon said at St. Helena: "It was the subject of my perpetual dreams to render Paris the real capital of Europe.... My ambition was of the highest and noblest kind that ever existed,—that of establishing and consecrating the empire of reason, and the full exercise and complete enjoyment of all the human faculties."

A dreadful insurrection took place in Spain against the rule of Joseph, and Napoleon sent a large army to quell it. He succeeded in reinstating Joseph on the throne for a time. He abolished the Inquisition and began several reforms.

The insurrection in Spain gave great joy in England. "The general rapture knew no bounds," says Alison. England sent her armies into Spain and Portugal, and the Peninsular War resulted, which Napier has described so vividly. To restore Ferdinand, the son of Charles IV., to Spain, England spent, says Napier, one hundred millions sterling, about five hundred million dollars, "and the bones of forty thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of the Peninsula." The heroic Sir John Moore fell at Corunna, and was buried in his bloody cloak at night by torchlight.

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

His last words were, "I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice." After his death, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was made commander-in-chief of all the English troops in the Spanish peninsula. Austria considered this an opportune time to make war on Napoleon. The latter raised another immense army,—Lanfrey says with much truth, "France was bleeding to death,"—marched against Austria, and several bloody battles resulted.

At Eckmühl the Austrians, says Marbot, admitted a loss of five thousand killed, and fifteen thousand prisoners. Napoleon said at St. Helena, "The greatest military manœuvres I ever made, and those for which I give myself most credit, were performed at Eckmühl."

At Ratisbon the Emperor was wounded in the foot, just before the retaking. So wild were the soldiers at the news, that as soon as his wound was dressed he rode in front of the whole line to appease their anxiety.

After some other successes, Napoleon reached Vienna, May 10, the Emperor Francis having fled, as before, to a place of safety. Napoleon went at once to the royal palace of Schönbrunn.

The enemy were now on the left bank of the Danube. The spring rains had swollen the great river, and the crossing was most hazardous. In the midst of the thousand yards of water was the huge Island of Lobau, four and a half miles long. Here the troops of Napoleon intrenched themselves, and built a bridge of boats to either side of the Danube. As soon as a portion of the French troops had crossed the river, and reached the towns of Aspern and Essling, the Austrians fell upon them with great slaughter, compelling the French to retreat to the Island of Lobau, in the middle of the river. In these battles the heroic Lannes had both legs crushed by a cannon-ball. One leg was amputated. The Emperor knelt beside the stretcher and wept as he embraced Lannes, whose blood stained Napoleon's white kerseymere waistcoat.

"You will live, my friend, you will live," said the Emperor.

"I trust I may, if I can still be of use to France and your Majesty," was the reply.

After his death, said Marbot, "Napoleon embraced the marshal's body, bathing it with tears, and saying repeatedly, 'What a loss for France and for me!'"

The losses at this double battle are variously estimated from twenty to fifty thousand; Lanfrey accepts the latter number. Seeley calls it "one of the most terrible and bloody battles of the period." Napoleon at once began to build substantial bridges on piles across the Danube, one of them eight hundred yards long, broad enough for three carriages to pass abreast. These bridges were finished in twenty days, and compelled great admiration.

To the astonishment of the Austrians, he crossed most of his army of 150,000 men during the night of July 4, and on July 6 fought the dreadful battle of Wagram. About 300,000 were in the battle. Fifty thousand on both sides were killed and wounded, probably about an equal number in each army.

The weather was extremely hot, and the corn on the battle-field caught fire from the shells. "The movements of both armies were hampered by the necessity of avoiding it," says Marbot; "for if once troops were overtaken by it, pouches and wagons exploded, carrying destruction through the ranks.... Of the soldiers who were severely wounded, great numbers perished in the flames; and of those whom the fire did not reach, many lay for days hidden by the tall corn, living during that time on the ears. The Emperor had the plains searched by bands of cavalry, and vehicles were brought from Vienna to remove the wounded, friends and foes alike. But few of those even whom the fire had passed recovered, and the soldiers had a saying that straw-fire had killed nearly as many as gun-fire."

"After the battle," says General Savary, "the Emperor sent sixty francs in crown pieces to each wounded soldier, and more than this to each officer."

Oct. 14, 1809, the peace of Vienna was signed at Schönbrunn, between France and Austria. "I committed a great fault after the battle of Wagram," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "in not reducing the power of Austria still more. She remained too strong for our safety, and to her we must attribute our ruin."

On Napoleon's return to France he had made up his mind to an act which will always tarnish his fame, and from which the decadence of his empire may be dated. He would divorce Josephine, and marry another, with the hope that he might have an heir to the throne. Undoubtedly he believed he was doing the best thing for France; and Thiers says the French people, while they loved Josephine, wished for the divorce.

On Nov. 30, 1809, as he and Josephine were dining together at Fontainebleau, not a word having been uttered except Napoleon asked one of the servants what time it was, he communicated to her his decision. After dismissing the servants, he came to her, took her hand, pressed it to his heart, and said, "Josephine! my dear Josephine! You know how I have loved you.... To you, to you alone, I owe the only moments of happiness I have tasted in this world. But, Josephine, my destiny is not to be controlled by my will. My dearest affections must yield to the interests of France."

"I expected this," said poor Josephine, "but the blow is none the less mortal."

She became at once insensible; and Napoleon, alarmed, hastily called assistance and bore her to her room. He came to see her in the evening, and wept.

Eugène determined at once to resign his position as Viceroy of Italy, but his mother begged him to remain the friend of Napoleon.

On Dec. 15, at the Tuileries, before the officers of the Empire, the divorce was announced. Josephine was almost overcome by her sobs. "The Emperor will always find in me his best friend," she said, and so it proved.

The next day the divorce was consummated before the Senate. Eugène announced the divorce, saying, "The tears of the Emperor do honor to my mother." Josephine, in a simple white muslin dress, leaning on the arm of Hortense, entered and signed the fatal decree. Both mother and daughter were in tears, as well as many of those present. Eugène, who idolized his mother, fell fainting to the floor. That evening when Josephine thought her husband had retired, she came to his room, her eyes swollen with weeping, and tottering towards the bed fell upon his neck, and sobbed as though her heart would break. They wept together, and talked for an hour. The next day Napoleon came to see her, accompanied by his secretary, Meneval. "He pressed her to his bosom with the most ardent embraces," says Meneval. "In the excess of her emotion she fainted."

At eleven o'clock the same day, veiled from head to foot, Josephine entered a close carriage drawn by six horses, said good-by to the Tuileries forever, and was driven to Malmaison. She retained the title of Empress, with $600,000 a year for her support. Napoleon passed eight days in retirement at Trianon. On his return to the Tuileries, he wrote to her, "I have been very lonely.... This great palace appears to me empty, and I find myself in solitude. Adieu, my love."

He frequently visited Malmaison. One day he found Josephine painting a violet. She says, "He threw himself with transport into the arms of his old friend.... It seemed impossible for him to cease gazing upon me, and his look was that of the most tender affection. At length he said, 'My dear Josephine, I have always loved you. I love you still. Do you still love me?"

Three months later, Mar. 11, 1810, Napoleon was married by proxy at Vienna, Archduke Charles representing him at the wedding, to Marie Louise, the daughter of Emperor Francis I. of Austria. He met her with his suite at the palace of Compiègne. She was eighteen, with light hair, and blue eyes, and gentle in manner. Napoleon was forty.

The civil marriage was celebrated at St. Cloud, April 1; and the next day they made their triumphal entry into Paris, by the Arc de l'Étoile, to the Tuileries, amid the cheers of three hundred thousand people. The world must have been amazed at such a union of France and Austria,—nations which had been at war for years. No wonder Napoleon, at St. Helena, spoke of it as "an abyss covered with a bed of flowers."

Two weeks later Josephine wrote him, "Your majesty shall never be troubled in his happiness by an expression of my grief. I offer incessant prayers that your majesty may be happy."

A year after his marriage, Mar. 20, 1811, a son, Napoleon Francis, was born to Napoleon, called the King of Rome, as the Roman States had been annexed to the Empire. All France rejoiced when the firing of one hundred guns announced the event.

Josephine wrote at once, telling Napoleon, "More than any one in the world do I rejoice in your joy." Of Marie Louise she wrote, "She cannot be more tenderly devoted to you than I am, but she has been enabled to contribute more toward your happiness, by securing that of France.... Not till you have ceased to watch by her bed, not till you are weary of embracing your son, will you take your pen to converse with your best friend. I will wait."

Napoleon brought his child to Josephine. "The moment I saw you enter," she wrote him, "bearing the young Napoleon in your hands, was unquestionably one of the happiest of my life."

He said at St. Helena: "Josephine would willingly have seen Marie Louise. She frequently spoke of her with great interest.... Marie Louise manifested the utmost dislike, and even jealousy, of Josephine. I wished one day to take her to Malmaison, but she burst into tears when I made the proposal. She said she did not object to my visiting Josephine, only she did not wish to know it. But whenever she suspected my intention of going to Malmaison, there was no stratagem which she did not employ for the sake of annoying me."

The emperor was devoted to his son, and always considerate and tender to Marie Louise. The boy developed into a very beautiful and bright child, winning the love of everybody.

A little more than a year after the birth of the King of Rome, Russia and France were again at war. Whatever Alexander's personal feelings toward Napoleon, his nobles were opposed to him; they disliked his restrictions on commerce, and feared his growing power. Russia and England became allies, though Napoleon offered to make peace with the latter, which offers she always declined. Probably the real truth was they all wished to humble Napoleon.

Russia and France each raised a great army, the latter about a half million men.

Napoleon left Paris for Dresden, May 9, taking Marie Louise with him. He left her at Prague. Before he started from Paris he spent two hours in earnest conversation with Josephine at Malmaison.

This Grand Army must have made an imposing appearance, with their twenty thousand carriages, one hundred and eighty thousand horses employed in the artillery, besides thousands of provision wagons and baggage.

He began to cross the river Niemen, which empties into the Baltic, on the night of June 23, 1812. The policy of the Russians was to retreat, burning the towns through which they passed, and destroying all produce, that the French might find no support in the desolated country.

The first terrible battle was at Borodino, Sept. 7, where the French lost about thirty thousand, and the Russians fifty thousand, in killed and wounded.

On Sept. 14, Napoleon and his weary army—many thousands had been stationed at various places along the route—entered Moscow. Here they hoped for food and rest. They found the great city deserted. Powder had been placed under the Kremlin, and shells under the larger palaces, where Napoleon and his officers would be apt to lodge; water-pipes had been cut, fountains destroyed; and, the day after Napoleon's arrival, the whole city was set on fire by Russians detailed for that purpose. No wonder Napoleon said, years later, of this terrible destruction of a great city, "It was the most grand, the most sublime, the most terrific sight the world ever beheld!"

Napoleon wrote to the Tsar proposing peace; but no answer was ever returned, though he waited some weeks in Moscow, hoping to hear favorably. The more intelligent serfs offered to rise against their masters, and aid Napoleon, but he did not desire civil war.

On Oct. 19, 1812, the Grand Army of France, one hundred thousand strong, commenced its heart-breaking retreat. Deep snow had already come, earlier than usual. Kutusof, the Russian general, moved his army parallel to the French, and fought them at every available point. Marshal Ney covered the rear, and made for himself an immortal record. Napoleon rightly called him "The Bravest of the Brave." When they reached Borodino they sadly turned their heads away from the battle-fields where the bodies of thirty thousand men were half devoured by wolves. The cold became intense. Horses slipped and fell on the icy ground. Artillery and baggage were abandoned. There was no food in the devastated country. Where Napoleon had left provisions on his way to Moscow the enemy had destroyed them. Men ate their horses for food. They lay down at night on the snow to sleep, and never rose. "Every morning," says Marbot, "we left thousands of dead in our bivouacs.... So intense was the cold that we could see a kind of vapor rising from men's ears and eyes. Condensing, on contact with the air, this vapor fell back on our persons with a rattle such as grains of millet might have made. We had often to halt and clear away from the horses' bits the icicles formed by their frozen breath.... Many soldiers of all ranks blew out their brains to put an end to their misery.... All ranks were confounded; there were no arms, no military bearings; soldiers, officers, generals, were clad in rags, and for boots had nothing but strips of leather or cloth, hardly fastened together with a string." The Emperor himself was grave, calm, and self-controlled, with no diminution of courage.

The soldiers of the allies of Napoleon, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and others, deserted by the thousands, the Russians having sent proclamations in various languages into the camps, telling them they should be returned to their homes.

Finally they reached the river Beresina, the bridge over which had been destroyed by the Russians. Tearing down the hovels in the village, the French built two bridges at night, the men standing for six or seven hours in the water. Then the troops surged upon them, and one bridge broke under the weight of guns and men. In rushing upon the other, great crowds were forced into the river and drowned. The Russians meantime swept them with cannon. From twenty to twenty-five thousand men perished in this dreadful crossing of the Beresina.

On Dec. 5, 1812, they were within the borders of Poland; and Napoleon, having learned that his death had been proclaimed in Paris, and that a man had tried to usurp the power, left his army in charge of Murat, and, with two officers, hastened by sledges to Paris, which he reached Dec. 18.

The loss of the French army and its allies in the Russian campaign Thiers estimates as 300,000 men; other authorities make it 350,000; 100,000 were killed in the advance and retreat from Moscow; 150,000 died of hunger, fatigue, and cold; 100,000 were taken prisoners. The Russian losses were also heavy.

Prussia now joined herself to Russia, and declared war against France. Napoleon at once raised another army of nearly two hundred thousand by conscription, and defeated the enemy at Lützen, or Gross-Beeren, and Bautzen. His young conscripts fought heroically. His beloved Marshal Duroc was killed just after the latter battle. Napoleon wept as he left him dying, saying, "Duroc, there is another life.... We shall one day meet again."

Austria offered to be a mediator, but failing, hastened to join Prussia and Russia. The marriage with Marie Louise had not won Napoleon friends, as he had fondly hoped.

The allies now had five hundred thousand men, the Prussians under Blücher, the Austrians under Schwarzenberg. Upon Aug. 27, 1813, Napoleon defeated them at Dresden, where they left forty thousand on the field, half of whom were prisoners, but was himself defeated in the dreadful battle of Leipsic, Oct. 16-19.

Bavaria and Westphalia had been compelled to join the allies, whose forces thrice outnumbered the French. The Swedes, under Bernadotte, had now turned against France. "In the three days' battle," says Alison, "the French lost 60,000 men, and the allies nearly as many."

In the retreat of the French from Leipsic they were obliged to cross the Elster river. The bridge had been mined, and by a mistake was exploded before all the French had passed over. Marbot says, of those who were left in Leipsic, about 13,000 were killed, and 25,000 made prisoners.

Meantime the English had been victorious over the French in Spain and Portugal, and Joseph Bonaparte had been driven from the throne. He came to the United States and lived at Bordentown, New Jersey, for some years, dying at Florence, Italy, July 28, 1844, at the age of seventy-six.

The allies now pushed into France, determined to enter Paris and dethrone Napoleon. The Emperor raised a new army, and with prodigious energy and courage fought against the coalition of Europe. Often with his forces greatly inferior in number to the allies, he defeated them, but finally he was overborne. Marie Louise fled to Blois. The young King of Rome refused to go. "They are betraying my papa," he said, "and I will not go away. I do not wish to leave the palace." He wept as he was taken to the carriage. His governess promised that he should come back, but she was never able to keep her promise.

Paris capitulated March 30, 1814; and the Senate, through the lead of Talleyrand, declared that Napoleon and his family had forfeited the throne.

Napoleon arrived at Paris a few hours after the capitulation, stunned at the news. Fearless as ever, he wished to attack the allies, but was persuaded by his marshals to desist.

With agony of soul, but calmness of demeanor, he signed his abdication at Fontainebleau, April 6, 1814: "The Emperor Napoleon declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the throne of France and Italy; and that there is no personal sacrifice, not even that of life itself, which he is not willing to make for the interests of France."

By the will of the allies, Louis XVIII. was recalled, and Napoleon was banished to the Island of Elba, east of Corsica, with an annual income from France of $500,000. He bade the Old Guard an affectionate good-by. "Adieu, my children," he said. "I would that I could press you all to my heart. Let me at least embrace your general and your eagle." He put his arms around General Petit, and kissed the eagle on its silver beak. Amid the tears and sobs of his brave soldiers, on April 20, Napoleon drove away from Fontainebleau to Fréjus, and in the British frigate, The Undaunted, set sail for Elba, April 27, 1814.

He had frequently written to Josephine through these melancholy months. Once he wrote: "To me death would now be a blessing. But I would once more see Josephine," and he saw her before his departure.

Four days before he left Fontainebleau for Elba, he wrote, "Adieu, my dear Josephine. Be resigned, as I am, and never forget him who never forgot, and who never will forget you. Farewell, Josephine."

She longed to follow him to Elba, but waited to see if Marie Louise would join him. At first Marie Louise desired to go to him, but was prevailed upon by her father, the Emperor Francis, to return to Austria, where she and her son became virtually prisoners. She finally retired to the Duchy of Parma, which the allies had given her, and later married her chamberlain, Count de Neipperg, an Austrian general.

Josephine wrote to Napoleon: "I have been on the point of quitting France to follow your footsteps, and to consecrate to you the remainder of an existence which you so long embellished. A single motive restrains me, and that you may divine.... Say but the word, and I depart."

As soon as Napoleon went to Elba, Josephine's health rapidly declined. She caught cold in driving in the park at Malmaison. When near death she said to Hortense, "I can say with truth, in this, my dying hour, that the first wife of Napoleon never caused a single tear to flow."

Napoleon landed at Elba, May 4, 1814. A month later, May 29, Josephine died, uttering, with her last breath, "Napoleon! Elba!"

"I have seen," said Mademoiselle Avrillon, the first lady of her bedchamber, "the Empress Josephine's sleeplessness and her terrible dreams. I have known her to pass whole days buried in the gloomiest thought. I know what I have seen and heard, and I am sure that grief killed her!"

Napoleon's mother, a woman of sixty-four, and his sister Pauline, joined him at Elba. The latter had married Prince Borghese in 1803, but they soon separated. After several years they were reconciled to each other. She died at Florence in 1825.

Napoleon remained at Elba ten months, when he escaped, landed at Cannes, Mar. 1, 1815, raised an army in France as if by magic, and entered Paris at its head, Mar. 20.

The people seemed glad to be rid of Louis XVIII., who fled at midnight, Mar. 19. Napoleon said, with much truth, "The Bourbons, during their exile, had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing." The Grand Army joyously received their leader. The people shouted themselves hoarse. They wept, and sang songs of thanksgiving. Paris was brilliant with illuminations. When he reached the Tuileries, he was seized and borne aloft above the heads of the throng. The ladies of the court, says Alison, "received him with transports, and imprinted fervent kisses on his cheeks, his hands, and even his dress. Never was such a scene witnessed in history." Hortense and her two children were at the Tuileries to welcome Napoleon.

