draw it, the grasp of Botello was upon his throat, and he was hurled to the bottom of the boat. With a shout, the other Moors seized the boat-hooks and stretchers, and rushed upon Botello; but Juan and Alfonzo were upon the alert, and, drawing their long daggers, rushed to his defense. Never was there a more desperate conflict than on that star-light night, in that frail boat, that floated, a feeble, solitary speck of humanity, on the bosom of the vast Indian sea. The conflict was desperate, but it was soon over. The Portuguese of those days were other men than their degenerate descendants of the present age; and, beside, the slaves were overmatched both in arms and numbers. Three were slain outright, and the fourth driven overboard. One of the Portuguese servants was killed-thus diminishing the number of the voyagers more than one-half; a lucky circumstance, without which, most probably, the whole would have perished. For a week longer the little bark stood on its course, when a violent storm threatened a melancholy termination to the voyage. The wind, however, was accompanied by rain, and Botello kept up the spirits of his friends by attributing the storm to St. Francis, who had sent it expressly to save them from dying of thirst. It would have been perhaps more easy to believe in the saint's agency in the matter, had there been less wind; for, in addition to the danger of being ingulfed by the heavy sea, their clothing, which they spread to collect the rain, was so deluged with salt spray as to make the water exceedingly brackish. Bad as it was, however, it served to maintain life until they reached a little rocky, uninhabited island in the channel of Mozambique. It was with some difficulty that a landing-place was found. Upon ascending the rocks, a few scattered palms exhibited the only appearance of vegetation. Their chief necessity-fresh water-however, was found in abundance, standing in the hollows of the rocky surface, where it had been deposited by the recent storm. Several kinds of wild-fowl showed themselves in abundance, and so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught without any trouble; while crowding the little sandy inlets were thousands of the finest turtle. At this spot Botello and his companions rested for a week; which was spent in caulking and repairing their boat and sail, drying and salting the flesh of fowl and turtle, and in filling every available vessel with the precious fluid so liberally furnished by their patron St. Francis. A succession of storms followed their departure, and tossed them about here and there for so many days that their reckoning became exceedingly confused. Botello, however, was an accomplished navigator, and his sailor instinct stood him in good stead. Upon returning fair weather, he conjectured that he was abreast of Cape Corrientes, and the bow of the boat was directed due east, for the African coast. Calms followed storms. The oars were got out, and day after day the clumsy boat was pulled through the long rolling swell of the glassy sea. Still no sight of land. Their provisions were getting short again, their water was reduced to the lowest possible allowance, and the labor of the oar was rapidly exhausting their strength. The image of St. Francis was hourly appealed to. Sometimes his aid was implòred in most humble prayers-sometimes demanded with the wildest imprecations and threats. One day, Botello seized the little St. Francis, and, whirling him on high, threatened to throw him into the sea, unless he instantly granted a sight of land; no land showed itself, but the saint was reverentially replaced in his box. But he was not to rest there long in quiet. The next day the ingenious Botello announced to his sinking companions that he had a plan to compel the saint to terms. The image was produced from its box, a cord was fastened around its neck, and then thrown overboard. Down went his leaden saintship into the depths of the ocean. "And there he shall remain," exclaimed Botello," until he sends us land or rain!" An hour had not expired when a faint bluish haze in the eastern horizon attracted all eyes. A favorable breeze springing up, the sail was hoisted, and as the boat moved under its influence, the haze grew in consistency and size. Land was in sight. The land proved to be a point in Lagoa Bay-a familiar object to Botello. Upon going ashore, a party of natives received him, with whom friendly relations were soon established, and from whom provisions and water were readily obtained. A few days served to recruit the exhausted strength of the party, when, taking again to their boat, they coasted along the shore, landing at frequent intervals, sea, the shores of Morocco were cautiousuntil they reached the dreaded Cape of ly coasted. Without further adventure, Storms, as the southern point of Africa but not without further suffering, and labor, was called by its first discoverer, Barthol- and danger, the short remaining distance omew Diaz. was passed. The head of the Straits of Gibraltar-the headlands of Spain-the southern point of Algarve, successively came in sight; and then the smiling mouth of the golden Tagus greeted their longing eyes. The Cape did not belie its reputation. From the summit of Table Mountain, and the surrounding highlands, it sent down a gust that drove the unfortunate voyagers away from the land a long distance to the south-west; and many weary and despairing days were passed before they were able to make the harbor of Saldanha. Here the chief necessity of life-fresh water-was found in abundance, and a supply of provisions obtained, consisting chiefly of the dried flesh of seals, with which the harbor was filled. A few orange