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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.

Author: Various


        
Release date: February 22, 2012 [eBook #38952]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, VOL IV. NO. XX. JANUARY, 1852. ***




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Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net











                            HARPER'S

                     NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

               NO. XX--JANUARY, 1852--VOL. IV.




[Illustration]

EARLY AND PRIVATE LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

BY JACOB ABBOTT.


It is generally true in respect to great statesmen that they owe their
celebrity almost entirely to their public and official career. They
promote the welfare of mankind by directing legislation, founding
institutions, negotiating treaties of peace or of commerce between rival
states, and guiding, in various other ways, the course of public and
national affairs, while their individual and personal influence attracts
very little regard. With Benjamin Franklin, however, the reverse of this
is true. He did indeed, while he lived, take a very active part, with
other leading men of his time, in the performance of great public
functions; but his claim to the extraordinary degree of respect and
veneration which is so freely awarded to his name and memory by the
American people, rests not chiefly upon this, but upon the extended
influence which he has exerted, and which he still continues to exert
upon the national mind, through the power of his private and personal
character. The prevalence of habits of industry and economy, of
foresight and thrift, of cautious calculation in the formation of plans,
and energy and perseverance in the execution of them, and of the
disposition to invest what is earned in substantial and enduring
possessions, rather than to expend it in brief pleasures or for purposes
of idle show--the prevalence of these traits, so far as they exist as
elements of the national character in this country--is due in an
incalculable degree to the doings and sayings and history of this great
exemplar. Thus it is to his life and to his counsels that is to be
attributed, in a very high degree, the formation of that great public
sentiment prevailing so extensively among us, which makes it more
honorable to be industrious than to be idle, and to be economical and
prudent rather than extravagant and vain; which places substantial and
unpretending prosperity above empty pretension, and real comfort and
abundance before genteel and expensive display.

A very considerable portion of the effect which Franklin has produced
upon the national character is due to the picturesque and almost
romantic interest which attaches itself to the incidents of his personal
history. In his autobiography he has given us a very full and a very
graphic narrative of these incidents, and as the anniversary of his
birth-day occurs during the present month, we can not occupy the
attention of our readers at this time, in a more appropriate manner than
by a brief review of the principal events of his life--so far as such a
review can be comprised within the limits of a single article.

[Illustration]

The ancestors of Franklin lived for many generations on a small estate
in Northamptonshire, one of the central counties in England. The head of
the family during all this time followed the business of a smith, the
eldest son from generation to generation, being brought up to that
employment.

The Franklin family were Protestants, and at one time when the Catholics
were in power, during the reign of Mary, the common people were
forbidden to possess or to read the English Bible. Nevertheless the
Franklin family contrived to get possession of a copy of the
Scriptures, and in order to conceal it they kept it fastened on the
under side of the seat of a little stool. The book was open, the back of
the covers being against the seat, and the leaves being kept up by tapes
which passed across the pages, and which were fastened to the seat of
the stool at the ends. When Mr. Franklin wished to read his Bible to his
family, he was accustomed to take up this stool and place it bottom
upward upon his lap; and thus he had the book open before him. When he
wished to turn over a leaf, he had to turn it under the tape, which,
though a little inconvenient, was attended with no serious difficulty.
During the reading one of the children was stationed at the door, to
watch, and to give notice if an officer should be coming; and in case of
an alarm the stool was immediately turned over and placed in its proper
position upon the floor, the fringe which bordered the sides of it
hanging down so as to conceal the book wholly from view. This was in the
day of Franklin's _great-grandfather_.

In process of time, after the Catholic controversy was decided, new
religious dissensions sprang up between the Church of England and the
Nonconformists. The family of Franklin were of the latter party, and at
length Mr. Josiah Franklin--who was Benjamin Franklin's
father--concluded to join a party of his neighbors and friends, who had
determined, in consequence of the restrictions which they were under in
England, in respect to their religious faith and worship, to emigrate to
America. Mr. Franklin came accordingly to Boston, and there, after a
time, Benjamin Franklin was born. The place of his birth was in
Milk-street, opposite to the Old South Church. The humble dwelling,
however, in which the great philosopher was born, has long since
disappeared. The magnificent granite warehouses of the Boston merchants
now cover the spot, and on one of them is carved conspicuously the
inscription, BIRTHPLACE OF FRANKLIN.

Mr. Josiah Franklin had been a dyer in England, but finding on his
coming to Boston that there was but little to be done in that art in so
new a country, he concluded to choose some other occupation; and he
finally determined upon that of a tallow chandler. Benjamin was the
youngest son. The others, as they gradually became old enough, were put
to different trades, but as Benjamin showed a great fondness for his
books, having learned to read of his own accord at a very early age, and
as he was the youngest son, his father conceived the idea of educating
him for the church. So they sent him to the grammar school, and he
commenced his studies. He was very successful in the school, and rose
from class to class quite rapidly; but still the plan of giving him a
public education was at length, for some reason or other, abandoned, and
Mr. Franklin took Benjamin into his store, to help him in his business.
His duties here were to cut the wicks for the candles, to fill the
moulds, to attend upon the customers, or to go of errands or deliver
purchases about the town.

[Illustration]

There was a certain mill-pond in a back part of the town, where Benjamin
was accustomed to go sometimes, in his play-hours, with other boys, to
fish. This mill-pond has long since been filled up, and its place is now
occupied by the streets and warehouses of the city. In Franklin's day,
however, the place was somewhat solitary, and the shore of the pond
being marshy, the boys soon trampled up the ground where they were
accustomed to stand in fishing, so as to convert it into a perfect
quagmire. At length young Franklin proposed to the boys that they should
build a wharf, or pier, to stand upon--getting the materials for the
purpose from a heap of stones that had been brought for a house which
some workmen were building in the neighborhood. The boys at once acceded
to the proposal. They all accordingly assembled at the spot one evening
after the workmen had gone away for the night, and taking as many stones
as they needed for the purpose, they proceeded to build their wharf.

[Illustration]


The boys supposed very probably that the stones which they had taken
would not be missed. The workmen, however, did miss them, and on making
search the following morning they soon discovered what had become of
them. The boys were thus detected, and were all punished.

Franklin's father, though he was plain and unpretending in his manners,
was a very sensible and well-informed man, and he possessed a sound
judgment and an excellent understanding. He was often consulted by his
neighbors and friends, both in respect to public and private affairs. He
took great interest, when conversing with his family at table, in
introducing useful topics of discourse, and endeavored in other ways to
form in the minds of his children a taste for solid and substantial
acquisitions. He was quite a musician, and was accustomed sometimes when
the labors of the day were done, to play upon the violin and sing, for
the entertainment of his family. This music Benjamin himself used to
take great delight in listening to.

[Illustration]

Young Benjamin did not like his father's trade--that of a chandler--and
it was for a long time undecided what calling in life he should pursue.
He wished very much to go to sea, but his parents were very unwilling
that he should do so. His father, accordingly, in order to make him
contented and willing to remain at home, took great pains to find some
employment for him that he would like, and he was accustomed to walk
about the town with him to see the workmen employed about their various
trades. It was at last decided that he should learn the trade of a
printer. One reason why this trade was decided upon was that one of
Benjamin's older brothers was a printer, and had just returned from
England with a press and a font of type, and was about setting up his
business in Boston. So it was decided that Benjamin should be bound to
him, as his apprentice; and this was accordingly done. Benjamin was then
about twelve years old.

Benjamin had always from his childhood manifested a great thirst for
reading, which thirst he had now a much better opportunity to gratify
than ever before, as his connection with printers and booksellers gave
him facilities for borrowing books. Sometimes he would sit up all
night to read the book so borrowed.

[Illustration]

Benjamin's brother, the printer, did not keep house, but boarded his
apprentices at a boarding house in the town. Benjamin pretty soon
conceived the idea of boarding himself, on condition that his brother
would pay to him the sum which he had been accustomed to pay for him to
the landlady of the boarding house. By this plan he saved a large
portion of the time which was allotted to dinner, for reading; for, as
he remained alone in the printing office while the rest were gone, he
could read, with the book in his lap, while partaking of the simple
repast which he had provided.

[Illustration]


Young Benjamin was mainly employed, of course, while in his brother's
office, in very humble duties; but he did not by any means confine
himself to the menial services which were required of him, as the duty
of the youngest apprentice. In fact he actually commenced his career as
an author while in this subordinate position. It seems that several
gentlemen of Boston, friends of his brother, used to write occasional
articles for a newspaper which he printed; and they would sometimes meet
at the office to discuss the subjects of their articles, and the effects
that they produced. Benjamin determined to try his hand at this work. He
accordingly wrote an article for the paper, and after copying it
carefully in disguised writing, he put it late one night under the door.
His brother found it there in the morning, and on reading it was much
pleased with it. He read it to his friends when they came in--Benjamin
being at work all the time near by, at his printing case, and enjoying
very highly the remarks and comments which they made. He was
particularly amused at the guesses that they offered in respect to the
author, and his vanity was gratified at finding that the persons that
they named were all gentlemen of high character for ingenuity and
learning.

The young author was so much encouraged by this attempt that he
afterward sent in several other articles in the same way; they were all
approved of and duly inserted in the paper. At length he made it known
that he was the author of the articles. All were very much surprised,
and Benjamin found that in consequence of this discovery he was regarded
with much greater consideration by his brother's friends, the gentlemen
to whom his performances had been shown, but that his brother himself
did not appear to be much pleased.

Benjamin was employed at various avocations connected with the
newspaper, while in his brother's service; sometimes in setting types,
then in working off the sheets at the press, and finally in carrying the
papers around the town to deliver them to the subscribers. Thus he was,
at the same time, compositor, pressman, and carrier. This gave a very
agreeable variety to his work, and the opportunities which he enjoyed
for acquiring experience and information were far more favorable than
they had ever been before.

[Illustration]

In the efforts which young Franklin made to improve his mind, while in
his brother's office, he did not devote his time to mere reading, but
applied himself vigorously to _study_. He was deficient, he thought, in
a knowledge of figures, and so he procured an arithmetic, of his own
accord, and went through it himself, with very little or no assistance.
By proceeding very slowly and carefully in this work, leaving nothing
behind that he did not fully understand, he so smoothed his own way as
to go through the whole with very little embarrassment or difficulty. He
also studied a book of English grammar. The book contained, moreover,
brief treatises on Logic and Rhetoric, which were inserted at the end by
way of appendix. These treatises Franklin studied too with great care.
In a word, the time which he devoted to books was spent, not in seeking
amusement, but in acquiring solid and substantial knowledge.

[Illustration]

Notwithstanding these advantages, however, Benjamin did not lead a very
happy life as his brother's apprentice. He found his brother a very
passionate man and he was often used very roughly by him. Finally after
the lapse of four or five years, during which various difficulties
occurred which can not here be fully narrated, young Benjamin determined
to run away, and seek his fortune in New York. In writing the history of
his life, Franklin acknowledges that he was very censurable for taking
such a step, and that in the disputes which had occurred between him and
his brother, he himself was much in fault, having often needlessly
irritated his brother by his saucy and provoking behavior. He, however,
determined to go, and a young friend of his, named Collins, a boy of
about his own age, helped him form and execute the plan of his escape.

[Illustration]

The plan which they formed was for Benjamin to take passage secretly, in
a New York sloop, which was then in Boston and about ready to sail. The
boys made up a false story to tell the captain of the sloop in order to
induce him to take Benjamin on board. Benjamin sold his books and such
other little property as he possessed, to raise money, and at length,
when the time arrived he went on board the sloop in a very private
manner, and concealed himself there.

The captain of the sloop undoubtedly did wrong in taking such a boy away
in this manner. He knew that Franklin was running away from home, though
he was deceived by Collins's story in respect to the cause of his
flight.

The vessel soon sailed, with Franklin on board. The wind was fair and
she had a very prosperous passage. In three days which was by no means a
long time for such a voyage, she reached New York, and Benjamin landed
safely.

[Illustration]

He found himself, however, when landed, in a very forlorn and friendless
condition. He knew no one, he was provided, of course, with no letters
of introduction or recommendation, and he had very little money.

He applied at a printing office for employment. The printer, whose name
was Bradford, said that he had workmen enough, but that he had a son in
Philadelphia who was also a printer, and who had lately lost one of his
principal hands. So our young hero determined to go to Philadelphia.

On his journey to Philadelphia he met with various romantic adventures.
A part of the way he went by water, and very narrowly escaped shipwreck
in a storm which suddenly arose, and which drove the vessel to the
eastward, entirely out of her course, and came very near throwing her
upon the shores of Long Island. He, however, at length reached Amboy in
safety, and thence he undertook to travel on foot through New Jersey to
Burlington, a distance of about fifty miles, carrying his pack upon his
back.

[Illustration]

It rained violently all the day, and the unhappy adventurer became so
exhausted with his exposures and suffering that he heartily repented of
having ever left his home.

At length after two days of weary traveling, Franklin reached
Burlington, on the Delaware, the point where he had expected to embark
again on board a vessel in order to proceed down the river to
Philadelphia. The regular packet, however, had just gone, and no other
one was expected to sail for three days. It was then Saturday, and the
next boat was not to go until Tuesday. Our traveler was very much
disappointed to find that he must wait so long. In his perplexity he
went back to the house of a woman where he had stopped to buy some
gingerbread when he first came into town, and asked her what she thought
he had better do. She offered to give him lodging in her house, until
Tuesday, and inviting him in she immediately prepared some dinner for
him, which, though it was very frugal and plain, was received with great
thankfulness by the weary and wayworn traveler.

[Illustration]

Our hero was not obliged to wait so long as he expected, after all; for
that evening as he chanced to be walking along the shore of the river, a
small vessel came by on its way to Philadelphia, and on his applying to
the boatmen for a passage they agreed to take him on board. He
accordingly embarked, and the vessel proceeded down the river. There was
no wind, and the men spent the night in rowing. Franklin himself worked
with the rest. Toward morning they began to be afraid that they had
passed the city in the dark, and so they hauled their vessel up to the
shore and landed. When daylight appeared they found that they were about
five miles above the city. When they arrived at the city Franklin paid
the boatmen a shilling for his passage. They were at first unwilling to
receive it, on account of his having helped them to row, but he insisted
that they should. He then counted up the money which he had left, and
found that it amounted to just one dollar.

[Illustration]

The first thing that he did was to go to a baker's to buy something to
eat. He asked for three-pence worth of bread. The baker gave him three
good sized rolls for that money. His pockets were full of clothes and
other such things, which he had put into them, and so he walked off up
the street, holding one of his rolls under each arm and eating the
third. It is a singular circumstance that while he was walking through
the streets in this way, he passed by the house where the young woman
resided who was destined in subsequent years to become his wife, and
that she actually saw him as he passed, and took particular notice of
him on account of the ridiculous appearance which he made.

Franklin went on in this manner up Market-street to Fourth-street, then
down through Chestnut-street and apart of Walnut-street, until he came
back to the river again at the place where the vessel lay. He came thus
to the shore again in order to get a drink of water from the river, for
he was thirsty.

In fact the situation in which our young adventurer found himself at
this time must have been extremely discouraging. He was in a strange
town, hundreds of miles from home, without friends, without money,
without even a place to lay his head, and scarcely knowing what to do or
where to go. It is not strange, therefore, that, after taking his short
walk around the streets of the town, he should find himself returning
again toward the vessel that had brought him; since this vessel alone
contained objects and faces in the least degree familiar to his eye.

It happened that among the passengers that had come down the river on
board the vessel, there was a poor woman, who was traveling with her
child, a boy of six or eight years of age. When Franklin came down to
the wharf he found this woman sitting there with her child, both looking
quite weary and forlorn; and, as he had already satisfied his hunger
with eating only one of his rolls, he gave the other two to them. They
received his charity very thankfully. It seems that they were waiting
there for the vessel to sail again, as they were not intending to stop
at Philadelphia, but were going farther down the river.

