in Austria and Prussia," said the count, "seems to me, the best that can possibly be contrived, for it is a government of law. If Napoleon had had talent enough to combine properly the elements that lay around him in abundance, he could have established a government of this nature that would have been perfect; he might have created an administration that would have combined perfect despotism with perfect freedom."

You are the first person that I ever met with, count, who has ventured to suggest that Napoleon had not talents for every thing,"

greatness of any one, you must judge either by the effects which he wrought, or by his own inherent personal might; by both tests Napoleon is found want. ing. Cromwell transformed for everlasting, the condition of the English people, and the principles of English society; kings came in after him, but the mark of his five fingers is on the government to this day, and will never vanish. Ximenes revolutionized Spain, once and forever; and the modern guerilla glories of the Peninsula attest his genius. These countries passed through the grip of these men like clay through the hands of the potter; the empire passed over France "Of all the persons of whom I have ever read or like a bright cloud over the earth. Where are the heard," said the count, "there is no one for whose results of Napoleon's life? where, the political eviabilities as a ruler and a man of power, I entertain a dence of his existence? The France of Louis Philippe more profound and settled contempt than for those of is the France of Louis Quatorze. Read the histories Napoleon .Buonaparte. He was a great soldier, and of the times of the First and Second James in England, nothing more. At no period of his varied life was he or of Henry and Charles in Spain; and in both inthe master of the circumstances around him-the stances you will say, 'There has been some mighty criterion of greatness-but always their absolute slave. spirit at work in this interval.' Read the annals of the He controlled not the revolution; it began without last five years in France, as a history of a century him, and its elements had been organized without back, and you will detect no moral anachronism. him; it went forward, and he went with it. Vast Napoleon left a few roads and statues; what are these? energies were in dislocated combination, and were to Proofs only of wealth; any rich men might have built work out their jarring course; they did it with him them. He operated on things; they on men; he wrote on their back; they did it as soon, and no sooner, as his name upon the ground; they stamped their likecertainly, and not more regularly than if he had not ness on the nation. If, again, you look at the indivi been there. France, under Napoleon, was like a dual, Napoleon had absolutely no personality. He steam-car thrown from its track, and dashing madly was a name. No man can be great, who has not great through the sand to the nearest precipice: as it goes passions; he had none. Richelieu left on France the on in awful force, for a while, a man stands upon it, furrows of every passion that ever lightened through and vaunts his own power which directs it; it would his breast. The country shook as he breathed. Sketch have gone as well if a child had sat upon the box. his stupendous policy in the form of a portrait, and The government of Napoleon contained within itself you have a colossal image of the man. You feel inalways the elements of inevitable ruin. Every mis-clined to call France, under his administration, Riche take in policy which he could make, he made; while there stood beside him a pale priest, who warned him from every one of them. The true history of the empire is this, that Buonaparte's military fame had raised him to such a height that he was fourteen years in falling to the ground. A merchant may live for years in a state of bankruptcy, and still appear to be solvent. Napoleon's extravagant foreign enterprises were the desperate movements of a dancer on a slackrope, conscious that the moment of pause is the moment of fall: he could not have kept his place, in peace. His triumph was but for the half-hour necessary for his enemies to recover from their surprise. What a contrast between him and Cromwell; who bent, conquered, and crushed circumstances, as if they had been osiers; and lived not, like Napoleon, only till the unavoidable explosion should take place, but lived secure in the confidence that his genius had broken down all danger and established his safety. Napoleon held his power at the sufferance of Talleyrand and Fouché, and a dozen more: they made use of him, not he of them; and when it suited their interest, they dismissed him. Cromwell stood on his own single, all-sufficient strength. Compare Napoleon with Mirabeau, who, instead of floating like a straw upon the whirlwind, waved the tempest into fury with one hand, and stretching forth the other, said, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.' In estimating the

lieu; and to call him France. What all these men did, they did alone; all their great contemporaries opposed them. But take away from the empire some five or six names, and you have nothing left but the pomp and the glitter. Some one asked Mackintosh what de Stael meant when she said that Napoleon was not a man, but a system;'Mass! I don't know,' said sir James.