The allies cared little whom France wished to rule her. They preferred the conservative Bourbons or indeed anybody who would not disturb the so-called balance of power in Europe. They at once banded themselves together, England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, to crush this "enemy and disturber of the world."

A million men were soon raised by the allies, and Napoleon brought together over 200,000. He decided at once to take the offensive rather than let the allies invade France. He left Paris for Belgium, June 12, 1815, taking with him about 120,000 men. He drove the Prussians out of Charleroi, and on June 16 gained a victory over the Prussian marshal, Blücher, at Ligny. Jomini, who is usually authentic, says Napoleon had 72,000 in the battle, and Blücher from 80,000 to 90,000. It was a hotly contested battle-field in which the Prussians lost from 12,000 to 20,000 men. Thiers says 30,000.

Blücher had his gray charger, given him by the Prince Regent of England, shot under him, and was nearly killed in the retreat.

The same day occurred the desperate battle of Quatre-Bras, in which Marshal Ney was defeated.

On June 18, 1815, the decisive battle of Waterloo was fought, nine miles south-east of Brussels. Napoleon's forces, according to Jomini and Thiers, were 70,000 in number; Seeley and Ropes say 72,000. Wellington had about 68,000.

The ground was so drenched by rains that the battle was not begun till a little past eleven. Both sides fought desperately. Blücher, a few miles to the right of Wellington, at Wavre, had promised to join him. Napoleon had told Marshal Grouchy to follow the Prussians and thus prevent their union with the English. He started too late for Wavre; he did not take the advice of some of his officers to hasten to Napoleon when they heard the sound of battle, and his 33,000 men failed to help at Waterloo. Ropes gives an interesting account of this in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1881, "Who lost Waterloo?"

All day long the battle raged. Hand to hand combats were constant. The battle seemed in favor of the French. Meantime Blücher was coming from Wavre, with his guns sinking axle-deep in the mud. "We shall never get on," was heard on all sides. "We must get on," said the bluff Blücher; "I have given my word to Wellington."

Napoleon kept watching for Grouchy. Early in the afternoon about 30,000 Prussians under Bulow had come to Wellington's assistance. Night came on and the firing of musketry was heard. "There's Grouchy!" said the Emperor. His aide-de-camp, Labédoyère, rushed to announce it to the army. "Marshal Grouchy is arriving, the Guard is going to charge. Courage! courage! 'tis all over with the English."

"One last shout of hope burst from every rank," says M. Fleury de Chaboulon, ex-secretary of the Emperor; "the wounded who were still capable of taking a few steps returned to the combat, and thousands of voices eagerly repeated, Forward! forward!"

It was not Grouchy, but Blücher with thirty or forty thousand fresh troops. The Imperial Guard did indeed charge with all their wonted impetuosity. They were mowed down like grain. Ney, with five horses shot under him, marched on foot with his drawn sword. Napoleon watched them, pale, yet calm. "All is lost!" said he, "the Guard recoils!"

The Emperor was everywhere in the battle. "Death shuns you. You will be made a prisoner," said his generals, and an officer seized the bridle of his horse and dragged him away.

The French were completely overcome, and the Prussians pursued them with great vigor. It is estimated that the French lost thirty thousand on the field of Waterloo, and the loss of the allies was probably not much less. It was one of the most bloody battles of modern times.

Napoleon returned to Paris, and then retired to Malmaison. He abdicated in favor of his son, Napoleon II.; but the allies, when they captured Paris a second time, July 7, 1815, placed Louis XVIII. again on the throne.

Napoleon repaired to Rochefort with the hope that he might embark for America, but the coast was so blockaded by the English steamers that this was impossible. He surrendered himself to go on board the English ship, Bellerophon, July 15, with the hope that he should find a generous foe. He soon learned, to his inexpressible grief, that he was destined for St. Helena. On Aug. 7 he was transferred to the Northumberland, and sailed for his lonely place of exile, which he reached Oct. 16, 1815.

The Island of St. Helena, ten miles broad and seven long, is in the Atlantic Ocean, fourteen hundred miles west of the west coast of South Africa. It is composed of rugged mountains of volcanic origin, with little vegetation. Wherever a vessel could approach a fort was planted, so that the island formed a complete prison.

Lieutenant John R. Glover, who accompanied the British admiral who took Napoleon to St. Helena, said of the island (Century, for November, 1893): "Nothing can possibly be less prepossessing, nay, more horribly forbidding, than the first appearance of this isolated and apparently burnt up barren rock, which promises neither refreshment nor pleasure.... During our eight months' residence we experienced little variation, and had continued rains. The climate is by no means healthy, ... the children being sickly, and the adults suffering from the liver, of which complaint many of our men died."

Here Napoleon lived for six years, till his death, May 5, 1821, at the age of fifty-two, of a cancer in the stomach, the same disease which had killed his father. He was allowed to take with him to St. Helena three of his generals and their families, and a secretary, Las Cases.

His jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, seems to have been a most unfortunate choice in the surveillance of a high-spirited and remarkable man.

Napoleon was allowed to walk or ride only within certain limits, with a British officer near at hand. His accommodations were poor and plain. "The rats," says Dr. O'Meara, "are in numbers almost incredible. I have frequently seen them assemble like broods of chickens round the offal thrown out of the kitchen." Besides he says, through the roof "the rain entered in torrents." Napoleon's letters were all opened, both those sent or received. He was never addressed as Emperor, England ungenerously insisting that he be called simply General Bonaparte. Books addressed to "The Emperor" were not delivered to him. William O'Connor Morris says: "His humiliation was degrading and needless.... Admitting that the allies had a right to deprive him of liberty, they had no right to subject him to insult and wrong; and St. Helena is a blot on the fair fame of England." From his idolized son he was not permitted to hear.

He said to Countess Montholon, at St. Helena, "On receiving into my arms that infant, so many times fervently implored of Heaven, could I have believed that one day he would have become the source of my greatest anguish? Yes, madame, every day he costs me tears of blood. I imagine to myself the most horrid events, which I cannot remove from my mind. I see either the potion or the empoisoned fruit which is about to terminate the days of that young innocent by the most cruel sufferings."

The boy worshipped his father. "Tell him," said the little King of Rome, then four years old, when Meneval, Napoleon's former secretary, left Marie Louise in Austria, "that I love him dearly." He looked like his father, had his ambition, and, as he grew to manhood, longed to return to France. When Charles X. was overthrown in 1830, he said, "Why was I not there to take my chance?" He was then nineteen. Napoleon had foreseen the fall of the Bourbons, as he said at St. Helena, "They will not maintain their position after my death; a reaction in my favor will take place everywhere, even in England."

Napoleon II. died at Vienna, July 22, 1832, at the age of twenty-one, of consumption, at Schönbrunn, the summer home of the Emperor. He expired upon the same narrow bed on which his father slept when he came as the conqueror of Austria. General Hartmann said, "Having passed my life on battle-fields, I have often seen death, but I never saw a soldier die more bravely."

When near death, Napoleon II. said, "So young, and is there no remedy? My birth and my death will be the only points of remembrance." He lies buried in the plain Church of the Capucines, beside his mother. His heart is in a small silver urn in St. Augustine's Church.

For six years Napoleon lived in this prison at St. Helena, dictating his memoirs and commentaries to Count Montholon, Baron Gourgaud, and Count Las Cases. His health failed rapidly after the first year. Not taking exercise, on account of the constant espionage, he was finally prevailed upon by the physician to work a little in a garden, which he found a relief.

At the end of a year, Las Cases was banished with his son to England, because he had forwarded a letter to Lady Clavering, telling how badly the Emperor was treated, and it had not passed through the hands of Sir Hudson Lowe. This was a great blow to Napoleon, as he was the only one who could read, speak, and understand English. Dr. O'Meara was also obliged to leave St. Helena on account of Sir Hudson Lowe's treatment of him.

After some months of illness, the friends of Napoleon were permitted to send Dr. Antommarchi, a Corsican, to him. In the spring of 1821, Napoleon grew feeble and emaciated. He made his will, remembering his friends most generously. April 22, from perspiration on account of his great pain, Count Montholon writes, "On this night I changed the Emperor's linen seven times." April 25, as Montholon watched by his bedside, at four o'clock in the morning, Napoleon exclaimed, "I have just seen my good Josephine, but she would not embrace me. She disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms. She was seated there.... She is not changed. She is still the same, full of devotion to me. She told me that we were about to see each other again, never more to part. Did you see her?"

Three days later he gave directions about his death, asking that his heart might be put in spirits of wine, and carried to Parma, to Marie Louise. "You will tell her that I tenderly loved her," he said, "that I never ceased to love her."

Five days before his death he dictated for two hours his desires about the Palace of Versailles, and the organization of the National Guard for the defence of Paris. To the last he carried out his chosen motto, "Everything for the French people."

He remembered his servants, and wished to see them and say good-by. One of them exclaimed excitedly, "I will die for him."

May 2 the Emperor was delirious, and, thinking he was with his army, shouted, "Desaix! Massena! Ah! victory is declaring. Run! hasten! press the charge! They are ours!" He sprang from the bed and fell prostrate upon the floor.

On the night of May 4 a tornado swept the island, uprooting the trees which the Emperor had planted. During the night, says Count Montholon, "Twice I thought I distinguished the unconnected words, 'France—armée, tête d'armée (head of the army)—Josephine.'"

During the whole of May 5 he lay quiet and peaceful, conscious, his right hand out of bed, seemingly absorbed in deep meditation. At eleven minutes before six o'clock he died.

England would not permit his body to be embalmed or to be carried to France, as he had requested, or his heart to be given to Marie Louise; so, at half-past twelve, on May 8, he was buried under some willows at St. Helena. The English garrison, two thousand five hundred strong, which had been on the island to keep Napoleon from escaping, now followed his body to the grave. Three volleys of fifteen guns each were fired over it. The soldiers had unbounded admiration for the unrivalled leader, and begged to kiss the blue cloak which he wore at Marengo, and which was thrown over the coffin.

"We were not allowed," says Dr. Antommarchi, "to place over the grave either a stone or a modest inscription, the governor [Sir Hudson Lowe] opposing this pious wish."

The Emperor had written in his will, "It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well."

On May 5, 1840, nineteen years after Napoleon's death, the French, now that Louis Philippe had become king, asked England that his body might be removed to France. Consent being given, Prince de Joinville, the son of the king, with Gourgaud, Bertrand, and the son of Las Cases, with two armed ships, proceeded on their sad errand, bearing an ebony coffin, with the one word, "Napoleon," on it in gold letters. Within was a coffin of lead. The funeral pall was of purple velvet, embroidered with bees, and bordered with ermine.

At midnight, Oct. 5, 1840, the work of exhuming the body of the Emperor was begun. At ten o'clock in the forenoon the coffin was reached, so difficult had it been to remove the heavy stones and cement which covered the vault. The first coffin of mahogany was opened, then the leaden one, then one of mahogany, then one of tin. The body was found wonderfully preserved, and seemed as though recently interred. The hands were perfect, with the smooth skin as if in life. The clothes retained their color,—the dark green coat faced with red, the white pantaloons, and the hat, resting on the thigh. The body was exposed to the air only two minutes; the coffins were re-sealed and placed in those brought from France.

The ships reached France early in December. Never was there such a funeral in Paris. One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and more than a million citizens assisted at the magnificent obsequies. The funeral car, its cenotaph rising fifty feet from the ground, was drawn by sixteen black horses, four abreast, covered with cloth of gold. The Emperor's war-horse was draped with a veil of purple crape, embroidered with bees. The remnants of the Old Guard were there—the hosts who idolized Napoleon and would have died for him; but the son, the King of Rome, was sleeping in a coffin in Austria, and Josephine was resting in the church at Rueil, two miles from Malmaison.

At the funeral service three hundred musicians played Mozart's Requiem in the Church of the Invalides, where now the great hero rests. The seemingly countless throng of people were moved to tears. Could he who was its object have looked forward to all this love and homage, when he lay dying among the rocks of St. Helena, the agony might have been lessened. Could he have foreseen how tens of thousands, every year, from all the world, would stand by that tomb, under the dome of the Invalides, and do honor to the wonderful soldier and statesman, that bitter exile and death might not have been quite so desolate and pathetic.

"Posterity," as he said, "will do him justice." Already the harshness of his critics is giving place to a correct estimate of his extraordinary genius.

"I have formed and carried into effect," he said to Dr. O'Meara, "a code of laws that will bear my name to the most distant posterity. From nothing I raised myself to be the most powerful monarch of the world."

Napier thought Napoleon "the greatest man of whom history makes mention." "Never," says Alison, "were talents of the highest, genius of the most exalted kind, more profusely bestowed upon a human being."

Napoleon worked incessantly. He saved every moment. He believed in himself. He had great courage, will, and energy. He said to Las Cases that he liked two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which he had rarely met. "I mean," he said, "unprepared courage; that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision."

Napoleon had this courage. Three horses were killed under him at Toulon, several in Italy, and three or four at the siege of Saint Jean d'Acre. When his body was prepared for burial, it was found that there were several scars upon it, some slight, and three very distinct.

He hated selfishness. Madame la Générale Durant, first lady to the Empress Marie Louise, relates in her book, "Napoleon and Marie Louise," that once, when Marie Louise said everybody was selfish, and that she was also, he replied, "Don't say, my Louise, that you are selfish; I know no more hideous vice."

He had great dignity combined with kindliness. After a ball, during which he conversed with Goethe, he wrote Josephine: "I have attended a ball in Weimar. The Emperor Alexander danced. But I? No! Forty years are forty years."

"He had a directness of action," says Emerson, "never before combined with so much comprehension.... Here was a man who, in each moment and emergency, knew what to do next.... Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the world, if his ends had been purely public....

"We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage and thoroughness."

While indomitable in battle, he was, says General Gourgaud, "of all generals, whether ancient or modern, the one who has paid the greatest attention to the wounded. The intoxication of victory never could make him forget them. His first thought after every battle was always of them."

Count Segur relates that, after the battle of Borodino, when Napoleon and his escort were going over the field, a horse stepped on a dying man, who expired with a groan. Napoleon uttered a shriek of pain. Some one, to soothe him, said, "It was only a Russian." With much warmth, Napoleon replied, "After victory there are no enemies, but only men."

His despatch was marvellous. He was generous, and never forgot the poorest who needed his kindness. He was ambitious; but Europe, fearing him, forced him into many of his wars. He knew how to govern himself as well as others. He said of Lannes, one of his generals who lost his temper, that a man could not be great who permitted himself to get angry. The officer heard of this remark, and ever after controlled his temper.

Napoleon was more moral than his age. He loved children and nature. "How many times," says Bourrienne, as they walked toward Rueil from Malmaison, "has the bell of the village church interrupted our most serious conversations! He would stop, lest the noise of our footsteps should drown any portion of the delightful sound."

He believed, in an age of unbelief. He said to Bertrand at St. Helena, "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.... Everything in him astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and his will confounds me. Between him and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison."

Napoleon compared the reign of Christ with that of Cæsar, Alexander, Hannibal, and of himself; "My armies have forgotten me, even while living, as the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Such is our power! A single battle lost crushes us, and adversity scatters our friends.... What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is extended over all the earth! Is this to die? Is it not rather to live? The death of Christ! It is the death of God."

The life of Napoleon, truly called "the Great," is more interesting and pathetic than any novel. It will always remain one of the marvels of the world.

LORD NELSON.

HORATIO NELSON.

It is a significant fact that the life of a leader is never an easy one. Nelson's life was one of struggle from beginning to end; a battle with poverty, lack of appreciation ofttimes by his country, much ill-health, domestic disquietude, and many hardships. He died at forty-seven, the greatest naval hero of the age.

Horatio Nelson, the son of a country rector, the Rev. Edmund Nelson, was born Sept. 29, 1758, at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, England. The mother, Catherine, was descended from a good family, her grandmother being an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford. Catherine died when her little son, Horatio, was nine years old, leaving eight out of eleven children to mourn their capable mother. Nelson said of her later, just a short time before he died, "The thought of former days brings all my mother into my heart, which shows itself in my eyes."

The boy Nelson was fearless and ambitious. It is related of him that, straying away from the house when a mere child, his grandmother thought he had been carried off by gypsies. When found sitting beside a brook which he could not cross, the old lady said, "I wonder, child, that hunger and fear did not drive you home."

"Fear," said the boy, "I never saw fear; what is it?"

At another time, some pears were wanted from the schoolmaster's garden. Without debating the question of the sin of stealing, nobody dared venture for fear of the consequences. Horatio volunteered to get them, was lowered at night by a sheet from his window, gathered the pears, and gave them to his mates, keeping none for himself. "I only took them," he said, "because every other boy was afraid."

His father was poor, always in frail health, and apparently unable to do much for his numerous progeny. Horatio determined to do something for himself. Seeing in the newspaper that his uncle on his mother's side, Captain Maurice Suckling, had been appointed in the navy to the ship Raisonnable, of sixty-four guns, Horatio said to his brother, a year and a half older than himself, "Do, William, write to my father, and tell him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice."

Mr. Nelson was at Bath for his health. He at once wrote to the captain about his twelve-year-old son, who was as sickly in body as himself. The uncle wrote back, "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once."

His father took him to London, from whence he found his way to Chatham, where the ship was lying. His uncle was absent at the time, and the first few days were lonely in the extreme. The sailors were rough, their treatment by officers often harsh, not to say cruel, and the lad who had so yearned for the sea soon came to despise the Royal Navy.

He soon went on a West Indian voyage, in a small merchant ship commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had served as master's mate under Captain Suckling. Here, with keen observation, and a constant desire to rise in his profession, he learned rapidly.

Later, young Nelson went as coxswain under Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass on a Polar voyage. They were beset by the ice; left their ships, expecting they would be crushed, and dragged their boats by hand; had the usual fights with walruses and bears, Nelson exposing himself in an encounter with the latter, that he might carry a skin home to his father.

Nelson's next voyage, at fifteen, was in the Seahorse, of twenty guns, to the East Indies in a squadron under Sir Edward Hughes. He was stationed at the foretop at watch and watch, where his attention to duty soon made him a midshipman.

After eighteen months in this debilitating climate, he became dangerously ill, and was sent home in the Dolphin in 1776. The youth of sixteen became very despondent. "I felt impressed," he says, "with an idea that I should never rise in my profession. My mind was staggered with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount, and the little interest I possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition. After a long and gloomy revery, in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within me and presented my king and country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the idea. 'Well, then,' I exclaimed, 'I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger.'"

From that time he often told his friend Hardy, "a radiant orb was suspended in his mind's eye, which urged him onward to renown."