The way it happened that our young hero had provided himself with so
much more bread than he needed, notwithstanding that his funds were so
low, was this. When he went into the baker's he asked first for
biscuits, meaning such as he had been accustomed to buy in Boston. The
baker told him that they did not make such biscuits in Philadelphia. He
then asked for a three-penny loaf. The baker said they had no
three-penny loaves. Franklin then asked him for three-penny worth of
bread of any sort, and the baker gave him the three penny rolls.
Franklin was surprised to find how much bread he got for his money, but
he took the rolls, though he knew it was more than he would need, and so
after eating one he had no very ready way of disposing of the other two.
His giving them therefore to the poor woman and her boy was not quite as
great a deed of benevolence as it might at first seem. It was, however,
in this respect like other charitable acts, performed in this world,
which will seldom bear any very rigid scrutiny.

It ought, however, to be added in justice to our hero, that instances
frequently occurred during this period of his life in which he made real
sacrifices for the comfort and welfare of others, and thus gave
unquestionable evidence that he possessed a truly benevolent heart. In
fact, his readiness to aid and assist others, whenever it was in his
power to do so, constituted one of the most conspicuous traits in the
philosopher's character.

[Illustration]

Having thus given his bread to the woman, and obtained a draught of
water from the river for himself, Franklin turned up the street again
and went back into the town. He observed many well dressed people in the
street, all going the same way. It was Sunday, and they were going to
meeting. Franklin followed them, and took a seat in the meeting-house.
It proved to be a meeting of the society of Friends, and as is usual in
their meetings when no one is moved to speak, the congregation sat in
silence. As there was thus no service to occupy Franklin's attention,
and as he was weary with the rowing of the previous night and with the
other hardships and fatigues which he had undergone, he fell asleep. He
did not wake until the meeting was concluded, and not then until one of
the congregation came and aroused him.

[Illustration]

Early on Monday morning Franklin went to Mr. Bradford's office to see if
he could obtain employment. To his surprise he found Bradford the father
there. He had come on from New York on horseback, and so had arrived
before Franklin. Franklin found that young Bradford had obtained a
workman in the place of the one he had lost, but old Mr. Bradford
offered to go with him and introduce him to another printer named
Keimer, who worked in the neighborhood.

[Illustration]

Mr. Keimer concluded to take the young stranger into his employ, and he
entered into a long conversation with Mr. Bradford about his plans and
prospects in business, not imagining that he was talking to the father
of his rival in trade. At length Mr. Bradford went away, and Franklin
prepared to commence his operations.

He found his new master's printing office, however, in a very crazy
condition. There was but one press, and that was broken down and
disabled. The font of type, too, the only one that the office contained,
was almost worn out with previous usage. Mr. Keimer himself, moreover,
knew very little about his trade. He was an author, it seems, as well as
compositor, and was employed, when Franklin and Mr. Bradford came to see
him, in setting up an elegy which he was composing and putting in type
at the same time, using no copy.

Franklin, however took hold of his work with alacrity and energy, and
soon made great improvements in the establishment. The press was
repaired and put in operation. A new supply of types and cases was
obtained. Mr. Keimer did not keep house, and so a place was to be looked
for in some private family where the young stranger could board. The
place finally decided upon was Mr. Read's, the house where the young
woman resided who has already been mentioned as having observed the
absurd figure which Franklin had made in walking through the streets
when he first landed. He presented a much better appearance now, for a
chest of clothing which he and Collins had sent round secretly from
Boston by water, had arrived, and this enabled him to appear now in
quite a respectable guise.

It was in the fall of the year 1723, that Franklin came thus to
Philadelphia. He remained there during the winter, but in the spring a
very singular train of circumstances occurred, which resulted in leading
him back to Boston. During the winter he worked industriously at his
trade, and spent his leisure time in reading and study. He laid up the
money that he earned, instead of squandering it, as young men in his
situation often do, in transient indulgences. He formed many useful
acquaintances among the industrious and steady young men in the town. He
thus lived a very contented life, and forgot Boston, as he said, as much
as he could. He still kept it a profound secret from his parents where
he was--no one in Boston excepting Collins having been admitted to the
secret.

It happened, however, that Captain Holmes, one of Franklin's
brothers-in-law who was a shipmaster, came about this time to Newcastle,
a town about forty miles below Philadelphia, and there, hearing that
Benjamin was at Philadelphia, he wrote to him a letter urging him to
return home. Benjamin replied by a long letter defending the step that
he had taken, and explaining his plans and intentions in full. It
happened that Captain Holmes was in company with Sir William Keith, the
governor of the colony, when he received the letter; and he showed it to
him. The governor was struck with the intelligence and manliness which
the letter manifested, and as he was very desirous of having a really
good printing office established in Philadelphia, he came to see
Franklin when he returned to the city, and proposed to him to set up an
office of his own. His father, the governor said, would probably furnish
him with the necessary capital, if he would return to Boston and ask for
it, and he himself would see that he had work enough, for he would
procure the public printing for him. So it was determined that Franklin
should take passage in the first vessel that sailed, and go to Boston
and see his father. Of course all this was kept a profound secret from
Mr. Keimer.

In due time Franklin took leave of Mr. Keimer and embarked; and after a
very rough and dangerous passage he arrived safely in Boston. His
friends were very much astonished at seeing him, for Captain Holmes had
not yet returned. They were still more surprised at hearing the young
fugitive give so good an account of himself, and of his plans and
prospects for the future. The apprentices and journeymen in the printing
office gathered around him and listened to his stories with great
interest. They were particularly impressed by his taking out a handful
of silver money from his pocket, in answer to a question which they
asked him in respect to the kind of money which was used in
Philadelphia. It seems that in Boston they were accustomed to use paper
money almost altogether in those days.

[Illustration]

Young Collins, the boy who had assisted Franklin in his escape the year
before, was so much pleased with the accounts that the young adventurer
brought back of his success in Philadelphia that he determined to go
there himself. He accordingly closed up his affairs and set off on foot
for New York, with the understanding that Franklin, who was to go on
afterward by water, should join him there, and that they should then
proceed together to Philadelphia.

After many long consultations Franklin's father concluded that it was
not best for Benjamin to attempt to commence business for himself in
Philadelphia, and so Benjamin set out on his return. On his way back he
had a narrow escape from a very imminent danger. A Quaker lady came to
him one day, on board the vessel in which he was sailing to New York,
and began to caution him against two young women who had come on board
the vessel at Newport, and who were very forward and familiar in their
manners.

[Illustration]

"Young man," said she, "I am concerned for thee, as thou hast no friend
with thee, and seems not to know much of the world, or of the snares
youth is exposed to: depend upon it, these are very bad women. I can see
it by all their actions, and if thou art not upon thy guard, they will
draw thee into some danger; they are strangers to thee, and I advise
thee, in a friendly concern for thy welfare, to have no acquaintance
with them." Franklin thanked the lady for her advice, and determined to
follow it. When they arrived at New York the young women told him where
they lived, and invited him to come and see them. But he avoided doing
so, and it was well that he did, for a few days afterward he learned
that they were both arrested as thieves. They had stolen something from
the cabin of the ship during the voyage. If Franklin had been found in
their company he might have been arrested as their accomplice.

It happened curiously enough that young Franklin attracted the notice
and attention of a governor for the second time, as he passed through
New York on this journey. It seems that the captain of the vessel in
which he had made his voyage, happened to mention to the governor when
he arrived in New York, that there was a young man among his passengers
who had a great many books with him, and who seemed to take quite an
interest in reading; and the governor very kindly sent word back to
invite the young man to call at his house, promising, if he would do so,
to show him his library. Franklin very gladly accepted this invitation,
and the governor took him into his library, and held considerable
conversation with him, on the subject of books and authors. Franklin was
of course very much pleased with this adventure.

[Illustration]

At New York Franklin found his old friend Collins, who had arrived there
some time before him. Collins had been, in former times, a very steady
and industrious boy, but his character had greatly degenerated during
Franklin's absence. He had fallen into very intemperate habits, and
Franklin found, on joining him at New York, that he had been intoxicated
almost the whole time that he had been there. He had been gaming too,
and had lost all his money, and was now in debt for his board, and
wholly destitute. Franklin paid his bills, and they set off together for
Philadelphia.

Of course Franklin had to pay all the expenses, both for himself and his
companion, on the journey, and this, together with the charges which he
had incurred for Collins in New York, soon exhausted his funds, and the
two travelers would have been wholly out of money, had it not been that
Franklin had received a demand to collect for a man in Rhode Island, who
gave it to him when he came through. This demand was due from a man in
Pennsylvania, and when the travelers reached the part of the country
where this man resided, they called upon him and he paid them the money.
This put Franklin in funds again, though as it was money which did not
belong to him, he had no right to use it. He however considered himself
compelled to use a part of it, by the necessity of the case; and
Collins, knowing that his companion had the money, was continually
asking to borrow small sums, and Franklin lent them to him from time to
time, until at length such an inroad was made upon the trust funds which
he held, that Franklin began to be extremely anxious and uneasy.

To make the matter worse Collins continued to addict himself to drinking
habits, notwithstanding all that Franklin could do to prevent it. In
fact Franklin soon found that his remonstrances and efforts only
irritated Collins and made him angry, and so he desisted. When they
reached Philadelphia the case grew worse and worse. Collins could get no
employment, and he led a very dissipated life, all at Franklin's
expense. At length, however, an incident occurred which led to an open
quarrel between them. The circumstances were these.

The two boys, with some other young men, went out one day upon the
Delaware in a boat, on an excursion of pleasure. When they were away at
some distance from the shore, Collins refused to row in his turn. He
said that Franklin and the other boys should row him home. Franklin said
that they would not. "Then," said Collins. "You will have to stay all
night upon the water. You can do just as you please."

The other two boys were disposed to give up to Collins, unreasonable as
he was. "Let us row," said they, "what signifies it?" But Franklin,
whose resentment was now aroused, opposed this, and persisted in
refusing. Collins then declared that he would make him row or throw him
overboard; and he came along, stepping on the thwarts, toward Franklin,
as if to put his threat in execution. When he came near he struck at
Franklin, but Franklin just at the instant thrust his head forward
between Collins's legs, and then rising suddenly with all his force he
threw him over headlong into the water.

[Illustration]

Franklin knew that Collins was a good swimmer, and so he felt no concern
about his safety. He walked along to the stern of the boat, and asked
Collins if he would promise to row if they would allow him to get on
board again. Collins was very angry, and declared that he would not row.
So the boys who had the oars pulled ahead a few strokes, to keep the
boat out of Collins's reach as he swam after her. This continued for
some time--Collins swimming in the wake of the boat, and the boys
pulling gently, so as just to keep the boat out of his reach--while
Franklin himself stood in the stern, interrogating him from time to
time, and vainly endeavoring to bring him to terms. At last finding him
beginning to tire without showing any signs of yielding, for he was
obstinate as well as unreasonable, the boys stopped and drew him on
board, and then took him home dripping wet. Collins never forgave
Franklin for this. A short time after this incident, however, he
obtained some engagement to go to the West Indies, and he went away
promising to send back money to Franklin, to pay him what he owed him,
out of the very first that he should receive. He was never heard of
afterward.

In the mean time Franklin returned to his work in Mr. Keimer's office.
He reported the result of his visit to Boston, to Sir William, the
governor, informing him that his father was not willing to furnish the
capital necessary for setting up a printing office. Sir William replied
that it would make no difference; he would furnish the capital himself,
he said; and he proposed that Franklin should go to England in the next
vessel, and purchase the press and type. This Franklin agreed to do.

[Illustration]

In the mean time, before the vessel sailed, Franklin had become very
much attached to Miss Read. He felt, he says, a great respect and
affection for her, and he succeeded, as he thought, in inspiring her
with the same feelings toward him. It was not, however, considered
prudent to think of marriage immediately, especially as Franklin was
contemplating so long a voyage.

Besides the company of Miss Read there were several young men in
Philadelphia whose society Franklin enjoyed very highly at this time.
His most intimate friend was a certain James Ralph. Ralph was a boy of
fine literary taste and great love of reading. He had an idea that he
possessed poetic talent, and used often to write verses, and he
maintained that though his verses might be in some respects faulty, they
were no more so than those which other poets wrote when first beginning.
He intended, he said, to make writing poetry the business of his life.
Franklin did not approve of such a plan as this; still he enjoyed young
Ralph's company, and he was accustomed sometimes on holidays to take
long rambles with him in the woods on the banks of the Schuylkill. Here
the two boys would sit together under the trees, for hours, reading, and
conversing about what they had read.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

At length the time arrived for the sailing of the ship in which Franklin
was to go to England. The governor was to have given him letters of
introduction and of credit, and Franklin called for them from time to
time, but they were not ready. Finally he was directed to go on board
the vessel, and was told that the governor would send the letters there,
and that he would find them among the other letters, and could take them
out at his leisure. Franklin supposed that all was right, and
accordingly after taking leave of Miss Read, to whom he was now formally
engaged, and who wished him heartily a good voyage and a speedy return,
he proceeded to Newcastle, where the ship was anchored, and went on
board.

On the voyage Franklin met with a variety of incidents and adventures,
which, however, can not be particularly described here. Among other
things he made the acquaintance of a certain gentleman named Denham, a
_Friend_, from Philadelphia, who afterward rendered him very essential
service in London. He did not succeed in finding the governor's letters
immediately, as the captain told him, when he inquired for them, that
the letters were all together in a bag, stowed away. He said, however,
that he would bring out the bag when they entered the channel, and that
Franklin would have ample time to look out the letters before they got
up to London.

Accordingly when the vessel entered the channel the letters were all
brought out, and Franklin looked them over. He did not find any that
seemed very certainly intended for him, though there were several marked
with his name, as if consigned to his care. He thought that these must
be the governor's letters, especially as one was addressed to a printer
and another to a bookseller and stationer. He accordingly took them out,
and on landing he proceeded to deliver them. He went first with the one
which was addressed to the bookseller. The bookseller asked him who the
letter was from. Franklin replied that it was from Sir William Keith.
The bookseller replied that he did not know any such person, and on
opening the letter and looking at the signature, he said angrily that it
was from Riddlesden, "a man," he added, "whom I have lately found to be
a complete rascal, and I will have nothing to do with him or receive any
letters from him." So saying he thrust the letter back into Franklin's
hands.

[Illustration]

Poor Franklin, mortified and confounded, went immediately to Mr. Denham
to ask him what it would be best for him to do. Mr. Denham, when he had
heard a statement of the case, said that in all probability no one of
the letters which Franklin had taken was from the governor. Sir William,
he added, was a very good-natured man, who wished to please every body,
and was always ready to make magnificent offers and promises but not the
slightest reliance could be placed upon any thing that he said.

So Franklin found himself alone and moneyless in London, and dependent
wholly upon his own resources. He immediately began to seek employment
in the printing offices. He succeeded in making an engagement with a Mr.
Palmer, and he soon found a second-hand bookstore near the printing
office, where he used to go to read and to borrow books--his love of
reading continuing unchanged.

[Illustration]

In a short time Franklin left Mr. Palmer's and went to a larger printing
office, one which was carried on by a printer named Watts. The place was
near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a well known part of London. Here he was
associated with a large number of workmen, both compositors and
pressmen. They were very much astonished at Franklin's temperance
principles, for he drank nothing but water, while they consumed immense
quantities of strong beer. There was an ale-house near by, and a boy
from it attended constantly at the printing office to supply the workmen
with beer. These men had a considerable sum to pay every Saturday night
out of their wages for the beer they had drank; and this kept them
constantly poor. They maintained, however, that they needed the beer to
give them strength to perform the heavy work required of them in the
printing office. They drank _strong_ beer, they said, in order that they
might be _strong_ to labor. Franklin's companion at the press drank a
pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast, a pint between breakfast and
dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon at six o'clock, and a
pint when he had done his day's work. Some others drank nearly as much.

Franklin endeavored to convince them that it was a mistake to suppose
that the beer gave them strength, by showing that he, though he drank
nothing but water, could carry two heavy forms up-stairs to the
press-room, at a time, taking one in each hand; while they could only
carry one with both hands. They were very much surprised at the superior
strength of the "water American," as they called him, but still they
would not give up drinking beer.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

As is usually the case with young workmen entering large establishments,
where they are strangers, Franklin encountered many little difficulties
at first, but he gradually overcame them all, and soon became a favorite
both with his employer and his fellow workmen. He earned high wages, for
he was so prompt, and so steady, that he was put to the best work. He
took board at the house of an elderly woman, a widow, who lived not far
distant, and who, after inquiring in respect to Franklin's character,
took him at a cheaper rate than usual, from the protection which she
expected in having him in the house.

