most atrocious deeds by the splendour of his name, and even to extort applause for crimes by the brilliancy of his success. He took no pains to conciliate esteem. In his own eyes he was mightier than conscience; and thus he turned against himself the power and resentment of virtue, in every breast where that divine principle yet found a home.

"Through the same blinding egotism, he was anxious to fill the thrones of Europe with men bearing his own name, and to multiply every where images of himself. Instead of placing over conquered countries, efficient men taken from themselves, who, by upholding better institutions, would carry with them large masses of the people, and who would still, by their hostility to the old dynasties, link their fortunes with his own, he placed over nations such men as Jerome and Murat. He thus spread a jealousy of his power, whilst he rendered it insecure; for as none of the princes of his creation, however well-disposed, were allowed to identify themselves with their subjects, and to take root in the public heart, but were compelled to act, openly and without disguise, as satellites and prefects of the French emperor; they gained no hold on their subjects, and could bring no strength to their master in his hour of peril. In none of his arrangements, did Napoleon think of securing to his cause the attachment of nations. Astonishment, awe, and force were his weapons, and his own great name the chosen pillar of his throne.

"So far was Bonaparte from magnifying the contrast and distinctions between himself and the old dynasties of Europe, and from attaching men to himself by new principles and institutions, that he had the great weakness, for so we view it, to revive the old forms of monarchy, and to ape the manners of the old court, and thus to connect himself with the herd of legitimate sovereigns. This was not only to rob his government of that imposing character which might have been given to it, and of that interest which it might have inspired, as an improvement on former institutions, but was to become competitor in a race in which he could not but be distanced. He could indeed pluck crowns from the heads of monarchs; but he could not by any means infuse their blood into his veins, associate with himself the ideas which are attached to a long line of ancestry, or give to his court the grace of manners, which belongs to older establishments. His true policy was, to throw contempt on distinctions, which he could not rival; and had he possessed the genius and spirit of the founder of a new era, he would have substituted for a crown, and for other long worn badges of power, a new and simple style of grandeur, and new, insignia of dignity, more consonant with an enlightened age, and worthy of one who disdained to be a vulgar king. By the policy which he adopted, if it be worthy of that name, he became a vulgar king, and showed a mind incapable of answering the wants and demands of his age. It is well known, that the progress of intelligence had done much in Europe, to weaken men's reverence for pageantry and show. Nobles had learned to lay aside their trappings in ordinary life, and to appear as gentlemen. Even royalty had begun to retrench its pomp; and in the face of all this

improvement, Bonaparte stooped from his height, to study cos tumes, to legislate about court dresses, and court manners, and to outshine his brother monarchs in their own line. He desired to add the glory of master of ceremonies to that of conqueror of na tions. In his anxiety to belong to the caste of kings, he exacted scrupulously the observance and etiquette with which they are approached. Not satisfied with this approximation to the old sovereigns, with whom he had no common interest, and from whom he could not have removed himself too far, he sought to ally himself by marriage with the royal families in Europe, to engraft himself and his posterity on an old imperial tree. This was the very way to turn back opinion into its old channels; to carry back Europe to its old prejudices; to facilitate the restora→ tion of its old order; to preach up legitimacy; to crush every hope that he was to work a beneficent change among nations. It may seem strange, that his egotism did not preserve him from the imitation of antiquated monarchy. But his egotism, though excessive, was not lofty, nor was it seconded by a genius, rich and inventive, except in war.

