re aught too
incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw
a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient
capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplace in his
contemplation: kings were his people; nations were his outposts; and he
disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as
if they were the titular dignitaries of the chessboard! Amid all these
changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the
field, or in the drawing-room; with the mob, or the levee; wearing the
Jacobin bonnet, or the iron crown; banishing a Braganza, or espousing a
Hapsburg; dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or
contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic he was still the same
military despot.

In this wonderful combination, his affectations of literature must not be
omitted. The jailer of the press, he affected the patronage of letters;
the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of
authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection
of learning; the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the
denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De
Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.

Such a medley of contradictions, and, at the same time, such an individual
consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist, a
republican, and an emperor; a Mohammedan, a Catholic, and a patron of the
synagogue; a subaltern and a sovereign; a traitor and a tyrant; a
Christian and an infidel; he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same
stern, impatient, inflexible original; the same mysterious,
incomprehensible self; the man without a model, and without a shadow.

NOTES.--St. Louis (b. 1215, d. 1270), a wise and pious king of France,
known as Louis IX. Napoleon was appointed to the Military School at
Brienne, by Louis XVI. Brutus, Lucius Junius, abolished the royal office
at Rome (509 B. C.), and ruled as consul for two years.

Jacobin Bonnet.--The Jacobins were a powerful political club during the
first French Revolution. A peculiar bonnet or hat was their badge.
Braganza, the name of the royal family of Portugal. Maria of Portugal, and
her father, Charles IV. of Spain, were both expelled by Napoleon.
Hapsburg, the name of the royal family of Austria. Napoleon's second wife
was Maria Louisa, the daughter of the Emperor