But she meant wisdom: she meant

that there was in France a confederate system of power, organized by powerful men, at the head of which stood Napoleon, and that, by a political synecdoche, the world has called this system Napoleon.' Certainly, great things were done under the empire; but Bounaparte no more did them, than Shakspeare's wig wrote Othello. The splendor of his military achievements has struck the world blind to his miserable statesmanship; the grandeur of his pacific monuments, which only showed greatness of aspiration and great command of physical means, has been deemed evidence of greatness of intellect, as the swelling robe conceals the mean form behind it. But the very qualities which his victories evinced, unfitted him for statesmanship. He fought his battles on general prin. ciples, and by the aid of grand and comprehensive combinations; whereas politics is essentially a science of detail-a system of particulars-a rule of excep tions. When the history of France under Napoleon is truly written by an independent thinker, it will

exhibit a great national triumph and a contemptible of the former, that by the time that one has reached personal failure."

"The utter failure of both French revolutions," said I, "is a mournful discouragement to the hopes of the philanthropist; yet with these prospects before me, I am still not without hope that great results may yet be accomplished in the political improvement of men. The great impediment in the way of successful change from tyranny to freedom is, that the agitation which necessarily attends the process constantly rouses that ambition which might otherwise have slumbered, and sharpens those qualities of power which might else have been ineffective. But for the sounds of war, Napoleon might have lived and died at Ajaccio, and his spirit might have slept as calmly and as darkly as now reposes its possessor in his wave-swept grave. Still, as in all cases of failure, the causes of failure are evident and were evitable, there yet remains hope that, in some future voyage, the harbor rocks may be avoided, and the smooth river gained. The wreck of one vessel on a sand bar, so far from proving that another will share the same fate, affords a strong presumption that its successor will avoid it; for the danger is made known. Taught by repeated failure, man may at length devise, or guided by accident, may discover, perfect institutions, and these will make perfect men, and the dream of the sanguine may yet wake to fulfilment."

"The perfectibility of things human," said count Mardini," is a true doctrine, but with a circumstance not always observed. The perfection of all things beneath the heaven will be their destruction; for destructiveness, or the disposition to impracticability, becomes in every thing mundane, after a certain point of improvement, an element developing itself with geometric acceleration, while the melioration goes on in arithmetical increase. The good in an institution, a machine, or a character, may now far exceed the opposing tendency to dissolution or unfeasibility, but the augmentive ratio of the latter so far exceeds that

perfection, the other will equal it and nullify the whole. Vague as this assertion may seem to you, it may be proved in physical matters by experi ment, and in moral, by figures. The atheist notion of the ultimate universal perfection of humanity, and the Christian dogma of the final dissolution of terrestriality, so far from contradicting one another, are consistent and identical. At this moment, the institututions of the liberalized sections of Europe are on the point of becoming perfect and impossible. It has happened from the beginning until now-it will happen from now until the end—that men and nations advance nobly into the illuminated temple of Reform, as if led by an angel's hand, and when their hand is just upon the altar, then, as if a demon's eye glared on them, they are paralyzed in an instant, or start back into the darkness and barbarity of threshold times. So invariably has this happened, that it cannot be the occasional effect of falling off, but the essential consequence of going on; in fact, the pit lies at the foot of the altar.

Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling,
But when another rock would crown their work.

But the splendid thinker who wrote those lines-by far the most splendid of our time-errs in imagining that to be the accident of defeat, which, in truth, is the essential consequence of success. Good morning! This, I believe, is the road to Constantinople:" and, turning his horse to the left, the count struck into another road, and I saw no more of him.

A week's ride brought me to Trieste. The faint summer sun was declining through the dreamy mists of the west, when the long, blue line of ocean burst upon my sight. My heart was glad within me when I beheld that glorious image of the infinite and eternal. [To be continued.]

THE KENTUCKY

TRAGEDY.

A TALE-FOUNDED ON FACTS OF ACTUAL OCCURRENCE.

BY MISS MARY E. MACMICHAEL.

can reach.

blue, and the stars look down like the eyes of gentle spirits upon the array of magnificence and beauty. "There stood two beings in the pride of youth; The maid was on the eve of womanhood."

'Tis a calm summer's evening, and very lovely is the view; the sun is setting behind the distant hills, and gilding with its red and glowing light the little river which glides like a silver serpent through the plain, forming various fairy islets in its meandering course; and pleasant it is to watch the humble boat with its red sails glowing in the sun set, as it proceeds | They have sworn eternal constancy. The springing slowly by the luxuriant woods towards the city of night-breeze, and the leaves and the waters, and the which is seen in the distance, far as the eye blue arch of heaven, are the mute witnesses of their plighted troth. There is something, oh how beautiful! in the unreservedness, the unsuspecting trust, with which a woman's heart gives up all its hopes, its affection, its chances of happiness, into the keeping of another. There may be something in the human heart to compensate for the loss of its first fresh feelings; the love given in after years may be the one purified by the ordeal of many changes; or, perchance, the heart does not lean on kindred hearts for happiness or sorrow, when time has drawn it, as it were, out of itself, in the pursuit of honor, or fame, or knowledge. Together, the lovers had looked upon the beautiful sky, the flowery earth, and the dreamy play of waters; and they had kindled visions of roinance, and drawn their plan for years of happiness, the lively, thrilling happiness of youth, unshaded and unsubdued. And they were now to part; and to their eyes the pale light of the moon looked sad as it silvered the deep green of the wood, and seemed to be passing through a misty veil; and so they parted.