In a small room in the garret of the house where Franklin boarded, there
was a lodger whose case was very singular. She was a Roman Catholic, and
when young had gone abroad, to a nunnery, intending to become a nun; but
finding that the climate did not agree with her she returned to England,
where, though there was no nunnery, she determined on leading the life
of a nun by herself. She had given away all her property, reserving only
a very small sum which was barely sufficient to support life. The house
had been let from time to time to various Catholic families, who all
allowed the nun to remain in her garret rent free, considering it a
blessing upon them to have her there. A priest visited her every day to
receive her confessions; otherwise she lived in almost total seclusion.
Franklin, however, was once permitted to pay her a visit. He found her
cheerful and polite. She looked pale, but said that she was never sick.
The room had scarcely any furniture except such as related to her
religious observances.

[Illustration]

Franklin mentions among other incidents which occurred while he was in
London, that he taught two young men to swim, by only going twice with
them into the water. One of these young men was a workman in the
printing-office where Franklin was employed, named Wygate. Franklin was
always noted for his great skill and dexterity as a swimmer, and one
day, after he had taught the two young men to swim, as mentioned above,
he was coming down the river Thames in a boat with a party of friends,
and Wygate gave such an account of Franklin's swimming as to excite a
strong desire in the company to see what he could do. So Franklin
undressed himself, and leaped into the water, and he swam all the way
from Chelsea to Blackfriar's bridge in London, accompanying the boat,
and performing an infinite variety of dextrous evolutions in and under
the water, much to the astonishment and delight of all the company. In
consequence of this incident, Franklin had an application made to him
some time afterward, by a certain nobleman, to teach his two sons to
swim, with a promise of a very liberal reward. The nobleman had
accidentally heard of Franklin's swimming from Chelsea to London, and of
his teaching a person to swim in two lessons.

Franklin remained in London about eighteen months; at the end of that
time one of his fellow workmen proposed to him that they two should make
a grand tour together on the continent of Europe, stopping from time to
time in the great towns to work at their trade, in order to earn money
for their expenses. Franklin went to his friend, Mr. Denham, to consult
him in respect to this proposal. Mr. Denham advised him not to accede to
it, but proposed instead that Franklin should connect himself in
business with _him_. He was going to return to America, he said, with a
large stock of goods, there to go into business as a merchant. He made
such advantageous offers to Franklin, in respect to this enterprise,
that Franklin very readily accepted them, and in due time he settled up
his affairs in London, and sailed for America, supposing that he had
taken leave of the business of printing forever.

In the result, however, it was destined to be otherwise; for after a
short time Mr. Denham fell sick and died, and then Franklin, after
various perplexities and delays, concluded to accept of a proposal which
his old master, Mr. Keimer, made to him, to come and take charge of his
printing-office. Mr. Keimer had a number of rude and inexperienced hands
in his employ, and he wished to engage Franklin to come, as foreman and
superintendent of the office, and teach the men to do their work
skillfully.

[Illustration]

Franklin acceded to this proposal, but he did not find his situation in
all respects agreeable, and finally his engagement with Mr. Keimer was
suddenly brought to a close by an open quarrel. Mr. Keimer, it seems,
had not been accustomed to treat his foreman in a very respectful or
considerate manner, and one day when Franklin heard some unusual noise
in the street, and put his head out a moment to see what was the matter,
Mr. Keimer, who was standing below, called out to him, in a very rough
and angry manner, to go back and attend to his business, adding some
reproachful words which nettled Franklin exceedingly. He immediately
afterward came up into the office, when a sharp contention and high
words ensued. The end of the affair was that Franklin took his dismissal
and went immediately away.

[Illustration]

In a short time, however, Keimer sent for Franklin to come back, saying
that a few hasty words ought not to separate old friends, and Franklin,
after some hesitation, concluded to return. About this time Keimer had a
proposition made to him to print some bank bills, for the state of New
Jersey. A copper-plate press is required for this purpose, a press very
different in its character from an ordinary press. Franklin contrived
one of these presses for Mr. Keimer, the first which had been seen in
the country. This press performed its function very successfully. Mr.
Keimer and Franklin went together, with the press, to Burlington, where
the work was to be done: for it was necessary that the bills should be
printed under the immediate supervision of the government, in order to
make it absolutely certain that no more were struck off than the proper
number.

In printing these bills Franklin made the acquaintance of several
prominent public men in New Jersey, some of whom were always present
while the press was at work. Several of these gentlemen became very warm
friends of Franklin, and continued to be so during all his subsequent
life.

At last Franklin joined one of his comrades in the printing-office,
named Meredith, in forming a plan to leave Mr. Keimer, and commence
business themselves, independently. Meredith's father was to furnish the
necessary capital, and Franklin was to have the chief superintendence
and care of the business. This plan being arranged, an order was sent
out to England for a press and a font of type, and when the articles
arrived the two young men left Mr. Keimer's, and taking a small building
near the market, which they thought would be suitable for their purpose,
they opened their office, feeling much solicitude and many fears in
respect to their success.

To lessen their expense for rent they took a glazier and his family into
the house which they had hired, while they were themselves to board in
the glazier's family. Thus the arrangement which they made was both
convenient and economical.

[Illustration]

This glazier, Godfrey, had long been one of Franklin's friends, he was a
prominent member, in fact, of the little circle of young mechanics, who,
under the influence of Franklin's example, spent their leisure time in
scientific studies. Godfrey was quite a mathematician. He was
self-taught, it is true, but still his attainments were by no means
inconsiderable. He afterward distinguished himself as the inventor of an
instrument called Hadley's quadrant, now very generally relied upon for
taking altitudes and other observations at sea. It was called by
Hadley's name, as is said, through some artifice of Hadley, in obtaining
the credit of the invention, though Godfrey was really the author of it.

Though Godfrey was highly respected among his associates for his
mathematical knowledge, he knew little else, and he was not a very
agreeable companion. The mathematical field affords very few subjects
for entertaining conversation, and besides Godfrey had a habit, which
Franklin said he had often observed in great mathematicians, of
expecting universal precision in every thing that was said, of forever
taking exception to what was advanced by others, and of making
distinctions, on very trifling grounds, to the disturbance of all
conversation. He, however, became afterward an eminent man, and though
he died at length at a distance from Philadelphia, his remains were
eventually removed to the city and deposited at Laurel Hill, where a
monument was erected to his memory.

The young printers had scarce got their types in the cases and the press
in order, before one of Franklin's friends, a certain George House, came
in and introduced a countryman whom he had found in the street,
inquiring for a printer. They did the work which he brought, and were
paid five shillings for it.--Franklin says that this five shillings, the
first that he earned as an independent man, afforded him a very high
degree of pleasure. He was very grateful too to House, for having taken
such an interest in bringing him a customer, and recollecting his own
experience on this occasion, he always afterward felt a strong desire to
help new beginners, whenever it was in his power.

A certain other gentleman evinced his regard for the young printers in a
much more equivocal way. He was a person of some note in Philadelphia,
an elderly man, with a wise look, and a very grave and oracular manner
of speaking. This gentleman, who was a stranger to Franklin stopped one
day at the door and asked Franklin if he was the young man who had
lately opened a printing house. Being answered in the affirmative he
told Franklin that he was very sorry for him, as he certainly could not
succeed. Philadelphia, he said, was a sinking place. The people were
already half of them bankrupts, or nearly so, to his certain knowledge.
He then proceeded to present such a gloomy detail of the difficulties
and dangers which Philadelphia was laboring under, and of the evils
which were coming, that finally he brought Franklin into a very
melancholy frame of mind.

[Illustration]

The young printers went steadily on, notwithstanding these predictions,
and gradually began to find employment for their press. They obtained
considerable business through the influence of the members of a sort of
debating club which Franklin had established some time before. This club
was called the Junto, and was accustomed to meet on Friday evenings for
conversation and mutual improvement. The rules which Franklin drew up
for the government of this club required that each member should, in his
turn, propose subjects or queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or
Natural Philosophy, to be discussed by the company; and once in three
months to produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject
that he pleased. The members of the club were all enjoined to conduct
their discussion in a sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, and not
from love of dispute or desire of victory. Every thing like a positive
and dogmatical manner of speaking, and all direct contradiction of each
other, was strictly forbidden. Violations of these rules were punished
by fines and other similar penalties.

The members of this club having become much interested in Franklin's
character from what they had seen of him at the meetings, were strongly
disposed to aid him in obtaining business now that he had opened an
office of his own. They were mostly mechanics, being engaged in
different trades, in the city. One of them was the means of procuring
quite a large job for the young printers--the printing of a book in
folio. While they were upon this job, Franklin employed himself in
setting the type, his task being one sheet each day, while Meredith
worked the press. It required great exertion to carry the work on at the
rate of one sheet per day, especially as there were frequent
interruptions, on account of small jobs which were brought in from time
to time. Franklin was, however, very resolutely determined to print a
sheet a day, though it required him sometimes to work very late, and
always to begin very early. So determined was he to continue doing a
sheet a day of the work, that one night when he had imposed his forms
and thought his day's work was done, and by some accident one of the
forms was broken, and two pages thrown into _pi_, he immediately went to
work, distributed the letter, and set up the two pages anew before he
went to bed.

This indefatigable industry was soon observed by the neighbors, and it
began to attract considerable attention; so that at length, when certain
people were talking of the three printing-offices that there were now in
Philadelphia, and predicting that they could not all be sustained, some
one said that whatever might happen to the other two, Franklin's office
must succeed, "For the industry of that Franklin," said he, "is superior
to any thing I ever saw of the kind. I see him still at work every night
when I go home, and he is at work again in the morning before his
neighbors are out of bed." As the character of Franklin's office in this
respect became generally known, the custom that came to it rapidly
increased. There were still, however, some difficulties to be
encountered.

[Illustration]

Franklin was very unfortunate in respect to his partner, so far as the
work of the office was concerned, for Meredith was a poor printer, and
his habits were not good. In fact the sole reason why Franklin had
consented to associate himself with Meredith was that Meredith's father
was willing to furnish the necessary capital for commencing business.
His father was persuaded to do this in hopes that Franklin's influence
over his son might be the means of inducing him to leave off his habits
of drinking. Instead of this, however, he grew gradually worse. He
neglected his work, and was in fact often wholly incapacitated from
attending to it, by the effects of his drinking. Franklin's friends
regretted his connection with such a man, but there seemed to be now no
present help for it.

It happened, however, that things took such a turn, a short time after
this, as to enable Franklin to close his partnership with Meredith in a
very satisfactory manner. In the first place Meredith himself began to
be tired of an occupation which he was every day more and more convinced
that he was unfitted for. His father too found it inconvenient to meet
the obligations which he had incurred for the press and types, as they
matured; for he had bought them partly on credit. Two gentlemen,
moreover, friends of Franklin, came forward of their own accord, and
offered to advance him what money he would require to take the whole
business into his own hands. The result of all this was that the
partnership was terminated, by mutual consent, and Meredith went away.
Franklin assumed the debts, and borrowed money of his two friends to
meet the payments as they came due; and thenceforward he managed the
business in his own name.

After this change, the business of the office went on more prosperously
than ever. There was much interest felt at that time on the question of
paper money, one party in the state being in favor of it and the other
against it. Franklin wrote and printed a pamphlet on the subject. The
title of it was _The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency_. This
pamphlet was very well received, and had an important influence in
deciding the question in favor of such a currency. In consequence of
this Franklin was employed to print the bills, which was very profitable
work. He also obtained the printing of the laws, and of the proceedings
of the government, which was of great advantage to him.

About this time Franklin enlarged his business by opening a stationery
store in connection with his printing office. He employed one or two
additional workmen too. In order, however, to show that he was not above
his business, he used to bring home the paper which he purchased at the
stores, through the streets on a wheelbarrow.

[Illustration]

The engagement which Franklin had formed with Miss Read before he went
to London had been broken off. This was _his_ fault and not hers; as the
rupture was occasioned by his indifference and neglect. When her friends
found that Franklin had forsaken her, they persuaded her to marry
another man. This man, however, proved to be a dissolute and worthless
fellow, having already a wife in England, when he married Miss Read. She
accordingly refused to live with him, and he went away to the West
Indies, leaving Miss Read at home, disconsolate and wretched.

[Illustration]

Franklin pitied her very much, and attributed her misfortunes in a great
measure to his unfaithfulness to the promises which he had made her. He
renewed his acquaintance with her, and finally married her. The wedding
took place on the 1st of September, 1730; Franklin was at this time
about twenty-five years of age. It was reported that the man who had
married her was dead. At all events her marriage with him was wholly
invalid.

At the time when Franklin commenced his business in Philadelphia there
was no bookstore in any place south of Boston. The towns on the sea
coast which have since grown to be large and flourishing cities, were
then very small, and comparatively insignificant; and they afforded to
the inhabitants very few facilities of any kind. Those who wished to buy
books had no means of doing it except to send to England for them.

In order to remedy in some measure the difficulty which was experienced
on this account, Franklin proposed to the members of the debating
society which has already been named, that they should form a library,
by bringing all their books together and depositing them in the room
where the society was accustomed to hold its meetings. This was
accordingly done. The members brought their books, and a foundation was
thus laid for what afterward became a great public library. The books
were arranged on shelves which were prepared for them in the club-room,
and suitable rules and regulations were made in respect to the use of
them by the members.

[Illustration]

With the exception that he appropriated one or two hours each day to the
reading of books from the library, Franklin devoted his time wholly to
his business. He took care, he said, not only to _be_, in reality,
industrious and frugal, but to appear so. He dressed plainly; he never
went to any places of diversion; he never went out a-hunting or
shooting, and he spent no time in taverns, or in games or frolics of any
kind. The people about him observed his diligence, and the consequence
was that he soon acquired the confidence and esteem of all who knew him.
Business came in, and his affairs went on more and more smoothly every
day.

[Illustration]

It was very fortunate for him that his wife was as much disposed to
industry and frugality as himself. She assisted her husband in his work
by folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing paper,
rags, and other similar services. They kept no servants, and lived in
the plainest and most simple manner. Thus all the money which was earned
in the printing office, or made by the profits of the stationery store,
was applied to paying back the money which Franklin had borrowed of his
friends, to enable him to settle with Meredith. He was ambitious to pay
this debt as soon as possible, so that the establishment might be wholly
his own. His wife shared in this desire, and thus, while they deprived
themselves of no necessary comfort, they expended nothing for luxury or
show. Their dress, their domestic arrangements, and their whole style of
living, were perfectly plain.

[Illustration]

Franklin's breakfast, for example, for a long time, consisted only of a
bowl of bread and milk, which was eaten from a two-penny earthen
porringer and with a pewter spoon. At length, however, one morning when
called to his breakfast he found a new china bowl upon the table, with a
silver spoon in it. They had been bought for him by his wife without his
knowledge, who justified herself for the expenditure by saying that she
thought that her husband was as much entitled to a china bowl and silver
spoon as any of her neighbors.

About this time Franklin adopted a very systematic and formal plan for
the improvement of his moral character. He made out a list of the
principal moral virtues, thirteen in all, and then made a book of a
proper number of pages, and wrote the name of one virtue on each page.
He then, on each page, ruled a table which was formed of thirteen lines
and seven columns. The lines were for the names of the thirteen virtues,
and the columns for the days of the week. Each page therefore
represented one week, and Franklin was accustomed every night to examine
himself, and mark down in the proper column, and opposite to the names
of the several virtues, all violations of duty in respect to each one
respectively, which he could recollect that he had been guilty of during
that day. He paid most particular attention each week to one particular
virtue, namely, the one which was written on the top of the page for
that week, without however neglecting the others--following in this
respect, as he said, the example of the gardener who weeds one bed in
his garden at a time.

[Illustration]

He had several mottos prefixed to this little book, and also two short
prayers, imploring divine assistance to enable him to keep his
resolution. One of these prayers was from Thomson:

    "Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
    O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
    Save me from folly, vanity, and vice;
    From every low pursuit; and feed my soul
    With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
    Sacred, substantial, never fading bliss."

