no other object than that of pointing a moral, or adorning a tale! No, Major Lee, the name of Napoleon is not more glorious than that of Scott, unless the abuse of genius be more glorious than its use. "Genius and Art, ambition's boasted wings, Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid! Assist our flight, fame's flight is glory's fall. The remarks in which we have indulged, are by no means irrelevant: for the object of the volume before us seems to be quite as much the vilification of Scott, as the biography of Napoleon. It comprises five hundred and eighty-five pages, of which more than a half are accorded to an appendix, devoted mainly to the former purpose. Making allowance, indeed, for the difference in the type, the history embraces, perhaps, not so much as a third of the matter, though the whole is but a rivulet of text running through a broad meadow of margin. No inaccuracy of Sir Walter, however trivial, escapes the clutches of the author, or is ascribed to aught save the most malignant or paltry desire of misrepresentation, until the reader becomes as wearied with the minuteness and insignificance of the details, as displeased with the uncompromising tone of the censure. But if Major Lee has proved his ability in depreciating, he has also furnished conclusive evidence that he possesses at least equal faculties in the way of panegyric. The book is a perfect apotheosis of its subject-a resolute glorification from beginning to end, not only of the warrior, but the man. Scarce a virtue under heaven can be named, military, civil, or private, which is not vehemently attributed to the impeccable hero. Whilst his deeds are emblazoned as superhuman, the motives of them are paraded as worthily in unison, by their exalted, etherial character. No idea of self ever entered into his calculations —no! it was "intense patriotism which animated his whole life; which warmed his boyish indignation; directed his youthful studies; inspired his greatest actions; and sanctified the dignity of his last request"—which being doubtless the case, the less intense patriotism there is in the world, the better. All the blood, too, which his intense patriotism constrained him to shed, appears to have rendered him an object of much deeper commiseration than the persons from whose veins it gushed-" instinct with heroic fire, his soul shuddered at scenes of cruelty and murder." Unfortunate Napoleon! Sympathizing Major Lee! As an evidence of his abhorrence of murder, and freedom from all other frailties, the following anecdote may be cited from our author's text: "But his time was not altogether engrossed by the toils of war or the rude grandeur of mountain prospects. Scenes less inclement and softer contests occasionally engaged him. Among the members of the convention in attendance on the army of Italy, was M. Thurreau—a gentleman whose personal insignificance in the deputation, was redeemed by the wit and beauty of his wife. This lady was not insensible to the merit, nor unkind to the devotion of the young general of artillery, who proud of his success, ventured to manifest his adoration, by ordering for her amusement, as they walked out on the great theatre of the Alps, an attack of the advance posts stationed below them. "The French party was victorious, but they lost some of their number, and as the affair could lead to no result, it was in every sense of the term a 'wanton sacrifice of brave men's lives. In his youth, his infatuation, and the compunction with which he remembered and confessed this criminal folly, indulgent readers may find some excuse for it. The incident is worthy of being recorded, because the faults of such a man are sacred to history, and because the intimacy out of which it sprung was the means probably of saving his life." How the lover must have "shuddered" at being obliged to give this manifestation of his intense patriotism for the amusement of his mistress! "Criminal folly" in a hero, it is worthy of remark, means, according to our author's dictionary, adultery and wholesale slaughter in a common man. We live to learn. This was not the first time, by the way, that Napoleon was caught in the toils of the blind god, though the previous instance was not quite so much in keeping with his usual purity. Whilst in garrison at Valence in Dauphiny, he had been smitten with the charms of a Mademoiselle Colombier, and having engaged her affections, the two “met one morning by day break in an orchard, where their passionate indulgence consisted in eating cherries together!" The loves of Francesca da Rimini and her swain, fade into insignificance before the attachment of this tender couple. Had they lived prior to the time of Dante, Mademoiselle Colombier would doubtless chiefly have claimed the poet's compassion and attention to her melancholy tale of guilt, as he passed through the città dolente, and been immortalized in his verse instead of the unfortunate Italian! Two lovers indulging their affection by a repast upon cherries! Horrible! Besides his patriotism, aversion to blood, and chastity, "had Bonaparte cultivated rhetoric, he would have rivaled the greatest masters of eloquence.” His veracity also, maugre the proverbial phrase-tu ments comme un bulletin de l'empereur—is as pertinaciously vindicated as his other virtues. To uphold it, our author has the cruelty, to use the mildest term, even