t place in the Mediterranean; you would not have got
to sea again for a month or six weeks." He then proceeded to allege
reasons for the difficulty, which were quite sufficient if the
peculiarities of the little bay were really such as he described; but
Captain Usher, having never heard of them during his service in the
Mediterranean, suspected that the emperor was mistaken, or had
confounded some report he had heard from mariners in his youth. When,
however, he mentioned the circumstance many years afterward to Captain
Dundas, who had recently cruised in the Gulf of Genoa, that officer
confirmed the report of Napoleon in all its particulars, and expressed
astonishment at its correctness. "For" (said he), "I thought it a
discovery of my own, having ascertained all you have just told me about
that creek, by observation and experience."

HIS INDUSTRY AND CURIOSITY.

Great as was his appetite for knowledge, his memory in retaining, and
his quickness in applying it; his labor both in acquiring and using it
was equal to them. In application to business he could wear out the men
most inured to study. In the deliberations on the Code Civil, many of
which lasted ten, twelve, or fifteen hours without intermission, he was
always the last whose attention flagged; and he was so little disposed
to spare himself trouble, that even in the Moscow campaign he sent
regularly to every branch of administration in Paris directions in
detail, which in every government but his would, both from usage and
convenience, have been left to the discretion of the superintending
minister, or to the common routine of business. This and other instances
of his diligence are more wonderful than praiseworthy. He had
established an office with twelve clerks, and Mounier at their head,
whose sole duty it was to extract, translate, abridge, and arrange under
heads the contents of our English newspapers. He charged Mounier to omit
no abuse of him, however coarse or virulent; no charge, however
injurious or malignant. As, however, he did not specify the empress,
Mounier, who reluctantly complied with his orders, ventured to suppress,
or, at least, to soften any phrases about her; but Napoleon questioned
others on the contents of the English papers; detected Mounier and his
committee in their mutilations of the articles, and forbade them to
withhold any intelligence or any censure they met with in the
publications which they were appointed to examine. Yet wit