"We have now followed Napoleon to the height of his power, and given our views of the policy by which he hoped to make that power perpetual and unbounded. His fall is easily explained. It had its origin in that spirit of self-reliance and self-exaggeration, of which we have seen so many proofs. It began in Spain. That country was a province in reality. He wanted to make it one in name; to place over it a Bonaparte; to make it a more striking manifestation of his power. For this purpose, he "kidnapped" its royal family, stirred up the unconquerable spirit of its people, and, after shedding on its plains and mountains the best blood of France, lost it for ever. Next came his expedition against Russia, an expedition against which his wisest counsellors remonstrated, but which had every recommendation to a man who regarded himself as an exception to his race, and able to triumph over the laws of nature. So insane were his self-confidence and impatience of opposition, that he drove by his outrages, Sweden, the old ally of France, into the arms of Russia, at the very moment that he was about to throw himself into the heart of that mighty empire. On his Russian campaign we have no desire to enlarge. Of all the mournful pages of history, none are more sad than that which records the retreat of the French army from Moscow. We remember, that when the intelligence of Napoleon's discomfiture in Russia first reached this country, we were among those who exulted in it, thinking only of the results. But when subsequent and minuter accounts brought distinctly before our eyes that unequalled army of France, broken, famished, slaughtered, seeking shelter under snow-drifts, and perishing by intense cold, we looked back on our joy with almost a consciousness of guilt, and expiated by a sincere grief our insensibility to the sufferings of our fellow creatures. We understand that many interesting notices of Napoleon, as he appeared in this disastrous campaign, are given in the Memoirs of Count Segur, a book, from which we have been

repelled by the sorrows and miseries which it details. We can conceive few subjects more worthy of Shakespeare than the mind of Napoleon, at this moment, when his fate was sealed; when the tide of his victories was suddenly stopped and rolled backwards; when his dreams of invincibleness were broken as by a peal of thunder; when the word, which had awed nations, died away, on the bleak waste, a powerless sound; and when he, whose spirit Europe could not bound, fled in fear from a captive's doom. The shock must have been tremendous to a mind so imperious, scornful, and unschooled to humiliation. The intense agony of that moment, when he gave the unusual orders, to retreat; the desolateness of his soul, when he saw his brave soldiers, and his chosen guards sinking in the snows, and perishing in crowds around him; his unwillingness to receive the details of his losses, lest self-possession should fail him; the levity and badinage of his interview with the Abbe de Pradt at Warsaw, discovering a mind labouring to throw off an insupportable weight, wrestling with itself, struggling against misery; and though last not least, his unconquerable purpose, still clinging to lost empire as the only good of life; these workings of such a spirit would have furnished to the great dramatist a theme, worthy of his transcendent powers.

"By the irretrievable disasters of the Russian campaign, the empire of the world was effectually placed beyond the grasp of Napoleon. The tide of conquest had ebbed, never to return. The spell which had bound the nations was dissolved. He was no longer the Invincible. The weight of military power, which had kept down the spirit of nations, was removed, and their long smothered sense of wrong and insult, broke forth like the fires of a volcano. Bonaparte might still, perhaps, have secured the throne of France; but that of Europe was gone. This however, he did not, could not, would not understand. He had connected with himself too obstinately, the character of the world's master, to be able to relinquish it. Amidst the dark omens which gathered round him, he still saw in his past wonderful escapes, and in his own exaggerated energies, the means of rebuilding his fallen power. Accordingly the thought of abandoning his pretensions does not seem to have crossed his mind, and his irreparable defeat was only a summons to new exertion. We doubt, indeed, whether Napoleon, if he could have understood fully his condition, would have adopted a different course. Though despairing, he would probably have raised new armies, and fought to the last. To a mind, which has placed its whole happiness in having no equal, the thought of descending to the level even of kings, is intolerable. Napoleon's mind had been stretched by such ideas of universal empire, that France, though reaching from the Rhine to the Alps, seemed narrow to him. He could not be shut up in it. Accordingly, as his fortunes darkened, we see no signs of relenting. He could not wear, he said, 'a tarnished crown,' that is, a crown no brighter than those of Austria and Russia. He continued to use a master's tone. He showed no change, but such as opposition works in the obstinate. He lost his temper and grew sour. He heaped re

