m the ensuing narrative of Count Segur,[128] who was one of
the generals in that army, an officer of the imperial staff, and an
eye-witness of what he describes.[129]

His faithful history of that terrible disaster must necessarily be
painful. It is in most respects the very opposite of Xenophon's account
of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, which precedes it. But the reader
should reflect that the dark and sorrowful scenes of history may have
lessons as salutary as the brighter ones; and that the story of a great
failure, involving the ruin and death of thousands, may be as
instructive and as helpful as the story of a great success. In
Xenophon's case, we have the spectacle of a man of more than ordinary
ability, stimulated by difficulty and peril until he rises to real
greatness of achievement. In Napoleon's career we see a naturally "great
mind dragged to ruin by its own faults"; but such a man could not fall
alone, and it was inevitable that a multitude should suffer with him and
for him.

D. H. M.

NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.

Sec. 1. Description of Moscow; arrival of the Czar.

The ancient capital of Russia, appropriately denominated by its poets
"_Moscow[130] with the gilded cupolas_," was a vast and fantastic
assemblage of two hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred
palaces, with their gardens and dependencies. These larger mansions of
brick, and their parks, intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even
thatched cottages, were spread over several square leagues of irregular
ground. They were grouped round the Kremlin, a lofty triangular
fortress. The vast double enclosure in which this was situated was about
two miles in circuit. It contained, first, several palaces, some
churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots, and secondly, a prodigious
bazaar,--the town of the merchants and shopkeepers,--where was displayed
the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.

These palaces, these edifices, nay, the very shops themselves, were all
covered with burnished and painted iron. The churches, each surmounted
by a balcony and several steeples, terminating in golden balls, then the
crescent, and lastly the cross, reminded the spectator of the history of
this nation: it was Asia and its religion, at first victorious,
subsequently vanquished, so that finally the cross of Christ surmounted
the crescent of Mohammed.

A ray of sunshine caused this splendid city to glisten with a thous