not men, French and other, but ghastly portents, stalking wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods. It must be owned the figure of Napoleon was titanic-especially to the generation that looked on him, and that waited. shuddering to be devoured by him. In general, in that French Revolution, all was on a huge scale; if not greater than anything in human experience, at least more grandiose. All was recorded in bulletins, too, addressed to the shilling-gallery; and there were fellows on the stage with such a breadth of sabre, extent of whiskerage, strength of windpipe, and command of men and gunpowder, as had never been seen before. How they bellowed, stalked and flourished about; counterfeiting Jove's thunder to an amazing degree! Terrific Drawcansir figures, of enormous whiskerage, unlimited command of gunpowder; not without sufficient ferocity, and even a certain heroism, stage-heroism in them; compared with whom, to the shilling-gallery, and frightened excited theatre at large, it seemed as if there had been no generals or sovereigns before; as if Frederick, Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror, and Alexander the Great were not worth speaking of henceforth.

All this, however, in half a century is considerably altered. The Drawcansir equipments getting gradually torn off, the natural size is seen better; translated from the bulletin style into that of fact and history, miracles, even to the shilling-gallery, are not so miraculous. It begins to be apparent that there lived great men before the era of bulletins and Agamemnon. Austerlitz and Wagram shot away more gunpowder,-gunpowder probably in the proportion of ten to one, or a hundred to one: but neither of them was tenth-part such a beating to your enemy as that of Rosbach, brought about by strategic art, human ingenuity and intrepidity, and the loss of 478 men. Leuthen, too, the Battle of Leuthen (though so few English readers ever heard of it) may very well hold up its head beside any victory gained by

Napoleon or another. For the odds were not far from three to one; the soldiers were of not far from equal quality; and only the General was consummately superior, and the defeat a destruction. Napoleon did indeed, by immense expenditure of men and gunpowder, overrun Europe for a time: but Napoleon never, by husbanding and wisely expending his men and gunpowder, defended a little Prussia against all Europe, year after year for seven years long, till Europe had enough, and gave up the enterprise as one it could not manage. So soon as the Drawcansir equipments are well torn off, and the shilling-gallery got to silence, it will be found that there were great Kings before Napoleon, and likewise an Art of War, grounded on veracity and human courage and insight, not upon Drawcansir rodomontade, grandiose Dick-Turpinism, revolutionary madness, and unlimited expenditure of men and gunpowder. "You may paint with a very big brush, and yet not be a great painter," says a satirical friend of mine. This is becoming more and more apparent, as the dust-whirlwind, and huge uproar of the last generation, gradually dies away again. —F. I. 1.

AUGUST THe strong, kING OF POLAND.

FREDERICK AUGUST, the big King of Poland, called by some of his contemporaries August the Great, which epithet they had to change for August der Starke, August the Physically Strong: this August of the three-hundred-and-fifty-four bastards, who was able to break a horse-shoe with his hands, and who lived in this world regardless of expense, he is the individual of this junior-senior Albertine Line,* whom I wish to pause one moment upon: merely with the remark, that if Moritz t had any hand in making him the phenomenon he was, Moritz may well be ashamed of his work. More trans

* Saxony.

Elector of Saxony: "the 'Maurice' known in English Protestant books." Frederick August was his grand-nephew.

cendent king of gluttonous flunkeys seldom trod this lower earth. A miracle to his own century,-to certain of the flunkey species a quasi-celestial miracle, bright with diamonds, with endless mistresses, regardless of expense,―to other men a prodigy, portent and quasi-infernal miracle, awakening insoluble inquiries: Whence this, ye righteous gods, and above all, whither! Poor devil, he was full of good humour too, and had the best of stomachs. A man that had his own troubles withal. His miscellany of mistresses, very pretty some of them, but fools all, would have driven most men mad. You may discern dimly in the flunkey histories, in babbling Pöllnitz and others, what a set they were; what a time he must have had with their jealousies, their sick vapours, megrims, angers and infatuations;-springing, on occasion, out of bed in their shift, like wild-cats, at the throat of him, fixing their mad claws in him, when he merely enters to ask, "How do you do, mon chow?” Some of them, it is confidently said, were his own children. The unspeakably exemplary mortal!

He got his skin well beaten,-cow-hided, as we may say, by Charles XII., the rough Swede, clad mostly in leather. He was coaxed and driven-about by Peter the Great, as Irish post-horses are,-long miles, with a bundle of hay, never to be attained, stuck upon the pole of the coach. He reduced himself to utter bankruptcy. He had got the crown of Poland by pretending to adopt Papistry,—the apostate, and even pseudoapostate; and we may say he has made Protestant Saxony, and his own House first of all, spiritually bankrupt ever since. He died at last, at Warsaw (year 1733), of an old man's foot;' highly composed, eupeptic to the last; busy in scheming out a partition of Poland,—a thing more than once in men's heads, but not to be completed just yet. Adieu to him forever and a day.

-M. The Prinzenraub.

MARECHAL DE SAXE.

ON the authority of Baron d'Espagnac, [Vie du Maréchal de Saxe] I mention one other thing of this Mauritius or Moritz, Maréchal de Saxe; who like his father,* was an immensely strong man. Walking once in the streets of London, he came into a collision with a scavenger, who perhaps had splashed him with his mudshovel, or the like. Scavenger would make no apology; willing to try a round of boxing instead. Moritz grasps him suddenly by the back of the breeches; whirls him aloft in horizontal position; pitches him into his own mudcart, and walks on. A man of much physical strength till his wild ways wasted it all.

He was tall of stature, had black circular eyebrows, black bright eyes,-brightness partly intellectual, partly animal,—oftenest with a smile in them. Undoubtedly a man of unbounded dissoluteness; of much energy, loose native ingenuity; and the worst speller probably ever known. Take this one specimen, the shortest I have, not otherwise the best; specimen achieved, when there had a proposal arisen in the obsequious Académie Française to elect this Maréchal a member. The Maré hal had the sense to decline. Ils veule me fere de la Cadémie, writes he; sela miret com une bage a un chas, meaning probably, Ils veulent me faire de l'Académie; cela m'iroit comme une bague à un chat: They would have me in the Academy; it would suit me as a ring would a cat,' or say, a pair of breeches a cock. Probably he had much skill in war; I cannot judge: his victories were very pretty; but it is to be remembered, he gained them all over the Duke of Cumberland; who was beaten by everybody that tried, and never beat anything, except once some starved Highland peasants at Culloden.

-M. The Prinzenraub.

* The "big King of Poland." His mother was Aurora von Königsmark. He was born at Goslar, Oct. 28, 1696.

NAPOLEON.

A GREAT man is ever, as the Transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea. Napoleon himself, not the superfinest of great men, and ballasted sufficiently with prudences and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear enough, an idea to start with: the idea that Democracy was the Cause of Man, the right and infinite Cause. Accordingly he made himself the armed soldier of Democracy;' and did vindicate it in a rather great manner. Nay, to the very last, he had a kind of idea: that, namely, of La carrière ouverte aux talens, The tools to him that can handle them;' really one of the best ideas yet promulgated on that matter, or rather the one true central idea, towards which all the others, if they tend anywhither, must tend. Unhappily it was in the military province only that Napoleon could realize this idea of his, being forced to fight for himself the while: before he got it tried to any extent in the civil province of things, his head by much victory grew light (no head can stand more than its quantity); and he lost head, as they say, and became a selfish ambitionist and quack, and was hurled out; leaving his idea to be realized, in the civil province of things, by others!

-M. Scott.

MIRABEAU.

WHICH of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have: be their work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's head, fit to be "shaken" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incon