The other was composed by himself, and was as follows.

     "O Powerful Goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in
     me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my
     resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind
     offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for
     thy continual favors to me."

Franklin persevered in his efforts to improve himself in moral
excellence, by means of this record, for a long time. He thought he made
great progress, and that his plan was of lasting benefit to him. He
found, however, that he could not, as at first he fondly hoped, make
himself perfect. He consoled himself at last, he said, by the idea that
it was not best, after all, for any one to be absolutely perfect. He
used to say that this willingness on his part to be satisfied with
retaining some of his faults, when he had become wearied and discouraged
with the toil and labor of removing them, reminded him of the case of
one of his neighbors, who went to buy an ax of a smith. The ax, as is
usual with this tool, was ground bright near the edge, while the
remainder of the surface of the iron was left black, just as it had come
from the forge. The man wished to have his ax bright all over, and the
smith said that he would grind it bright if the man would turn the
grindstone.

So the man went to the wheel by which it seems the grindstone was
turned, through the intervention of a band, and began his labor. The
smith held the ax upon the stone, broad side down, leaning hard and
heavily. The man came now and then to see how the work went on. The
brightening he found went on slowly. At last, wearied with the labor, he
said that he would take the ax as it then was, without grinding it any
more. "Oh, no," said the smith, "turn on, turn on; we shall have it
bright by-and-by. All that we have done yet has only made it speckled."
"Yes," said the man, "but I think I like a speckled ax best." So he took
it away.

[Illustration]

In the same manner Franklin said that he himself seemed to be contented
with a character somewhat speckled, when he found how discouraging was
the labor and toil required to make it perfectly bright.

During all this time Franklin went on more and more prosperously in
business, and was continually enlarging and extending his plans. He
printed a newspaper which soon acquired an extensive circulation. He
commenced the publication of an almanac, which was continued afterward
for twenty-five years, and became very celebrated under the name of Poor
Richard's Almanac. At length the spirit of enterprise which he possessed
went so far as to lead him to send one of his journeymen to establish a
branch printing-office in Charleston, South Carolina. This branch,
however, did not succeed very well at first, though, after a time, the
journeyman who had been sent out died, and then his wife, who was an
energetic and capable woman, took charge of the business, and sent
Franklin accounts of the state of it promptly and regularly. Franklin
accordingly left the business in her hands, and it went on very
prosperously for several years: until at last the woman's son grew up,
and she purchased the office for him, with what she had earned and
saved.

[Illustration]

Notwithstanding the increasing cares of business, and the many
engagements which occupied his time and attention, Franklin did not,
during all this time, in any degree remit his efforts to advance in the
acquisition of knowledge. He studied French, and soon made himself
master of that language so far as to read it with ease. Then he
undertook the Italian. A friend of his, who was also studying Italian,
was fond of playing chess, and often wished Franklin to play with him.
Franklin consented on condition that the penalty for being beaten should
be to have some extra task to perform in the Italian grammar--such as
the committing to memory of some useful portion of the grammar, or the
writing of exercises. They were accordingly accustomed to play in this
way, and the one who was beaten, had a lesson assigned him to learn, or
a task to perform, and he was bound upon his honor to fulfill this duty
before the next meeting.

After having acquired some proficiency in the Italian language Franklin
took up the Latin. He had studied Latin a little when a boy at school,
at the time when his father contemplated educating him for the church.
He had almost entirely forgotten what he had learned of the language at
school, but he found, on looking into a Latin Testament, that it would
be very easy for him to learn the language now, on account of the
knowledge which he had acquired of French and Italian. His experience in
this respect led him to think that the common mode of learning languages
was not a judicious one. "We are told," says he, "that it is proper to
begin first with the Latin, and having acquired that, it will be more
easy to attain those modern languages which are derived from it; and yet
we do not begin with the Greek in order more easily to acquire the
Latin." He then compares the series of languages to a staircase. It is
true that if we contrive some way to clamber to the upper stair, by the
railings or by some other method, without using the steps, we can then
easily reach any particular stair by coming down, but still the simplest
and the wisest course would seem to be to walk up directly from the
lower to the higher in regular gradation.

"I would therefore," he adds, "offer it to the consideration of those
who superintend the education of our youth, whether, since many of those
who begin with the Latin quit the same after spending some years,
without having made any great proficiency, and what they have learned
becomes almost useless, so that their time has been lost, it would not
have been better to have begun with the French, proceeding to the
Italian and Latin; for though after spending the same time they should
quit the study of languages, and never arrive at the Latin, they would,
however, have acquired another tongue or two that, being in modern use,
might be serviceable to them in common life."

[Illustration]

It was now ten years since Franklin had been at Boston, and as he was
getting well established in business, and easy in his circumstances, he
concluded to go there and visit his relations. His brother, Mr. James
Franklin, the printer to whom he had been apprenticed when a boy, was
not in Boston at this time. He had removed to Newport. On his return
from Boston Franklin went to Newport to see him. He was received by his
brother in a very cordial and affectionate manner, all former
differences between the two brothers being forgotten by mutual consent.
He found his brother in feeble health, and fast declining--and
apprehending that his death was near at hand. He had one son, then ten
years of age, and he requested that in case of his death Benjamin would
take this child and bring him up to the printing business. Benjamin
promised to do so. A short time after this his brother died, and
Franklin took the boy, sent him to school for a few years, and then took
him into his office, and brought him up to the business of printing. His
mother carried on the business at Newport until the boy had grown up,
and then Franklin established him there, with an assortment of new types
and other facilities. Thus he made his brother ample amends for the
injury which he had done him by running away from his service when he
was a boy.

[Illustration]

On his return from Boston, Franklin found all his affairs in
Philadelphia in a very prosperous condition. His business was constantly
increasing, his income was growing large, and he was beginning to be
very widely known and highly esteemed, throughout the community. He
began to be occasionally called upon to take some part in general
questions relating to the welfare of the community at large. He was
appointed postmaster for Philadelphia. Soon after this he was made clerk
of the General Assembly, the colonial legislature of Pennsylvania. He
began, too, to pay some attention to municipal affairs, with a view to
the better regulation of the public business of the city. He proposed a
reform in the system adopted for the city watch. The plan which had been
pursued was for a public officer to designate every night a certain
number of householders, taken from the several wards in succession, who
were to perform the duty of watchmen. This plan was, however, found to
be very inefficient, as the more respectable people, instead of serving
themselves, would pay a fine to the constable to enable him to hire
substitutes; and these substitutes were generally worthless men who
spent the night in drinking, instead of faithfully attending to their
duties.

Franklin proposed that the whole plan should be changed; he recommended
that a tax should be levied upon the people, and a regular body of
competent watchmen employed and held to a strict responsibility in the
performance of their duty. This plan was adopted, and proved to be a
very great improvement on the old system.

It was also much more just; for people were taxed to pay the watchmen in
proportion to their property, and thus they who had most to be protected
paid most.

[Illustration]

Franklin took a great interest, too, about this time, in promoting a
plan for building a large public edifice in the heart of the city, to
accommodate the immense audiences that were accustomed to assemble to
hear the discourses of the celebrated Mr. Whitefield. The house was
built by public contribution. When finished, it was vested in trustees,
expressly for the use of _any preacher of any religious persuasion_, who
might desire to address the people of Philadelphia. In fact, Franklin
was becoming more and more a public man, and soon after this time, he
withdrew almost altogether from his private pursuits, and entered fully
upon his public career. The history of his adventures in that wider
sphere must be postponed to some future Number.

[Illustration]




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.[1]

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT.

    [1] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
    Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
    the Southern District of New York.


Napoleon's Expedition to Egypt was one of the most magnificent
enterprises which human ambition ever conceived. When Napoleon was a
schoolboy at Brienne, his vivid imagination became enamored of the
heroes of antiquity, and ever dwelt in the society of the illustrious
men of Greece and Rome. Indulging in solitary walks and pensive musings,
at that early age he formed vague and shadowy, but magnificent
conceptions of founding an Empire in the East, which should outvie in
grandeur all that had yet been told in ancient or in modern story. His
eye wandered along the shores of the Persian Gulf, and the Caspian Sea,
as traced upon the map, and followed the path of the majestic floods of
the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Ganges, rolling through tribes and
nations, whose myriad population, dwelling in barbaric pomp and pagan
darkness, invited a conqueror. "The Persians," exclaimed this strange
boy, "have blocked up the route of Tamerlane, but I will open another."
He, in those early dreams, imagined himself a conqueror, with
Alexander's strength, but without Alexander's vice or weakness,
spreading the energies of civilization, and of a just and equitable
government, over the wild and boundless regions which were lost to
European eyes in the obscurity of distance.

When struggling against the armies of Austria, upon the plains of Italy,
visions of Egypt and of the East blended with the smoke and the din of
the conflict. In the retreat of the Austrians before his impetuous
charges, in the shout of victory which incessantly filled his ear,
swelling ever above the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the
dying, Napoleon saw but increasing indications that destiny was pointing
out his path toward an Oriental throne.

When the Austrians were driven out of Italy, and the campaign was ended,
and Napoleon, at Montebello, was receiving the homage of Europe, his
ever-impetuous mind turned with new interest to the object of his early
ambition. He often passed hours, during the mild Italian evenings,
walking with a few confidential friends in the magnificent park of his
palace, conversing with intense enthusiasm upon the illustrious empires,
which have successively overshadowed those countries, and faded away.
"Europe," said he, "presents no field for glorious exploits; no great
empires or revolutions are to be found but in the East, where there are
six hundred millions of men."

Upon his return to Paris, he was deaf to all the acclamations with which
he was surrounded. His boundless ambition was such that his past
achievements seemed as nothing. The most brilliant visions of Eastern
glory were dazzling his mind. "They do not long preserve at Paris," said
he, "the remembrance of any thing. If I remain long unemployed, I am
undone. The renown of one, in this great Babylon, speedily supplants
that of another. If I am seen three times at the opera, I shall no
longer be an object of curiosity. I am determined not to remain in
Paris. There is nothing here to be accomplished. Every thing here passes
away. My glory is declining. This little corner of Europe is too small
to supply it. We must go to the East. All the great men of the world
have there acquired their celebrity."

When requested to take command of the army of England, and to explore
the coast, to judge of the feasibility of an attack upon the English in
their own island, he said to Bourrienne, "I am perfectly willing to
make a tour to the coast. Should the expedition to Britain prove too
hazardous, as I much fear that it will, the army of England will become
the army of the East, and we will go to Egypt."

He carefully studied the obstacles to be encountered in the invasion of
England, and the means at his command to surmount them. In his view, the
enterprise was too hazardous to be undertaken, and he urged upon the
Directory the Expedition to Egypt. "Once established in Egypt," said he,
"the Mediterranean becomes a _French Lake_; we shall found a colony
there, unenervated by the curse of slavery, and which will supply the
place of St. Domingo; we shall open a market for French manufactures
through the vast regions of Africa, Arabia, and Syria. All the caravans
of the East will meet at Cairo, and the commerce of India, must forsake
the Cape of Good Hope, and flow through the Red Sea. Marching with an
army of sixty thousand men, we can cross the Indus, rouse the oppressed
and discontented native population, against the English usurpers, and
drive the English out of India. We will establish governments which will
respect the rights and promote the interests of the people. The
multitude will hail us as their deliverers from oppression. The
Christians of Syria, the Druses, and the Armenians, will join our
standards. We may change the face of the world." Such was the
magnificent project which inflamed this ambitious mind.

England, without a shadow of right, had invaded India. Her well-armed
dragoons had ridden, with bloody hoofs, over the timid and naked
natives. Cannon, howitzers, and bayonets had been the all-availing
arguments with which England had silenced all opposition. English
soldiers, with unsheathed swords ever dripping with blood, held in
subjection provinces containing uncounted millions of inhabitants. A
circuitous route of fifteen thousand miles, around the stormy Cape of
Good Hope, conducted the merchant fleets of London and Liverpool to
Calcutta and Bombay; and through the same long channel there flooded
back upon the maritime isle the wealth of the Indies.

It was the plea of Napoleon that he was not going to make an unjust war
upon the unoffending nations of the East; but that he was the ally of
the oppressed people, drawing the sword against their common enemy, and
that he was striving to emancipate them from their powerful usurpers,
and to confer upon them the most precious privileges of freedom. He
marched to Egypt not to desolate, but to enrich; not to enslave, but to
enfranchise; not to despoil the treasures of the East, but to transfer
to those shores the opulence and the high civilization of the West.
Never was an ambitious conqueror furnished with a more plausible plea.
England, as she looks at India and China, must be silent. America, as
she listens to the dying wail of the Red Man, driven from the forests of
his childhood and the graves of his fathers, can throw no stone.
Napoleon surely was not exempt from the infirmities of humanity. But it
is not becoming in an English or an American historian to breathe the
prayer, "We thank Thee, oh God, that we are not like this Bonaparte."

Egypt, the memorials of whose former grandeur still attract the wonder
and the admiration of the civilized world, after having been buried,
during centuries, in darkness and oblivion, is again slowly emerging
into light, and is, doubtless, destined eventually to become one of the
great centres of industry and of knowledge. The Mediterranean washes its
northern shores, opening to its commerce all the opulent cities of
Europe. The Red Sea wafts to its fertile valley the wealth of India and
of China. The Nile, rolling its vast floods from the unknown interior of
Africa, opens a highway for inexhaustible internal commerce with unknown
nations and tribes.

The country consists entirely of the lower valley of the Nile, with a
front of about one hundred and twenty miles on the Mediterranean. The
valley six hundred miles in length, rapidly diminishes in breadth as it
is crowded by the sands of the desert, presenting, a few leagues from
the mouth of the river, but the average width of about six miles. The
soil fertilized by the annual inundations of the Nile, possesses most
extraordinary fertility. These floods are caused by the heavy rains
which fall in the mountains of Abyssinia. It never rains in Egypt.
Centuries may pass while a shower never falls from the sky. Under the
Ptolemies the population of the country was estimated at twenty
millions. But by the terrific energies of despotism, these numbers had
dwindled away, and at the time of the French Expedition Egypt contained
but two million five hundred thousand inhabitants. These were divided
into four classes. First came the Copts, about two hundred thousand, the
descendants of the ancient Egyptians. They were in a state of the most
abject degradation and slavery. The great body of the population, two
millions in number, were the Arabs. They were a wild and semi-barbarian
race, restrained from all enterprise and industry, by unrelenting
despotism. The Turks or Janizaries, two hundred thousand strong,
composed a standing army, of sensual, merciless, unprincipled usurpers,
which kept the trembling population by the energies of the bastinado,
the scimitar and the bowstring in most servile subjection. The Mamelukes
composed a body of twelve thousand horsemen, proud, powerful and
intolerable oppressors. Each horseman had two servants to perform his
menial service. Twenty-four beys, each of whom had five or six hundred
Mamelukes under his command, governed this singular body of cavalry. Two
principal beys, Ibrahim and Mourad divided between them the sovereignty
of Egypt. It was the old story of despotism. The millions were ground
down into hopeless degradation and poverty to pamper to the luxury and
vice of a few haughty masters. Oriental voluptuousness and luxury
reigned in the palaces of the beys; beggary and wretchedness deformed
the mud hovels of the defrauded and degraded people. It was Napoleon's
aim to present himself to the _people_ of Egypt as their friend and
liberator; to rally them around his standard, to subdue the Mamelukes,
to establish a government, which should revive all the sciences and the
arts of civilized life in Egypt; to acquire a character, by these
benefactions, which should emblazon his name throughout the East; and
then, with oppressed nations welcoming him as a deliverer, to strike
blows upon the British power in India, which should compel the mistress
of the seas to acknowledge that upon the land there was an arm which
could reach and humble her. It was a design sublime in its magnificence.
But it was not the will of God that it should be accomplished.