and lemon-trees, planted by the early Portuguese discoverers, were loaded with fruit, and afforded a grateful and effectual means of removing the symptoms of scurvy which were beginning to appear. Saldanha being then a resting-place for the outward-bound Portuguese fleets, Botello made his stay as short as possible, lest he should be intercepted and turned back by some newly-appointed and jealous viceroy. For the same reason he avoided several points on the coast of Western Africa, where his countrymen had stationskeeping well out to sea and from the mouth of the Congo, and steering a direct course across the Gulf of Guinea. He knew that if a Portuguese admiral had sailed at the appointed time, he must be somewhere in that Gulf, and that his tall barks would hug the shore, creeping from headland to headland slowly and cautiously. The energetic Botello and his companions had encountered too many dangers to be frightened at the perils of a run across the Gulf, and the resolution was adopted to give the Portuguese fleet, by the aid of St. Francis, the go-by in the open sea. The run was successfully achieved; not, however, without many weary days at the oar, and many an appeal to St. Francis for favoring winds, and for aid in the sudden tornadoes which frequently threatened to ingulf them. Cape de Verd was reached; the barren shore of the Great Desert was passed, with but a single stoppage in the Rio del Ouro-a slender arm of the sea setting up a few miles into the sands of Sahara. Here a few dates and some barley cakes were purchased of a family of wandering Arabs; and again putting to And thus was happily finished this wonderful voyage-a voyage which, if performed in the present day, with all the appliances of navigation, would excite the admiration of the world. The presence of Botello was soon known to his friends; and the rumor spread through the city that an Indian fleet had arrived off the mouth of the Tagus. It reached the court, so that upon his application for an audience of the king, he found no detention except from the curiosity of the courtiers and ministers; which, however, he resolutely refused to satisfy, until he had communicated his news to the royal ear. Botello exhibited his copy of the convention with Badur, King of Cambaya, and the plans of the fort which was being erected at Diu, and related the history of his adventurous voyage. King John freely expressed his astonishment and delight, and, calling around him the members of his household, familiarly questioned Botello as to all the little details of his voyage. WHY FLIES CAN WALK ON THE CEILING."The phenomena," says Dr. Lardner, "which are vulgarly called suction, are merely the effects of atmospheric pressure. If a piece of moist leather be placed in close contact with a heavy body having a smooth surface, such as a stone or a piece of metal, it will adhere to it; and if a cord be attached to the leather, the stone or metal may be raised by it. This effect arises from the exclusion of the air between the leather and the stone. The weight of the atmosphere presses their surfaces together with a force amounting to fifteen pounds on a square inch of the surface of contact. The power of flies to walk on ceilings and other similar surfaces, in doing which the gravity of their bodies appears to have no effect, is explained upon the same principle. Their feet are provided with an apparatus similar exactly to a leather sucker applied to a stone." RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YOUTH OF NAPOLEON. THE public acts of the life of Napoleon be forgotten. The transactions of his secret policy are preserved in the archives of every court in Europe, and must, sooner or later, be equally well known. As to the incidents of his private life, we find in the memoirs published by different persons attached to the person of the Emperor, or written under his own eye at St. Helena, a multitude of anecdotes, more or less authentic, which give, up to a certain point, some insight into his character and habits. All these recollections, however, relate to the more brilliant epochs of his life, but scarcely, if at all, touch upon the history of his early youth; and up to a long time after his death, the world was still in ignorance of all that pertained to his mental training-to the formation of his intellectual powers. We were shown him in the full development of his genius; he was depicted as general, first consul, and emperor; and placed before us now in the imperial purple-now in his ocean prison. His course was traced for us from the moment when the eagle took his first flight upward at Toulon, to that in which he was chained to the island rock; but we had not been told how those pinions were trained for such lofty soaring. Napoleon himself seemed to have been very reserved on this point, and, with the exception of a few college anecdotes, and some vague intimations, we were left, up to a very late period, with scarcely any light upon all that preceded his elevation, or could account for it. And yet, what more interesting problem than the formation of such a character as Napoleon's? How did he employ the years when he was only lieutenant of artillery? how prepare for his high destiny? By what means were developed that extraordinary character that marvelous intellect? Were those intellectual heights attained by one single spring of a genius submitting to no restraint, needing none of the ordinary aids? or was that genius directed by an iron will, and supported by that steady and persevering diligence which is its natural ally, and, in all its highest creations, its indispensable fellow-worker and inseparable companion? But to these questions we have