proaches on his marshals, and the legislative body. He insulted Metternich, the statesman, on whom, above all others, his fate depended. He irritated Murat by sarcasms, which rankled within him, and accelerated, if they did not determine, his desertion of his master. It is a striking example of retribution, that the very vehemence and sternness of his will, which had borne him onward to dominion, now drove him to the rejection of terms which would have left him a formidable power, and thus made his ruin entire. Refusing to take counsel of events, he persevered in fighting with a stubbornness, which reminds us of a spoiled child, who sullenly grasps what he knows he must relinquish, struggles without hope, and does not give over resistance, until his little fingers are one by one unclenched from the object on which he has set his heart. Thus fell Napoleon. We shall follow his history no farther. His retreat to Elba, his irruption into France, his signal overthrow, and his banishment to St. Helena, though they add to the romance of his history, throw no new light on his character, and would of course contribute nothing to our present object. There are indeed incidents in this portion of his life, which are somewhat inconsistent with the firmness and conscious superiority which belonged to him. But a man, into whose character so much impulse, and so little principle entered, must not be expected to preserve unblemished, in such hard reverses, the dignity and self-respect of an emperor and a hero.

(To be Continued.)

REVIEW.

"Three Questions proposed and answered, concerning the Life forfeited by Adam, the Resurrection of the Dead, and Eternal Punishment. By the Rev. David Thom."

THIS pamphlet is the production of an original and thinking mind. It evinces an ardent desire for the knowledge of Christian truth. It shows an individual, regardless of the systems of man's devising, pursuing his inquiries with an eye steadfastly fixed on the acquisition of Scriptural information, and desirous of deriving the doctrines of faith from the pure and sacred fountain of the Bible. Mr. Thom is a native of Glasgow. Educated in the belief of the Assembly's Catechism, and being from his youth of exemplary character, he was early destined to the Church of Scotland. Of that Church, he was a regularly ordained minister. Some years since, he settled with the Scots Church in Liverpool, as successor, we believe, to the Rev. Dr. Barr, now of Port-Glasgow, an individual who, during

Mr. Harris's residence in Liverpool, distinguished himself by publishing a pamphlet in vindication of the existence and agency of the Devil. Contentions having arisen between Mr. Thom and the proprietors of the church, a considerable number of the congregation left with him, and built a very handsome chapel in Rodney-Street. Here, after a short time, Mr. Thom was charged with holding tenets deemed to be inimical to the doctrines of the Confession of Faith. For this supposed heresy, which seemed to us to consist partly of truth, and partly to be Calvinism in most rank luxuriance-Calvinism carried out to its legitamate consequences-Mr. Thom was cited before the Presbytery of Glasgow. Long and various were the discussions which ensued, on the supposed perversions of the creed of his forefathers. A verdict of guilty was however pronounced, and Mr. Thom was deposed from his situation. Still numbers of his people adhered to him, and worship was conducted by Mr. Thom in the Music Hall, Bold-Street. Once set free from the trammels of the Established Church, the scales of prejudice appear to have gradually fallen from the mental vision of this excellent individual. His present pamphlet is dedicated to several persons by name, and to "the other friends of free discussion in matters of religion, by whom he was supported in his late arduous struggle with the Presbytery of Glasgow."

In the work which we are now noticing, the author, in opposition to the popular ideas of the day, considers,

"The death, with which Adam was menaced, in case of disobedience, and which he actually incurred, was death in the ordinary acceptation of the term, that is, the termination of the animal existence, which God, at his creation, had conferred on him, followed by the dissolution of his body.

This opinion, Mr. Thom supports by a variety of arguments, inquiring whether the general views on this subject may not be referred rather to Milton's Paradise Lost, than to the Bible, and replying to the usual statements made in defence of the common views with great force.

On the second question, the author endeavours to show that we are to rise from the dead, not in consequence of our connection with Adam, but solely in virtue of that which we bear to the Lord Jesus.

To the last matter proposed for investigation, Mr. Thom resolutely enters the lists against the doctrine of eternal