The Directory, at last overcome by the arguments of Napoleon, and also,
through jealousy of his unbounded popularity, being willing to remove
him from France, assented to the proposed expedition. It was however
necessary to preserve the utmost secrecy. Should England be informed of
the direction in which the blow was about to fall upon her, she might,
with her invincible fleet, intercept the French squadron--she might
rouse the Mamelukes to most formidable preparations for resistance, and
might thus vastly increase the difficulties of the enterprise. All the
deliberations were consequently conducted with closed doors, and the
whole plan was enveloped in the most profound mystery. For the first
time in the history of the world, literature and science and art, formed
a conspicuous part of the organization of an army. It was agreed that
Napoleon should take forty-six thousand men, a certain number of
officers of his own selection, men of science, engineers, geographers,
and artisans of all kinds. Napoleon now devoted himself with the most
extraordinary energy to the execution of his plans. Order succeeded
order with ceaseless rapidity. He seemed to rest not day nor night. He
superintended every thing himself, and with almost the rapidity of the
wind passed from place to place, corresponding with literary men,
conversing with generals, raising money, collecting ships, and
accumulating supplies. His comprehensive and indefatigable mind arranged
even the minutest particulars. "I worked all day," said one, in apology
for his assigned duty not having been fully performed. "But had you not
the night also?" Napoleon replied. "Now sir," said he to another, "use
dispatch. Remember that the world was created in but six days. Ask me
for whatever you please, except _time_; that is the only thing which is
beyond my power."

His own energy was thus infused into the hearts of hundreds, and with
incredible rapidity the work of preparation went on. He selected four
points for the assemblage of convoys and troops, Toulon, Genoa, Ajaccio,
and Civita Vecchia. He chartered four hundred vessels of merchantmen in
France and Italy as transports for the secret service, and assembled
them at the points of departure. He dispatched immediate orders for the
divisions of his renowned army of Italy to march to Genoa and Toulon. He
collected the best artisans Europe could furnish in all the arts of
human industry. He took printing types, of the various languages of the
East, from the College of the Propaganda at Rome, and a company of
printers. He formed a large collection of the most perfect philosophical
and mathematical instruments. The most illustrious men, though knowing
not where he was about to lead them, were eager to attach themselves to
the fortunes of the young general. Preparations for an enterprise upon
such a gigantic scale could not be made without attracting the attention
of Europe. Rumor was busy with her countless contradictions. "Where is
Napoleon bound?" was the universal inquiry. "He is going," said some "to
the Black Sea"--"to India"--"to cut a canal through the Isthmus of
Suez"--"to Ireland"--"to the Thames." Even Kleber supposed that they
were bound for England, and reposing implicit confidence in the
invincibility of Napoleon, he said, "Well! if you throw a fireship into
the Thames, put Kleber on board of her and you shall see what he will
do." The English cabinet was extremely perplexed. They clearly foresaw
that a storm was gathering, but knew not in what direction it would
break. Extraordinary efforts were made to equip a powerful fleet, which
was placed under the command of Lord Nelson, to cruise in the
Mediterranean and watch the movements of the French.

On the 9th of May, 1798, just five months after Napoleon's return to
Paris from the Italian campaign, he entered Toulon, having completed all
his preparations for the most magnificent enterprise ever contemplated
by a mortal. Josephine accompanied him, that he might enjoy as long as
possible, the charms of her society. Passionately as he loved his own
glory, his love for Josephine was _almost_ equally enthusiastic. A more
splendid armament never floated upon the bosom of the ocean than here
awaited him, its supreme lord and master. The fleet consisted of thirty
ships of the line and frigates; seventy-two brigs and cutters, and four
hundred transports. It bore forty-six thousand combatants, and a
literary corps of one hundred men, furnished in the most perfect manner,
to transport to Asia the science and the arts of Europe, and to bring
back in return the knowledge gleaned among the monuments of antiquity.
The old army of Italy was drawn up in proud array to receive its
youthful general, and they greeted him with the most enthusiastic
acclamations. But few even of the officers of the army were aware of its
destination. Napoleon inspirited his troops with the following
proclamation:

"Soldiers! you are one of the wings of the army of England. You have
made war in mountains, plains and cities. It remains to make it on the
ocean. The Roman legions, whom you have often imitated but not yet
equaled, combated Carthage, by turns, on the seas and on the plains of
Zama. Victory never deserted their standards, because they never ceased
to be brave, patient, and united. Soldiers! the eyes of Europe are upon
you. You have great destinies to accomplish, battles to fight, dangers
and fatigues to overcome. You are about to do more than you have yet
done, for the prosperity of your country, the happiness of man and for
your own glory." Thus the magnitude of the enterprise was announced,
while at the same time it was left vailed in mystery.

[Illustration: THE EMBARKATION.]

Napoleon had, on many occasions, expressed his dislike of the arbitrary
course pursued by the Directory. In private he expressed, in the
strongest terms, his horror of Jacobin cruelty and despotism. "The
Directors," said he "can not long retain their position. They know not
how to do any thing for the imagination of the nation." It is said that
the Directors, at last, were so much annoyed by his censure that they
seriously contemplated his arrest and applied to Fouche for that
purpose. The wily minister of police replied, "Napoleon Bonaparte is not
the man to be arrested; neither is Fouche the man who will undertake to
arrest him." When Bourrienne inquired if he were really determined to
risk his fate on the Expedition to Egypt, "Yes!" he replied, "if I
remain here, it will be necessary for me to overturn this miserable
government, and make myself king. But we must not think of that yet. The
pear is not yet ripe. I have sounded, but the time has not yet come. I
must first dazzle these gentlemen by my exploits." One of his last acts
before embarkation was to issue a humane proclamation to the military
commission at Toulon urging a more merciful construction of one of the
tyrannical edicts of the Directory against the emigrants. "I exhort you,
citizens," said he, "when the law presents at your tribunal old men and
females, to declare that, in the midst of war, Frenchmen respect the
aged and the women, even of their enemies. The soldier who signs a
sentence against one incapable of bearing arms is a coward." There was
perhaps not another man in France, who would have dared thus to oppose
the sanguinary measures of government. This benevolent interposition met
however with a response in the hearts of the people, and added a fresh
laurel to his brow.

On the morning of the 19th of May, 1798, just as the sun was rising over
the blue waves of the Mediterranean the fleet got under way. Napoleon,
with Eugene, embarked in the Orient, an enormous ship of one hundred and
twenty guns. It was a brilliant morning and the unclouded sun perhaps
never shone upon a more splendid scene. The magnificent armament
extended over a semi-circle of not less than eighteen miles. The parting
between Napoleon and Josephine is represented as having been tender and
affecting in the extreme. She was very anxious to accompany him, but he
deemed the perils to which they would be exposed, and the hardships they
must necessarily endure, far too formidable for a lady to encounter.
Josephine stood upon a balcony, with her eyes blinded with tears, as she
waved her adieus to Napoleon, and watched the receding fleet, till the
lessening sails disappeared beneath the distant horizon. The squadron
sailed first to Genoa, thence to Ajaccio, and thence to Civita Vecchia,
to join the convoys collected in those ports. The signal was then given
for the whole fleet to bear away, as rapidly as possible, for Malta.

In coasting along the shores of Italy, Napoleon, from the deck of the
Orient descried, far away in the distant horizon, the snow-capped
summits of the Alps. He called for a telescope, and gazed long and
earnestly upon the scene of his early achievements. "I can not," said
he, "behold without emotion, the land of Italy. These mountains command
the plains where I have so often led the French to victory. Now I am
bound to the East. With the same troops victory is still secure."

[Illustration: THE DISTANT ALPS.]

All were fascinated by the striking originality, animation, and
eloquence of his conversation. Deeply read in all that is illustrious in
the past, every island, every bay, every promontory, every headland
recalled the heroic deeds of antiquity. In pleasant weather Napoleon
passed nearly all the time upon deck, surrounded by a group never weary
of listening to the freshness and the poetic vigor of his remarks. Upon
all subjects he was alike at home, and the most distinguished
philosophers, in their several branches of science, were amazed at the
instinctive comprehensiveness with which every subject seemed to be
familiar to his mind. He was never depressed and never mirthful. A calm
and thoughtful energy inspired every moment. From all the ships the
officers and distinguished men were in turn invited to dine with him. He
displayed wonderful tact in drawing them out in conversation, forming
with unerring skill an estimate of character, and thus preparing himself
for the selection of suitable agents in all the emergencies which were
to be encountered. In nothing was the genius of Napoleon more
conspicuous, than in the lightning-like rapidity with which he detected
any vein of genius in another. Not a moment of time was lost.
Intellectual conversation, or reading or philosophical discussion caused
the hours to fly on swiftest wing. Napoleon always, even in his most
hurried campaigns, took a compact library with him. When driving in his
carriage, from post to post of the army, he improved the moments in
garnering up that knowledge, for the accumulation of which he ever
manifested such an insatiable desire. _Words_ were with him nothing,
_ideas_ every thing. He devoured biography, history, philosophy,
treatises upon political economy and upon all the sciences. His contempt
for works of fiction--the whole class of novels and romances--amounted
almost to indignation. He could never endure to see one reading such a
book or to have such a volume in his presence. Once, when Emperor, in
passing through the saloons of his palace, he found one of the maids of
honor with a novel in her hands. He took it from her, gave her a severe
lecture for wasting her time in such frivolous reading, and cast the
volume into the flames. When he had a few moments for diversion, he not
unfrequently employed them in looking over a book of logarithms, in
which he always found recreation.

At the dinner table some important subject of discussion was ever
proposed. For the small talk and indelicacies which wine engenders
Napoleon had no taste, and his presence alone was sufficient to hold all
such themes in abeyance. He was a young man of but twenty-six years of
age, but his pre-eminence over all the forty-six thousand who composed
that majestic armament was so conspicuous, that no one dreamed of
questioning it. Without annoyance, without haughtiness, he was fully
conscious of his own superiority, and received unembarrassed the marks
of homage which ever surrounded him. The questions for discussion
relating to history, mythology, and science, were always proposed by
Napoleon. "Are the planets inhabited?" "What is the age of the world?"
"Will the earth be destroyed by fire or water?" "What are the
comparative merits of Christianity and Moslemism?" such were some of the
questions which interested the mind of this young general.

From the crowded state of the vessels, and the numbers on board
unaccustomed to nautical manoeuvres, it not unfrequently happened that
some one fell overboard. Though Napoleon could look with perfect
composure upon the carnage of the field of battle, and order movements,
without the tremor of a nerve, which he knew must consign thousands to a
bloody death, when by such an accidental event life was periled, his
sympathies were aroused to the highest degree, and he could not rest
until the person was extricated. He always liberally rewarded those who
displayed unusual courage and zeal in effecting a rescue. One dark night
a noise was heard as of a man falling overboard. The whole ship's
company, consisting of two thousand men, as the cry of alarm spread from
stem to stern, was instantly in commotion. Napoleon immediately ascended
to the deck. The ship was put about; boats were lowered, and, after much
agitation and search, it was discovered that the whole stir was
occasioned by the slipping of a quarter of beef from a noose at the
bulwark. Napoleon ordered that the recompense for signal exertions
should be more liberal than usual. "It might have been a man," he said,
"and the zeal and courage now displayed have not been less than would
have been required in that event."

On the morning of the 16th of June, after a voyage of twenty days, the
white cliffs of Malta, and the magnificent fortifications of that
celebrated island, nearly a thousand miles from Toulon, emerged from the
horizon, glittering with dazzling brilliance in the rays of the rising
sun. By a secret understanding with the Knights of Malta. Napoleon had
prepared the way for the capitulation of the island before leaving
France. The Knights, conscious of their inability to maintain
independence, preferred to be the subjects of France, rather than of any
other power. "I captured Malta," said Napoleon, "while at Mantua." The
reduction, by force, of that almost impregnable fortress, would have
required a long siege, and a vast expenditure of treasure and of life. A
few cannon shot were exchanged, that there might be a slight show of
resistance, when the island was surrendered, and the tri-colored flag
waved proudly over those bastions which, in former years, had bid
defiance, to the whole power of the all-conquering Turk. The generals of
the French army were amazed as they contemplated the grandeur and the
strength of these works, upon which had been expended the science, the
toil, and the wealth of ages. "It is well," said General Caffarelli to
Napoleon, "that there was some one within to open the gates to us. We
should have had more trouble in making our way through, if the place had
been empty." The Knights of Malta, living upon the renown acquired by
their order in by-gone ages, and reveling in luxury and magnificence,
were very willing to receive the gold of Napoleon, and palaces in the
fertile plains of Italy and France, in exchange for turrets and towers,
bastions and ramparts of solid rock. The harbor is one of the most safe
and commodious in the world. It embraced, without the slightest
embarassment, the whole majestic armament, and allowed the magnificent
Orient, to float, with abundance of water, at the quay.

Napoleon immediately devoted his mind, with its accustomed activity, to
securing and organizing the new colony. The innumerable batteries, were
immediately armed, and three thousand men were left in defense of the
place. All the Turkish prisoners, found in the galleys, were set at
liberty, treated with the greatest kindness, and scattered through the
fleet, that their friendship might be won, and that they might exert a
moral influence, in favor of the French, upon the Mohammedan population
of the East. With as much facility as if he had devoted a long life to
the practical duties of a statesman, Napoleon arranged the municipal
system of the island; and having accomplished all this in less than a
week, he again weighed anchor, and directed his course toward Egypt.
Many of the Knights of Malta, followed the victorious general, and with
profound homage, accepted appointments in his army.

The whole French squadron, hourly anticipating collision with the
English fleet, were ever ready for battle. Though Napoleon did not turn
from his great object to seek the English, he felt no apprehension in
view of meeting the enemy. Upon every ship-of-the-line he had put five
hundred picked men, who were daily exercised in working the guns. He had
enjoined upon the whole fleet, that, in case of an encounter, every ship
was to have but one single aim, that of closing immediately with a ship
of the enemy, and boarding her with the utmost desperation. Nelson,
finding that the French had left their harbors, eagerly but unavailingly
searched for them. He was entirely at a loss respecting their
destination, and knew not in what direction to sail. It was not yet
known, even on board the French ships, but to a few individuals, whither
the fleet was bound. Gradually, however, as the vast squadron drew
nearer the African shore, the secret began to transpire. Mirth and
gayety prevailed. All were watching with eagerness, to catch a first
glimpse of the continent of Africa. In the evenings Napoleon assembled,
in the capacious cabins of the Orient, the men of science and general
officers, and then commenced the learned discussions of the Institute of
Egypt. One night, the two fleets were within fifteen miles of each
other; so near that the signal guns of Nelson's squadron, were heard by
the French. The night, however, was dark and foggy, and the two fleets
passed without collision.

On the morning of the 1st of July, after a passage of forty days, the
low and sandy shores of Egypt, about two thousand miles from France,
were discerned extending along the distant horizon, as far as the eye
could reach. As with a gentle breeze they drew nearer the land, the
minarets of Alexandria, the Needle of Cleopatra, and Pompey's Pillar,
rose above the sand hills, exciting, in the minds of the enthusiastic
French, the most romantic dreams of Oriental grandeur. The fleet
approached a bay, at a little distance from the harbor of Alexandria,
and dropped anchor about three miles from the shore. But two days
before, Nelson had visited that very spot, in quest of the French, and,
not finding them there, had sailed for the mouth of the Hellespont. The
evening had now arrived, and the breeze had increased to almost a gale.
Notwithstanding the peril of disembarkation in such a surf, Napoleon
decided that not a moment was to be lost. The landing immediately
commenced, and was continued, with the utmost expedition, through the
whole night. Many boats were swamped, and some lives lost, but,
unintimidated by such disasters, the landing was continued with unabated
zeal. The transfer of the horses from the ships to the shore, presented
a very curious spectacle. They were hoisted out of the ships and lowered
into the sea, with simply a halter about their necks, where they swam in
great numbers around the vessels, not knowing which way to go. Six were
caught by their halters, and towed by a boat toward the shore. The rest,
by instinct followed them. As other horses were lowered into the sea
from all the ships, they joined the column hastening toward the land,
and thus soon there was a dense and wide column of swimming horses,
extending from the ships to the beach. As fast as they reached the shore
they were caught, saddled, and delivered to their riders. Toward morning
the wind abated, and before the blazing sun rose over the sands of the
desert, a proud army of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, was marshaled
upon the dreary waste, awaiting the commands of its general.

