is tent, that he set
his whole officers in a roar of laughter; and these joyful sounds, heard
by the soldiers without, restored confidence to the army, from the
belief that no anxious thoughts clouded the brows of their chiefs.
Hannibal, it is known, preserved a diary, and wrote a history of his
campaigns, which was extant at a very late period in the ancient world.
What an inestimable treasure would the journal of the private thoughts
of such a man have been! Modern times have no more irreparable loss to
mourn.

The just pride and elegant flattery of the French historians has often
led them to compare Napoleon's passage of the Great St Bernard to
Hannibal's passage of the Pennine Alps: but without detracting from the
well-earned fame of the French general, it may safely be affirmed that
his achievement will bear no sort of comparison with that of the
Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from
Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, above the lake of Geneva, he found
the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two
thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for
horsemen and foot passengers, and was daily traversed by great numbers
of both in every season of the year. Comfortable villages, on the ascent
and the descent, afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers
both by night and by day; the ample stores of the monks at the summit,
and the provident foresight of the French generals, had provided a meal
to every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their
passage: the guns were drawn up in sledges made of hollowed firs; and in
four days from the time that they began the ascent from the banks of the
Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria
Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the
gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very
different, when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the
banks of the Po. The mountain sides, not yet cleared by centuries of
laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every
hollow by headlong Alpine torrents; bridges there were none to cross
these perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times
in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been
hid by the affrighted inhabitants on the approach of the invaders; and a
powerful army of mountaineers occupied th