of Carraghen-moss from the rapid carrent. The poor peasant of Normandy gathers the vast heaps of decaying fuci, which wind and wave have driven to his shore, in order to carry them painfully, miles and miles, as manure on his fields, and the so-called sheep-fucus supports the flocks and herds of cattle in many a Northern island in Scotland and in Norway, through their long, dreary winters. The men of Iceland and of Greenland diligently grind some farinaceous kind of fucus into flour and subsist, like their cattle, upon this strange wood for many months, whilst their wives follow Paris fashion, and rouge themselves with the red flower of the purple fucus.

Here, however, one of the great mysteries which the ocean suggests, startles the thinking observer. For whom did the Almighty create all this wealth of beauty and splendor? Why did He conceal the greatest wonders, the most marvellous creations of nature under that azure veil, the mirror-like surface of which reflects nearly every ray of light and mostly returns, as if in derision, the searcher's own face as his only reward?

But because all the varied forms, all the minute details are not seen, is therefore the impression, which the ocean produces on our mind, less striking or less permanent? We count not the stars in heaven, we see even but a small number of all, and yet the starry sky has never failed to lift up the mind of man to his Maker. So with the ocean. His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the Lord is upon many waters. From olden times the ocean has ever been to the nations of the earth the type of all that is great, powerful, infinite. All the fictions of the Orient and Eastern India, all the myths of Greece of the "earth embracing Okeanos," and even the Jewish tradition that "the earth was without form and void, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," speak of the sea as the great source of all life, the very dwelling-place of the Infinite.

There are nations who never see the ocean. How dream-like, how fantastic are their ideas of the unknown world! German poetry abounds with wild, fanciful dreams of mermaids and mermen, and even the sailor-nation has its favorite legend of the ancient mariner, and a Tennyson has sung of fabled mer

men and their loves. But truly has it been said that "they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of Jehovah and his wonders in the deep."

Uniform and monotonous as the wide ocean often appears, it has its changes and is now mournful, now cheery and bright. Only when the wind is lulled and a calm has soothed the angry waves, can the ocean be seen in its quiet majesty. But the aspect is apt to be dreary and lonely; whether we see the dark waves of the sea draw lazily in and out of rocky riffs, or watch wearily “the sea's perpetual swing, the melancholy wash of endless waves." Away from the land there is nothing so full of awe and horror as a perfectly calmn sea: man is spell-bound, a magic charm seems to chain him the glassy and transparent waters; he cannot move from the fatal spot, and death, slow, fearful, certain death stares him in the face. He trem

bles as his despairing gaze meets the upturned, leaden eye of the shark, patiently waiting for him, or as he hears far below the sigh of some grim monster, slowly shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine. Fancy knows but one picture more dreadful yet than tempest, shipwreck, or the burning of a vessel out at sea: it is a ship on the great ocean in 3 calm, with no hope for a breeze. Wild and waste is the view. On the same sunshine, over the same waves the poor mariners gaze day by day with languid eye, even until the heart is sick and the body perishes.

At other times it is the gladsome ocean, full of proud ships, merry waves and ceaseless motion, that greets the eye. Then the wild, shoreless sea, on which the waves have rolled for thousands of years in unbroken might, fills the mind with the idea of infinity, and thought, escaping from all visible impression of space and time, rises to sublimest con templations. Yet, the sight of the clear, transparent mirror of the ocean, with its light, curling, sportive waves, cheers the heart like that of a friend, and reminds us that here, as upon the great sea of life, even when the wrecked ma riner has been cast among the raging billows, an unseen hand has often guided him to a happy shore. For He ruleth the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof rise, He s'illeth them.