In the midst of the disembarkation, a sail appeared in the distant
horizon. It was supposed to be an English ship. "Oh, Fortune!" exclaimed
Napoleon, "dost thou forsake me now? I ask of thee but a short respite."
The strange sail proved to be a French frigate, rejoining the fleet.
While the disembarkation was still going on, Napoleon advanced, with
three thousand men, whom he had hastily formed in battle array upon the
beach, to Alexandria, which was at but a few miles distance, that he
might surprise the place before the Turks had time to prepare for a
defense. No man ever better understood the value of time. His remarkable
saying to the pupils of a school which he once visited, "_My young
friends! every hour of time is a chance of misfortune for future life_,"
formed the rule of his own conduct.

Just before disembarking, Napoleon had issued the following proclamation
to his troops: "Soldiers! You are about to undertake a conquest fraught
with incalculable effects upon the commerce and civilization of the
world. You will inflict upon England the most grievous stroke she can
sustain before receiving her death blow. The people with whom we are
about to live are Mohammedans. Their first article of faith is, There is
but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Contradict them not. Treat
them as you have treated the Italians and the Jews. Show the same regard
to their muftis and imaums, as you have shown to the bishops and
rabbins. Manifest for the ceremonies of the Koran, the same respect you
have shown to the convents and the synagogues, to the religion of Moses
and that of Jesus Christ. All religions were protected by the legions of
Rome. You will find here customs greatly at variance with those of
Europe. Accustom yourselves to respect them. Women are not treated here
as with us; but in every country he who violates is a monster. Pillage
enriches only a few, while it dishonors an army, destroys its resources,
and makes enemies of those whom it is the interest of all to attach as
friends."

The first gray of the morning had not yet dawned, when Napoleon, at the
head of his enthusiastic column, marched upon the city, which bore the
name, and which had witnessed the achievements of Alexander. It was his
aim, by the fearlessness and the impetuosity of his first assaults, to
impress the Turks with an idea of the invincibility of the French. The
Mamelukes, hastily collected upon the ramparts of the city, received the
foe with discharges of musketry and artillery, and with shouts of
defiance. The French, aided by their ladders, poured over the walls like
an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. The conflict was short,
and the tricolored flag waved triumphantly over the city of Alexander.
The Turkish prisoners from Malta, who had become fascinated by the
magnificence of Napoleon, as all were fascinated who approached that
extraordinary man, dispersed themselves through the city, and exerted a
powerful influence in securing the friendship of the people for their
invaders. The army, imbibing the politic sentiments of their general,
refrained from all acts of lawless violence, and amazed the enslaved
populace by their justice, mercy, and generosity. The people were
immediately liberated from the most grinding and intolerable despotism;
just and equal laws were established; and Arab and Copt, soon began,
lost in wonder, to speak the praises of Napoleon. He was a strange
conqueror for the East; liberating and blessing, not enslaving and
robbing the vanquished. Their women were respected, their property was
uninjured, their persons protected from violence, and their interests in
every way promoted. A brighter day never dawned upon Egypt than the day
in which Napoleon placed his foot upon her soil. The accomplishment of
his plans, so far as human vision can discern, would have been one of
the greatest of possible blessings to the East. Again Napoleon issued
one of those glowing proclamations which are as characteristic of his
genius as were the battles which he fought:

[Illustration: THE DISEMBARKATION.]

     "People of Egypt! You will be told, by our enemies, that I am come
     to destroy your religion. Believe them not. Tell them that I am
     come to restore your rights, punish your usurpers, and revise the
     true worship of Mohammed. Tell them that I venerate, more than do
     the Mamelukes, God, his prophet, and the Koran. Tell them that all
     men are equal in the sight of God; that wisdom, talents, and virtue
     alone constitute the difference between them. And what are the
     virtues which distinguish the Mamelukes, that entitle them to
     appropriate all the enjoyments of life to themselves? If Egypt is
     their farm, let them show their lease, from God, by which they
     hold it. Is there a fine estate? it belongs to the Mamelukes. Is
     there a beautiful slave, a fine horse, a good house? all belong to
     the Mamelukes. But God is just and merciful, and He hath ordained
     that the empire of the Mamelukes shall come to an end. Thrice happy
     those who shall side with us; they shall prosper in their fortune
     and their rank. Happy they who shall be neutral; they will have
     time to become acquainted with us, and will range themselves upon
     our side. But woe, threefold woe to those who shall arm for the
     Mamelukes and fight against us. For them there will be no hope;
     they shall perish."

"You witlings of Paris," wrote one of the officers of the army, "will
laugh outright, at the Mohammedan proclamation of Napoleon. He, however,
is proof against all your raillery, and the proclamation itself has
produced the most surprising effect. The Arabs, natural enemies of the
Mamelukes, sent us back, as soon as they had read it, thirty of our
people, whom they had made prisoners, with an offer of their services
against the Mamelukes."

It was an interesting peculiarity in the character of Napoleon that he
respected all religions as necessities of the human mind. He never
allowed himself to speak in contemptuous terms even of the grossest
absurdities of religious fanaticism. Christianity was presented to him
only as exhibited by the papal church. He professed the most profound
admiration of the doctrines and the moral precepts of the gospel, and
often expressed the wish that he could be a devout believer. But he
could not receive, as from God, all that Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and
Priests claimed as divine. In the spiritual power of the Pope he
recognized an agent of tremendous efficiency. As such he sincerely
respected it, treated it with deference, and sought its alliance. He
endeavored to gain control over every influence which could sway the
human heart. So of the Mohammedans; he regarded their religion as an
element of majestic power, and wished to avail himself of it. While the
philosophers and generals around him regarded all forms of religion with
contempt, he, influenced by a far higher philosophy, regarded all with
veneration.

Since the revolution there had been no sort of worship in France. The
idea even of a God had been almost entirely obliterated from the public
mind. The French soldiers were mere animals, with many noble as well as
depraved instincts. At the command of their beloved chieftain, they were
as ready to embrace a religion as to storm a battery. Napoleon was
accused of hypocrisy for pursuing this course in Egypt. "I never," said
he, subsequently, "followed any of the tenets of the Mohammedan
religion. I never prayed in the mosques. I never abstained from wine, or
was circumcised. I said merely that we were friends of the Mussulmans,
and that I respected their prophet; which was true. I respect him now."

Napoleon remained in Alexandria but six days. During this time he
devoted himself with a zeal and energy which elicited universal
admiration, to the organization of equitable laws, the regulations of
police, and the development of the resources of the country. The very
hour of their establishment in the city, artisans, and artists, and
engineers all were busy, and the life and enterprise of the West, were
infused into the sepulchral streets of Alexandria. Preparations were
immediately made for improving the harbor, repairing the fortifications,
erecting mills, establishing manufactories, founding schools, exploring
antiquities, and the government of the country was placed in the hands
of the prominent inhabitants, who were interested to promote the wise
and humane policy of Napoleon. Since that day half a century of
degradation, ignorance, poverty, oppression, and wretchedness has passed
over Egypt. Had Napoleon succeeded in his designs, it is probable that
Egypt would now have been a civilized and a prosperous land, enriched by
the commerce of the East and the West; with villas of elegance and
refinement embellishing the meadows and headlands of the Nile, and
steamers, freighted with the luxuries of all lands, plowing her majestic
waves. The shores of the Red Sea, now so silent and lonely, would have
echoed with the hum of happy industry, and fleets would have been
launched from her forests, and thriving towns and opulent cities would
have sprung up, where the roving Bedouin now meets but desolation and
gloom. It is true that in the mysterious providence of God all these
hopes might have been disappointed. But it is certain that while
Napoleon remained in Egypt the whole country received an impulse unknown
for centuries before; and human wisdom can not devise a better plan than
he proposed, for arousing the enterprise, and stimulating the industry,
and developing the resources of the land.

About thirty of the French troops fell in the attack upon Alexandria.
Napoleon, with his prompt conceptions of the sublime, caused them to be
buried at the foot of Pompey's Pillar, and had their names engraven upon
that monument, whose renown has grown venerable through countless ages.
The whole army assisted at the imposing ceremony of their interment.
Enthusiasm spread through the ranks. The French soldiers, bewildered by
the meteor glare of glory, and deeming their departed comrades now
immortalized, envied their fate. Never did conqueror better understand
than Napoleon what springs to touch, to rouse the latent energies of
human nature.

Leaving three thousand men in Alexandria, under the command of General
Kleber, who had been wounded in the assault, Napoleon set out, with the
rest of his army, to cross the desert to Cairo. The fleet was not in a
place of safety, and Napoleon gave emphatic orders to Admiral Brueys to
remove the ships, immediately after landing the army, from the bay of
Aboukir, where it was anchored, into the harbor of Alexandria; or, if
the large ships could not enter that port, to proceed, without any
delay, to the island of Corfu. The neglect, on the part of the Admiral,
promptly to execute these orders, upon which Napoleon had placed great
stress, led to a disaster which proved fatal to the expedition. Napoleon
dispatched a large flotilla, laden with provisions, artillery,
ammunition, and baggage, to sail along the shore of the Mediterranean to
the western branch of the Nile, called the Rosetta mouth, and ascend the
river to a point where the army, having marched across the desert, would
meet it. The flotilla and the army would then keep company, ascending
the Nile, some fifty miles, to Cairo. The army had a desert of sixty
miles to cross. It was dreary and inhospitable in the extreme. A blazing
sun glared fiercely down upon the glowing sands. Not a tree or a blade
of grass cheered the eye. Not a rivulet trickled across their hot and
sandy path. A few wells of brackish water were scattered along the
trackless course pursued by the caravans, but even these the Arabs had
filled up or poisoned.

[Illustration: THE MARCH THROUGH THE DESERT.]

Early on the morning of the 6th of July the army commenced its march
over the apparently boundless plain of shifting sands. No living
creature met the eye but a few Arab horsemen, who occasionally appeared
and disappeared at the horizon, and who, concealing themselves behind
the sand hills, immediately murdered any stragglers who wandered from
the ranks, or from sickness or exhaustion loitered behind. Four days of
inconceivable suffering were occupied in crossing the desert. The
soldiers, accustomed to the luxuriance, beauty, and abundance of the
valleys of Italy, were plunged into the most abject depression. Even the
officers found their firmness giving way, and Lannes and Murat, in
paroxysms of despair, dashed their hats upon the sand, and trampled them
under foot. Many fell and perished on the long and dreary route. But the
dense columns toiled on, hour after hour, weary, and hungry, and faint,
and thirsty, the hot sun blazing down upon their unsheltered heads, and
the yielding sands burning their blistered feet. At the commencement of
the enterprise Napoleon had promised, to each of his soldiers, seven
acres of land. As they looked around upon this dreary and boundless
ocean of sand, they spoke jocularly of his moderation in promising them
but _seven acres_, "The young rogue," said they, "might have safely
offered us as much as we chose to take. We certainly should not have
abused his good-nature."

Nothing can show more strikingly the singular control which Napoleon had
obtained over his army, than the fact that under these circumstances, no
one murmured against him. He toiled along on foot, at the head of the
column, sharing the fatigue of the most humble soldiers. Like them he
threw himself upon the sands at night, with the sand for his pillow,
and, secreting no luxuries for himself, he ate the coarse beans which
afforded the only food for the army. He was ever the last to fold his
cloak around him for the night, and the first to spring from the ground
in the morning. The soldiers bitterly cursed the government who had sent
them to that land of barrenness and desolation. Seeing the men of
science stopping to examine the antiquities, they accused them of being
the authors of the expedition, and revenged themselves with witticisms.
But no one uttered a word against Napoleon. His presence overawed all.
He seemed to be insensible to hunger, thirst, or fatigue. It was
observed that while all others were drenched with perspiration, not a
drop of moisture oozed from his brow. Through all the hours of this
dreary march, not a word or a gesture escaped him, which indicated the
slightest embarrassment or inquietude. One day he approached a group of
discontented officers, and said to them, in tones of firmness which at
once brought them to their senses, "You are holding mutinous language!
beware! It is not your being six feet high which will save you from
being shot in a couple of hours." In the midst of the desert, when gloom
and despondency had taken possession of all hearts, unbounded joy was
excited by the appearance of a lake of crystal water, but a few miles
before them, with villages and palm trees beautifully reflected in its
clear and glassy depths. The parched and panting troops rushed eagerly
on, to plunge into the delicious waves. Hour after hour passed, and they
approached no nearer the elysium before them. Dreadful was their
disappointment when they found that it was all an illusion, and that
they were pursuing the _mirage_ of the dry and dusty desert. At one time
Napoleon, with one or two of his officers, wandered a little distance
from the main body of his army. A troop of Arab horsemen, concealed by
some sand hills, watched his movements, but for some unknown reason,
when he was entirely in their power, did not harm him. Napoleon soon
perceived his peril, and escaped unmolested. Upon his return to the
troops, peacefully smiling, he said, "It is not written on high, that I
am to perish by the hands of the Arabs."

As the army drew near the Nile the Mameluke horsemen increased in
numbers, and in the frequency and the recklessness of their attacks.
Their appearance and the impetuosity of their onset was most imposing.
Each one was mounted on a fleet Arabian steed, and was armed with
pistol, sabre, carbine, and blunderbuss. The carbine was a short gun
which threw a small bullet with great precision. The blunderbuss was
also a short gun, with a large bore, capable of holding a number of
balls, and of doing execution without exact aim. These fierce warriors
accustomed to the saddle almost from infancy, presented an array
indescribably brilliant, as, with gay turbans, and waving plumes, and
gaudy banners, and gold-spangled robes, in meteoric splendor, with the
swiftness of the wind, they burst from behind the sand hills. Charging
like the rush of a tornado, they rent the air with their hideous yells,
and discharged their carbines, while in full career, and halted,
wheeled, and retreated with a precision and celerity which amazed even
the most accomplished horsemen of the army of Italy. The extended sandy
plains were exactly adapted to the manoeuvres of these flying herds.
The least motion, or the slightest breath of wind, raised a cloud of
dust, blinding, choking, and smothering the French, but apparently
presenting no annoyance either to the Arab rider or to his horse. If a
weary straggler loitered a few steps behind the toiling column, or if
any soldiers ventured to leave the ranks in pursuit of the Mamelukes in
their bold attacks, certain and instant death was encountered. A wild
troop, enveloped in clouds of dust, like spirits from another world,
dashed upon them, cut down the adventurers with their keen Damascus
blades, and disappeared in the desert, almost before a musket could be
leveled at them.

After five days of inconceivable suffering the long-wished-for Nile was
seen, glittering through the sand hills of the desert, and bordered by a
fringe of the richest luxuriance. The scene burst upon the view of the
panting soldiers like a vision of enchantment. Shouts of joy burst from
the ranks. All discipline and order were instantly forgotten. The whole
army of thirty thousand men, with horses and camels rushed forward, a
tumultuous throng, and plunged, in the delirium of excitement, into the
waves. They luxuriated, with indescribable delight, in the cool and
refreshing stream. They rolled over and over in the water, shouting and
frolicking in wild joy. Reckless of consequences, they drank and drank
again, as if they never could be satiated with the delicious beverage.
In the midst of this scene of turbulent and almost frenzied exultation,
a cloud of dust was seen in the distance, the trampling of hoofs was
heard, and a body of nearly a thousand Mameluke horsemen, on fleet
Arabian chargers, came sweeping down upon them, like the rush of the
wind, their sabres flashing in the sunlight, and rending the air with
their hideous yells. The drums beat the alarm; the trumpets sounded, and
the veteran soldiers, drilled to the most perfect mechanical precision,
instantly formed in squares, with the artillery at the angles, to meet
the foe. In a moment the assault, like a tornado, fell upon them. But it
was a tornado striking a rock. Not a line wavered. A palisade of
bristling bayonets met the breasts of the horses, and they recoiled from
the shock. A volcanic burst of fire, from artillery and musketry, rolled
hundreds of steeds and riders together in the dust. The survivors,
wheeling their unchecked chargers, disappeared with the same meteoric
rapidity with which they had approached. The flotilla now appeared in
sight, having arrived at the destined spot at the precise hour
designated by Napoleon. This was not accident. It was the result of that
wonderful power of mind, and extent of information, which had enabled
Napoleon perfectly to understand the difficulties of the two routes, and
to give his orders in such a way, that they could be, and would be
obeyed. It was remarked by Napoleon's generals, that during a week's
residence in Egypt, he acquired apparently as perfect an acquaintance
with the country as if it had been his native land.

