reserve, swept like a whirlwind, driving before them
horse and foot, artillery, equipage, and standards, all mingled in
irremediable confusion.

With what freedom did our young hero comment on the campaign, speaking
such names as Lannes and Ney, Murat and Massena, like household words!
He did not, perhaps, state that the favorable result of things was
entirely owing to his presence, but it might be inferred that it was
well he threw in his sword when the fortunes of the Empire trembled in
the balance.

Under such influences, and with the excitement produced by the
marvellous success of the French armies, it is not singular that young
men looked eagerly forward to a participation in the prodigies and
splendors of their time,--that they should turn disdainfully from the
paths of honest industry, and that everything which constitutes the true
wealth and greatness of a state should have been despised or forgotten
in the lurid and blood-stained glare of military glory, which cowered
like an incubus on the breast of Europe. The battle-fields were beyond
the frontiers of their own country; the calamities of war were too far
distant to obtrude their disheartening features; and no lamentations
mingled with the public rejoicings. Many a broken-hearted mother mourned
in secret for her son lying in his bloody grave; but individual grief
was disregarded in the madness which pervaded all classes, vain-glorious
from repeated and uninterrupted success.

But the time had come when the storm was to pour in desolation over the
fields of France, and the nations which had trembled at her power were
to tender back to her the bitter cup of humiliation. The unaccustomed
sound of hostile cannon broke in on the dreams of invincibility which
had entranced the people, and deeds of violence and blood, which had
been complacently regarded when the theatre of action was on foreign
territory, seemed quite another thing when the scene was shifted to
their own vineyards and villages.

The genius of Napoleon never exhibited such vast fertility of resources
as when he battled for life and empire in his own dominions. Every foot
of ground was wrested from him at an expense of life which thinned the
innumerable hosts pressing onward to his destruction. He stood at bay
against all Europe in arms; and so desperately did he contend against
the vast odds opposed to him, and so rapidly did he move from one
invading column to another, successively beating bac