On such an evening, in 18-, two figures were seen slowly ascending the hill. They were apparently little alive to the scenery which we have been attempting to portray, for the eyes of both were bent upon the ground. The one, a young man, was tall and athletic in figure, with eyes flashing with animation, and in his open countenance the reckless gayety of youth was blended with an expression of hardihood and manly daring beyond his years. His companion was a girl of unusual freshness and beauty. Her hair was light, and of a glossy hue, and was parted off her lofty and pale forehead, that was smoother than the sea before the wind was born. Her eyes were of as deep and holy a blue as ever painted the heavens, and were filled with that earnest expression of tender ness that subdues the heart on which it falls. She was just on that threshold of time by which the girl steps into womanhood; and in her virgin eyes might be read the troubled spirit of her years, when the young heart, trembling with hope and fear, looks back with joy, and yet regret, and forward with distrust mingled with delight. Beauty breathed in the swelling outline of her form, and passion appeared to dwell in the melting fondness of her looks. The smiles that came and went, calling into life a thou-her-nay more, had sworn to love her. When he spoke sand dimples that played about her rosy mouth and rounded cheek, had now vanished, and the usual laughing slyness and coquetry of her love-lighting eye had changed to an expression of deep tenderness, as with an anxious gaze she followed the downcast looks of her companion.

|

Consumption, that dire foe to all that is lovely, had sent both the parents of Geraldine to an early grave, and she was left upon an unloving world. For several years, Claude de Wilton had filled up every void in her heart. He had walked with her-had rode with

the slightest touch of his hand.

of the depth of his affection, he drank deep delight from the quivering lip and tearful eye with which his words were received. She leaned upon his arm as they strayed through the beautiful woods, and gazed upon his flashing features and speaking eye, when he talked of his passion, till her heart beat painfully at The lovers were overtaken by the fall of night-the sound of his footsteps, and her veins thrilled at not a cloud broke its deep serene; the face of nature was calm and peaceful as the grave. The sweet promises of spring had been realized in the splendid garniture of the earth; and the small pale blossoms that spring up among the meadow grass had given place to the fragrance and glowing hues of summer; it was the very season of love-of the richness and maturity of its passion; when the still air is heavy with incense, and the flowers seem sunk in a luxurious slumber, and the stream passes with a deeper and more musical murmur, and the sky wears a darker

She looked into his eyes, and her secret found a voice; and there were a thousand modes of expres sion which told again and again, a tale which was dear to her heart. Of all the gratifications of life, there is none superior, or holier, than first love.— Where is there a tone that is so irresistible as that breathed by the being whom we adore? It falls like the rich dew of heaven upon the barren plain of the human heart, and brings to light and life the hidden treasures that no lesser power could reveal. In af

M

fection we can repose all our sorrows, all our cares; | riad of brightnesses playing in the light air, and her. self the especial divinity of them all, the glorious sun and centre, from and around which, and for which all those gay appearances were created, and their creator, Love. Claude's letters became colder, and less frequent; but his excuses were always received; she would not think he had deceived her. Geraldine loved. Sumetimes, as she sat watching the sun sink behind the hills, and gray twilight sway its empire, and darkness rendered the objects indistinct, (the time of their meet

her sympathy will lighten their weight, and her voice will dissipate their power, and enable us to effect their dissolution. The height of pleasure may be shared, and the depths of woe made easier. Geral dine enjoyed to its full this delirious happiness; life rolled on, one unbroken stream of brightness; the beautiful charm that binds us to existence had not as yet been broken; the bolt had not yet been hurled But Claude was gone. Then came the anxiety, the life-enduring sorrows of absence, stealing the lightings,) she would sigh, and then smile when it had from the eye, and the buoyancy from the step; the secret pang-the trembling sigh-and thoughts that leave the cheek pale.

passed, and exclaim internally, “Am I not happy in possession of Claude's love!", But the cloud that had so long hung over her happiness was about to burst, and she to awaken to a sense of her condition. Bad news will fly swiftly, and she heard, that he whom she had enshrined in her heart's inmost core as above templation, was forsworn-that he was paying desperate attention to a lady of great wealth in the splen did city whose range for him had so many charms. It had come to her in such a form that she could not doubt-the truth was too palpable-her brain seemed bursting-her temples throbbed with madness-her lips were parched-her heart, which alone maintained its first feelings undiseased, unbroken, was still full of grief.