The whole moral aspect of the army was now changed, with the change in
the aspect of the country. The versatile troops forgot their sufferings,
and, rejoicing in abundance, danced and sang, beneath the refreshing
shade of sycamore and palm trees. The fields were waving with luxuriant
harvests. Pigeons were abundant. The most delicious watermelons were
brought to the camp in inexhaustible profusion. But the villages were
poor and squalid, and the houses mere hovels of mud. The execrations in
which the soldiers had indulged in the desert, now gave place to jokes
and glee. For seven days they marched resolutely forward along the banks
of the Nile, admiring the fertility of the country, and despising the
poverty and degradation of the inhabitants. They declared that there was
no such place as Cairo, but that the "Little Corporal," had suffered
himself to be transported _like a good boy_, to that miserable land, in
search of a city even more unsubstantial than the mirage of the desert.

On the march Napoleon stopped at the house of an Arab sheik. The
interior presented a revolting scene of squalidness and misery. The
proprietor was however reported to be rich. Napoleon treated the old man
with great kindness and asked, through an interpreter, why he lived in
such utter destitution of all the comforts of life, assuring him that an
unreserved answer should expose him to no inconvenience. He replied,
"some years ago I repaired and furnished my dwelling. Information of
this was carried to Cairo, and having been thus proved to be wealthy, a
large sum of money was demanded from me by the Mamelukes, and the
bastinado was inflicted until I paid it. Look at my feet, which bear
witness to what I endured. From that time I have reduced myself to the
barest necessaries, and no longer seek to repair any thing." The poor
old man was lamed for life, in consequence of the mutilation which his
feet received from the terrible infliction. Such was the tyranny of the
Mamelukes. The Egyptians, in abject slavery to their proud oppressors,
were compelled to surrender their wives, their children, and even their
own persons to the absolute will of the despots who ruled them.

Numerous bands of Mameluke horsemen, the most formidable body of cavalry
in the world, were continually hovering about the army, watching for
points of exposure, and it was necessary to be continually prepared for
an attack. Nothing could have been more effective than the disposition
which Napoleon made of his troops to meet this novel mode of warfare. He
formed his army into five squares. The sides of each square were
composed of ranks six men deep. The artillery were placed at the angles.
Within the square were grenadier companies in platoons to support the
points of attack. The generals, the scientific corps, and the baggage
were in the centre. These squares were moving masses. When on the march
all faced in one direction, the two sides marching in flank. When
charged they immediately halted and fronted on every side; the outermost
rank kneeling that those behind might shoot over their heads--the whole
body thus presenting a living fortress of bristling bayonets. When they
were to carry a position the three front ranks were to detach
themselves from the square and to form a column of attack. The other
three ranks were to remain in the rear, still forming the square, ready
to rally the column. These flaming citadels of fire set at defiance all
the power of the Arab horsemen. The attacks of the enemy soon became a
subject of merriment to the soldiers. The scientific men, or _savans_,
as they were called, had been supplied with asses to transport their
persons and philosophical apparatus. As soon as a body of Mamelukes was
seen in the distance, the order was given, with military precision,
"_form square, savans and asses in the centre_." This order was
echoed, from rank to rank, with peals of laughter. The soldiers amused
themselves with calling the asses _demi-savans_. Though the soldiers
thus enjoyed their jokes, they cherished the highest respect for many of
these savans, who in scenes of battle had manifested the utmost
intrepidity. After a march of seven days, during which time they had
many bloody skirmishes with the enemy, the army approached Cairo.

Mourad Bey had there assembled the greater part of his Mamelukes, nearly
ten thousand in number, for a decisive battle. These proud and powerful
horsemen were supported by twenty-four thousand foot soldiers, strongly
intrenched. Cairo is on the eastern banks of the Nile. Napoleon was
marching along the western shore. On the morning of the 21st of July,
Napoleon, conscious that he was near the city, set his army in motion
before the break of day. Just as the sun was rising in those cloudless
skies, the soldiers beheld the lofty minarets of the city upon their
left, gilded by its rays, and upon the right, upon the borders of the
desert, the gigantic pyramids rising like mountains upon an apparently
boundless plain. The whole army instinctively halted and gazed
awe-stricken upon those monuments of antiquity. The face of Napoleon
beamed with enthusiasm. "Soldiers!" he exclaimed, as he rode along the
ranks; "from those summits forty centuries contemplate your actions."
The ardor of the soldiers was aroused to the highest pitch. Animated by
the clangor of martial bands, and the gleam of flaunting banners, they
advanced with impetuous steps to meet their foes. The whole plain before
them, at the base of the pyramids was filled with armed men. The
glittering weapons of ten thousand horsemen, in the utmost splendor of
barbaric chivalry, brilliant with plumes and arms of burnished steel and
gold, presented an array inconceivably imposing. Undismayed the French
troops, marshaled in five invincible squares, pressed on. There was
apparently no alternative. Napoleon must march upon those intrenchments,
behind which twenty-four thousand men were stationed with powerful
artillery and musketry to sweep his ranks, and a formidable body of ten
thousand horsemen, on fleet and powerful Arabian steeds, awaiting the
onset, and ready to seize upon the slightest indications of confusion to
plunge, with the fury which fatalism can inspire, upon his bleeding and
mangled squares. It must have been with Napoleon a moment of intense
anxiety. But as he sat upon his horse, in the centre of one of the
squares, and carefully examined, with his telescope, the disposition of
the enemy, no one could discern the slightest trace of uneasiness. His
gaze was long and intense. The keenness of his scrutiny detected that
the guns of the enemy were not mounted upon carriages, and that they
could not therefore be turned from the direction in which they were
placed. No other officer, though many of them had equally good glasses,
made this important discovery. He immediately, by a lateral movement,
guided his army to the right, toward the pyramids, that his squares
might be out of the range of the guns, and that he might attack the
enemy in flank. The moment Mourad Bey perceived this evolution, he
divined its object, and with great military sagacity resolved instantly
to charge.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS.]

"You shall now see us," said the proud Bey, "cut up those dogs, like
gourds."

It was, indeed, a fearful spectacle. Ten thousand horsemen,
magnificently dressed, with the fleetest steeds in the world, urging
their horses with bloody spurs, to the most impetuous and furious onset,
rending the heavens with their cries, and causing the very earth to
tremble beneath the thunder of iron feet, came down upon the adamantine
host. Nothing was ever seen in war more furious than this charge. Ten
thousand horsemen is an enormous mass. Those longest inured to danger
felt that it was an awful moment. It seemed impossible to resist such a
living avalanche. The most profound silence reigned through the ranks,
interrupted only by the word of command. The nerves of excitement being
roused to the utmost tension, every order was executed with most
marvelous rapidity and precision. The soldiers held their breath, and
with bristling bayonets stood, shoulder to shoulder, to receive the
shock.

The moment the Mamelukes arrived within gunshot, the artillery, at the
angles, plowed their ranks, and platoons of musketry, volley after
volley, in a perfectly uninterrupted flow, swept into their faces a
pitiless tempest of destruction. Horses and riders, struck by the balls,
rolled over each other, by hundreds, in the sand, and were trampled and
crushed by the iron hoofs of the thousands of frantic steeds, enveloped
in dust and smoke, composing the vast and impetuous column. But the
squares stood as firm as the pyramids at whose base they fought. Not one
was broken; not one wavered. The daring Mamelukes, in the frenzy of
their rage and disappointment, threw away their lives with the utmost
recklessness. They wheeled their horses round and reined them back upon
the ranks, that they might kick their way into those terrible fortresses
of living men. Rendered furious by their inability to break the ranks,
they hurled their pistols and carbines at the heads of the French. The
wounded crawled along the ground, and with their scimitars, cut at the
legs of their indomitable foes. They displayed superhuman bravery, the
only virtue which the Mamelukes possessed.

But an incessant and merciless fire from Napoleon's well-trained
battalions continually thinned their ranks, and at last the Mamelukes,
in the wildest disorder, broke, and fled. The infantry, in the
intrenched camp, witnessing the utter discomfiture of the mounted
troops, whom they had considered invincible, and seeing such incessant
and volcanic sheets of flame bursting from the impenetrable squares,
caught the panic, and joined the flight. Napoleon now, in his
turn, charged with the utmost impetuosity. A scene of indescribable
confusion and horror ensued. The extended plain was crowded with
fugitives--footmen and horsemen, bewildered with terror, seeking escape
from their terrible foes. Thousands plunged into the river, and
endeavored to escape by swimming to the opposite shore. But a shower of
bullets, like hail stones, fell upon them, and the waves of the Nile
were crimsoned with their blood. Others sought the desert, a wild and
rabble rout. The victors, with their accustomed celerity pursued,
pitilessly pouring into the dense masses of their flying foes the most
terrible discharges of artillery and musketry. The rout was
complete--the carnage awful. The sun had hardly reached the meridian,
before the whole embattled host had disappeared, and the plain as far as
the eye could extend, was strewn with the dying and the dead. The camp,
with all its Oriental wealth, fell into the hands of the victors; and
the soldiers enriched themselves with its profusion of splendid shawls,
magnificent weapons, Arabian horses, and purses filled with gold. The
Mamelukes were accustomed to lavish great wealth in the decorations of
their persons, and to carry with them large sums of money. The gold and
the trappings found upon the body of each Mameluke were worth from
twelve hundred to two thousand dollars. Besides those who were slain
upon the field, more than a thousand of these formidable horsemen were
drowned in the Nile. For many days the soldiers employed themselves in
fishing up the rich booty, and the French camp was filled with all
abundance. This most sanguinary battle cost the French scarcely one
hundred men in killed and wounded. More than ten thousand of the enemy
perished. Napoleon gazed with admiration upon the bravery which these
proud horsemen displayed. "Could I have united the Mameluke horse to the
French infantry," said he, "I should have reckoned myself master of the
world."

After the battle, Napoleon, now the undisputed conqueror of Egypt,
quartered himself for the night in the country palace of Mourad Bey. The
apartments of this voluptuous abode were embellished with all the
appurtenances of Oriental luxury. The officers were struck with surprise
in viewing the multitude of cushions and divans covered with the finest
damasks and silks, and ornamented with golden fringe. Egypt was beggared
to minister to the sensual indulgence of these haughty despots. Much of
the night was passed in exploring this singular mansion. The garden was
extensive and magnificent in the extreme. Innumerable vines were laden
with the richest grapes. The vintage was soon gathered by the thousands
of soldiers who filled the alleys and loitered in the arbors. Pots of
preserves, of confectionery, and of sweetmeats of every kind, were
quickly devoured by an army of mouths. The thousands of little
elegancies which Europe, Asia, and Africa had contributed to minister to
the voluptuous splendors of the regal mansion, were speedily transferred
to the knapsacks of the soldiers.

The "Battle of the Pyramids," as Napoleon characteristically designated
it, sent a thrill of terror, far and wide, into the interior of Asia and
Africa. These proud, merciless, licentious oppressors were execrated by
the timid Egyptians, but they were deemed invincible. In an hour they
had vanished, like the mist, before the genius of Napoleon.

The caravans which came to Cairo, circulated through the vast regions of
the interior, with all the embellishments of Oriental exaggeration, most
glowing accounts of the destruction of these terrible squadrons, which
had so long tyrannized over Egypt, and the fame of whose military
prowess had caused the most distant tribes to tremble. The name of
Napoleon became suddenly as renowned in Asia and in Africa as it had
previously become in Europe. But twenty-one days had elapsed since he
placed his foot upon the sands at Alexandria, and now he was sovereign
of Egypt. The Egyptians also welcomed him as a friend and a liberator.
The sheets of flame, which incessantly burst from the French ranks, so
deeply impressed their imaginations, that they gave to Napoleon the
Oriental appellation of Sultan Kebir, or King of Fire.

The wives of the Mamelukes had all remained in Cairo. Napoleon treated
them with the utmost consideration. He sent Eugene to the wife of
Mourad Bey, to assure her of his protection. He preserved all her
property for her, and granted her several requests which she made to
him. Thus he endeavored, as far as possible, to mitigate the inevitable
sufferings of war. The lady was so grateful for these attentions that
she entertained Eugene with all possible honors, and presented him, upon
his departure, with a valuable diamond ring.

Cairo contained three hundred thousand inhabitants. Its population was
brutal and ferocious in the extreme. The capital was in a state of
terrible agitation, for the path of Oriental conquerors is ever marked
with brutality, flames, and blood. Napoleon immediately dispatched a
detachment of his army into the city to restore tranquillity, and to
protect persons and property from the fury of the populace. The next day
but one, with great pomp and splendor, at the head of his victorious
army, he entered Cairo, and took possession of the palace of Mourad Bey.
With the most extraordinary intelligence and activity he immediately
consecrated all his energies to promote the highest interest of the
country he had conquered. Nothing escaped his observation. He directed
his attention to the mosques, the harems, the condition of the women,
the civil and religious institutions, the state of agriculture, the
arts, and sciences--to every thing which could influence the elevation
and prosperity of the country. He visited the most influential of the
Arab inhabitants, assured them of his friendship, of his respect for
their religion, of his determination to protect their rights, and of his
earnest desire to restore to Egypt its pristine glory. He disclaimed all
sovereignty over Egypt, but organized a government to be administered by
the people themselves. He succeeded perfectly in winning their
confidence and admiration. He immediately established a congress,
composed of the most distinguished citizens of Cairo, for the creation
of laws and the administration of justice, and established similar
assemblies in all the provinces, which were to send deputies to the
general congress at Cairo. He organized the celebrated Institute of
Egypt, to diffuse among the people the light and the sciences of Europe.
Some of the members were employed in making an accurate description and
a perfect map of Egypt; others were to study the productions of the
country, that its resources might be energetically and economically
developed; others were to explore the ruins, thus to shed new light upon
history; others were to study the social condition of the inhabitants,
and proper plans for the promotion of their welfare, by the means of
manufactures, canals, roads, mills, works upon the Nile, and
improvements in agriculture. Among the various questions proposed to the
Institute by Napoleon, the following may be mentioned as illustrative of
his enlarged designs: Ascertain the best construction for wind and water
mills; find a substitute for the hop, which does not grow in Egypt, for
the making of beer; select sites adapted to the cultivation of the vine;
seek the best means of procuring water for the citadel of Cairo; select
spots for wells in different parts of the desert; inquire into the means
of clarifying and cooling the waters of the Nile; devise some useful
application of the rubbish with which the city of Cairo, and all the
ancient towns of Egypt, are encumbered; find materials for the
manufacture of gunpowder. It is almost incredible that the Egyptians
were not acquainted with windmills, wheelbarrows, or even handsaws,
until they were introduced by Napoleon. Engineers, draughtsmen, and men
of science immediately dispersed themselves throughout all the provinces
of Egypt. Flour, as fine as could be obtained in Paris, was ground in
mills at Alexandria, Rosetta, Damietta, and Cairo. By the erection of
public ovens, bread became abundant. Hospitals were established, with a
bed for each patient. Saltpetre and gunpowder-mills were erected. A
foundry was constructed with reverberating furnaces. Large shops were
built for locksmiths, armorers, joiners, cartwrights, carpenters, and
rope-makers. Silver goblets and services of plate were manufactured. A
French and Arabic printing-press was set at work. Inconceivable activity
was infused into every branch of industry. The genius of Napoleon, never
weary, inspired all and guided all. It was indeed a bright day which,
after centuries of inaction and gloom, had thus suddenly dawned upon
Egypt. The route was surveyed, and the expense estimated, of two
ship-canals, one connecting the waters of the Red Sea with the Nile at
Cairo; the other uniting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean across the
Isthmus of Suez. Five millions of dollars and two years of labor would
have executed both of these magnificent enterprises, and would have
caused a new era to have dawned upon three continents. It is impossible
not to deplore those events which have thus consigned anew these fertile
regions to beggary and to barbarism. The accomplishment of these
majestic plans might have transferred to the Nile and the Euphrates
those energies now so transplendent upon the banks of the Mississippi
and the Ohio. "It is incredible," says Talleyrand, "how much Napoleon
was able to achieve. He could effect more than any man, yes, more than
any four men whom I have ever known. His genius was inconceivable.
Nothing could exceed his energy, his imagination, his spirit, his
capacity for work, his ease of accomplishment. He was clearly the most
extraordinary man that I ever saw, and I believe the most extraordinary
man that has lived in our age, or for many ages." All the energies of
Napoleon's soul were engrossed by these enterprises of grandeur and
utility. Dissipation could present no aspect to allure him. "I have no
passion," said he, "for women or gaming. I am entirely a political
being."