Captain Suckling had now become comptroller of the navy; and as soon as Nelson was recovered, through his uncle's influence, he was made fourth lieutenant of the Worcester, a ship of sixty-four guns, commanded by Mark Robinson, going out to Gibraltar. At nineteen he passed an excellent examination in naval matters, and was made second lieutenant on the Lowestoffe, of thirty-two guns, under Captain William Locker, then fitting out for the West Indies. The vessel arrived at Carlisle Bay, Barbadoes, July 4, 1777.

Nelson soon showed his usual bravery. An American letter-of-marque was captured. The first lieutenant was ordered to board her; but, unable to reach her by reason of the high sea, Nelson volunteered, and though his boat swept over the deck of the American privateer, he finally got aboard, and made her his prize.

Soon after Nelson was appointed third lieutenant of the flag-ship Bristol, and in 1779 commander of the Badger, protecting the Mosquito Coast and the Bay of Honduras from the privateers. Many French merchantmen were captured.

During these years from 1777 to 1780, the skirmishes with the Spaniards and French, though marked with great energy and bravery on the part of Nelson, were ruinous to him and his men. Hundreds of the latter died from the malaria of the climate, or were poisoned by the bites of serpents. Nelson himself, more dead than alive, was carried back to England, and for many months remained at Bath, endeavoring to regain his health.

Fretting at his inactive life, he applied for a position which was not granted for some months; and then he was sent, much against his will, to the bleak North Sea to protect the home trade. Here he spent a winter in discomfort, but he learned many things which were of inestimable value in one of his great battles afterwards.

In 1782 he sailed in his ship, the Albemarle, for Newfoundland and Quebec, and while cruising along the coast, captured the Harmony, a schooner which belonged to a fisherman by the name of Carver. Nelson employed him as a pilot in Boston Harbor, and then restored him the schooner and cargo, giving him a certificate so that no other vessel should capture him. This certificate was framed, and hung in the house of Isaac Davis of Boston. Carver was so grateful to Nelson that he came afterwards to the Albemarle, at the hazard of his life, bringing a present of sheep, poultry, and fresh provisions. The scurvy was raging on board, and the ship's company had not enjoyed a fresh meal for five months, so that Carver's present was most acceptable.

While at Quebec in 1782, when he was twenty-four, Nelson fell in love with an American lady, whom he much desired to marry, but was prevented by the decision of his friend Alexander Davison, who hurried him off to sea.

In October of this same year, 1782, Nelson sailed for New York, where he found the Barfleur with twelve sail-of-the-line under command of Lord Hood. The latter introduced him to Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV. The duke was greatly pleased with the boyish-looking captain, dressed in his full laced uniform, with his hair tied in a stiff Hessian tail of an extraordinary length. The duke says of his quaint figure, "I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was nor what he came about. But his address and conversation were irresistibly pleasing; and when he spoke on professional subjects, it was with an enthusiasm that showed me he was no common being."

Under Lord Hood, Nelson sailed to the West Indies, and remained there till January, 1783, when peace with France was concluded.

"I have closed the war," said Nelson, "without a fortune; but there is not a speck in my character. True honor, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches."

On July 11 Nelson was presented at court, and received much attention from the king, perhaps on account of the good words of Prince William, his son, for the sailor. The young man of twenty-five had not particularly distinguished himself as yet, but he had improved every opportunity of making himself familiar with naval matters. He would be ready for the great opportunity if it ever came.

As he was now on half-pay, he determined to go to France for a time to study the French language. Here he fell in love with Miss Andrews, one of the three daughters of an English clergyman. As his income was only £130 a year, he wrote his uncle, William Suckling, asking that he might be allowed £100 a year in addition, that he might be able to marry. This request was granted; but Miss Andrews perhaps did not give her consent, or Nelson thought that £230 would not support a wife in much luxury, for she afterwards married a clergyman by the name of Farrer, and later Colonel Warne. Nelson evidently admired her greatly; for he wrote to his brother William, "She has such accomplishments, that, had I a million of money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them."

In the spring of 1784 he was appointed to the Boreas, of twenty-eight guns, and sailed for the Leeward Islands, taking with him Lady Hughes and her family to her husband, Sir Richard, who was in command at that station.

There were about thirty midshipmen on board, and to all Nelson was extremely kind and sympathetic. When a boy was at first afraid to go up the masts, Nelson would say, "I am going a race to the masthead, and beg that I may meet you there." When they met at the top, Nelson would speak cheerfully and say, "How much any person was to be pitied who could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt."

He was always the first to arrive on deck with his quadrant at noon. When he made visits of ceremony he always took some of his lads with him. When he went to dine with the governor of Barbadoes, he said, "Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen. I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as they have few to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea."

Through life Nelson showed this same thoughtfulness and tenderness for his men. He never lost the sensitiveness of his childhood, which made him cry bitterly when he had hurt a pet lamb in a shoemaker's shop, by accidentally opening a door against it. He was always opposed to harsh discipline, and ruled by love rather than by fear. No wonder it was said of him, when other great men were mentioned, "Nelson was the man to love."

At the Island of Nevis, Nelson fell in love for the third time. The lady was Mrs. Fanny Nisbet, whose husband, a physician, had died insane, eighteen months after their marriage. Her uncle, Mr. Herbert, was the president of Nevis. She had a son Josiah, several years old, to whom Nelson became attached; and this, of course, helped to win the favor of the mother.

Three months before their marriage he writes to her from Antigua, where he has Prince William Henry with him: "What is it to attend on princes! let me attend on you and I am satisfied. Some are born for attendants on great men; I rather think that is not my particular province. His Royal Highness often tells me he believes I am married, for he never saw a lover so easy or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, then he is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and that it is not what is vulgarly—I do not much like the use of that word—called love.

"He is right; my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last. I need not tell you what you so well know, that I wish I had a fortune to settle on you; but I trust I have a good name, and that certain events will bring the other about; it is my misfortune, not my fault. You can marry me only from a sincere affection; therefore I ought to make you a good husband, and I hope it will turn out that I shall."

Again he writes, "I daily thank God, who ordained that I should be attached to you. He has, I firmly believe, intended it as a blessing to me, and I am well convinced you will not disappoint his beneficent intentions."

These are certainly very different letters from those which he wrote in after years to Lady Hamilton, whom he idolized. Undoubtedly Nelson mistook loneliness of heart for love; as he wrote to Lady Hamilton years after, "I never did love any one else.... I have been the world around, and in every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, or even one who could be put in comparison with you." Nelson and Mrs. Nisbet were married March 12, 1787, Prince William giving away the bride. Many of his friends in the service regretted that he had married before his honors had been more fully won. "The Navy," said Captain Pringle, the day after the wedding, "yesterday lost one of its greatest ornaments by Nelson's marriage. It is a national loss that such an officer should marry; had it not been for that circumstance, I foresaw that Nelson would become the greatest man in the service."

Nelson took his wife to England, arriving at Spithead July 4, about four months after their marriage. He had applied for a ship-of-the-line, but no notice was taken of the request. He retired with his wife to the parsonage at Burnham Thorpe, and at the request of his aged father remained there. He was in very poor health and living on half-pay. "From the 30th of November, 1787, to the 30th of January, 1793," says W. Clark Russell, in his life of the hero, "Nelson, whose delicate form enclosed the genius of the greatest sea-captain the world has ever produced, was compelled by departmental neglect to lie by in an almost poverty-stricken retirement."

Again and again he asked for employment. The prince recommended him to Lord Chatham, but nothing was done. In December, 1792, Nelson wrote, "If your lordships should be pleased to appoint me to a cockle-boat I should be grateful." He would have left the service, if he had had means to live on shore. He was irritated beyond measure by this neglect, and perhaps Mrs. Nelson did not find the parsonage a perfect haven of rest and peace.

Finally Nelson concluded to take refuge in France. That country had become a republic Sept. 21, 1792. She soon found herself, on account of her democratic principles, engaged in war with various countries, Great Britain among them. Feb. 1, 1793, she declared war against England, Holland, and Spain. Sardinia was already at war with France. As soon as England was involved in war, Nelson was needed; and he was assigned to the Agamemnon, a fine ship of sixty-four guns, called by the seamen, "Old Eggs-and-Bacon." She sailed for Gibraltar June 27, 1793, with Lord Hood's fleet, nineteen sail-of-the-line, and a convoy of merchant-ships.

When Lord Hood arrived in the Mediterranean, he stationed his ships off Toulon, which soon surrendered to the British, without firing a shot. Nelson was at once ordered to Naples with despatches for Sir William Hamilton, the British minister, and to ask for ten thousand Italian troops, to help in the preservation of Toulon.

King Ferdinand and his queen, Maria Caroline, the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, gave Nelson most cordial welcome at Court, feeling that the English were "the saviours of Italy." Sir William Hamilton told his wife that he was going to introduce her to a little man, not handsome, "but an English naval officer, who will become the greatest man that England ever produced. I know it from the few words I have already exchanged with him. I pronounce that he will one day astonish the world.... Let him be put in the room prepared for Prince Augustus."

Lady Hamilton received Nelson with her accustomed grace and cordiality. He wrote his wife, "She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honor to the station in which she is raised.... She has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah."

Nelson was at this time about thirty-five, and Lady Hamilton five years younger, of the same age as his wife. She was a woman of remarkable beauty and great sweetness of manner. Southey said, "She was a woman whose personal accomplishments have seldom been equalled, and whose powers of mind were not less fascinating than her person." Her history had been a strange one. Born in extreme poverty, and early left an orphan by the death of her father, she was for some years a nursery-maid and servant, then a model for Romney, the famous artist, who painted her twenty-three times, as Bacchante, Saint Cecilia, a Magdalen, a Wood Nymph, Joan of Arc, etc., and thought her the most beautiful human being he had ever looked upon.

At this time she supported herself by her needle. Her beauty attracted the attention of Mr. Charles Greville, second son of Francis, Earl of Warwick, and Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Archibald Hamilton. He educated her, and she became skilled in music and languages. She played finely on the harp. Her stage talents were so great that she was offered two thousand guineas to sing for the season at the Opera House in London. Greville sent her to Naples with his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, with the avowed object of perfecting her in music, but in reality to abandon her, as he had become somewhat straitened in circumstances.

She loved Greville, and was deeply wounded at his treatment. Sir William, a younger son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, was at that time sixty-one, and Emma Lyon twenty-eight. He had married for his first wife a Welsh heiress, who had died nine years previously: In 1791, Sept. 6, he married Emma, who thus became Lady Hamilton. He was a student of art, an author of several volumes, and for thirty-six years minister to Italy.

However blameworthy the previous life of Lady Hamilton, Sir William was devoted to her, and said at his death, twelve years later, "My incomparable Emma, you have never, in thought, word, or deed, offended me; and let me thank you, again and again, for your affectionate kindness to me all the time of our ten years' happy union."

On leaving Naples, Nelson was despatched to Corsica and Sardinia, to protect British trade and that of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He wrote to his wife, "This island is to belong to England, to be governed by its own laws, as Ireland, and a viceroy placed here with free ports. Italy and Spain are jealous of our obtaining possession; it will command the Mediterranean."

The town of Bastia was taken by Nelson. "I am all astonishment," he said, "when I reflect on what we have achieved ... four thousand in all, laying down their arms to twelve hundred soldiers, marines, and seamen! I always was of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen."

At the siege of Calvi, by the bursting of a shell in the ground, sand and small gravel destroyed the sight of Nelson's right eye. For two years Nelson was almost constantly active. He wrote his wife, Aug. 2, 1796, "Had all my actions been gazetted, not one fortnight would have passed during the whole war without a letter from me; one day or other I will have a long gazette to myself. I feel that such an opportunity will be given me. I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight; wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps."

He had been made colonel of marines, and then commodore. The Agamemnon had been sent to Leghorn to refit, so badly had she been damaged by shot.

Corsica was finally evacuated, and Nelson proceeded to Gibraltar. Spain and France had now become allies. Off Cape St. Vincent, on the coast of Portugal, a severe battle was fought, February 14, 1797, between the English and Spanish fleets. The former had fifteen ships-of-the-line, with four frigates, a sloop, and a cutter. The latter had twenty-seven ships-of-the-line, with ten frigates, and a brig. Nelson, in the Captain, was at one time engaged with no less than nine line-of-battle ships. He and his seamen sprang aboard the San Nicolas and the San Josef, he exclaiming, it is recorded, "Westminster Abbey or victory!" received the swords of some of the Spanish officers, and in the midst of falling spars and blinding smoke, showed themselves heroic.

For this successful battle Nelson received the Knighthood and Order of the Bath, and was made Rear-Admiral. The sword of the Spanish admiral given to Nelson on board the San Josef was presented to the mayor and corporation of Norwich, the capital of the county in which he was born. The freedom of the city was voted to him.

His aged father wrote him, "The name and services of Nelson have sounded through this city of Bath—from the common ballad-singer to the public theatre."

His wife begged him "never to board again. Leave it for captains.... You have been most wonderfully protected; you have done desperate actions enough."

On the night of July 3. 1797, Cadiz, off the coast of Spain, was bombarded. Nelson was in a most desperate action. In a barge with twelve men, he was attacked by a Spanish barge of twenty-six oars, with thirty in her crew. A hand-to-hand fight ensued. The Spanish commander and his launch were taken, and eighteen of his men were killed. The life of Nelson was saved by a trusted follower, John Sykes, who interposed his own head to receive the blow of a Spanish sabre. He recovered from his dangerous wound, "but did not live long enough," says Southey, "to profit by the gratitude and friendship of his commander."

On July 15 Nelson sailed in the ship Theseus for Teneriffe, off the coast of Africa. On the evening of July 24, he determined to attack the garrison of Santa Cruz. With the help of his step-son, Lieutenant Josiah Nisbet, he burned his wife's letters before starting to row ashore. Seeing that the young man was armed, he begged him to remain in the ship, saying, "Should we both fall, Josiah, what would become of your poor mother? The care of the Theseus falls to you; stay therefore, and take charge of her."

"The ship must take care of herself," said Nisbet; "I will go with you to-night if I never go again."

The expedition was a failure. Several of the boats missed the pier in the darkness, some were struck by shot and their men drowned—ninety-seven men went down in the fog—and Nelson was shot through the right elbow, as he was stepping out of his boat. As he fell young Nisbet placed him in the bottom of the boat, and laid his hat over the arm, lest the sight of the blood should increase Nelson's faintness. Then taking a silk handkerchief from his own neck, he bound it above the elbow, thus saving the life of the admiral. One of the bargemen, Lovel, tore his shirt into shreds to make a bandage for the shattered arm.

When his boat reached the Theseus, Nelson declined to be helped on board, and twisted the rope thrown over the side of the ship round his left hand, saying, "Let me alone; I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm; so the sooner it is off, the better."

When asked by the surgeon if he wished the arm embalmed that he might send it to England for burial, he said, "Throw it into the hammock with the brave fellow that was killed beside me," whose body was about to be thrown overboard.

Nelson was greatly depressed after this failure, and said, "A left-handed admiral will never again be considered as useful; therefore the sooner I get to a very humble cottage the better, and make room for a sounder man to serve the state."

He returned to England in September, and went to Bath where his father and Lady Nelson were staying. She tenderly nursed her husband for three months, till his arm was healed. In December, 1797, at his request the following notice was read in St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London: "An officer desires to return thanks to Almighty God for his perfect recovery from a severe wound, and also for the many mercies bestowed on him."

This year, 1797, government settled a pension of a thousand pounds a year on Sir Horatio Nelson, and at St. James's Palace made him Knight Companion of the Bath. The freedom of the city of London was conferred upon him in December, and with it a gold box worth one hundred guineas.

April 1, 1798, he sailed in the Vanguard, of seventy-four guns, to join Lord St. Vincent and the fleet off Cadiz. It was known that Napoleon and the French fleet were preparing for an invasion of some country of the allied forces, either England, Spain, or Italy. Nelson's instructions were to "take, sink, burn, and destroy it." It is now known that Napoleon's expedition was against the East Indian Empire, to cripple England. The Mediterranean was searched for the French ships. Nelson wrote his wife: "I have not been able to find the French fleet.... I yet live in hopes of meeting these fellows; but it would have been my delight to have tried Bonaparte on a bowline, for he commands the fleet as well as the army. Glory is my object and that alone."

After some months of fruitless search, Nelson obtained a fresh supply of provisions in July at Syracuse. A treaty between Naples and France forbade more than two English ships to enter any Neapolitan or Sicilian port, and it is said that Lady Hamilton gained the needed concession from her friend, Queen Maria Caroline, without which Nelson (in his Will, on the last day of his life) declared he could never have gone to Egypt and fought the glorious battle of the Nile.

On the morning of Aug. 1, 1798, Nelson was off the city of Alexandria in Egypt. His force amounted to thirteen seventy-four gun ships, one of fifty guns, and one brig, all carrying 8,068 men, with 1,012 guns. The French had also thirteen ships of the line, with eight frigates, brigs, and bomb vessels. They had 11,230 men, with 1,226 guns. The French had come to anchor in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the Nile.

The British were overjoyed at finding the French fleet. Nelson had scarcely eaten or slept for days; but, now that the enemy were in sight, he ordered dinner to be served on the Vanguard, and, on rising from the table, is said to have exclaimed to his officers, "Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."

After talking over the plan of battle with his officers, one of them said with enthusiasm, "If we succeed, what will the world say?"

"There is no if in the case," replied the admiral; "that we shall succeed is certain; who may live to tell the story is a very different question."

A little after six in the evening, Aug. 1, the fierce battle began. Nelson had six colors flying in different parts of his rigging, lest they should be shot away. The first two ships of the French line were dismasted in a quarter of an hour; the third, fourth, and fifth were taken at half-past eight.

Nelson received a severe wound in the head, which, though he supposed it would prove fatal, Southey says the admiral would not allow touched until the other wounded had been cared for. "I will take my turn with my brave fellows," he said.

About nine the L'Orient, the flagship of the French Admiral de Brueys, of one hundred and twenty guns, was seen to be on fire. Brueys was dead. He had received three wounds, but would not leave his post. A fourth cut him nearly in two. He requested to be left to die on the deck, and expired a quarter of an hour afterwards.

When Nelson saw the ship on fire, he gave orders that boats should be sent to the enemy. About seventy of her crew were saved by the English boats. So heroic were her men that they continued to fire from the upper decks after the lower were in flames. Between ten and eleven the huge ship exploded. Officers and men jumped overboard, and most were lost in that frightful commingling of fire and falling timbers which had been shot high into the air.

Both fleets seemed paralyzed, and for a quarter of an hour no gun was fired. All was darkness and silence save the groans of the dying, and the swell of the ingulfing sea. Among those who perished were Commodore Casabianca and his brave little son of ten or twelve, whom Mrs. Hemans has immortalized in her poem:—

"The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though child-like form."

The battle raged till three in the morning. The French were overwhelmingly defeated. "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene; it is a conquest," said Nelson.