This sense of the Infinite, suggested and awakened by the vast expanse of restless and uneasy waters is, however,

not unmixed with a feeling of deep mysterious awe. The mind cannot seize nor comprehend this boundless grandeur; hence its mysteriousness. The eye cannot see, no sense can, in fact, perceive the connection between the stupendous phenomena on the wide ocean and the fate of man. To human eyes the surging billows and the towering waves are both raised by an invisible, unknown power, and their depth is peopled with beings uncouth, ungoverned and unknown. The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, like a wide, watery waste compared with the gay, bright colors of the lad, and the might of gigantic waves that rush from age to age against the bulwarks of continent and isle, seems irresistible and able to destroy the world's foundation. Thus the ocean awakens in us feelings of dark mystery and grim power; the Infinite carries us off beyond the limits of familiar thought, and the sea becomes the home of fabled beings and weird images. All sea-shore e antries teem with stories, legends and trad tions; the fickle sea, the envious ocean, the fierce, hungry waves, the farious breakers, all become the representatives of so many human passions. Our fancy peoples the ocean with sweet, ning sirens, endowed with magic power to weave a spell and to draw the yielding mariner down to the green crystal halls beneath the waves. There sea kings and morgana fairies live in enchanted palaces; monsters of unheard size and shape flit ghostlike through that

dark, mysterious realm, and huge snakes trail themselves slowly from "their coiled sleep in the central deep, amidst all the dry pied things that lie in the hueless mosses under the sea." The bewildered and astounded mind tries, in his own way, to connect the great phenomena of nature with his fate and the will of the Almighty. It sees in homeless, restless birds the harbingers of the coming storm, in flying fishes the spirits of wrecked seamen, and points to the Flying Dutchman and the Ancient Mariner as illustrations of the justice of God's wrath.

The strong mind, the believing soul, of course, shake off all such idle dreams and vain superstitions. To them the sea is the very source of energy and courage. The life at sea is a life of unceasing strife and struggle. Hence all sea-faring nations are warlike, fond of adventures, and poetical. But the sea's greatest charin is, after all, its freedom. The free, unbounded ocean, where man feels no restraint, sees no narrow limits, where he must rely upon his own stout heart, strong in faith, where he is alone with his great Father in heaven, gives him a sense of his own freedom and strength like no other part of earth, and makes him return to the sea, its perils and sufferings, in spite of all the peace and happiness that the land can afford him. He knows that even if he dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall His hand lead him and His right hand shall hold him.

NA

"APOLEON, it may be stated without venture, is one of those historical magnitudes, which attract the renewed scrutiny, and periodically revived attention of successive ages. Does he also belong to those who present themselves for centuries in different phases, according to the different and characteristic elements which may be at work in the wrestling progress of the race to which they have belonged?

Public men are open to the gaze of all; and people will have their opinions about them. We heard Niebuhr exclaim: "How true! How wise!" when on one of the high roads of Tyrol, we passed a house, over the door of which was painted the distich:

"Wer da bauet un der Strassen,

Muss die Leute reden lassen."*

Nor must we forget the wise saying of Goethe, that it does not require an architect to live in a house.

The greater a name is among those that are stamped as historical, the surer it is to be discussed and examined from various points of view, and to present itself in different lights and hues in the sequel of years. Indeed, may it not be said that, as it is one of the characteristics of a great soul, that it lives within itself the lives of many men; so it is the variety of phases which a name, an epoch, a nation, or an institution, presents to succeeding generations, that constitutes one of the standards of historical greatness? Like great books, new eras find something new in them, and they grow on mankind. Christ became man; as such, the greatest man, and his name presents itself in endless phases to generation after generation. Timour and Attila did vast things for the times, but there is but one unchanging aspect in which they can be viewed. They were nothing but conquerors. Greece is studied with intenser zeal as our race advances, and always with the relish of a newly-discovered subject. Even the middle of the nineteenth century has produced several important and elaborate histories of that brilliant star in history. Portugal had a brilliant period, too; but it is like one flash of light, and there it ends. No succes-ive ages present it in a new aspect. The institutions of the Anglican

race are an inexhaustible theme of reflection, and wou'd be so for all ages to come, even if tuis day the Americans and English were swept from the face of the earth. Russia is a vast empire. Describe it once with accuracy and truth, or, when it will have crumbled into dust, let its rise and fall be carefully chronicled, and all is done that inankind stand in need of, or will care for.