What a God is memory; to keep in life-to endow with unslumbering vitality beyond that of our own nature with its unconscious company-the things that seem only born for enjoyment-that have no tongues to make themselves felt-and no claim upon it, only as they have ministered, ignorant of their own value, to the taste and necessities of a superior; recollection is like a page on which time has written the history of the affections and the hopes: there traces may not be obliterated. There was the tree under which, in happier hours, she had sat—the lawn, over which, in sweet company, she had oft times gambolled-treasures of the past, that were all her own when nothing of strife was in her fortunes. The wood, the spot, and the skies were there, and the wind, and the murmuring voices from the air that went up to heaven-were all the same-nothing had changed; all was of old, but one ;-the victim suffers-but he recks not of her grief. The bond that linked her in affection had been rudely snapped, but the heart of the maiden still elung to its idol-the pe destal on which it was reared could not fall; the ele ments still existed, though the communion was utter

Days-weeks-and even months rolled over that sacred trysting spot, and the sound of merry voices fell upon the ear, and bright steps were on the flowers of the river's brink, and fond words were heard-but our lovers were not there. Claude had gone forth to mingle in the false pageantries of the world. Geraldine stood alone in that once brilliant scene; but the chain was not broken-not one link was severed that bound her heart in its deep affection. True it was, Claude had not written to her for some time-and the flowers, and the sky, and the river, that she had looked upon with him, witnessed many an hour of gloom and loneliness. Amid the pursuits and occupa tions of life she continually reverted to the past, and gathered from the treasures, hoarded up in memory, a look, a tone, a movement, a sad or merry glance, all hallowed by love's devotion, all softened, yet distinct and perfect, and giving to the reveries of imagination the vividness and coloring of reality. Again and again the post office was visited with hope of the long-expected letters; in vain; this, at times, startled her. But had he not said he loved her; and tried by all means to evince his affection? had she not listened to his passionate avowals, with devout entrancement, when his fond tongue had uttered so much to make life exalted, and existence all poetry, all romance? She had poured him forth all the rich treasures of her young heart's love. Language was insufficient to describe her thoughts; they burned in her soul's depths with a deep and mysterious fire, to which words would be poor and worthless. Love is the only real emanation of the Deity that burns within us, and may not perish as grosser substances; the words of earth befit not the thrills of heaven. Geraldine was an enthusiast, nay more, she was all passion; enthusiasm is madness—it is earthly; passion is the refine-ly, ay, hopelessly, destroyed! Love is imperishable; ment of the heart-it is heavenly. She clung to Claude, and she clung as one who had all her earthly hopes, and all her expectations of futurity, associated with him she loved. Claude had believed he loved her; he was happy in her presence, admired her beauty, and felt flattered that she preferred him above others who had sought, as a rich guerdon, her favor. But he was It was a summer's twilight, when the stars kindling absent; she was not now with him, darting the bright suddenly, steal to their places in the evening sky. sunshine of her eyes upon his countenance, as if a Cool through the lattice comes the wind-the fra spirit resided within those orbs, throwing forth bright-grance of a thousand flowers, and the murmur of inness and holiness; or, listening to the rich harmony numerable leaves, rise up in fragrance on every side; of her voice, as she gave rein to her sportive imagi- and overhead a sky, where not a vapor floats, as soft, nation, and the solitude became peopled with a my- as blue, and as radiant, as the eye of childhood. The

the mortal may not become immortal-the finite be come infinite-nor what is born of the soul know death. Affection is pure, deep and lasting time may not overshadow it-distance enfeeble it-nor the storms of life obstruct; it breaks through clouds and tempests, and glows and burns till death.

close of the day-the shadows of evening-the calm | sublimed by pity-and then the brilliant lighting up of twilight-inspire a feeling of tranquillity; there of her whole countenance at that exciting interestis something, oh! how beautiful is this soothing hour. an illumination almost dazzling, yet softened by all of It fills the soul with purest thoughts, holy aspirations, woman's gentle delicacy! and ardent longings. Geraldine sat alone. Her deep blue eyes were full of soul and fire, and her lip moved and glistened, and again was tranquil and almost heavy, as if slumberously enjoying its own velvet richness. There she sat, with an open letter in her hand, like a storm-beaten flower stricken to the earth, but still smiling, even as the flower gives forth per fume, and ready to share a fate which it dreads, but has not power to arrest. The picture was painfully sweet. The letter ran thus:

Was it that the despoiler of her race-that had left her an orphan even in childhood, had descended to her by right of inheritance,-was busy with her frame; or had the fearful knowledge that had burst so suddenly upon her, flinging so deep a shadow upon her path, undermined the firmness of her constitution; none could tell; but from that day forth she had un dergone a blighting change. The plague-spot appeared, and told of the enemy within, from whose deadly tooth there is no escape, when once it wounds. "My dear Geraldine-Circumstances over which Consumption, however it may mock its victim with I have no control, have caused me to break my faith hope, must end in despair; its touch is the sting of with you! I write for the purpose of releasing you death. But all who saw, acknowledged that, exquifrom an engagement formed in childhood, and which site as she had been before, the sad, sweet Geraldine perchance may have become irksome. You are still Heathwood was more exquisite still. She felt that young and beautiful, and in society will doubtless find she had been deceived; an asp had sprung up amid many willing to be unto you all that I have been. the flowers in her paradise, and she could never tread Love, Geraldine, is a prettier theme for a verse-maker as gladly and as fearlessly as before: she was changed than to stand the shocks of fortune. I do more rea for ever! In a lesser evil there might have been condily release you from your vows, knowing, from my solation; but in the present there was none-her own feelings, that absence can effect that in the heart lover was forsworn. Oh! the magic of the wizard which at one time would have seemed impossible; being love! Where were now the images, the high-places, firmly impressed with the conviction that you have and glory. She was now a thinking, intellectual wotoo much delicacy and womanish pride to cling to a man, and the playful graces of earlier years had subpromise when the feeling that dictated it no longer sided. The frolic laugh had softened into the rich continues. I enclose your letters, and several memen- smile, and the voice, losing its high and gleesome tone, toes given me in by-gone days; now they are value-as if bent down by a load of sweetness, thrilled the less. I conclude, by offering you my best wishes for hearer's soul. Shrinking like the wild violet from health, happiness, and future prosperity.

Yours, with very great friendliness,

CLAUDE DE WILTON."

The lips, that but a moment before were compressed with beautiful but stern disdaining, slowly parted, as the epistle was torn deliberately into small shreds, and thrown to the winds. Her voice trembled, her words came faint and lingeringly, as if each dreaded to be the last. Farewell!-farewell, my dream of happiness. Thou wert the light of my existence! and-thou art false. Merciful heaven! The woods, the hills, and the river, were but as attributes of thy dignity; without thee, they would have been but rocks, and water, and plants of the earth; thou wert the soul that animated all these things; in them I saw only thee, and in their voice I heard only thine; thou wert the spirit by which all my actions were guided. The skies are golden, and the hills beautiful, the glorious hues of sunset, and the shades of evening, and the sweet coolness of the twilight air, and the vesper song of birds, and the whisper of the river, mocking the ear that strives to catch them, and the shady seat, and the rich hanging boughs are all the same, but thou art false. Oh! God! oh! God!" What a depth of beauty!-what a tale of love and trust in those sweet eyes, as she gazed on the blue sky above her! And those bright curls, shading that face, so delicately formed, with its spiritual beauty-and that figure, so slight, so very fragile, that admiration is

the gaze of the very sun.

The days of the fair girl were numbered; the angel of death had demanded her in sacrifice, and was but waiting to claim his prey. Her eye had in it that glorious effulgence, which is so peculiarly the attribute of her fatal malady. Death was busy with her frame; life still lingered, but immortality seemed to have put on some of the hues of that eternal morning, whose bloom and whose freshness speak not only for its lasting existence, but for its holy purity. Her face was pale as the pillow upon which she lay; and so transparent, that the smallest vein might be traced. She was looking upon things that in a few short hours would vanish for ever.

It was a lovely night; the air was balmy, and the wind silent; the quiet, intense summer with its bird and flower, that minister by song and sweet to man's happiness. But it might not save the victim; the mandate had been issued, the grave was yawning. There was a strange expression-an aspect not of earth; such a light as might stream from an altar, a halo from heaven, around the brow of its most approved apostle. "Father," she murmured, "hear, oh, hear my dying prayer-forgive him-oh! forgive him; look down upon him in mercy; spare him from farther transgression-he knew not what he did. And, oh God! if it must be so-my salvation will I barter for his-I will pray for him at thy throne. He must not perish." The last words were scarcely audible; the face was ghastly-the eye was glazing fast, but