Of thirteen French sail-of-the-line, nine were taken and two burned; of the four frigates, one was sunk and another was burned. Of the French, 5,221 were taken, drowned, burned, and missing. The English lost 218 killed and 677 wounded. Long after the battle a great number of bodies floated about the bay in spite of all efforts to sink them. Many were cast up on Nelson's Island, and the sailors raised mounds of sand over them. For four leagues the shore was covered with wrecks. The day after the battle, Aug. 2, at two o'clock, Nelson's ship gave public thanksgiving to God. Other ships were recommended to do the same as soon as convenient.

Part of L'Orient's mainmast was picked up by the English ship Swiftsure, Benjamin Hallowell, captain. A coffin was made from this and presented to Nelson with the note:—

"My lord, herewith I send you a coffin made of part of L'Orient's mainmast, that when you are tired of this life you may be buried in one of your own trophies; but may that period be far distant, is the sincere wish of your obedient and much obliged servant,

Ben Hallowell."

Nelson was greatly pleased with this gift, and ordered it placed upright in his cabin. Finally, at the request of his friends, it was carried below. He was eventually buried in it.

The joy at Napoleon's defeat was inexpressible. England made Nelson a baron, with a pension of £2,000 a year while he lived, to descend to his two male successors. The East India Company voted him £10,000, as they had thus been saved from French conquest. The Emperor Paul of Russia sent him his portrait set in diamonds, in a gold box. The Sultan of Turkey sent a pelisse of sable fur valued at five thousand dollars, and a diamond aigrette valued at eighteen thousand dollars, taken from the royal turbans. The Sultan's mother sent a box set in diamonds valued at five thousand dollars; the King of Sardinia a gold box set in diamonds; the King of the Two Sicilies a sword which once belonged to Charles III. of Spain. His friend Alexander Davison sent medals to the officers and men costing £2,000. These were all greatly prized by the men.

Italy was as rejoiced at the defeat of the French as was England. When the news reached Naples, both the queen and Lady Hamilton fainted. Lady Hamilton wrote to Nelson of the queen, "She cried, kissed her husband, her children, walked frantic about the room; cried, kissed and embraced every person near her, exclaiming, O brave Nelson! O God, bless and protect our brave deliverer! O Nelson, Nelson, what do we not owe you! O victor, saviour of Italy! Oh that my swollen heart could now tell him personally what we owe him!" She was the sister of Marie Antoinette, and, of course, felt no love for the people who had put her beautiful sister to death.

On Sept. 22 Nelson and his ships appeared off Naples. Hundreds of boats and barges went out to meet them with music and banners. He describes the scene in a letter to Lady Nelson, "I must endeavor to convey to you something of what passed; but if it were so affecting to those who were only united to me by bonds of friendship, what must it be to my dearest wife, my friend, my everything which is most dear to me in this world? Sir William Hamilton and his wife came out to sea, attended by numerous boats with emblems, etc. They, my most respectable friends, had nearly been laid up and seriously ill; first from anxiety, and then from joy....

"Alongside came my honored friends; the scene in the boat was terribly affecting; up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God! is it possible?' she fell into my arms more dead than alive. Tears, however, soon set matters to rights; when alongside came the king. The scene was in its way as interesting; he took me by the hand, calling me his 'Deliverer and Preserver,' with every expression of kindness." ...

The poor of Italy were no less enthusiastic. They brought cages of birds, and opening them, allowed the little creatures to fly about the ship, and alight upon the admiral's shoulder.

Nelson had been very ill, and was taken to the house of Sir William Hamilton, where his wife nursed the admiral back to health. She arranged a celebration for him on his fortieth birthday, Sept. 29. Eighteen hundred people were entertained at a cost of two thousand ducats. "Every ribbon, every button, has Nelson," etc., writes the admiral. "The whole service is marked H. N., Glorious 1st of August!"

Encouraged by the victory of Nelson, a second coalition was now formed against Napoleon, composed of Russia, Austria, England, Portugal, Naples, and Turkey. Ferdinand of Naples engaged to raise eighty thousand soldiers for the common cause. A force of thirty-two thousand Italians were sent to Rome to drive out the French, but were defeated, and the French in turn entered Naples and compelled the royal family to fly for safety to Palermo.

Lady Hamilton, with great skill and courage, after having explored a subterranean passage from the royal palace to the seaside, had two millions and a half of royal treasures, paintings and the like, removed to the English ships. She also assisted the king and his family secretly to reach Nelson's barges on the night of Dec. 21. They were carried to the Vanguard in a heavy sea.

On the night of Dec. 23 the fleet sailed. A dreadful storm arose; Nelson says, "the worst I ever experienced since I have been at sea." Almost all were ill, and Lady Hamilton, who was a good sailor, soothed and comforted them. Sir William sat with a pistol in his hand, prepared to shoot himself if the vessel sank. The little Prince Albert was taken ill on the morning of Dec. 25, and died at seven o'clock that evening in Lady Hamilton's arms.

Naples for a time was transformed by the French into the Parthenopæan Republic, which later was abolished, and the insurgents put to death by Ferdinand. Nelson has been censured, and justly, for the execution, on board one of his ships, the Foudroyant, of Francesco Caracciolo, who belonged to one of the noble families of Naples, and, with others, had been promised protection by a British officer. Caracciolo was tried and condemned as a rebel by officers of his own country, and Nelson decided not to interfere. The prisons of Naples were indeed slaughter pens; but wars are never humane, and struggles between despotism and liberty are rarely bloodless.

Ferdinand rewarded Nelson with the Sicilian dukedom of Brontë, with an estate worth about £3,000 per annum. Nelson at once gave from this estate an annuity of £500 for life to his father. He had already given out of the £10,000 voted him by the East India Company, five hundred pounds each to his father, his brother-in-law, Mr. Bolton, his sister, Mrs. Matcham, and his brothers Maurice and William. When his brother Maurice died in April, 1801, Nelson gave his blind widow £100 a year while he lived, and Lady Hamilton cared for her after his death. He wrote to his wife, "If I were rich I would do more. To my father say everything which is kind. I love, honor, and respect him as a father and as a man, and as the very best man I ever saw. May God Almighty bless you, my dear father, and all my brothers and sisters, is the fervent prayer of your affectionate—Nelson."

The Queen of Naples gave Nelson the king's picture set in diamonds and emeralds. She gave Lady Emma Hamilton her portrait set with diamonds, with the words "Eterna Gratitudine" on the back, hanging it round her neck by a chain of gold; to Sir William a gold snuffbox, with a picture of the king and herself set in diamonds; the king sent Sir William and his wife each a picture of himself richly set in jewels, worth a thousand guineas. Lady Hamilton also received two coach-loads of costly dresses from Queen Caroline, and a superb diamond necklace, with the cipher of the names of all the royal children, ornamented by locks of their hair. Emperor Paul of Russia sent her the cross of the Order of Malta, the first Englishwoman upon whom the honor was ever bestowed.

The Island of Zante sent Nelson a golden-headed sword and a truncheon set round with diamonds, thanking him "for having by his victory preserved that part of Greece from the horrors of anarchy."

The French having been driven out of Italy, Nelson, in poor health, asked to return to England. Sir William Hamilton had been superseded by Hon. Arthur Paget, so he and his wife decided to return at the same time. The queen and some of her children accompanied them to Vienna. Here Prince Esterhazy entertained the party in regal style for four days, a hundred grenadiers, six feet high, waiting at table. At Dresden the party remained eight days, when two vessels were fitted up for their conveyance down the Elbe to Hamburg. Everywhere great crowds gathered to see the hero of the Nile. At Hamburg he met a venerable clergyman who had travelled forty miles to ask the admiral to write in the parish Bible. Here Nelson called upon the poet Klopstock. He also bought some elegant lace trimming for a court dress for his wife.

On Oct. 31 they started for England on a mail packet, and reached Yarmouth Nov. 6, 1800, after an absence of two years and seven months. On landing in a harbor radiant with flags, his carriage was drawn by the eager multitude to the inn; the freedom of the town was given him; and then, with his officers and people of the town, he went to the church to return thanks for his safe return to his country. He reached London Sunday, Nov. 9, and went to Nerot's hotel, King Street, St. James's, where his father and Lady Nelson had come from Norfolk to meet him. On the following day the people took his horses from his carriage and drew him from Ludgate Hill to Guild Hall, where he received the thanks of the common council, and a golden-hilted sword studded with diamonds.

Rumors of Nelson's devotion to Lady Hamilton had already reached England and his wife. She received him coldly. Shortly after this, while Lord and Lady Nelson were with the Hamiltons at the theatre, Lady Nelson, unable to control her feelings, fainted in the box where they were sitting.

For two months Lord Nelson and his wife lived, as might be supposed, most unhappily, when he determined to leave her forever, settling upon her £1,600 per year. He wrote to his friend Davison, "Sooner than live the life I did when last I came to England, I would stay abroad forever." The last time he saw her, Jan. 13, 1801, before he left for the Baltic, he said at parting, "I call God to witness there is nothing in you or your conduct I wish otherwise."

In 1801 England found herself engaged in conflict with Denmark, which had become an ally of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, in naval rights. On March 12, 1801, a fleet of fifty-two sail was sent into the Baltic from England, Nelson acting as second in command under Sir Hyde Parker. On March 16 the ship Invincible, of seventy-four guns, struck on a sand-bank called Hammond's Knowl, and went down, taking four hundred persons with her.

The harbor of Copenhagen was most strongly fortified. The city was protected by defences which stretched a distance of about four miles. The Danes had removed all the buoys, so that Nelson was obliged to make soundings and replace them.

On the morning of April 1, the British fleet anchored within two leagues of Copenhagen. On April 2, at five minutes past ten in the forenoon, the battle began. Nelson's squadron being received with the fire of more than a thousand guns. As some of his ships had become disabled, Admiral Parker, at a distance, thinking that the fire was too hot for Nelson, threw out the signal to retreat, knowing that if Nelson could possibly continue the battle he would do so.

When told of the signal, Nelson put his glass to his blind eye, saying, "I really do not see the signal! Keep mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I answer such signals. Nail mine to the mast!"

The men fought heroically on both sides. The battle lasted for five hours, men fighting knee-deep among the dead on the decks. The Danes lost 1800 men, including prisoners, 6,000, and the English 253 killed and 688 wounded.

Nelson said, "I have been in one hundred and five engagements in the course of my life, but this has been the most terrible of all."

An armistice was effected, and the Crown Prince of Denmark gave a grand banquet to the Danish commissioners and English officers. At the banquet, Nelson praised the bravery of the Danes, and asked to be introduced to Lieutenant Villemoes, a youth of seventeen, who, on a floating battery or raft, with six small cannon and twenty-four men, came under the very stern of Nelson's ship, the Elephant, and attacked her. Twenty of his men were killed; but the boy-commander, standing up to his waist among his dead comrades, fought till the truce was proclaimed. Southey gives the number of guns as twenty-four, and the men one hundred and twenty.

When the lad was brought before Nelson, he embraced him, and told the prince that the youth deserved to be made an admiral. "If, my lord," was the answer, "I were to make all my brave officers admirals, I should have no captains or lieutenants in my service."

Nelson, brave to rashness himself, admired it in others. When, early in 1800, in the Mediterranean, Le Généreux, one of the ships that had escaped at the battle of the Nile, was captured, Nelson patted the head of a little midshipman, who was very pale, and asked him how he relished the music. He told the boy how Charles XII. ran away from the first shot he heard, but was afterwards called "the Great" for his bravery. "I therefore hope much from you in future," said the admiral.

Nelson was made a viscount for the battle of Copenhagen. His estates and titles were to go to his father, to his brother William, and then to the male heirs of Nelson's sisters, Mrs. Bolton, and next Mrs. Matcham.

In very poor health he returned to England, and was welcomed to the home of Sir William Hamilton, at 23 Piccadilly.

By the wish of Nelson, Lady Hamilton purchased a country home for him, called Merton Place, in Surrey, eight miles from London. "It would make you laugh," wrote Sir William, "to see Emma and her mother fitting up pig-stys and hen-coops, and already the canal is enlivened with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his hens about the walks.... I have lived with our dear Emma several years. I know her merit, have a great opinion of the head and heart that God Almighty has been pleased to give her, but a seaman alone could have given a fine woman full power to choose and fit up a residence for him without seeing it himself."

On Oct. 29, 1821, Viscount Nelson took his seat in the House of Lords. The following year, in May, the Rev. Edmund Nelson, the father of the admiral, was coming to live with his son and the Hamiltons at Merton Place; but he died at Burnham Thorpe, April 26, at the age of seventy-nine.

During the summer of 1802, Nelson journeyed to Wales with the family of his brother, the Rev. William Nelson, and the Hamiltons, and everywhere received the homage of the people. Oxford gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and the degree of D.C.L. to him and to Sir William. He passed under triumphal arches, medals were struck in his honor, and crowds escorted him with lighted torches.

The next year, 1803, England and France, or, in reality, England and Napoleon, were again at war. Nelson wrote a characteristic note to the Premier:—

"House of Lords, 4 o'clock, March 9, 1803.

"Whenever it is necessary, I am your admiral.

Nelson and Brontë."

April 6, 1803, Sir William Hamilton died, holding his wife's and Nelson's hands, saying, "Protect my dear wife; and may God bless you, and give you victory and protect you in battle!" He bequeathed to Nelson a copy of a picture of his wife by Madame Le Brun in enamel. To her he gave a legacy of £800, and an annuity of £800 for life. Sir William's pension of £1,200 a year closed with his death, and, as the government did not continue it, in spite of Sir William's dying wishes, Nelson gave the amount to her, in monthly portions, while he lived.

A month after Sir William's death, Nelson was appointed to the command of the Mediterranean squadron, to take part in the war between England and France. He sailed from Spithead, May 20, in the Victory, and for two years, lacking ten days, did not step out of his ship. They were long, weary years of much illness and loneliness, but devotion to duty. He returned to Merton on the morning of Aug. 20, 1805.

A month later he was again called to serve his country. A third coalition had been formed by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden against France. Spain had become the ally of the latter.

"I will do my best," he wrote to a friend, "and I hope God Almighty will go with me. I have much to lose, but little to gain; and I go because it is right, and I will serve the country faithfully."

He left Merton Friday night, Sept. 13, at half-past ten, taking a sad leave of his sisters and Lady Hamilton, and kneeling by the bedside of their little girl, Horatia, earnestly prayed that God would protect and bless her. This child was at that time about four and a half years old, having been born in January, 1801.

Nelson writes in his private diary that evening, "At half-past ten drove from dear, dear Merton, where I left all which I hold dear in this world, to go to serve my king and country.... If it is His good providence to cut short my days upon earth, I bow with the greatest submission, relying that He will protect those so dear to me that I may leave behind. His will be done. Amen! Amen! Amen!"

A great crowd gathered to see him embark. Many were in tears, and many knelt before him and blessed him as he passed. He remarked to his dear friend, Captain Hardy, "I had their huzzas before; I have their hearts now."

Sept. 28 the fleet anchored off Cadiz, on the coast of Spain. Nelson knew there must be a fearful battle, and seems to have expected to be killed in it. He took much exercise daily, generally walking the deck for six or seven hours. Such was the activity of his mind that he rarely slept more than two hours at a time. He never thought of himself. He exposed his body, frail as it was, in all kinds of weather, and would not change his clothing when wet through. He disliked to depend much on others, as he was obliged to do, from having but one arm and one eye.

He was very prompt, and made good use of time. He once said to General Twiss, "Time, Twiss, time is everything. Five minutes makes the difference between a victory and a defeat."

He was extremely generous. When one of his men, Captain Parker, died, he paid his debts and funeral expenses, about £200. He spent very little for himself, and much for others.

It was thought that there would be a battle on Saturday, Oct. 19; and Nelson wrote two letters, one to "my dearest angel," little Horatia, and the other to Lady Hamilton, whom he would have married, had the divorce laws of England permitted. To her he writes, "May the God of battles crown my endeavors with success; at all events, I will take care that my name shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as much as my own life."

On Monday, Oct. 21, the fleets, now off Cape Trafalgar, below Cadiz, were ready for action. The English had twenty-seven sail-of-the-line and four frigates; the French and Spanish thirty-three sail-of-the-line and seven frigates. The English had 2,542 guns; the French and Spanish, 3,042 guns.

Nelson told the men who removed the picture of Lady Hamilton, which always hung in his cabin in the Victory, to "take care of his guardian angel." He wore a miniature of her next his heart. Then he wrote an earnest prayer, and a codicil to his will, in which he asked his country to reward Lady Hamilton for her services, leaving her and his child, Horatia, "a legacy to my king and country, that they will give her [Lady Hamilton] an ample provision to maintain her rank in life. These are the only favors I ask of my king and country, at this moment when I am going to fight their battle."

He wore his admiral's coat, which bore on the left breast his decorations. When fears were expressed that these would make him a mark for the enemy, he said, "In honor I gained them, and in honor I will die with them."

He gave orders for that well-known signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty," which was received with tremendous cheering. "You must be quick," he said to Lieutenant Pasco, "for I have one more to make, which is for close action."

"Now," said Nelson, "I can do no more. We must trust to the great Disposer of all events, and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this great opportunity of doing my duty."

The Royal Sovereign, one hundred guns, under Vice-Admiral Collingwood, was the first to get into action, a little past noon. The men were ordered to lie down upon the decks as she swept into the foe. She gave the great Spanish ship, Santa Ana, a broadside with double-shotted guns, killing and wounding four hundred men. Nelson shouted, "Bravo! What a glorious salute the Royal Sovereign is in!"

Seven or eight ships soon opened on the Victory. As Nelson and Captain Hardy walked the deck a splinter struck the foot of the latter, tearing the buckle from his shoe. "This is too warm work, Hardy, to last long," said Nelson with a smile.

About half-past one, as they were walking, Nelson was shot by Sergeant Robert Guillemard of the French ship Redoubtable, who was stationed in the rigging of his ship, singling out officers for his aim.

Nelson fell on his face, in the blood where his secretary, Scott, had been killed. "They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot through."

He was lifted and carried below, among the dead and dying. On the way thither, using one hand, he covered his face and his decorations with his handkerchief, that his men might not see who had fallen.

He was laid on a midshipman's bed, and covered with a sheet. As often as a ship surrendered, the men of the Victory cheered, and Nelson's dying face would light up with joy. Nothing could be done for the hero, but to fan him with paper and give him lemonade to quench his thirst. His thoughtfulness of others was strong even in his dying hour. A poor fellow near him was jarred or hurt by another in passing, and Nelson reproved the man for his carelessness.

He frequently asked for Captain Hardy, whom he loved; but Hardy was not able to leave his post till an hour and ten minutes after Nelson was wounded.

When he came, they shook hands in silence, and Hardy turned away to conceal his grief. "Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?"—"Very well, my lord. We have got twelve or fourteen of the enemy's ships in our possession."

"I hope," said Nelson, "that none of our ships have struck?"

"No, my lord, there is no fear of that."

"I am a dead man, Hardy. I am going fast—it will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me."