been left without an answer for twenty years after the death of Napoleon, when the want was supplied, and in the only way it could be supplied-almost all those who knew having gone to the grave-by himself. It was during his consulship that the idea occurred to Napoleon, who, to use his own words at St. Helena, "saw himself already in history," of putting into safe-keeping all the papers relating to his early youth. He placed them in a large official dispatch-box, labeled "Correspondence with the First Consul;" and drawing his pen over these words he wrote: "To be forwarded to Cardinal Fesch." This box, corded and sealed with the cardinal's crest, passed through the empire, and the restoration, and through many hands, with the seals still unbroken, till about nine years ago, when for the first time it was opened, and the nature of its contents discovered. These documents were divided into two classes-the first comprising the corre spondence and the biographical details; and the second, some original compositions of Napoleon, with thoughts, notes, and passages, extracted from and suggested by different works. To give some idea of the number of those documents, (all either autographs or copies, with corrections and annotations by the author) it is sufficient to say that without reckoning these copies, and a crowd of detached pieces, there were in this box thirty-eight commonplace books wholly in Napoleon's own hand. The greater number of these books are dated, and contain all that he wrote, from the year 1786 to 1793. In them he seems to have found a vent for all the thoughts, opinions, and feelings, which his taciturn disposition and somber gloom prevented his communicating to his companions. This gloom and reserve ought not to be matter of surprise; for he himself tells us, in a kind of biographical and chronological notice of his early life, that he left his home at nine years old, and did not return to Corsica till he was seventeen-an isolation which, while it doubtless strengthened his character, must yet have tended to embitter it. It will not be uninteresting to note, that in all these papers we find no complaint of his poverty, though, in order to meet the educational expenses of his brother Louis, he was obliged to dress his own dinner. It is not our intention to dwell upon the biographical notices; our object being to point attention to the numerous evidences of his arduous study and persevering diligence, affording a useful lesson, which we would commend to the consideration of those who, feeling within them a certain excitement, regard it—and it may be justly as the token of mental power, but forget that it is as surely an evidence of power needing the strengthening and discipline of order and systematic study; and who, therefore, require to be reminded that diligence and self-control are the crowning attributes of genius. Napoleon no more attained his greatness by fits and starts-of a genius however extraordinary-than he made his way over the Alps by a sudden flight. In both cases the road was opened by labor, toil, and endurance. must suffice. None but a young man, and a young Frenchman too, especially of that day, can estimate the difficulty of resisting the influence of Rousseau's opinions. Yet, notwithstanding this universal and scarcely disputed ascendancy; notwithstanding his agreement in many points with the citizen of Geneva, and his admiration for him, Napoleon was far from receiving all his doctrines. In an extract (dated Valence, August 8th, 1791) from the " Discourse on the Origin and Grounds of the Inequality of Men," the young Napoleon wrote at the end of each paragraph: "I do not think so;" "I do not believe a word of all this." We can almost see him snatching up the pen to make his dissent; and then, as if unable to endure the splendid sophistry, he thus writes on:-"I do not believe that man has ever been an isolated being, without any desire for intercourse with his fellows, without affection, without feeling. . . Why do we suppose that men in a state of nature eat? Simply because there never was an instance of a man's existing in any other way. By parity of reason has had the same faculties of reasoning, the same affections which he now has, and he must have used them, for we have no instance of the existence of man who has not used them. To feel is a want of the heart, as to eat is of the body. To feel is to attach ourselves-is to love. Man must know pity, friendship, and love; thence flow gratitude, veneration, respect. If it could have been otherwise, then the statement would be true, that feeling and reason are not inherent in man, but only the fruit of civilization-of society; then would there be no natural affection, no natural reason, no duty, no virtue, no conscience. No conscience? It is not the citizen of Geneva who will tell us this!" His selection of works and his extracts from them are alike remarkable. First, we perceive a restless curiosity throwing itself into all subjects without any determinate object. He reads Buffon, occupies himself with natural history, natural philosophy, and medicine. He studies geog-ing, I think that man in a state of nature raphy and ancient history, especially that of Greece. He cites Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus; but, strange to say, the name of Plutarch, the teacher at whose feet so many illustrious men have sat, and which has been so often said to have been Napoleon's favorite study, is not once mentioned. He next turned successively to the history of China, of India and Arabia, of England and Germany, and then applied himself to French history, first in a general view, and afterward in detail. He examines the resources, the