But

Napoleon was a great man. Whether that whole phenomenon comprehended within the one name, Napoleon Bonaparte, will have in future ages the polyphasial character which has just been spoken of, cannot be decided in our times, whatever the anticipations of present historians may be, according to the different bias of their minds. the period is arriving when his history may be written. We are daily receding from his time, and ascending the summit from which the historian may calmly look around. It is not the contemporaries that can write the history of a man or age. They can only accumulate materials. Niebuhr wrote a wiser history of Rome than Livy; Grote, a deeper history of Greece than Thucydides or Herodotus. In the meantime, separate questions are to be answered; distinct subjects belonging to the great theme are gradually to be treated with more and more of that character with which, ultimately, his whole history must be handled. One of these questions is-and it is a vital one-was Napoleon a dictator? Did he consciously concentrate immense power, compress freedom of action in France, and conquer the European continent, merely to prepare a nobler and a permanent state of things? Did he sow and plant, or did he merely concentrate power, and, in doing so, destroy the germs of freedom? Did he treat liberty as merely in abeyance, while, nevertheless, he was fostering its gerins, or did he induce a state of things, which, in the same degree as he succeeded, extirpated freedom, and which in turn must be undone in the same degree in which liberty would struggle into existence? The Roman dictator was no annihilator. He received extraordinary, not absolute, power, for a limited period, in times of danger and difficulty, to help the wheels

of the State through a miry pass, and when the days of his power were over, he was responsible for his stewardship.

The admirers of Napoleon, those that served him, and those who now worship his name, have ever striven to present him in this light. They felt instinctively that this was the only way of reconciling Lis acts with the great aim of our times. We are well aware that there are two other classes of Napoleonists. There are those who boldly assert that Napoleon actually ruled France in a liberal spirit, and that freedom really was enjoyed under him; and there are those who, with still greater boldness, maintain that France did not struggle for liberty in her first revolution, nor that she yearns for it now; that all she ever wanted is equality. This opinion was proclaimed at the time when the present eLiperor of the French was forging a new crown for himself, and new gyves for Bleeding France. We have nothing to do with this species of Napoleonists. They are void of the shame of history, crese, not knowing it and its sacred character, they merely write to say Lething new and startling. kave them and pass on."

"We

The elder brother of Napoleon was ret of their opinion. In many of his Itters, written from his exile in the United States, he expresses the idea that Napoleon was a dictator-a real lover of Liberty, forced by foreign enemies to assume the sole power of the State; a power developed by the wars into which Le was driven, to such an extent, that in a measure it overpowered himself. Jo

BoLaparte has repeatedly expressed ta's idea, especially in an elaborate letter to Count Thibeaudeau, who had stated in his history, that Napoleon had caused France to retrograde in the path of liberty. But we must confess, that the idea of a dictatorship in Napoleon seems Let to have been very clear in the mind of that able, benevolent, and otherwise Ger-headed and liberal brother of the eeror; for, in the same letter to

nt Thibeaudeau, he shows that the Ere idea of the "Caesars," successfully revved with its blighting associations, our own times, was also floating in

the mind of Joseph. He says: "He (the emperor) has succumbed in the struggle. It is impossible to say what he would have done after Actium. I say what I know. Impartial men, who have seen nothing but the internal facts, will say that probably Napoleon would have been as superior to Augustus, as he had been to Octavius; that a man of such a genius, would not have desired anything but what was meet for the French people; and that, if he were living now, he would make France as happy by her institutions, as the fortunate country which I inhabit-a country which proves that liberal institutions make nations happy and wise.” Yet this very Napoleon used to repeat: Everything for the people, nothing by the people.

That same letter to Count Thibeaudeau contains the remarkable sentence: "Napoleon isolated himself much in France; people ended with no longer understanding what he was after."