Hardy hastened to the deck and returned in about fifty minutes. Nelson exclaimed, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor! Don't throw me overboard, Hardy."

"Oh, no, certainly not," said Hardy.

"Then you know what to do. Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy! take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy."

The captain knelt and pressed his lips to his cheek. "Now I am satisfied," he said. "Thank God, I have done my duty." Hardy knelt again and kissed his forehead. "Who is that?" he said faintly. "It is Hardy." "God bless you, Hardy," said Nelson, and Hardy went again on deck.

To his chaplain, Dr. Scott, Nelson said, "Doctor, I have not been a great sinner," and after a short pause, "Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." His speaking now became difficult. "Thank God, I have done my duty," were his last words. At half-past four he passed away peacefully. He lived long enough to know that a great victory had been won.

Of the thirty-three ships in the French and Spanish fleets, nineteen were taken and destroyed by the English. Most of the rest became prizes, but were wrecked in a gale. The English lost in killed and wounded about three thousand; the French and Spanish about five thousand. "The greatest sea victory that the world had ever known was won," says W. Clark Russell, "but at such a cost, that there was no man throughout the British fleet—there was no man indeed in all England—but would have welcomed defeat sooner than have paid the price of this wonderful conquest."

The body of Nelson was carried in a cask of brandy in the Victory till she reached Spithead, Dec. 12, five weeks after the battle. It was afterwards placed in the coffin made from the mast of L'Orient, enclosed in a leaden coffin, with a handsome wooden coffin outside of these.

All England was bowed with grief at the death of Nelson. He was the idol of the nation, despite his unhappy marriage and his unlawful love for the devoted Lady Hamilton. The king was unable to speak for a long time after he heard the news, and the queen wept aloud. In Naples, writes Coleridge, "Numbers stopped and shook hands with me because they had seen the tears on my cheek and conjectured that I was an Englishman; and several, as they held my hand, themselves burst into tears."

Nelson was buried Jan. 9, 1806, in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, at a public expense of £14,000. Ten thousand troops preceded the body of the hero to the tomb. The streets were lined with thousands of troops and hundreds of thousands of weeping spectators. The coffin was drawn uncovered, under a canopy, upon a car, having at its front and back a carved representation of the head and stern of the Victory.

At the burial, by a sudden impulse, the sailors who lowered the coffin seized the flag which covered it and tore it in shreds, to keep as mementoes of their great leader.

No such funeral had been seen in England. It was felt that the battle of Trafalgar had saved the nation from an invasion by Bonaparte, and therefore no honor was too great for her deliverer.

"The battle of Trafalgar," says Bourrienne, in his Memoirs of Napoleon, "paralyzed our naval force, and banished all hope of any attempt against England."

England raised monuments in many of her large cities to her heroic dead. In Trafalgar Square, London, stands the Nelson column, fluted, surmounted by his statue, while on the sides are representations of his four great battles, St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, cast in gun-metal taken from the enemy in these engagements. The four lions by Landseer are at the base.

The government awarded various honors to Nelson's family. An earldom was conferred on Nelson's brother, the Reverend William, with a pension of £5,000 a year, with £120,000 that he might purchase an estate; £20,000 of this gift were to be divided between Nelson's sisters, Mrs. Bolton and Mrs. Matcham. Lady Nelson received £2,000 per annum till her death, May 4, 1831, twenty-five years after the death of Lord Nelson.

Nelson's dying request for Lady Hamilton and their child, Horatia, was disregarded by the government. Nelson left her by will £2,000, an annuity for life of £500 charged on the Bronte estate, Merton Place, and the yearly interest on £4,000 settled on Horatia till she became eighteen.

Lady Hamilton survived Nelson nine years, dying Jan. 16, 1815, in apartments in the Rue Française at Calais, at the age of fifty-one. She lost Merton Place, in Surrey, through debts. She was imprisoned for debt at the King's Bench, 12 Temple Place, in 1813, and was discharged after some months, by a city alderman, J. J. Smith, who felt that she had been cruelly treated. Fearing re-arrest, she went to Calais in 1814, with Horatia, and died in less than a year. Her daughter, who was devoted to her, wrote, years later, "Although often certainly under very distressing circumstances, she never experienced actual want."

Lady Hamilton was buried in a cemetery just outside the city limits, which was soon after used as a timber-yard, and all traces of the graves disappeared. In accordance with her mother's last wishes, Horatia was taken to the home of Mrs. Matcham, Lord Nelson's sister, where she remained two years, and then resided with Mr. Bolton, Lord Nelson's brother-in-law, till her marriage, in February, 1822, to the Rev. Philip Ward, Vicar of Tenterden in Kent. She became the mother of a large family, and died March 6, 1881, in the eighty-first year of her age.

The Rev. William Nelson, made an earl by the successes of his brother, was succeeded in 1835 by his nephew, Thomas Bolton, as second earl, who took the name Nelson. Thomas was succeeded the same year by his son Horatio, the third earl. Lord Nelson is a graduate of Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1844. He married a daughter of the second earl of Normanton in 1845.

JOHN BUNYAN.

JOHN BUNYAN.

The first book which Benjamin Franklin owned was "Pilgrim's Progress." This he read over and over.

Sir Humphry Davy, the great scientist, could repeat a large part of "Pilgrim's Progress" before he could read it. Nathaniel Hawthorne read and loved it when he was six years old.

Rufus Choate, the great orator, says E. P. Whipple, "read 'Pilgrim's Progress' when he was six years old; and he not only got it by heart, but eloquently expounded it to his companions, dramatically reproducing the scenes, incidents, and characters of that wonderful allegory, so that the little people he addressed were made to see in it what he saw."

Dr. Thomas Arnold said, "I cannot trust myself to read the account of Christian going up to the celestial gate, after his passage through the river of death.... I hold John Bunyan," he said, "to have been a man of incomparably greater genius than any of them [our old divines], and to have given a far truer and more edifying picture of Christianity."

"'Pilgrim's Progress' has been translated into more languages," says Canon Edmund Venables, in his life of John Bunyan, "than any other book in the English tongue;" and Southey thinks, "there is no European language into which it has not been translated."

Who wrote it? A travelling tinker, in prison; "A man," says James Anthony Froude, "whose writings have for two centuries affected the spiritual opinions of the English race in every part of the world more powerfully than any book or books except the Bible."

John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a little village about a mile from Bedford, England, in 1628. "Few villages," says Canon Venables, "are so little modernized as Elstow. The old, half-timbered cottages with overhanging stories, peaked dormers, and gabled porches, tapestried with roses and honeysuckles, must be much what they were in Bunyan's days."

The parish church is a part of the old Benedictine nunnery, founded here in 1078 by Judith, niece of William the Conqueror, in honor of the mother of the Emperor Constantine.

Thomas Bunyan, the father of the renowned author and preacher, was a tinker, "a mender of pots and kettles." He was married to his first wife, Anne Pinney, before he was twenty years of age. She died four years later, apparently without children; and Thomas was soon married again to Margaret Bentley, who became the mother of John Bunyan.

Poor as the parents were, "of that rank," says Bunyan, "that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land ... it pleased God to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to read and write."

There was a school at Bedford at this time, founded in Queen Mary's reign by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Harpur. Thither probably the lad walked day after day, but he seems to have learned little, and that little he soon forgot.

At an early age he was obliged to help his father at the forge, where, he says, he was "brought up in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen."

He soon learned bad habits from the men or boys around him. "From a child," he says, "I had but few equals (considering my years, which were then but tender and few) for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God. Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me."

In the plain home he must have been taught some religious truths by his parents, for at ten years of age he was greatly disturbed on account of his sins. These "did so offend the Lord that even in my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.... These things did so distress my soul, that then in the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith; yet could I not let go my sins."

Books the lad did not read, except the not very edifying life of Sir Bevis of Southampton, because the poor tinker's home afforded none.

In the midst of his reckless living—he himself protests that he was never immoral—several remarkable preservations from death had a strong influence on his mind. Twice he narrowly escaped drowning, once in the river Ouse at Bedford, and again in "a creek of the sea." At another time, he says, "Being in the fields with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I, having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end."

When John Bunyan was about seventeen, he was for a time engaged in the civil wars of the reign of Charles I. Whether he fought for the king or with the Parliamentary forces will never be known. Dr. John Brown, minister at Bedford, thinks he was drafted to fight against the Royalist party.

Here again he was marvellously preserved. "When I was a soldier, I, with others, was drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; but when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which, when I had consented, he took my place; and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head and died. Here were judgment and mercy; but neither of them did awaken my soul to righteousness."

Before Bunyan was twenty, a most important matter came into his life. He met a poor girl, an orphan, whose name even is not known, and married her. "I lighted on a wife," he says, "whose father was counted godly. She also would be often telling me what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house and amongst his neighbors; what a strict and holy life he lived in his day, both in word and deed....

"This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both. But she had for her portion two books, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died. In these two books I sometimes read with her. I found some things pleasing to me, but all this while I met with no conviction." However, they created in him "some desire to religion."

"The Practice of Piety," by Dr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor in King James's time, was translated into several languages, and passed through more than fifty editions during a century. The other book was written by the Rev. Arthur Dent, the Puritan pastor of Shoebury in Essex.

Young Bunyan changed his outward life after his marriage. He says, "I fell in with the religion of the times, to go to church twice a day, very devoutly to say and sing as the others did, yet retaining my wicked life."

Exceedingly fond of athletic sports, it was the fashion of the day to enjoy them on Sunday after the sermon. Sometimes the people danced on the village green, or rang the bells for hours, or played tip-cat or other sports.

James I. had issued a proclamation that "his good people should not be disturbed, letted, or discouraged, after the end of the divine service from any lawful recreations, such as dancing, either of men or women; archery for men; leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations."

Bunyan's minister, Vicar Hall, was opposed to these forms of Sabbath breaking, and denounced them from the pulpit in words which the young married man thought were especially aimed at him. He went home "with a great burden upon his spirit," but after dinner, "shook the sermon out of his mind," and went out to play tip-cat on the green.

As Bunyan was in the midst of the game, "having struck the cat one blow from the hole," he says, "just as I was about to strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put into an exceeding maze. Wherefore, leaving my cat on the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me."

The impression soon wore away, and Bunyan became as reckless as ever. A month went by, and "one day," he says, "as I was standing at a neighbor's shop-window, cursing and swearing, and playing the madman, after my wonted manner, there sat within the woman of the house, and heard me; who, though she was a very loose, ungodly wretch, yet protested that I swore and cursed at that most fearful rate, that she was made to tremble to hear me; and told me further, that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard in all her life; and that I, by thus doing, was enough to spoil all the youth in the whole town, if they came but in my company."

Bunyan was ashamed and hung his head. "While I stood there," he says, "I wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my father might teach me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so much accustomed to it, that it is in vain for me to think of reformation; for, I thought, that could never be.... How it came to pass I know not; but I did from this time forward so leave off my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it. And whereas, before, I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before and another behind, to make the words have authority; now I could speak better without it, and with more pleasantness than ever I could before."

He began to read the Bible at the suggestion of a friend, and attempted to keep the commandments. He had a hard struggle in giving up his amusements. While sure that bell-ringing was a foolish use of time, he "hankered after it still," and would for some time go and see his old companions ring. He could not bring himself to give up dancing for a full year.

His neighbors began to think him very pious, and he was "proud of his godliness.... I thought," he says, "I pleased God as well as any man in England."

His self-satisfaction was soon spoiled. "Upon a day," he says, "the good providence of God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling; and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the things of God. And being now willing to hear what they said, I drew near, to hear their discourse—for I was now a brisk talker of myself in the matters of religion—but I may say, I heard, but understood not; for they were far above, out of my reach.

"Their talk was about a new birth—the work of God in their hearts; as also, how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature. They talked how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus.... Methought, they spoke as if joy did make them speak. They spoke with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me, as if I had found a new world; as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned among their neighbors....

"I left, but their talk and discourse went with me; also my heart would tarry with them, for I was greatly affected by their words.... Therefore, I would often make it my business to be going again and again into the company of these poor people; for I could not stay away."

The result was "a very great softness and tenderness of heart, and a desire to meditate on good things."

These poor women could not have realized the wonderful work they were doing in reforming the life of this travelling vender of pots and kettles. They were simply using every opportunity for good which came in their way, and the seed was now destined to bring forth an hundred-fold.

They followed up the interest already awakened in Bunyan's heart. They were in earnest to serve their Lord. They introduced Bunyan to their minister, the Rev. John Gifford.

This Free Church was founded in Bedford in 1650, with twelve members. "Now the principle upon which they thus entered into fellowship one with another, and upon which they did afterwards receive those that were added to their body and fellowship, was faith in Christ and holiness in life, without respect to this or that circumstance or opinion in outward and circumstantial things." The Rev. John Gifford is usually spoken of as a Baptist, though Dr. Brown finds no proof for or against. In Gifford's last letter to his church, written just before his death, he appeals to them not to divide the church on such matters as "baptism, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any externals."

Bunyan himself, in a work written in 1673, "Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism no Bar to Communion," implies that he believes in immersion, but his children were baptized in their infancy.

Mr. Gifford had been a young major in the king's army, was defeated, and with eleven others condemned to the gallows. On the night before he was to be executed, his sister visited him in prison. The guards were asleep, and his fellow-prisoners were drunk. She urged him to escape to the fields. He did so, and for three days hid himself in a ditch, and lived on water. Coming to Bedford, he practised as a physician, but continued his bad habits, drinking and losing heavily through gambling.

In the midst of such a course of life he happened one day to take up a book written by an eminent scholar and Puritan preacher, the Rev. Robert Bolton, born at Blackburn, Lancashire, 1572. It was probably the volume entitled, "The Four Last Things, and Directions for Walking with God," published in 1626. Mr. Bolton died in 1631, with these words upon his lips: "By the wonderful mercies of God, I am as full of comfort as my heart can hold, and feel nothing in my soul but Christ, with whom I heartily desire to be."

Mr. Bolton's book was the means of the conversion of Gifford, who, in turn, led Bunyan into the light, and, consequently, to the writing of that wonderful book, "The Pilgrim's Progress," in which Gifford is supposed to be the Evangelist, who points out to Pilgrim the wicket gate. Who shall measure the power of a good book!

For months, even years, Bunyan passed through the struggles which Pilgrim found in his difficult journey. He has glowingly depicted these in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."

Sometimes he was in the depths of despair, because he felt that his sins had been too great to be forgiven. Then he feared that he was not one of the elect, or that he had committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Then doubts about the Bible and God took possession of him, till, under the mental strain, his health became affected, and consumption seemed imminent.

Sometimes a promise from the Bible would bring him the greatest joy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God," he writes, "that I thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me."

In these days of alternate grief and joy, Bunyan came upon an old copy of Luther's "Commentary on the Galatians;" "so old, that it was ready to fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over.... I found my conditions as largely and profoundly handled, in his experience, as if his book had been written out of my heart. I do prefer this book of Martin Luther (excepting the Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience."

This book was also most effective in the experience of John Wesley. "I went," Wesley wrote, "very unwillingly, to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Galatians. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins."

Finally, "the peace of God which passeth understanding" came into Bunyan's heart. As he was walking in the field, he seemed to hear the sentence, "Thy righteousness is in heaven;" "and methought I saw," he says, "with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there I say, as my righteousness, so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. Now went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

During these years of anxiety, Bunyan worked hard with his hands, feeling, as did his honest father, that it was one of the first of duties to be "very careful to maintain his family." He had been moderately successful at his trade, as a contemporary biographer writes, that "God had increased his stores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbors."

In the year 1653, when he was twenty-five,—the year in which Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England,—he became a member of Mr. Gifford's church. He probably removed to Bedford from Elstow, two years later, and was made a deacon in the church.

About this time his lovely wife, to whom he owed so much, died, leaving four children, one of them, his idolized blind daughter, Mary, born in 1650. His beloved friend and pastor, Mr. Gifford, died in September of the same year as his wife.

The members of the church, realizing that the uneducated tinker was gifted in speech, and believing in his earnestness, asked him "to speak a word of exhortation unto them."

At first, modest and shrinking as he was, "it did much dash and abash his spirit," but being entreated, he spoke twice, "but with much weakness and infirmity."

After this he was asked to go with others and hold meetings in the country roundabout; and finally, "after solemn prayer, with fasting, he was set apart to the more ordinary and public preaching of the Word."

"My great desire," he says, "in my fulfilling my ministry, was to get into the darkest places of the country, even amongst those people that were furtherest off of profession.... I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel.... Indeed, I have been as one sent to them from the dead. I went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of."

Later, he says, after two years "crying out against men's sins," he changed his manner of preaching; "I did labor much to hold forth Jesus Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits unto the world."

On one occasion, having preached with much feeling, one of his friends took him by the hand, and spoke of the sweet sermon he had delivered. "Ay," said the self-searching preacher, "you need not remind me of that, for the devil told me of it before I was out of the pulpit."

Bunyan preached wherever there was an open door,—in a barn, a church, or on the village green. Crowds came to listen,—some from curiosity,—and great numbers were converted.

"No such preacher," says Froude, "to the uneducated English masses was to be found within the four seas."

Among the crowd gathered in a churchyard in Cambridgeshire on a week-day, was a Cambridge scholar, "none of the soberest," who had come to hear "the tinker prate," and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse while he listened. "But God met him there by his ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country afterwards."

Another Cambridge University man asked Bunyan, "How dare you preach, seeing you have not the original, being not a scholar?"

"Have you the original?" asked Bunyan.

"Yes," said the scholar.

"Nay, but have you the very self-same original copies that were written by the penmen of the Scriptures, prophets and apostles?"

"No," was the reply, "but we have the true copies of these originals."

"How do you know that?" said Bunyan.

"How?" said the scholar, "why, we believe what we have is a true copy of the original."

"Then," said Bunyan, "so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy of the original." Then away rode the scholar.

Bunyan met with many obstacles in his preaching. When Dr. William Dell, the Puritan master of Caius College, Cambridge, asked him to preach in the parish church on Christmas, the orthodox parishioners were indignant. Some of the university professors were "angry with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and pans." Others declared him a witch, a highwayman, and accused him of nearly every vice. All these things deeply wounded the earnest man, but he kept steadily at work.

His first book, about two hundred pages, "Some Gospel Truths Opened according to the Scriptures," was published in London, in 1656, when Bunyan was twenty-eight years old. The Rev. John Burton, the pastor who succeeded Mr. Gifford, wrote the introduction, and commended the young author as one who had "neither the greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him ... not being chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university,—the Church of Christ."

This book being replied to by Edward Burrough, a Quaker, defending his sect, Bunyan wrote a second book, "A Vindication of Gospel Truths Opened." His third book, published in 1658, a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, was an exposition of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The volume went through nine editions in the author's lifetime. His fourth book, published in 1659, was entitled "The Doctrine of Law and Grace Unfolded."

