shall at length meet with such reprobation at the hands of the said an gels as shall lead one to believe that they are not quite angels. PROPOSITION I. To secure an aristocratic partner by the help of a given (finite) number of charms. Let a talent for dancing A, and a pair of fine eyes B, be the given finite num ber of charms. Let D be the aris tocratic partner. It is required to secure D with AB. Then with your captive D, and to the tune Then since it has been shown that your fine eyes B have had a great effect on the old gentleman C, much greater will be their effect on D; and with your charms AB you will have secured an aristocratic partner D. ACCORDING to the San Francisco Courier | such that they toss about the largest vessels the great glacier of Alaska is moving at the rate of a quarter of a mile per annum. The front presents a wall of ice five hundred feet in thickness; its breadth varies from three to ten miles, and its length is about one hundred and fifty miles. Almost every quarter of an hour hundreds of tons of ice in large blocks fall into the sea, which they agitate in the most violent manner. The waves are said to be which approach the glacier as if they were small boats. The ice is extremely pure and dazzling to the eye; it has tints of the lightest blue as well as of the deepest indigo. The top is very rough and broken, forming small hills, and even chains of mountains in miniature. This immense mass of ice, said to be more than an average of a thousand feet thick, advances daily towards the sea. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The National Review. thing of his life, I had studied, until I could almost repeat them by heart, the more famous passages of his writings; and, as no historical writer was ever less impersonal, I felt that I knew him as well as any of those old friends who are always the same to us as we listen to their still yet moving voices. But when I came to read his letters, and to see how he bore himself in the mess-room and on the battle-field, in the bosom of his family and, at last, on his sick-bed, I felt for him that love which all of us to whom the past is real have felt for our heroes among the illustrious dead, and which makes us hope against hope that hereafter we may be allowed to converse with them and to see them face to face. And I was sure that, if I could succeed in drawing his portrait, even in outline, with some approach to fidelity, I should make others feel that they also had found a new friend. SOME five-and-twenty years ago, the name of Sir William Napier was, to the people of this country, a household word. Hardly a week passed in which the readers of the Times did not light upon some letter bearing his signature, and written in a style of which the passionate sincerity, the strange vehemence, it might be, the overflowing tenderness, could not fail to arrest attention. The fame of his great book was then still fresh. The public knew him as one of the most famous survivors of that band of officers who had helped Wellington to drive the French out of the Peninsula; and many were still alive who could tell how nobly he had shared in making the history which he afterwards so truly told. A few heroworshippers, who saw him from day to day, as he drove his ponies in the neighborhood of Clapham, and gazed upon his Both the parents of William Napier massive form and his eagle face, with its were persons of noble birth and of rehalf-fierce, half-tender glance and its halo markable personal gifts. His father, of snow-white hair, might picture to them- Colonel the Honorable George Napier, selves how he had looked when, half a was descended from the inventor of logacentury before, he had bounded up the rithms and from, the great Montrose. He rocks overhanging the Nivelle, and clam- was endowed with gigantic bodily strength bered, the foremost man, over the wall of and corresponding force of character; but the fortress of La Rhune. But now his he seems to have been one of those men glory is becoming dim. His "History" who, from whatever cause, fail to win a was not written for all time; and, with the general reputation at all commensurate exception of a few students of military with the opinion formed of them by the affairs and a few lovers of good literature, most discerning of their friends. One of the readers of our generation know it only the most striking features of his charac by those isolated passages in which chron- ter was a disinterestedness which someicle rises to the sublimity of epic poetry. times showed itself in a manner that, to He was not a great general, though he his contemporaries in those days of coroften allowed himself to fancy that, under ruption, must have seemed Quixotic. For happier circumstances, he too, like his example, by abolishing a system of fees brother Charles, might have led armies to which he regarded as unjust, he voluntavictory. Moreover, his biography was so rily reduced the emoluments of an office poorly written that, after the curiosity that to which he was appointed in Ireland from had demanded it had died out, it could £20,000 to £600 a year. Left a widower not survive to attract the interest of future | at a very early age, he had afterwards readers. Nevertheless, of William Napier tradition will long have something to say; for, though he was not a great warrior, he was an almost ideal type of the military character, and, besides, he was endowed with a genius which, if somewhat narrow, was genuine and rare. Before I knew any married the famous Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, and great-granddaughter of Charles the Second. This lady was eight years older than her husband; but she still retained much of that beauty which, nearly twenty years before, had captivated the heart of George the Third; and the in tense affection which her sons felt towards | old nurse and a butler, for both of whom her may be regarded as an indication that her nature was as beautiful as her outward form. William Francis Patrick Napier, the third son of this marriage, was born at Celbridge, a small town on the Liffey, near Dublin, on the 17th of December, 1785. Among the great writers of our country, hardly any has owed less than he to regular education. He attended, as a day boy, a large school in his native town, the master of which appears to have been totally unfit for the profession of teaching. Nevertheless, the time which he passed here was not wholly wasted. Idle as he was, he eagerly read, and he remembered, all the romances, the histories, and the poems that he could obtain. The circumstances of his life tended, not less than his reading, to strengthen his adventurous instincts. Symptoms of the rebellion of 1798 had already begun to appear; and William's eldest brother Charles, who, though a military officer of two years' standing, was still his schoolfellow, had persuaded the boys to enrol themselves as volunteers in support of the government. One day William was insubordinate on parade. Charles at once ordered him to be seized and tried by a drum-head court-martial. The court found him guilty; but he refused to accept the sentence. Thereupon the youthful commander ordered him to be drummed out of the corps. With loud shouts the boys thronged round William, who furiously hurled his marbles among them, rushed upon the drummer, smashed the drum, and challenged the foremost of his assailants, who was much bigger than himself, to fight. In the struggle which ensued William was soon beaten; but, as he would not give in, the hearts of his comrades warmed towards him, and they voted that he should be allowed to rejoin the corps. Nor was his early knowledge of warfare derived only from the experience of school. One night, in the absence of his father, the house in which he lived was surrounded by several hundred rebels, who demanded that the arms which it contained should be given up to them; but a brave the children had an ardent affection, met the demand with defiance, and stood at bay until succor arrived. When the rebellion broke out, the colonel fortified his house, and armed his five boys; and so great was the awe which he inspired, that the little citadel, though often threatened, was never attacked. Amid such stormy scenes, however, William found plenty of opportunities for the ordinary amusements of boyhood. He was constantly getting into scrapes, in company with a poacher of whom he was very fond. Lady Londonderry, a beautiful young woman, who was very intimate with his family, begged him off whenever his father threatened to punish him; and she prophesied that, though he hated his lessons, he would do something great when he was a man. At the age of fourteen William left school to enter his father's profession. It was fortunate for him that he had not to pass an examination; for he would have had less chance of doing so than the youngest child in a modern infant school. Hardly a line in his letters was free from mistakes in spelling; and punctuation was a refinement of which he had not so much as an idea. But he had not suffered from over-pressure; his mind, following nature's prescription, had devoured and assimilated the food that suited it; and he had fought and played and run till his body had become vigorous and active as that of a young lion. Indeed, it may be said of him, as of other distinguished men whose early want of education their biographers have deplored, that he had learned what fitted him best for the work which he had to do. After passing through two regiments, he was presented by his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, with a cornetcy in the Blues, and went to Canterbary to join that regiment. But something better was in store for him. General John Moore, who was then at Shorncliffe, training the brigade which he was to make famous, offered him a lieutenancy in the 52nd Regiment. Napier accepted the offer; and Moore was so delighted with the readiness with which he gave up the high pay of the Household Brigade and the pleasures of London in order to study his pro |