revenue, the legislation, of France, and studies carefully the rights of the Gallican Church; and the three books filled with notes, written at eighteen, on the subject of the Sorbonne and the bull Unigenitus, and the religion of the State, at once anticipate and account for the Concordat. His object seemed rather to gain a knowledge of historical facts than to form a system from them. He soon directs his attention to the moral sciences; engages in the study of political economy and legislation; reads Filangieri, Mably, Necker, Smith, and takes extracts, often interspersed with critical remarks. The independence of his character is displayed here as in all else. A single instance In this refutation, defective as it is in many respects, the fundamental vice of Rousseau's system is strongly and logically put. It needed to be a Napoleon to criticise so boldly the opinions of a writer who, in 1791, exercised such despotic and universal sway. It is singular that, amid all this studying and copying, Napoleon never learned the grammar of the French language, nor even to spell correctly. His writing, it is well known, was almost illegible, and he was aware of it himself. Immediately after his accession to the imperial throne, a somewhat shabbily-dressed man gained access to him. "Who are you?" asked Napoleon. "Sire, I had the honor of giving lessons in writing to your majesty for fifteen months." "Your pupil does you great credit," replied the Emperor, quickly; "I cannot but congratulate you." And he gave him a pension. His writing, al- | ways hardly legible, soon became a complete short-hand, scarcely half the letters being given that properly belonged to the words. It is asserted that this was done designedly, to conceal his ignorance of orthography, which, as we have said, he could never learn. There is but little trace of mathematical research, all remains of his studies in this way being limited to calculations for the artillery. All this regular and systematic course of reading had a definite object; nothing was done for mere amusement. Ariosto is the only work of imagination he seems to notice, and from which, strange to say, he has some extracts; though several scraps of not very good poetry, scattered through his commonplace books, show that he sometimes liked to try his powers in the more flowery fields of literature. We have also a Corsican romance, entirely in his own handwriting, in which the dagger plays a very principal part; an English historical tale, called The Earl of Essex; and a short eastern story, entitled The Masked Prophet. are re kings in the twelve kingdoms of Europe. There are very few kings that had not deserved to be dethroned." Of all the productions of Napoleon's youth, the best known is a History of Corsica, which he wished to have had published at Dole, and which was supposed to have been lost. Lucien Bonaparte, in his Memoirs, thus expresses his regret for the loss of this work : "The names of Mirabeau and of Raynal bring me back to Napoleon. Napoleon, while at Ajaccio, during leave of absence, (it was, I think, in 1790,) had composed a History of Corsica; two copies of which I wrote, and the loss of which I much regret. One of these two MSS. was addressed to the Abbé Raynal, with whom my brother had become acquainted on his passage to Marseilles. Raynal thought the work so remarkable that he showed it to Mirabeau, who, when returning it, wrote to Raynal that this little History seemed to him an indication of genius of a firstrate order. Napoleon was enchanted at this opinion of the great orator. I have made many and vain attempts to recover these pieces, which were probably destroyed in the conflagration of our house by Paoli's troops." Lucien was mistaken; the manuscript of this History was not destroyed-it is among the papers committed to Cardinal Fesch, and consists of three large books, not in Napoleon's own hand, but with corrections and annotations by him. The history is in the form of letters addressed to the Abbé Raynal, and, beginning with the most remote period, terminates with the treaty of Coste between the Genoese and the Corsicans in the eighteenth century. The style is animated and fervid, and the whole breathes the most ardent love for Corsica. Indeed, there are many indications in the numerous documents on subjects connected with his native country, that Napoleon was then fully occupied with it, and with it only, and was preparing to play in it the part of Paoli. Among these papers are several harangues and speeches at popular meetings, and on deputations, the prospectus of the Calotte, (a secret society in the army,) and various political notes, in which Napoleon presents himself as an ardent and devoted republican. "The republicans," he says, in one of his speeches, 66 proached and calumniated; nay, it is even asserted that a republic is impossible in France." Farther on is found the plan of a work on royalty. It is somewhat curious to see what Napoleon, then at Auxonne, thought of a monarchy on the It is as remarkable as little to be ex23d of October, 1788. pected, that in writing this History, Na"Dissertation on Kingly Government.-poleon did not confine himself to traditions This work is to begin with a general view of the origin of the name of king, and the progress of its prestige in the minds of men. A military government is favorable to it. The work will then enter into the details of the usurped authority enjoyed by more or less vague; but at a time when erudition was almost proscribed as antiquated stuff, incompatible with the march of intellect, he studied every document that could throw any light upon his subject, and not only cited his authorities, but |