All were written in simple language, with the earnestness of one, who, as he said, grieved more over the backsliding of one of his converts "than if one of my own children were going to the grave."

With the restoration of Charles II. the rule of Puritanism was over. Dissenters' chapels were shut up. The worshippers were commanded to attend the Established Church. Bunyan had preached for five years; and he could not give up his work, even now that his pulpit was closed by law. He continued to preach in barns and private houses.

On Nov. 12, 1600, he went to the little hamlet of Lower Samsell, near Harlington, to preach. Some one communicated this fact to a magistrate, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This was told him, and he had time to escape; but he said if he were to flee, "the weak and newly converted brethren would be afraid to stand." He would never play the coward.

He opened the meeting with prayer, and began to speak from the words, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"

When the officers arrived, he was ordered to cease speaking. He replied "that he was about his Master's business, and must rather obey his Lord's voice than that of man." However, knowing that resistance was useless, as he was arrested in the king's name, he was led away to prison "with God's comfort," he says, "in my poor soul." He would not promise to discontinue preaching, saying rather, "If I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the gospel again to-morrow." He was sentenced to remain in prison for three months; if at the end of that time he refused to give up preaching, he would be sent away from his country, and if he came back without license, he would be hanged. Those were times of dreadful intolerance, and yet in this age we have not ceased to be intolerant of those whose beliefs are not like our own!

Bunyan had recently married a second time, and his wife was dangerously ill. He was a man of deep affections and loved his home. He said, "What a man is at home, that he is indeed. My house and my closet show most what I am, to my family and to the angels, though not to the world."

He wrote in prison, "The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of my flesh from my bones; and that not only because I am too, too fond of those great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the hardships, miseries, and wants my poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had beside. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow on thee.

"But yet, thought I, I must venture all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children."

As the coronation of Charles II. took place in the spring of 1661, and it was customary to pardon prisoners under sentence for any offence short of felony, it was hoped by the followers of Bunyan that he would be released. As the local authorities did not put his name on the list of those who might properly be pardoned, his young wife, Elizabeth, scarcely recovered from her illness, travelled to London, and with great courage made her way to the House of Lords, and presented her petition to one of the peers. He received her kindly, but told her that her husband's case must be left with the judges at the next assizes.

Three times Elizabeth Bunyan, "with abashed face and trembling heart," stood before the judges, pleading for her husband. One of the judges, Sir Matthew Hale, was very kind to her, though he feared he could not help her, as the law was against her husband. The other judge, Twisden, was brutal in his manner, so that she feared he would strike her.

Unsuccessful, the poor woman went back to her home, and John Bunyan remained for twelve long years in prison.

For the first six months Bunyan was allowed considerable liberty by his sympathetic jailer. He went to some of the meetings of the Baptists, and to his home. Some of the bishops heard of it, and sent a messenger from London to ascertain if this were really so. The officer was told to call at night at the prison. It happened that Bunyan had been allowed to remain at his home that night, but he became so uneasy that he told his wife he must go back to prison. It was so late when he returned that the jailer chided him for coming at all.

Soon afterward the messenger arrived. "Are the prisoners all safe?" he asked.

"Yes," was the reply.

"Is John Bunyan safe?"

"Yes."

"Let me see him."

Bunyan was called, and fortunately was able to appear. When the messenger was gone, the jailer said, "Well, you may go out again just when you think proper, for you know when to return better than I can tell you." Soon, however, the jailer was censured, and came near losing his position, while Bunyan himself was not permitted "to look out at the door." His name does not appear again at a church meeting for seven years.

Bunyan's prison life was a very busy one. He did not, says his friend and biographer, the Rev. Charles Doe, "spend his time in a supine and careless manner, or eat the bread of idleness. For there I have been witness, that his own hands have ministered to his and to his family's necessities, by making many hundred gross of long, tagged, thread laces, to fill up the vacancies of his time, which he had learned for that purpose since he had been in prison. There also I surveyed his library, the least and yet the best that ever I saw, consisting only of two books, a Bible and the 'Book of Martyrs.'"

Bunyan's Bible and his Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" came into the possession of Mr. Bohn, the London publisher, and were purchased from him for the Bedford library, where they have been seen by thousands of visitors.

"With those two books," says Froude, "Bunyan had no cause to complain of intellectual destitution. Foxe's Martyrs, if he had a complete edition of it, would have given him a very adequate knowledge of history.... The Bible, thoroughly known, is a literature of itself—the rarest and richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists."

Besides these books, he seems to have had a rosebush, about which he wrote a poem:—

"This homely Bush doth to mine eyes expose,

A very fair, yea, comely, ruddy rose.

This rose doth always bow its head to me,

Saying, 'Come pluck me; I thy rose will be.'"

He also wrote verses about a spider whose habits he closely watched.

Bunyan's prison, if it had much of discomfort, gave him leisure to read and write—the one thing for which most persons of brain are struggling. "Prisons in those days," says Canon Venables, "and indeed long afterwards, were, at their best, foul, dark, miserable places. A century later John Howard found Bedford jail, though better than some, in what would now be justly deemed a disgraceful condition. One who visited Bunyan during his confinement speaks of it 'as an uncomfortable and close prison.'"

Once or twice his friends tried to regain his liberty for him, but he always left the matter with his Lord. When they failed to obtain his freedom, he said, "Verily, I did meet my God sweetly again, comforting of me and satisfying of me, that it was his will and mind that I should be there."

In prison Bunyan's pen was a source of great joy to himself, and a blessing to all the world. His earliest prison work was "Profitable Meditations" in verse. He put portions of the Old and New Testament into poetry. Froude calls the "Book of Ruth" and the "History of Joseph" "beautiful idylls."

He wrote in prose a treatise on prayer, entitled, "Praying in the Spirit;" a book on "Christian Behavior;" the "Holy City," an exposition of the closing chapters of Revelation; a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment;" and "Grace Abounding," the story of his own conversion. The latter book, "if he had written no other," says Canon Venables, "would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest masters of the English language of his own or any other age."

This book was published by George Larkin, in London, in 1666, in the sixth year of Bunyan's imprisonment.

Besides these, he wrote his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith."

Bunyan's imprisonment came to an end May 8, 1672. Through the Declaration of Indulgence, granted by Charles II., Nonconformists were once more allowed to worship God as they chose.

It seems probable, from Bunyan's later biographers, that "Pilgrim's Progress" was written during a subsequent imprisonment of six months in 1675, when the Nonconformists were again suffering the rigors of law.

The first edition appeared in 1678, when Bunyan was fifty years old. A second edition was issued the same year, and a third, with additions, the year following, 1679.

After it was written in prison, Bunyan, always distrusting his own abilities, consulted with his friends about the wisdom of publishing it, as will be seen from the metrical preface:—

"When at first I took my pen in hand,

Thus for to write, I did not understand

That I at all should make a little book

In such a mode; nay, I had undertook

To make another; which, when almost done,

Before I was aware I this begun.

* * * * * *

Well, when I had thus put my ends together,

I showed them others, that I might see whether

They would condemn them, or them justify:

And some said, 'Let them live;' some, 'Let them die.'

Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so;'

Some said, 'It might do good;' others said, 'No.'

Now was I in a strait, and did not see

Which was the best thing to be done of me;

At last I thought, since you are thus divided,

I print it will, and so the case decided."

Bunyan was already famous. The day after he was released from prison, he began to preach in a barn standing in an orchard in Bedford, which one of the congregation, Josias Ruffhead, acting for the members of the church, had purchased, "to be a place for the use of such as doe not conforme to the Church of England, who are of the Persuasion commonly called Congregationall." The barn was so thronged that many were obliged to stay outside. Here he preached till his death, sixteen years afterward.

He had a general oversight of the churches far and near, and was often called Bishop Bunyan.

He was urged to reside in London, but he would not leave Bedford. Here he lived in a cottage which had three small rooms on the ground floor—such a house as laborers now use. Behind the cottage stood a small building which served as his workshop. A person visiting him found in his "study" the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress," and a few other books, chiefly his own productions, "all lying on a shelf or shelves."

His beloved blind daughter, Mary, had died while he was in prison. The other children, Thomas, John, Joseph, Sarah, and Elizabeth, four by the first mother, and two by the second, brightened the plain Bedford cottage. His son Thomas became a minister in 1673, the year after his father regained his liberty.

Whenever Bunyan went to London to preach, says Charles Doe, "if there were but one day's notice given, there would be more people come together than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, by my computation, about twelve hundred at a morning lecture, by seven o'clock, on a working day, in the dark winter time. I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him one Lord's Day in London, at a town's-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled almost over people to get up-stairs to his pulpit." To what honor had the poor tinker already come!

It is said that Charles II. expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that "a learned man, such as he, could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker."

"May it please your majesty," was the reply, "I would gladly give up all my learning if I could preach like that tinker."

The wonderful success attending the "Pilgrim's Progress" must have been a surprise to modest John Bunyan. Macaulay says, "He had no suspicion that he was producing a masterpiece." It spread his fame over Europe and the American settlements. It was translated into many foreign languages during his life.

Dr. Brown says: "It is found in Northern Europe—in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Lettish, Esthonian, and Russ; in Eastern Europe—in Servian, Bulgarian, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish; and in Southern Europe—in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romaic, or modern Greek. In Asia, it may be met with in Hebrew, Arabic, Modern Syriac, Armeno-Turkish, Græco-Turkish, and Armenian. Farther to the south, also, it is seen in Pashtu, or Afghani, and in the great Empire of India it is found in various forms.

"It has been translated into Hindustani or Urdu, Bengali, Uriya or Orissa, Hindi, Sindhi, Panjabi or Sikh, Telugu, Canarese, Tamil, Malayaline, Marathi-Balbodh, Gujarati, and Singhalese.

"In Indo-Chinese countries there are versions of it in Assamese, Khasi, Burmese, and Sgau-Karen. It has been given to the Dyaks of Borneo, to the Malays, to the Malagasy, to the Japanese, and to the many-millioned people of China, in various dialects, both classical and colloquial."

It has also been translated into the languages of Western Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Mexicans, and various tribes of Indians.

The greatest minds of the world have been unanimous in its praise. Everybody agrees with Toplady, who wrote "Rock of Ages," that "it is the finest allegorical work extant."

Macaulay said, "Bunyan is the first of allegorists, as Shakespeare is the first of dramatists," and recommended the study of his simple style to any who wished to gain command over his mother tongue.

Coleridge said, "I know of no book, the Bible excepted as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend, as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as 'The Pilgrim's Progress.'"

Fronde well says it has made Bunyan's "name a household word in every English-speaking family on the globe." Hallam calls his style "powerful and picturesque from concise simplicity." Green, the historian, thinks "Bunyan's English the simplest and homeliest English that has ever been used by any great English writer.... It is the English of the Bible."

The second part of "Pilgrim's Progress" was published seven years after the first, in 1685. In 1680 appeared the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," a contrast to the good Pilgrim; in 1681, "Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ," which went through several editions; and in 1682, the "Holy War," which, Macaulay says, would have been our greatest allegory if "Pilgrim's Progress" had never been written. It represents the fall and recovery of man.

Several small books from Bunyan's pen appeared from year to year. In 1688, the year of his death, five of his works were published, "Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing Souls;" "The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;" a poetical composition entitled, "The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House of God;" the "Water of Life;" and "Solomon's Temple Spiritualized." "The Acceptable Sacrifice" was going through the press at the time of his death.

Besides these, Bunyan had prepared the manuscript of fourteen or more works. Ten were published soon after his death, by his devoted friend, Charles Doe, who said he thought the best work he could do for God was to get Bunyan's books printed and sold.

In the summer of 1688, a young man, in whom Bunyan was deeply interested, told him that his father was about to disinherit him, and begged the preacher to see him. Though scarcely recovered from an illness, he at once rode on horseback to Reading, met the father, obtained a promise of forgiveness, and returned homeward through London, where he was to preach near Whitechapel.

His forty miles to London were made through a pouring rain. Drenched and weary, he reached the home of his friend, Deacon John Strudwick, Holborn Bridge, Snow Hill. With his usual determination to do what he thought to be his duty, he preached Sunday, Aug. 19, 1688. Twelve days later, Aug. 31, he was dead. In two months he would have been sixty years old. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's vault, in the Dissenters' burying-ground at Bunhill Field. The mother of John Wesley sleeps close by. This place was called Bunhill or Bonehill, from a vast quantity of human remains removed to it from the charnel house of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1549.

Bunyan died as he had lived, in complete trust and faith. He asked those who stood around his bedside to pray, and he joined fervently with them. "Weep not for me," he said, "but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where I hope we ere long shall meet to sing the new song, and remain everlastingly happy, world without end, Amen."

His blind Mary had gone before him; and Elizabeth, his noble wife, died four years after him, in 1692.

Bunyan's preaching was natural, simple, and earnest, with now and then an appropriate comparison and anecdote. He said, "I have observed that a word cast in by-the-by hath done more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken besides. Sometimes, also, when I have thought I did no good, then I did the most of all; and at other times, when I thought I should catch them, I have fished for nothing."

The Rev. Charles Doe describes Bunyan "as tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, ... hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray, ... forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest.... In his conversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse in company.... He had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit."

He was careful in preparing his sermons, usually committing them to writing after he had preached them. In composing his books his habit was, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again."

Froude says if Bunyan's "importance may be measured by the influence which he has exerted over succeeding generations, he must be counted among the most extraordinary persons whom England has produced.... To understand, and to make others understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, and no object ever held his attention except in connection with it." Is it any wonder that the ministry of the poor, uneducated tinker was a marvellous success?

Visitors from all parts of the world go to Bedford yearly to look upon the scenes associated with Bunyan's life. In the Manor are seen his will, his cabinet, the Church Book, and various editions and foreign versions of the "Pilgrim's Progress."

Bunyan's chair is also shown, and the oak door with iron crossbars, once a part of Bedford jail, the home of the great preacher for twelve long years.

THOMAS ARNOLD.

THOMAS ARNOLD.

Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "England's greatest schoolmaster," was born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13, 1795. He was the youngest son and seventh child of William and Martha Arnold. His father died before he was six years old. His early education was intrusted to his mother's sister, Mrs. Delafield; and later, at the age of twelve, he was sent to Winchester.

This aunt he never forgot. When she was seventy-seven he wrote to her, "This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, and loved you, for as many years past as I can remember. No tenth of September will ever pass without my thinking of you and loving you."

The shy, retiring boy was early fond of books. When he was three, he received a present from his father of Smollett's "History of England," "as a reward," says Dean Stanley, in his life of Arnold, "for the accuracy with which he had gone through the stories connected with the portraits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the same age he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the dissected map of England."

His first childish literary work was at the age of seven,—a play, on "Piercy, Earl of Northumberland." Between eight and twelve, when at school at Warminster, he rejoiced in Homer. A schoolmate writes: "Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the Siege of Troy; with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box, or any flat piece of wood, tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or the reproach.... Every book he had was easily recognized as his property by helmet and shields, and Hectors and Achilleses, on all the blank leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those heroes."

The home life seems to have been full of affection. Rose E. Selfe, in the World's Worker series, gives these letters. His brother Matthew writes him from school, in 1800, before he is five years old, asking him for a letter, "with all the news you can think of. What new books you have, whether you like the great Bible as well as you did, how your garden and the flowers come on."

"My darling little Tom...." his sister Susannah writes, "I shall expect to find you very much improved, particularly in your reading. As you know you are fond of kissing, give our DEAREST, DEAREST, DEAREST Mamma and Aunt ten each from Fan and myself. Oh, how I wish I could see and kiss them myself, and you, too, my sweet dear Tom! I should like to know very much if you are as fond of geography as you were last Christmas; tell me when you honour us with a letter. Adieu now, my lovely Boy. With sincerely wishing you health and happiness,

I remain, your truly affectionate and loving sister,

Sue Arnold."

This sister, an invalid for twenty years, was most unselfish and lovable in character. She died at Laleham in 1832.

At the Winchester school he was called the poet Arnold to distinguish him from another boy of the same name. He used to recite ballad poetry for the pleasure of his schoolmates, and wrote a long poem, "Simon de Montfort," in imitation of Scott's "Marmion."

He had read Gibbon and Mitford through twice before he left Winchester, at sixteen. At fourteen he enjoyed "the modest, unaffected, and impartial narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon," and did not like "the numerous boasts which are everywhere to be met with in the Latin writers." He thought Roman history "scandalously exaggerated," and had no idea that he was thereafter, in his manhood, to write a fair and delightful Roman history himself.

In 1811 he was elected a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and four years later became a Fellow at Oriel College. He gained in 1815 and in 1817 the Chancellor's prize for the two University essays, Latin and English. In college he had a passion for Aristotle and Thucydides. Next to these he loved Herodotus. Though delicate in appearance, he took long walks, in which he studied nature, being a lover of flowers, birds, and clouds.

His friendships were warm and lasting. John Keble, author of "The Christian Year," Whately, later Archbishop of Dublin, and Coleridge, afterwards chief-justice, were his especial friends.

During his four years as a Fellow in Oriel College, he took private pupils, and read in the Oxford libraries. His plan was to make himself master of some one period, like the fifteenth century, and write full notes upon it.

Oxford was always very dear to Arnold. He wrote years later, "If I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could desire, I should never forget or cease to look back with something of a painful feeling on the years we were together there, and on all the delights that we have lost."

During these college years he was often restless and weary of duty, inclined to indolence, and an early riser with the greatest difficulty. These things he overcame in later life. He had some religious doubts, which completely vanished as he studied and thought more deeply.

In 1819 Arnold removed to Laleham, with his mother, sister, and aunt, and remained here for the next nine years, preparing private pupils for the universities.

A year after coming to Laleham, he married, when he was twenty-five, Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Penrose, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his best college friends, Trevenen Penrose. She was a worthy helper through all the laborious years which followed.

Although Arnold had fitted himself for the Church, he loved the work of teaching. He wrote to a friend about to engage in a similar occupation. "I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond of it.... I enjoyed and do enjoy the society of youths of seventeen or eighteen; for they are all alive in limbs and spirits at least, if not in mind, while in older persons the body and spirits oftener become lazy and languid without the mind gaining any vigor to compensate for it....

"The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist in this, that men enter upon it as a means to some further end; are always impatient for the time when they may lay it aside; whereas, if you enter upon it heartily as your life's business, as a man enters upon any other profession, you are not then in danger of grudging every hour you give to it....

"I should say, have your pupils a good deal with you, and be as familiar with them as you possibly can. I did this continually more and more before I left Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping, and all other gymnastic exercises within my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing with them. They, I believe, always liked it, and I enjoyed it myself like a boy, and found myself constantly the better for it."

"Large private schools," he thought, "the worst possible system; the choice lies between public schools, and an education whose character may be strictly private and domestic."

The home at Laleham was very dear to him. Here six of his children were born. He loved the quiet walks along the banks of the Thames, his garden back of his house, where, he said, "there is always something to interest me even in the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I think how much improved the place will be when they are removed," and the churchyard, where in after years his mother, his infant child, and now his distinguished son Matthew are resting.