to enter into an elaborate argument, more remarkable for coarseness than strength, in support of the aspersion cast upon the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, that she was frightened from the arms of a paramour by the attack of the Paris mob upon the palace of Versailles, because the charge had been propagated by Napoleon. Now this monotonous strain of panegyric is not history, and if it be continued throughout the remaining volumes, as we fear is more than probable, the desideratum, in the words of Mr. Lee, of “an impartial and accurate biography of the Emperor Napoleon," will not be supplied by his production. It might be excusable in an oraison funebre, where it is understood to be a sort of duty to pour whole vials of sweetest perfume upon the memory of the deceased without any commixture of acid; but such a proceeding in a work aspiring to historical sobriety and dignity, immediately awakens suspicion, and injures the effect of even the merited encomium it may contain. The merely narrative portions of Mr. Lee's volume are by far the best. He fully sustains in them the reputation he has earned of being one of the most spirited and vigorous writers of the day. His military acquirements impart a satisfactory clearness to his relations of battles and campaigns, whilst the con amore spirit with which he tells them, arouses a corresponding sentiment in the bosom of the reader. He here exchanges, moreover, the measured march of his style in other parts, for a quick step, if we may so speak, more in harmony with the rapid movements par ticularly of Napoleon's warfare. We may quote his account of the victory over the sections of Paris as a fair sample. "While these vain discussions were prolonged, Lafond, at the head of a column of the insurgents who had intimidated Menou, marched about half-past two o'clock from the section Lepelletier to the bridge called Pont Neuf. At the same time, another column from the place de l'Odéon, approached in the opposite direction, and formed in the place Dauphine, at the south end of the bridge. General Cartaux, Bonaparte's former commander at Toulon, had been stationed at this bridge with four hundred men and four pieces of artillery, and with orders to defend both ends of it. But unwilling to come to blows, he retired down the quay to the railing of the Louvre, and allowed Lafond, without obstruction, to join in triumph his friends, in the place Dauphine. The insurgents, at the same time, took possession of the jardin des Infants, and occupied, in force, the front and steps of the church of St. Roch, the theatre Français, and the hotel de Noailles, so as to hold possession of the Palais Royal, and the great street of St. Honoré, and to close in upon the posts of Bonaparte as nearly as possible. Women were sent forward, at all points, to tempt the men from their colours, and even the popular leaders themselves advanced, with flourishing and fraternal gestures, in the hope of corrupting them. "Thus the day was passing away, one side threatening to attack, the other resolved on defence, when about half-past three in the afternoon, the rebel commanders, apprized of the state of feeling in the mass of the nation and the ranks of the army, saw the necessity of precipitating matters. To cover their violence with the respectability of peaceful forms, and probably in hopes of overawing the convention, they summoned the government by a flag of truce, to remove the troops whose presence menaced the good citizens of Paris, and to disarm the men of terror as they denominated the volunteers, who were arrayed against them. Their herald was conducted blindfolded to Bonaparte, by whom he was introduced to the executive committee, as to the council of a besieged garrison. His threatening language agitated them sensibly, but did not overcome their resolution. The shades of evening were now approaching, and parties of the insurgents had glided from house to house, so as to get into windows within gun shot of the Tuileries. Bonaparte, with a view of strengthening his reserve, had eight hundred muskets and a supply of cartridges, conveyed to the hall of the convention; a measure which although it alarmed some of the members, by showing them the full extent of the danger, committed all irretrievably in the contest, and enabled the resolute in case of need, to give the modern Gauls a warmer reception, than their ancestors had experienced from the senate of Rome. "About half past four, when an orderly dragoon had been already shot in the street St. Honoré, and a woman wounded on the steps of the Tuileries; and when the head of Lafond's column was seen approaching the Tuileries on the opposite side of the river, Bonaparte determined to put forth his strength. Sending orders to his posts on the Seine, to open a fire of artillery on Lafond, he hastened to the street Dauphin, where one of his detachments was menaced by a large body of the national guard, drawn up in front and on the steps of the church of St. Roch, and preparing to force their way to the Tuileries. To run forward his pieces, and pour upon this party repeated discharges of grape shot; to drive them with general Berruyer's volunteers from the front and steps of the church into its body; and then, pointing his cannon up and down the street, to clear that important avenue of the enemy, was the work of a few