The studious reader will find this letter on page 320, of the tenth volume of the Memoirs and Correspondence, political as well as military, of King Josephthe last volume of which has just appeared in Paris.

Joseph expresses similar views in a letter to Francis Lieber, which follows in the mentioned volume, immediately after that to Count Thibeaudeau. Indeed, he endorsed a copy of the latter in that to the former.

We consider these two letters of great interest, if they are not important in point of historical facts. We shall give the translation of the one to Mr. Lieber, in this paper, feeling assured that its perusal will prove the propriety of inserting it.

When Lieber had resolved to write the Encyclopædia Americana, he wished to turn the presence of Napoleon's brother in this country to good account, with reference to some disputed facts in the great period which had just ended, and regarding which Joseph Bonaparte had it in his power to give him light. He wrote, therefore, at once to Count Survilliers, asking him whether he would allow him occasionally to apply

to him for information concerning important facts in his own, or his brother's life. The answer was friendly and liberal, and produced a correspondence, of which a number of letters are now in the hands of Lieber. Possibly they may be published. It seems that Joseph retained copies of all his letters; at any rate, a copy of the letter which has been mentioned must have been among the papers of the man, who, twice king, lived among us an esteemed and beloved citizen, full of unpretending and genuine kindness.*

The emperor himself was desirous of having his reign considered as a dictatorship. This was at least the case in his exile, where, as it is well-known, and was natural, he occupied himself much with his name and reputation as they would appear to posterity. On one occasion he observed: Some people have said that I ought to have made myself a French Washington. All that I was allowed to be was a crowned Washington. For me to imitate Washington would have been a niaiserie." meant, undoubtedly, that circumstances did not allow him to be a Washington. This is true; but it is equally true that he could never have been a Washington, whatever the circumstances might have been.

He

There are no two men in the whole breadth of history more unlike to one another. Washington's fellow star of the binary constellation is William of Nassau, the founder of the Netherlands republic, not Bonaparte, crowned or uncrowned."

Napoleon's and Washington's minds and souls differed no less than their bodies. The one was wholly Anglican, or Teutonic; the other a very type of the Celtic or Iberian. The one great and noble as a calm and persevering man of duty; the other impetuous, and of flashy brilliancy. Washington has ever appeared to us as the historic model of sound common sense, and sterling judg ment, coupled with immaculate patriotism. There was nothing brilliant in Washington, unless, indeed, the Fabian

genius of unyielding perseverance in a high career, be called brilliant. Napoleon, on the other hand is, possibly, the most brilliant character of all modern times. Glory was his very idol. Washington was throughout his life a selflimiting man; Napoleon was ever a selfstimulating man. The fever of grandeur consumed him. Washington was obedient to the law, a law-abiding man if ever there was one; Napoleon constantly broke down the law when it appeare necessary to him, and it appeared to him often so. Washington aided in creating a new empire; Napoleon created, or aimed at creating a new state of things. Washington arose out of a struggle of independencc-a severance of colonies from a distant mother-country; Napoleon arose out of a fearful internal revolution. Washington is daily growing in the affection of history, and there is the most remarkable uniformity of opinion regarding his character; there is the greatest difference of opinion regarding Napoleon's, and however many may admire him, no one loves him, except some survivors, who have received acts of personal kindness at his hands. No man ever loves power merely as power. We could not even love God were He only almighty. Washington never persecuted; he imprisoned no opponent, banished no enemy, and when he died his hands were unstained like Pericles'; Napoleon banished, imprisoned, and persecuted, and developed a system of police, which must be called stupendous, on account of its vastness, completeness, perfection, power, and penetrating refinement-a system pressing to this day on France like an Alp, and which makes all that Aristotle writes on the police of usurpers appear as the veriest trash. The Dionysian sycophant was a poor bungler, compared to an agent of the French secret police; and, be it well remembered, this gigantic police system with the gendarmerie, and all the thousand ramifications, is essentially Napoleonic. It was developed in all its stifling grandeur under him, and is, unfor