One of his pupils at Laleham thus writes of Arnold: "His great power as a private tutor resided in this, that he gave such an intense earnestness to life. Every pupil was made to feel that there was a work for him to do,—that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing that work well.... His hold over all his pupils perfectly astonished me. It was not so much an enthusiastic admiration for his genius or learning or eloquence which stirred within them; it was a sympathetic thrill caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the world....

"In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one class of work above another ... but an humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the end for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his nature is ordained to develop itself."

Arnold used to say, "one must always expect to succeed, but never think he had succeeded."

Besides teaching, Arnold devoted his spare time to philology and history, preparing a Lexicon of Thucydides and articles on Roman History. He learned the German language that he might read Niebuhr's "History of Rome," and thereafter became deeply interested in German literature.

He wrote a friend concerning his little study "where I have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read or write till twelve or one o'clock." Plato's "Phædo" was a great favorite. He thought it "nearly the perfection of human language."

To another he wrote, "One of my most useful books is dear old Tottle's (Aristotle's) 'Politics,' which give one so full a notion of the state of society and opinions in old times, that by their aid one can pick out the wheat from the chaff in Livy with great success."

Arnold was always a learner. He studied Hebrew when he was forty-three and Sanscrit when he was forty-five. He urged ministers not to study works on "Divinity" only. "A man requires," he said "first, the general cultivation of his mind, by constantly reading the works of the very greatest writers, philosophers, orators, and poets, and next, an understanding of the actual state of society, ... and of political economy as teaching him how to deal with the poor.... Further, I should advise a constant use of the biography of good men."

Arnold's friends were urging him to a wider sphere of influence. Laleham had become too expensive for his means, and he had determined to move elsewhere. Just at this time the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant. There were about thirty applicants, and his testimonials were sent in late. His college friend, Dr. Hawkins, afterwards Provost of Oriel, wrote the twelve trustees a letter about Arnold, predicting that if he were elected, "he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England." He was elected in December, 1827, and the words of Dr. Hawkins were fully verified.

In 1828 he received the degree of D.D., and entered upon his new duties.

It cost the Arnold family many a struggle to leave Laleham. "I cannot tell you," Dr. Arnold writes J. T. Coleridge, "how we both love it, and its perfect peace seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity of Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, were it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but with labor."

To another friend he writes, "On Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this dear place, this nine years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to look backwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards,—should be one's motto."

For fourteen years Arnold lived at Rugby and did his great work, which has made his name known and honored among all educated nations. "What a pity," said some persons, "that a man fit to be a statesman should be employed in teaching school-boys."

But Arnold knew the greatness of his chosen work. "It is a most touching thing to me," he said, "to receive a new fellow from his father, when I think what an influence there is in this place for evil as well as for good. I do not know anything which affects me more. If ever I could receive a new boy from his father without emotion, I should think it was high time to be off."

With much firmness he united great tenderness. "Lenity is seldom to be repented of," he wrote a friend who had asked his advice in dealing with a difficult pupil. "In cases," says Dean Stanley, "when it might have been thought that tenderness would have been extinguished by indignation, he was sometimes so deeply affected in pronouncing sentence of punishment on offenders as to be hardly able to speak."

Once, when he heard of some great fault in one of his pupils, "I felt," he said—and his eyes filled with tears as he spoke, "as if it had been one of my own children, and, till I had ascertained that it was really true, I mentioned it to no one, not even to any of the masters."

At another time he said to one of the masters, speaking of a promising lad, "If he should turn out ill, I think it would break my heart."

He wrote a friend, "I believe that boys may be governed a great deal by gentle methods and kindness, and appealing to their better feelings, if you show that you are not afraid of them; I have seen great boys, six feet high, shed tears when I have sent for them up to my room and spoken to them quietly, in private, for not knowing their lesson, and I have found that this treatment produced its effect afterwards in making them do better. But of course deeds must second words when needful, or words will soon be laughed at."

When occasion demanded, Arnold could be very firm. If a boy were habitually idle, or doing harm in the school, he was expelled, for a time or permanently. "Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus dismissed or why," says Dean Stanley; "latterly, Arnold generally allowed such cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their removal might pass altogether unnoticed."

Many parents were displeased, but Arnold never hesitated for a moment in what he believed to be his duty. The result was that the tone of the school became so elevated that more wished to come than could be accommodated.

He always appealed to the honor of the pupils. Once he said, with great spirit, in an address in which he had spoken of bad feeling amongst the boys, "Is this a Christian school? I cannot remain here if all is to be carried on by constraint and force; if I am to be here as a jailer, I will resign my office at once."

He said, "My great desire is to teach my boys to govern themselves—a much better thing than to govern them well myself."

At another time, when several boys had been sent away, and there was much discontent in consequence, he said, "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."

He trusted the boys, and never seemed to watch them. Their word was not doubted. "If you say so, that is quite enough; of course I believe your word," was his frequent statement.

"There grew up in consequence," says Stanley, "a general feeling that it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie—he always believes one." If falsehood was discovered, the punishment was severe.

He usually had great patience. When living at Laleham he once spoke sharply to a dull pupil. "Why do you speak angrily, sir?" said the youth, looking up in his face; "indeed, I am doing the best that I can."

Years afterward Arnold used to say to his children, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life—that look and that speech I have never forgotten."

For mere "intellectual acuteness" he had no admiration, unless united with goodness. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable," he said, "it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.... I would stand to that man hat in hand."

Arnold's consistent and noble life won the undying regard of his pupils. One pupil writes: "I am sure that I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say that I felt a love and reverence for him as one of quite awful greatness and goodness, for whom, I well remember, that I used to think I would gladly lay down my life.... I used to believe that I, too, had a work to do for him in the school, and did, for his sake, labor to raise the tone of the set I lived in."

Who can ever forget the description of Arnold in that natural and fascinating book, "Tom Brown's School Days"?

"And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy's life of that day—the first sermon from the Doctor.... The tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of righteousness, and love, and glory, with whose spirit he was filled, and in whose power he spoke....

"But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred boys, dragging them out of themselves, willingly or unwillingly, for twenty minutes on Sunday afternoon? True, there always were boys scattered up and down the school, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But those were a minority always, generally a very small one....

"What was it that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred scholars, childish boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our sets in the school than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God?

"We couldn't enter into half that we heard: we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men, too, for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart, and soul, and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world."

Another pupil writes of these sermons: "I used to listen to them from first to last with a kind of awe, and over and over again could not join my friends at the chapel door, but would walk home to be alone; and I remember the same effects being produced by them, more or less, on others, whom I should think Arnold looked on as some of the worst boys in the school."

The influence at Rugby under Arnold was thoroughly Christian, though never sectarian. Harry East, the friend of Tom Brown (Thomas Hughes) went to Arnold to talk with him about being confirmed. "When I stuck," says East, "he lifted me, just as if I had been a little child; and he seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I burst out crying—more than I've done this five years; and he sat down by me and stroked my head; and I went blundering on.... And he wasn't shocked a bit, and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool ... and he didn't give me any cut-and-dried explanation. But when I'd done, he just talked a bit—I can hardly remember what he said yet; but it seemed to spread round me like healing, and strength, and light; and to bear me up and plant me on a rock, where I could hold my footing and fight for myself. I don't know what to do, I feel so happy."

While Arnold loved his boys, and felt the keenest interest in them, he did not forget his own mental requirements. "He is the best teacher of others," he said, "who is best taught himself; that which we know and love we cannot but communicate.... I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the mind once becomes stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind; it is drinking out of a pond instead of from a spring.... I think it essential that I should not give up my own reading, as I always find any addition of knowledge to turn to account for the school in some way or other."

While his great desire for his boys was "moral thoughtfulness: the inquiring love of truth going along with the devoted love of goodness," he insisted on liveliness in his teachers: "It is a great matter to make these boys understand that liveliness is not folly and thoughtlessness. A schoolmaster's intercourse is with the young, the strong, and the happy; and he cannot get on with them unless in animal spirits he can sympathize with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not connected with selfishness or weakness.... He who likes boys has probably a daily sympathy with them."

One great secret of Arnold's success was that he loved his work. Not that he had not strong ambitions like other men. He said, "I believe that, naturally, I am one of the most ambitious men alive," and thought that "the three great objects of human ambition" which would attract him, were "to be the prime minister of a great kingdom, the governor of a great empire, or the writer of works which should live in every age and in every country." But he felt that God had opened a great school to him, and that his path of duty was clearly marked out.

He grew tired, as do others, with what he felt to be very hard work, as all know who have tried teaching, and almost yearly took a journey on the Continent for rest and change.

"I hunger sometimes," he said, "for more time for writing; but I do not indulge the feeling, and on the other hand, I think my love of tuition rather grows upon me.... The work here is more and more engrossing continually, but I like it better and better; it has all the interest of a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and pieces." No one ever studied the game more intently.

"Do you see those two boys walking together?" he said to an assistant master. "I never saw them together before; you should make an especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so tells the changes in a boy's character."

He deprecated such long terms for boys or masters as twenty-one weeks, and wished for more "co-operation in our system of public education, including both the great schools and the universities."

Besides his teaching, Arnold did much writing of pamphlets and books. "I must write or die," was an expression which he often used. His pamphlet on "The Christian Duty of Conceding the Roman Catholic Claims," in 1828, whereby many of their civil and political disabilities were to be removed, created great bitterness of feeling against him. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the House of Commons, was also fighting the battles for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and probably saved England from a civil war by his advocacy. But toleration was as rare nearly a century ago as it is to-day, and Arnold soon received abuse from pulpit and pew.

He was the devoted friend of the poor and the laborers. In 1831 Arnold started the Englishmen's Register, a weekly newspaper, with the hope of telling the people "the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to their causes and their remedies."

"If the clergy would come forward," he writes to his beloved sister Susannah, "as one man, from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side and justice on the other, denouncing the high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they might yet save themselves and the State." ...

To the Rev. Augustus Hare, he writes; "Unquestionably our aristocratic manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and unsympathizing bodies; and from want of sympathy I fear the transition to enmity is but too easy when distress embitters the feelings, and the sight of others in luxury makes that distress still more intolerable. This is the plague-spot, to my mind, in our whole state of society, which must be removed, or the whole must perish."

He rejoiced that some of the leading manufacturers "are considering that their workmen have something else besides hands belonging to them, and are beginning to attend to the welfare of that something."

The Register soon died, because Arnold could not give all the time needed to conduct it, or the large amount of money necessary to start and carry on a weekly paper. His articles, however, about laborers were copied into the Sheffield Courant, and he was asked to continue his writings for its columns.

He was always a noble friend to the poor. At Laleham and Rugby he gave lectures in their interest, and was often seen in their homes. "I never knew such an humble man as the doctor," said the parish clerk at Laleham; "he comes and shakes us by the hand as if he was one of us." At his later home in Westmoreland a poor woman said, "He used to come into my house and talk to me as if I was a lady."

"Prayer and kindly intercourse with the poor," said Arnold, "are the two great safeguards of spiritual life; its more than food and raiment."

Dr. Arnold held that there "are but two things of vital importance," which Algernon Sidney calls Religion and Politics, "but which I would rather call our duties and affections toward God, and our duties and feelings toward men; science and literature are but a poor make-up for the want of these."

At one time Arnold was very anxious to start a journal, a portion of which should be devoted regularly to such subjects as history, statistics of different countries, and the like. "All instruction must be systematic," he said, "and it is this which the people want."

Without doubt Arnold was right. He could not then foresee how the newspapers of to-day, with their syndicate novels, travels, and biography, were to take the place of books in very many families. The life and times of Lincoln in the Century Magazine was a great step in the right direction. Sometime, it is to be hoped, our newspapers, instead of containing so much that is neither helpful nor lasting, will be the schools of the people, teaching history, political economy, and helpful biography.

While Arnold was, above all things, devoted to one central idea, "One name there is, and one alone—Jesus Christ, both God and man," yet he said, "I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as articles on common subjects written with a decidedly Christian tone. History and biography are far better vehicles of good, I think, than any direct comments on Scripture, or essays on evidences."

Arnold used to say, "Above all, be afraid of teaching nothing; it is vain now to say that questions of religion and politics are above the understanding of the poorer classes—so they may be, but they are not above their misunderstanding, and they will think and talk about them, so that they had best be taught to think and talk rightly."

In 1833 Arnold published a pamphlet on Church Reform. He believed in a union of Church and State, but wished to bring Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church. He would give them the use of the churches for worship, with different hours for their services. He did not believe in the Apostolical succession, and deprecated all divisions among Christians. He longed to see all united on one foundation stone, the Saviour of men.

The Church Reform pamphlet went rapidly through four editions, and aroused a perfect whirlwind of invective. Arnold was denounced by the Established Church because too liberal; by Dissenters as not liberal enough; by Conservatives in politics as one revolutionary in doctrine and too thoroughly a friend of the people; by other educators as the unwise head of a new system which bade fair to destroy the old. The sale of his sermons—he had published two or three volumes—was stopped. Some of his friends even dropped their intercourse with him.

"The strong, great man was startled," says Dean Stanley, "but not moved by this continued outcry."

He resolved not to answer anybody through the newspapers. "All that is wanted," he said, "is to inspire firmness into the minds of those engaged in the conduct of the school, lest their own confidence should be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I suppose is unparalleled in the experience of schools."

When the controversy was at its height, he voted for the Liberal candidate, "foreseeing," as Stanley says, "as he must have done, the burst of indignation which followed."

"I should like," he said, "to write a book on 'The Theory of Tides,' the flood and ebb of parties. The English nation are like a man in a lethargy; they are never roused from their conservatism till mustard poultices are put to their feet."

He wrote in 1833, "May God grant to my sons, if they live to manhood, an unshaken love of truth and a firm resolution to follow it for themselves, with an intense abhorrence of all party ties, save that one tie which binds them to the party of Christ against wickedness."

Two years later he wrote, "The only hope is with the young, if by any means they can be led to think for themselves without following a party, and to love what is good and true, let them find it where they will."

Arnold went steadily forward with his scholarly work, bringing out in 1835 the last volume of his edition of Thucydides, and resumed his labor on his "Roman History." He thought "brevity and simplicity" two of the greatest merits which style can have, and applied these rules to his own accurate and thorough workmanship.

His eyes were often turned towards America, which he foresaw would solve many of the old world problems. To Jacob Abbott he wrote concerning "The Young Christian," "The publication of a work like yours in America was far more delightful to me than its publication in England could have been. Nothing can be more important to the future welfare of mankind, than that God's people, serving Him in power and in love, and in a sound mind, should deeply influence the national character of the United States."

Later he writes to his friend Chevalier Bunsen, "so beautifully good, so wise, and so noble-minded!" "I hear, both from India and the Mediterranean, the most delightful account of the zeal and resources of the American missionaries, that none are doing so much in the cause of Christ as they are. They will take our place in the world, I think not unworthily, though with far less advantages, in many respects, than those which we have so fatally wasted."

While the storm raged around him, he enjoyed great peace and comfort in his home life. He romped with his children, gathered flowers with them, and climbed mountains like a boy. "I do not wonder," he said, "that it was thought a great misfortune to die childless in old times, when they had not fuller light—it seems so completely wiping a man out of existence." He wrote Coleridge, "What men do in middle life without a wife and children to turn to, I cannot imagine; for I think the affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men, by their intercourse with people, such as one usually finds them in the world.... But with a home filled with those whom we entirely love and sympathize with, and with some old friends, to whom one can open one's heart fully from time to time, the world's society has rather a bracing influence to make one shake off mere dreams of delight."

Archbishop Whately said of Arnold, "He was attached to his family as if he had no friends; to his friends as if he had no family; and to his country as if he had no friends or relations."

Dr. Arnold's married life was very happy. He wrote his "Dearest Mary" on their wedding-day; "How much of happiness and of cause for the deepest thankfulness is contained in the recollections of this day; for in the ten years that have elapsed since our marriage, there has been condensed, I suppose, as great a portion of happiness, with as little alloy, as ever marked any ten years of human existence."

To his servants he was extremely kind and considerate, as are all true gentlemen and well-bred women. "He was in the habit," says Stanley, "whether in travelling or in his own house, of consulting their accommodation and speaking to them familiarly as to so many members of the domestic circle."

In 1832 Arnold had purchased a small estate, Fox How, between Rydal and Ambleside, among the English lakes. "It is," he said, "with a mixed feeling of solemnity and tenderness that I regard our mountain nest, whose surpassing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive happiness to every one of my waking hours passed in it." He loved every tree, every rock, every flower, "as a child loves them." The three roads he often used to walk upon with his children he called "Old Corruption," an irregular, grassy path; "Bit-by-Bit Reform;" and "Radical Reform," a straight, good road.

The mountains were an especial delight. The impression they gave him, he said, "was never one of bleakness or wildness, but of a sort of paternal shelter and protection to the valley."

Here the work went on as elsewhere. "All the morning, till one o'clock," he wrote, "I used to sit in one corner of the drawing-room, not looking towards Fairfield lest I should be constantly tempted from my work, and there I worked on at the 'Roman History' and the 'Tudor Tables,' and Appius Claudius and Cincinnatus, and all the rest of them."

The "Roman History" was never finished. The third volume, published after his death, Archdeacon Hare thinks the first history which "has given anything like an adequate representation of the wonderful genius and noble character of Hannibal."

Dr. Arnold took an active part in the opposition to "The Tracts for the Times," when John Henry Newman went from the High Church Party of Oxford to the Roman Catholic Church, and became a cardinal. "I groan," he said, "over the divisions of the church, of all our evils I think the greatest ... that men should call themselves Roman Catholics, Church of England men, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts of appellations, forgetting that only glorious name of Christian, which is common to all, and a true bond of union."

In 1835 Arnold accepted a fellowship in the Senate of the new London University, with the hope that he could make it as he said, "Christian, yet not sectarian." He wished an examination in the Scriptures to be a part of the University work, but as the University from its charter was intended for all denominations, without regard to belief, he was overruled, and resigned his position. While he thanked Parliament "for having done away with distinctions between Christian and Christian"—Dissenters had been excluded heretofore from degrees at the universities because not belonging to the Established Church—"I would pray," he said, "that distinctions be kept up between Christians and non-Christians."

It is surprising to read that a man so broad and great as Dr. Arnold thought the Jews, because unbelievers, "have no claim whatever of political right,"—"no claim to become citizens, but by conforming to our moral law, which is the Gospel,"—and petitioned against the removal of their civil disabilities. Mr. Gladstone was also against the removal, but happily changed his opinions, and spoke in behalf of the Jews in 1847.