minutes. Leaving that post and a very guarded pursuit, in charge of an approved officer, he galloped to the river. Danican and Maulevrier had united themselves by this time with Lafond, and they were all three, with about seven thousand men, advancing in close column and at the charging step, along the quay upon the Pont Royal, which, emboldened by Cartaux's indecision at the other bridge, they hoped by one determined effort to carry. With the battery at the Louvre, that at the Pont Royal, and with pieces planted at intermediate points along the quay of the Tuileries, Bonaparte directed a rapid discharge of grape shot on the front, flank, and rear, of this dense mass. The effect was of course murderous. The insurgents showed no want of courage, and though they several times wavered and broke, were as often rallied. Lafond proved himself a hero. Remembering the weakness of Menou, and impelled by his own fierce valour, he collected his bravest followers, and while his main body fired from the quay, twice threw himself upon the bridge, attempting to seize the guns and force the pass by a headlong charge. But Bonaparte was there in person, and twice repelled him by volleys of grape and musketry. The undaunted zealot, who had been a subaltern in the royal guard, rushed a third time to the charge, and desisted not till the fire of his adversary had by death or terror destroyed his column. At this point and at the church of St. Roch, the loss on both sides was considerable. At six o'clock, the insurgents, after an action of an hour and a half, were defeated in all their attacks, and their cannon sent from St. Germain being intercepted, had lost all hope. Bonaparte in taking in his turn the offensive, with a sentiment like that of Cæsar at Pharsalia, ordered blank cartridges only to be fired, justly inferring, that, when such crowds, after the indulgence of confidence and a desperate exertion of courage, were once put to flight, the sound of a gun would keep up their panic. This forbearance saved many lives. During the night he cleared the streets of barricades, patroled the rue Royale and the Boulevards, dislodged a party from the church St. Roch, and surrounded with detachments of infantry and artillery another party in the Palais Royal. The next day it was easily dispersed, as was a body who had collected in the convent at the head of the rue Vivienne. By noon on the 5th of October, the insurrection was suppressed, and tranquillity perfectly restored. The killed and wounded, of which rather the smaller number belonged to the troops of the convention, amounted to between four and five hundred. Bonaparte had a horse shot under him. The deputies Sieyes, Louvet, and Fréron behaved with remarkable firmness." In general, the evidence of the lime labor in his style is not to our taste. It is artificial in the extreme, as if every word had been weighed before location, and every period scanned. It might be described in his own characteristic phrase, respecting the national festival for the capture of Toulon, as a style "of careful ostentation and elaborate pomp." The reader feels constantly tempted to repeat to him the request of the judge in the "Plaideurs" to the oratorical l'Intimé de votre ton, Monsieur, adoucissez l'éclat. "To soar sublime upon the seraph wings of ecstacy," is an attempt which he oftener makes than accomplishes, though it cannot be denied that at times he is happy in his rhetoric. The industry and research which his volume exhibits are also justly entitled to praise. As to his apology for the atrocities of the French Revolution (p. 52), we must allow him to settle that matter with his conscience. AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. XXXIV. JUNE, 1835. ART. I.-NATIONAL MUSIC. 1-Recueil de Ranz-des-Vaches et Chansons nationales de la Suisse. Quatrième edition, revue et augmentée. Berne. 4to. 2.-Texte zu der Sammlung Schweizer Kuhreihen, und Volksliedern. Von JOH. RUD. Wyss, Professor. Bern. pp. 152. 12mo. WHETHER, as St. Thomas Aquinas supposed, music was given by inspiration to the first human pair; or whether, as Lucretius imagines, men became proficient when they were led "liquidas avium voces imitarier ore;" one thing is certain, that wherever we discern any advance towards civilization, we find men to have rejoiced and lamented in song. And the further back we go, the more are we astounded by the effects attributed to this potent art. The influence of the Ranz-des-Vaches upon the expatriated Swiss, is proverbial; but this is nothing when compared with the feats of Orpheus and Amphion. We read in Plutarch, that Antigenides, by the use of the Harpatian mode, so wrought upon Alexander the Great, that the monarch leaped, sword in hand, upon his comrades. Terpander modulated the discordant Lacedemonians into unity. The Arcadians were civilized by music. And to come to later times, Ericus, king of Denmark, about 1130, on hearing a musician, was driven to fall upon his attendants, of whom he slew a goodly number; and the harping of Claude le Jeune threw the inflammable Duc de Joyeuse into such a phrenzy, that he swore he must fight with some one of the company. Were we to say more, we should remind our readers of Cornelius, in the exquisite satire of Arbuthnot and Pope: "How can you dignify, (quoth he,) this modern fiddling with the name of music? Will any of VOL. XVII.-NO. 34. 34 |