When the Chartists were demanding a people's charter with universal suffrage for men, and other reforms, Arnold was greatly moved. He began a correspondence with Carlyle, urging that a society be formed "for drawing public attention to the state of the laboring classes throughout the kingdom." He believed that the "upper classes would make sacrifices," if the real condition of the poor and the workers could be brought to their knowledge. "Men do not think of the fearful state in which we are living," he said; and he did not despair of a remedy, "even though it is the solution of the most difficult problem ever yet proposed to man's wisdom, and the greatest triumph over selfishness ever yet required of his virtue."

We in America are facing the same problems; and there was never more need for the "upper classes to make sacrifices," and live unselfish lives for the good of their country, than now. We need to keep ever before us the Bible message, "For none of us liveth to himself."

Arnold believed rightly in each one doing his share of the world's work and duties. "There is no earthly thing," he said, "more mean and despicable in my mind than an English gentleman destitute of all sense of his responsibilities and opportunities, and only revelling in the luxuries of our high civilization, and thinking himself a great person."

He wrote to a pupil who had become a physician, "It is a real pleasure to me to find that you are taking steadily to a profession, without which I scarcely see how a man can live honestly. I use the term 'profession' in rather a large sense ... a definite field of duty, which the nobleman has as much as the tailor, but which he has not, who, having an income large enough to keep him from starving, hangs about upon life, merely following his own caprices and fancies."

Again he writes to a friend, "I would far rather send a boy to Van Diemen's Land, where he must work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages." As the years went by, the spirit of opposition against Arnold seemed to die out, and the school at Rugby gained continually in numbers and influence. He was presented to the Queen; he went up to Oxford to see degrees conferred upon Wordsworth and Bunsen; he published more volumes of sermons—six in all—and two volumes of his admirable "Roman History."

In 1841 he was appointed by Lord Melbourne, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, the chair being made vacant by the death of Dr. Nares. This gave him great pleasure, and with enthusiasm he began to prepare his lectures.

He gave his first lecture Dec. 2, 1841, in the "theatre," the usual lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings being too small for the hundreds who crowded to hear him. "It was an audience," says Dean Stanley, "unprecedented in the range of academical memory."

He designed to give a yearly course of eight lectures, beginning with the fourteenth century. Some of his lectures were to be biographical: "The life and times of Pope Gregory, or the Great," Charlemagne, Alfred, Dante, and "the noblest and holiest of monarchs, Louis IX."

He wrote Coleridge before going to Oxford, "If I do go up, many things, I can assure you, have been in my thoughts, which I wished gradually to call men's attention to; one in particular, which seems to me a great scandal—the debts contracted by the young men, and their backwardness in paying them. I think that no part of this evil is to be ascribed to the tradesmen, because so completely are the tradesmen at the mercy of the undergraduates, that no man dares refuse to give credit; if he did, his shop would be abandoned."

Arnold still continued his work at Rugby, remaining in part because two of his sons were being educated there. He was also making final arrangements for an edition of St. Paul's Epistles.

The last lecture of his first year at Oxford, June 2, 1842, was abandoned for the time, on account of a brief, but sudden illness. June 5 he preached his farewell sermon to the Rugby boys, before the vacation; and Friday, June 10, was the public-day for school speeches.

Saturday he was in high spirits, taking his usual walk and bath, and conversing with his guests on social and historical topics. In the evening he gave a supper to some of the higher classes of the school.

He wrote in his diary that evening, June 11, 1842: "The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it—my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed.... But above all, let me mind my own personal work—to keep myself pure and zealous and believing—laboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it."

Between five and six o'clock on Sunday morning he awoke with a sharp pain across his chest. He lay with his hands clasped and his eyes raised upwards, while he repeated, "And Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

Against Arnold's wish, his wife sent for a physician. Meantime she read to him in the Prayer Book, the fifty-first psalm. The twelfth verse, "O give me the comfort of thy help again, and establish me with thy free spirit," he repeated after her very earnestly.

The physician soon came, and Arnold, asking the cause of the pain, was told that it was spasm of the heart.

"Is it generally fatal?" asked Arnold. "Yes, I am afraid it is," was the reply.

Soon after the doctor left the house for medicine, and the son Thomas entered the room. "Thank God, Tom," said Arnold, "for giving me this pain; I have suffered so little pain in my life, that I feel it is very good for me; now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him for it."

His son said, "I wish, dear papa, we had you at Fox How." He made no reply, but smiled tenderly upon the boy and his mother.

The doctor soon came; and as he was dropping the laudanum into a glass, Arnold asked what medicine it was. On being told, he replied, "Ah, very well."

In a moment there was a convulsive struggle, then a few deep gasps, and the work of the great teacher was over.

Five of their nine children were waiting for their father at Fox How, to celebrate his forty-seventh birthday, and returned to Rugby for the burial. The news brought bewilderment and deep sorrow to Rugby, to Oxford, to London, and indeed to the whole of England.

On the following Friday he was buried in the chancel, immediately under the communion-table. How many of us Americans have stood by that sacred spot, and remembered how one good man can bring honor to his work and nation!

Out of gratitude for his services in the cause of education, a public subscription was at once started. The money subscribed was used to erect his monument in Rugby Chapel, Chevalier Bunsen writing an epitaph for it in imitation of those on the tombs of the Scipios, and of the early Christian inscriptions; and for scholarships, first to be used by his sons, and afterwards for the promotion of general study at Rugby, and history at Oxford.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

The great orator, thinker, and leader was of the best blood of New England. Educated, brilliant, aristocratic, he gave his life to the lowly. No such self-sacrifice can ever be forgotten. His name will live as long as American history is read.

Wendell Phillips was born in a stately mansion on Beacon Street, Boston, Nov. 29, 1811, the eighth in a family of nine children. The father was the Hon. John Phillips, a rich merchant, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a member of the corporation of Harvard College, and of the convention which revised the Constitution of the State; elected to the House of Representatives, and later to the Senate till his death; the first mayor of Boston; honored for a noble heart as well as for gifts of speech, and worthy to be the parent of such a son as Wendell.

Sally Walley, the mother, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, well-educated and of strong nature, soon perceived the unusual talents of her son. Her earliest gift to him was a Bible, which was one of his most prized treasures for seventy years.

Affectionate and domestic by nature, "Wendell's love for his mother was a passion," says the Rev. Carlos Martyn, in his life of Phillips. Her advice to him always was, "Be good and do good; this is my whole desire for you." From her he learned his Bible and the catechism; and years after, when he stood like a great oak in the forest, beat upon by wind and storm, he never forgot to keep his trust where his mother first taught him to place it.

From her knowledge and common sense in political and mercantile affairs, he judged that other women must be able to take part in the world's work, and therefore through life he asked for them an equal place in home and state.

When a child he enjoyed tools, and would have made a good carpenter or engineer. As his ancestors were mostly preachers—he was descended from the Rev. George Phillips, who came from Great Britain in 1630, and was settled at Watertown, Mass., for fourteen years, till his death—Wendell seemed inclined to follow in their footsteps; for when he was four or five years old, he would put a Bible in the chair before him, and arranging other chairs in a circle, would address them by the hour.

"Wendell," said his father, "don't you get tired of this?"

"No," said the boy, "I don't get tired, but it's rather hard on the chairs!"

His most intimate playmate was J. Lothrop Motley, afterward the celebrated historian. Often, in the Motley garret, they dressed themselves in fancy costume, and declaimed poetry and dialogue; a good preparation for the after years.

At eleven years of age Wendell was sent to the Boston Latin School, then on School Street, where the Parker House now stands. Here he met and became the warm friend of the studious Charles Sumner.

While noted for his love of books and power in declamation, he was also fond of sports,—boating, horseback-riding, and all gymnastic exercises. He was tall, graceful, and handsome.

In 1827, when he was sixteen, he entered Harvard College, whose buildings, noble trees, and shaded walks have become dear to thousands, and will be through all time. The widowed mother—John Phillips had been dead four years—gave her promising boy her blessing, and sent him out into the world to make a man of himself by virtuous and noble living, or to spoil himself by yielding to temptation, as he should elect. He chose the former course.

He became the intimate friend of Edmund Quincy, the son of the president of the college, Josiah Quincy. He stood high in his classes, besides reading extensively in general history and mechanics. He was also greatly interested in genealogy.

Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Harry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and James Watt were among his English heroes, and Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Eli Whitney among his American. Scott and Victor Hugo were great favorites. Elizabeth Barrett Browning he regarded as the first of modern poets. Through life he was an omniverous reader of newspapers.

He was versed in several languages,—German, Italian, and Spanish, but French was his favorite among the modern tongues. He was always skilled in Latin.

Already his life had become more serious through the preaching of Dr. Lyman Beecher. The Rev. Dr. O. P. Gifford relates that Phillips once told a friend that he asked God "that whenever a thing be wrong it may have no power of temptation over me; whenever a thing be right, it may take no courage to do it. From that day to this it has been so. Whenever I have known a thing to be wrong, it has held no temptation. Whenever I have known a thing to be right, it has taken no courage to do it."

The Rev. Dr. Edgar Buckingham, secretary of the class of 1831, says: "I remember well his appearance of devoutness during morning and evening prayers in the chapel, which many attended only to save their credit with the authorities. Doddridge's 'Expositor' Wendell bore to college in his Freshman year (a present, I think, from his mother, a new volume), to be his help in daily thought and prayer."

Another of his classmates says: "Before entering college he had been the subject of religious revival. Previous to that he used to give way to violent outbursts of temper, and his schoolmates would sometimes amuse themselves by deliberately working him into a passion. But after his conversion they could never succeed in getting him out of temper."

"He had a deep love for all that was true and honorable," said his room-mate, the Rev. John Tappan Pierce of Illinois, "always detested a mean action. His Bible was always open on the centre-table. His character was perfectly transparent; there were no subterfuges, no pretences about him. He was known by all to be just what he seemed.... As an orator, Phillips took the highest stand of any graduate of our day. I never knew him to fail in anything or hesitate in a recitation."

Dr. Buckingham speaks of his "kindly, generous manner, his brightness of mind, his perfect purity and whiteness of soul; ... with a most attractive face, 'a smile that was a benediction,' with manners of superior elegance, with conversation filled with the charms of literature, with biography and history, full of refined pleasantry, ... it was no wonder that his society was courted and respected by those who had wealth at their command, and still more by those young men who came from the South."

He was a member of the "Phi Beta Kappa," on account of his scholarship, and president of the exclusive "Porcellian" and "Hasty-Pudding Club."

After graduation Phillips entered the Harvard Law School, under the brilliant Judge Story, and was admitted to the bar when he was twenty-three.

His first honor, after leaving the law school, was the invitation to deliver a Fourth of July address at New Bedford.

Charles T. Congdon, the well-known journalist, says: "When Phillips stood up in the pulpit, I thought him the handsomest man I had ever seen. When he began to speak, his elocution seemed the most perfect to which I had ever listened.... He was speaking of the political history of the State, and of its frequent isolation in politics, and electrified us all by exclaiming, 'The star of Massachusetts has shone the brighter for shining alone!'" How little he foreknew his own isolation and the brightness of the star which shone almost alone for so many years!

He opened an office on Court Street, Boston, and began regular work, knowing that idleness brings no fame. He drew up legal papers, wills, etc., and, as he told a friend, during "those two opening years I paid all my expenses, and few do it now."

On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 1835, sitting beside an open window on Court Street, he saw a noisy crowd on Washington Street; and curiosity prompted him to put on his hat, and learn the reason of the commotion. He found a mob of four or five thousand men trying to force their way into the office of the Anti-Slavery Society, No. 46 Washington Street, where the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was holding its meeting. Warning handbills had been circulated about the city, and threats had been heard concerning the women if they attempted to assemble; yet nobody really believed that, in a rich and cultivated city, a company of thirty women would be mobbed on account of free speech. It had not then become apparent that the North was bound hand and foot by the slave-power.

While the women prayed, the "broadcloth" mob, of well-dressed men, in large part "gentlemen of property and standing," were yelling and cursing outside. Mayor Lyman appeared on the scene, and commanded the women to disperse, as he was powerless to protect them from bloodshed. He besought the mob to lay down their arms; but they pushed their way into the hall, appropriated the Testaments and Prayer-books, and then began to search for William Lloyd Garrison, who was in an adjoining room. He escaped across a roof, by the advice of the Mayor, but was caught by the mob, who coiled a rope around his body, and dragged him, bare-headed, and with torn garments, into State Street, toward the City Hall, shouting, "Kill him!" "Hang the Abolitionist!"

He was taken to the Mayor's room, provided with needful clothing, thrust into a closed carriage, and driven rapidly to jail, "as a disturber of the peace," but in reality to save his life. The mob clung to the wheels, dashed open the doors, seized the horses, and tried to upset the carriage; but the driver laid his whip on horses and heads of rioters alike, and Garrison was finally safely locked in a cell.

Wendell Phillips looked on bewildered, and seeing, near by, the colonel of his own Suffolk regiment, in which he also was an officer, said, "Why does not the Mayor call out the regiment? We would cheerfully take arms in such a case as this."

The reply was, "Don't you see that the regiment is in the mob?"

The young lawyer went back to his office sadly and thoughtfully.

He said, twenty years later, before the anti-slavery meeting on the anniversary of this mob: "Let me thank the women who came here twenty years ago, some of whom are met here to-day, for the good they have done me. I thank them for all they have taught me. I had read Greek and Roman and English history; I had by heart the classic eulogies of brave old men and martyrs; I dreamed, in my folly, that I heard the same tone in my youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett;—these women taught me my mistake. They taught me that down in those hearts, which loved a principle for itself, asked no man's leave to think or speak, true to their convictions, no matter at what hazard, flowed the real blood of '76, of 1640, of the hemlock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints of Jerusalem. I thank them for it!"

The year after the Garrison mobbing scene, Phillips began to take part in the lyceum lectures, which at that time were popular, as the University Extension lectures are now. He spoke usually upon some topic in natural science, being more fond of this evidently than of the law.

The colored people were refused admittance to lectures; and this fact so incensed Emerson, Sumner, George William Curtis, and Phillips, that they refused to speak where the negroes were not admitted. This refusal soon broke the exclusive and unnatural custom.

In this year, 1836, Phillips met a young lady two years younger than himself, Ann Terry Greene, the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant. Her cousin, Miss Grew, was to go by stage-coach with her intended husband to Greenfield, Mass., and Miss Greene was to accompany them. Phillips was asked to join the party. The brilliant young woman, as she herself said, "talked abolition to him all the way up." Mr. Phillips was never a great talker, but a good listener. He said, "I learn something from every one."

Both parents were dead; and she had been received as a daughter into the home of her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, who lived in Chauncy Place, near Summer Street. Both were warm friends of Garrison, and deeply interested in the anti-slavery movement. The young girl, with all the enthusiasm of youth, and the impulse of a strong and noble nature, espoused the cause of the slave, and was not afraid to stand for the right in a choice so unpopular among the rich and aristocratic.

The acquaintance begun on the stage-coach resulted in an engagement the same year; and the following year, Oct. 12, 1837, they were married. Like Mrs. Browning, Miss Greene was an invalid at the time of her marriage, and remained thus all her life.

"Of Mr. Phillips's unbounded admiration and love for his wife," writes Francis Jackson Garrison in his memorial sketch of "Ann Phillips," "of his chivalrous devotion to her, and absolute self-abnegation through the more than forty-six years of their married life, and of his oft-confessed indebtedness to her for her wise counsel and inspiration, matchless courage, and unswerving constancy, the world knows in a general way; but only those who have been intimately acquainted with them both can fully realize and appreciate it all. They also know how ardent was her affection for him, and how great her pride in his labors and achievements."

When his speeches were first published in book form, in 1863, he wrote on the title-page of one volume, and gave it to his wife, "Speeches and Lectures. By Ann Phillips." Thus thoroughly did he appreciate her helpfulness.

Mrs. Phillips wrote to a friend regarding her husband, whom she called her "better three-quarters," "When I first met Wendell, I used to think, 'It can never come to pass; such a being as he is could never think of me.' I looked upon it as something as strange as a fairy-tale."

A month after her marriage, she wrote a friend, Nov. 19, 1837: "Only last year, on my sick-bed, I thought I should never see another birthday, and I must go and leave him in the infancy of our love, in the dawn of my new life; and how does to-day find me? the blessed and happy wife of one I thought I should never perhaps live to see. Thanks be to God for all his goodness to us, and may he make me more worthy of my Wendell! I cannot help thinking how little I have acquired, and Wendell, only two years older, seems to know a world more."

And yet, with all this depreciation of self, she had such a fine mind and sound judgment that Phillips deferred to her constantly, talked over with her the arguments of his speeches, and valued her approval more than that of all the world beside. As in the case of John Stuart Mill and his wife, intellectual companionship seemed the basis of their extremely happy married life.

Four years later they moved into a modest brick house, 26 Essex Street, given to Mrs. Phillips by her father, where they lived for forty years. From here Mrs. Phillips writes to a friend concerning herself: "Now what do you think her life is? Why, she strolls out a few steps occasionally, calling it a walk; the rest of the time from bed to sofa, from sofa to rocking-chair; reads generally the Standard and Liberator, and that is pretty much all the literature her aching head will allow her to peruse; rarely writes a letter, sees no company, makes no calls, looks forward to spring and birds, when she will be a little freer.... I am not well enough even to have friends to tea, so that all I strive to do is to keep the house neat and keep myself about. I have attended no meetings since I helped fill 'the negro pew.' What anti-slavery news I get, I get second-hand. I should not get along at all, so great is my darkness, were it not for Wendell to tell me that the world is still going.... We are very happy, and only have to regret my health being so poor, and our own sinfulness. Dear Wendell speaks whenever he can leave me, and for his sake I sometimes wish I were myself again; but I dare say it is all right as it is."

In 1846 Mrs. Phillips writes: "Dear Wendell has met with a sad affliction this fall in the death of his mother.... She was everything to him—indeed, to all her children; a devoted mother and uncommon woman.... So poor unworthy I am more of a treasure to Wendell than ever, and a pretty frail one. For his sake I should love to live; for my own part I am tired, not of life, but of a sick one. I meet with but little sympathy; for these long cases are looked upon as half, if not wholly, make-believes,—as if playing well would not be far better than playing sick."

On the same sheet of paper Mr. Phillips writes: "Dear Ann has spoken of my dear mother's death. My good, noble, dear mother! We differed utterly on the matter of slavery, and she grieved a good deal over what she thought a waste of my time, and a sad disappointment to her; but still I am always best satisfied with myself when I fancy I can see anything in me which reminds me of my mother. She lived in her children, and they almost lived in her, and the world is a different one, now she is gone!"

Nearly a dozen years later Mr. Phillips writes to a friend: "We are this summer at Milton, one of the most delightful of our country towns, about ten miles from Boston. Ann's brother has a place here, and we are with him. She is as usual—little sleep, very weak, never goes down-stairs, in most excellent and cheerful spirits, interested keenly in all good things, and, I sometimes tell her, so much my motive and prompter to every good thing, that I fear, should I lose her, there'd be nothing of me left worth your loving."