The Arabs were lost in astonishment that a conqueror, who wielded the
thunderbolt, could be so disinterested and merciful. Such generosity and
self-denial was never before heard of in the East. They could in no way
account for it. Their females were protected from insult; their persons
and property were saved. Thirty thousand Europeans were toiling for the
comfort and improvement of the Egyptians. They called Napoleon the
worthy son of the prophet, the favorite of Allah. They even introduced
his praises into their Litany, and chanted in the mosques, "Who is he
that hath saved the favorite of Victory from the dangers of the sea, and
from the rage of his enemies? Who is he that hath led the brave men of
the West, safe and unharmed to the banks of the Nile! It is Allah! the
great Allah! The Mamelukes put their trust in horses; they draw forth
their infantry in battle array. But the favorite of Victory hath
destroyed the footmen and the horsemen of the Mamelukes. As the vapors
which rise in the morning are scattered by the rays of the sun, so hath
the army of the Mamelukes been scattered by the brave men of the West.
For the brave men of the West are as the apple of the eye to the great
Allah."

Napoleon, to ingratiate himself with the people, and to become better
acquainted with their character, attended their religious worship, and
all their national festivals. Though he left the administration of
justice in the hands of the sheiks, he enjoined and enforced scrupulous
impartiality in their decisions. The robbers of the desert, who for
centuries had devastated the frontiers with impunity, he repulsed with a
vigorous hand, and under his energetic sway life and property became as
safe in Egypt as in England or in France. The French soldiers became
very popular with the native Egyptians, and might be seen in the houses,
socially smoking their pipes with the inhabitants, assisting them in
their domestic labors, and playing with their children.

One day Napoleon, in his palace, was giving audience to a numerous
assemblage of sheiks and other distinguished men. Information was
brought to him that some robbers from the desert had slain a poor
friendless peasant, and carried off his flocks. "Take three hundred
horsemen and two hundred camels," said Napoleon, immediately, to an
officer of his staff, "and pursue these robbers until they are captured,
and the outrage is avenged." "Was the poor wretch your cousin,"
exclaimed one of the sheiks, contemptuously, "that you are in such a
rage at his death?" "He was more," Napoleon replied, sublimely, "he was
one whose safety Providence had intrusted to my care." "Wonderful!"
rejoined the sheik, "you speak like one inspired of the Almighty." More
than one assassin was dispatched by the Turkish authorities to murder
Napoleon. But the Egyptians with filial love, watched over him, gave him
timely notice of the design, and effectually aided him in defeating it.

In the midst of this extraordinary prosperity, a reverse, sudden,
terrible, and irreparable, befell the French army. Admiral Brueys,
devotedly attached to Napoleon, and anxious to ascertain that he had
obtained a foothold in the country before leaving him to his fate,
delayed withdrawing his fleet, as Napoleon had expressly enjoined, from
the Bay of Aboukir, to place it in a position of safety. The second day
after entering Cairo, Napoleon received dispatches from Admiral Brueys
by which he learned that the squadron was in the bay of Aboukir, exposed
to the attacks of the enemy. He was amazed at the intelligence, and
immediately dispatched a messenger, to proceed with the utmost haste,
and inform the admiral of his great disapprobation, and to warn him to
take the fleet, without an hour's delay, either into the harbor of
Alexandria, where it would be safe, or to make for Corfu. The messenger
was assassinated on the way by a party of Arabs. He could not, however,
have reached Aboukir before the destruction of the fleet. In the mean
time, Lord Nelson learned that the French had landed at Egypt. He
immediately turned in that direction to seek their squadron. At six
o'clock in the evening of the first of August, but ten days after the
battle of the Pyramids, the British fleet majestically entered the bay
of Aboukir, and closed upon their victims. The French squadron
consisting of thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, was anchored
in a semi-circle, in a line corresponding with the curve of the shore.
The plan of attack, adopted by Nelson, possessed the simplicity and
originality of genius, and from the first moment victory was almost
certain. As soon as Nelson perceived the situation of the French fleet,
he resolved to double with his whole force on half of that of his enemy,
pursuing the same system of tactics by sea which Napoleon had found so
successful on the land. He ordered his fleet to take its station half on
the outer, and half on the inner side of one end of the French line.
Thus each French ship was placed between the fire of two of those of the
English. The remainder of the French fleet being at anchor to the
windward could not easily advance to the relief of their doomed friends.
Admiral Brueys supposed that he was anchored so near the shore that the
English could not pass inside of his line. But Nelson promptly decided
that where there was room for the enemy to swing, there must be room for
his ships to float. "If we succeed what will the world say," exclaimed
one of Nelson's captains, with transport, as he was made acquainted with
the plan of attack. "There is no if in the case," Nelson replied, "that
we shall succeed is certain. Who may live to tell the story is a very
different question."

The French fought with the energies of despair. For fifteen hours the
unequal contest lasted. Dark night came on. The Bay of Aboukir resembled
one wide flaming volcano, enveloped in the densest folds of sulphureous
smoke. The ocean never witnessed a conflict more sanguinary and
dreadful. About eleven o'clock the Orient took fire. The smoke, from the
enormous burning mass, ascended like an immense black balloon, when
suddenly the flames, flashing through them, illumined the whole horizon
with awful brilliance. At length its magazine, containing hundreds of
barrels of gunpowder, blew up, with an explosion so tremendous as to
shake every ship to its centre. So awfully did this explosion rise
above the incessant roar of the battle, that simultaneously on both
sides, the firing ceased, and a silence, as of the grave, ensued. But
immediately the murderous conflict was resumed. Death and destruction,
in the midst of the congenial gloom of night, held high carnival in the
bay. Thousands of Arabs lined the shore, gazing with astonishment and
terror upon the awful spectacle. For fifteen hours that dreadful
conflict continued, through the night and during the morning, and until
high noon of the ensuing day, when the firing gradually ceased, for the
French fleet was destroyed. Four ships only escaped, and sailed for
Malta. The English ships were too much shattered to attempt to pursue
the fugitives.

Admiral Brueys was wounded early in the action. He would not leave the
quarter-deck. "An admiral," said he, "should die giving orders." A
cannon ball struck him, and but the fragments of his body could be
found. Nelson was also severely wounded on the head. When carried to the
cockpit, drenched in blood, he nobly refused, though in imminent danger
of bleeding to death, to have his wounds dressed, till the wounded
seamen, who were brought in before him, were attended to. "I will take
my turn with my brave fellows," said he. Fully believing that his wound
was mortal, he called for the chaplain, and requested him to deliver his
dying remembrance to Lady Nelson. When the surgeon came, in due time, to
inspect his wound, it was found that the wound was only superficial.

All of the transports and small craft which had conveyed Napoleon's army
to Egypt, were in the harbor of Alexandria, safe from attack, as Nelson
had no frigates with which to cross the bar. For leagues the shore was
strewn with fragments of the wreck, and with the mangled bodies of the
dead. The bay was also filled with floating corpses, notwithstanding the
utmost efforts to sink them. The majestic armament which but four weeks
before had sailed from Toulon, was thus utterly overthrown. The loss of
the English was but about one thousand. Of the French five thousand
perished, and three thousand were made prisoners. As soon as the
conquest was completed, Nelson made signal for the crew, in every ship,
to be assembled for prayers. The stillness of the Sabbath instantly
pervaded the whole squadron, while thanksgivings were offered to God for
the signal victory. So strange is the heart of man. England was
desolating the whole civilized world with war, to compel the French
people to renounce republicanism and establish a monarchy. And in the
bloody hour when the Bay of Aboukir was covered with the thousands of
the mutilated dead, whom her strong arm had destroyed, she, with
unquestioned sincerity, offered to God the tribute of thanksgiving and
praise. And from the churches and the firesides of England, tens of
thousands of pious hearts breathed the fervent prayer of gratitude to
God for the great victory of Aboukir.

Such was the famous _Battle of the Nile_, as it has since been called.
It was a signal conquest. It was a magnificent triumph of British arms.
But a victory apparently more fatal to the great interests of humanity
was perhaps never gained. It was the death-blow to reviving Egypt. It
extinguished in midnight gloom the light of civilization and science,
which had just been enkindled on those dreary shores. Merciless
oppression again tightened its iron grasp upon Asia and Africa, and
already, as the consequence, has another half century of crime, cruelty
and outrage, blighted that doomed land.

Napoleon at once saw that all his hopes were blasted. The blow was
utterly irreparable. He was cut off from Europe. He could receive no
supplies. He could not return. Egypt was his prison. Yet he received the
news of this terrible disaster, with the most imperturbable equanimity.
Not a word or a gesture escaped him, which indicated the slightest
discouragement. With unabated zeal he pursued his plans, and soon
succeeded in causing the soldiers to forget the disaster. He wrote to
Kleber, "We must die in this country or get out of it as great as the
ancients. This will oblige us to do greater things than we intended. We
must hold ourselves in readiness. We will at least bequeath to Egypt an
heritage of greatness." "Yes!" Kleber replied, "we must do great things.
I am preparing my faculties."

The exultation among the crowned heads in Europe in view of this great
monarchical victory was unbounded. England immediately created Nelson
Baron of the Nile, and conferred a pension of ten thousand dollars a
year, to be continued to his two immediate successors. The Grand
Signior, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Sardinia, the King of
Naples, and the East India Company made him magnificent presents.
Despotism upon the Continent, which had received such heavy blows from
Napoleon, began to rejoice and to revive. The newly emancipated people,
struggling into the life of liberty, were disheartened. Exultant England
formed new combinations of banded kings, to replace the Bourbons on
their throne, and to crush the spirit of popular liberty and equality,
which had obtained such a foothold in France. All monarchical Europe
rejoiced. All republican Europe mourned.

The day of Aboukir was indeed a disastrous day to France. Napoleon with
his intimate friends did not conceal his conviction of the magnitude of
the calamity. He appeared occasionally, for a moment, lost in painful
reverie, and was heard two or three times to exclaim, in indescribable
tones of emotion, "Unfortunate Brueys, what have you done." But hardly
an hour elapsed after he had received the dreadful tidings, ere he
entirely recovered his accustomed fortitude, and presence of mind, and
he soon succeeded in allaying the despair of the soldiers. He saw, at a
glance, all the consequences of this irreparable loss. And it speaks
well for his heart that in the midst of a disappointment so terrible,
he could have forgotten his own grief in writing a letter of condolence
to the widow of his friend. A heartless man could never have penned so
touching an epistle as the following addressed to Madame Brueys, the
widow of the man who had been unintentionally the cause of apparently
the greatest calamity which could have befallen him.

"Your husband has been killed by a cannon ball, while combating on his
quarter deck. He died without suffering--the death the most easy and the
most envied by the brave. I feel warmly for your grief. The moment which
separates us from the object which we love is terrible; we feel isolated
on the earth; we almost experience the convulsions of the last agony;
the faculties of the soul are annihilated; its connection with the earth
is preserved only through the medium of a painful dream, which disturbs
every thing. We feel, in such a situation, that there is nothing which
yet binds us to life; that it were far better to die. But when, after
such just and unavoidable throes, we press our children to our hearts,
tears and more tender sentiments arise, and life becomes bearable for
their sakes. Yes, Madame! they will open the fountains of your heart.
You will watch their childhood, educate their youth. You will speak to
them of their father, of your present grief, and of the loss which they
and the Republic have sustained in his death. After having resumed the
interests in life by the chord of maternal love, you will perhaps feel
some consolation from the friendship and warm interest which I shall
ever take in the widow of my friend."

[Illustration]

The French soldiers with the versatility of disposition which has ever
characterized the light-hearted nation, finding all possibility of a
return to France cut off, soon regained their accustomed gayety, and
with zeal engaged in all the plans of Napoleon, for the improvement of
the country, which it now appeared that, for many years, must be their
home.




THE GERMAN EMIGRANTS--A SKETCH OF LIFE.

BY JOHN DOGGETT, JUN.


A few years ago, while wandering a stranger along the quay at Albany, my
attention was attracted to a crowd composed for the most part of persons
about to depart by a canal-packet for Buffalo. The scene was to me one
of some interest, as a number of Germans of the better class were among
the passengers. One was a beautiful girl apparently of about the age of
eighteen, arrayed in the simple, unaffected garb of her country, but
whose intellectual features, black and lustrous hair, tall and elegant
figure, and somewhat melancholy cast of countenance, rendered her an
object of interest, perhaps, I may say of admiration, to the bystanders.
I noticed the sweet, sad smile which occasionally enlivened her
countenance as fondly holding the hand of her companion in her own, she
spoke to him in a tone and with a frankness of manner, that betrayed a
deep and abiding interest in his welfare. I was informed that this young
man was her only brother, who had been for some months employed in a
manufacturing establishment in Albany; that his sister, however, had but
recently arrived in the country, and, accompanied by her uncle, was now
about to depart on a pilgrimage to the distant West.

Feeling an interest--why I know not--in this brother and sister, and
perceiving they were of a better class than ordinarily emigrate to
America, I was not surprised to learn that they had been educated with
all the care and tenderness wealthy parents could bestow; that their
father, who for many years had been engaged in extensive commercial
pursuits in Bremen, died from grief and despair at the sudden
prostration of his credit and loss of fortune, his widow soon after
following him to the grave.

A few months previous to the time alluded to, the sister was the
affianced bride of an amiable, enterprising young man, the partner of
her father in business. At that period her ideal world was doubtless one
of beauty and of innocence, the acme, perhaps, of earthly peace and
happiness; for within it was a fountain of pure and mutual love, ever
full and ever flowing. No worldly care disturbed her tranquil bosom--her
every wish was gratified; no cloud obscured the brightness of her
sky--it was pure, serene, and beautiful. How uncertain are earthly
hopes! How vain are human expectations! In a moment, as it were, all
with her had changed. Grief had taken possession of her heart, bitter
tears had succeeded to innocent smiles, and her hopes of domestic bliss
were blasted, perhaps never again to bud or bloom. She was miserably
unhappy, the innocent victim of a disappointment, heart-rending indeed
and by her never to be forgotten.

On the decline of her father's fortune and that also of Edward
Nordheimer (for that was the name of her lover), the latter suddenly
became intemperate. Thinking, as many wiser and older than himself had
thought, to drown the recollection of bankruptcy and the disappointment
of worldly hope in the giddy bowl, he seized the intoxicating draught
with an infatuated zeal. He heeded not the timid admonitions of love, or
the kind entreaties of friends; but reckless alike of the consequences
of his dreadful habit to himself and others, was hurrying to inevitable
ruin, making no effort to stem the wild, the eddying stream that
controlled him, and within the vortex of which he was soon, alas! to be
forever lost.

Like many others, he had been taught by the example of his elders,
perhaps, by the daily habits of his parents, the unwise and dangerous
idea that discourtesy consisteth not in partaking but in _refusing_ the
proffered glass; hence, what was in youth a fashionable indulgence--a
mere pastime--had become in his manhood a settled, desperate vice. Every
principle, every ambition, of which apparently the exercise had gained
him the respect, confidence, best wishes of his fellow-men, no longer
controlled him. Once an industrious, careful, esteemed young merchant,
he was now a reckless, abandoned inebriate. All his energies were
apparently paralyzed. The pangs of remorse (for reflections on his
course would sometimes flit with the rapidity of shadows across his
mind) were drowned in deep and frequent potations; his features were
bloated, his eyes were bloodshot, his limbs shook. So changed was he
that few could realize in him the man who so recently in conscious
manliness of character, had held high his head on the Exchange, and
operated so extensively in the marts of Bremen.

Love was regarded by him, if regarded at all, as an idle creation of the
brain; and whether from such an opinion of the tender passion, a
consciousness of his own unworthiness of being loved, or, from a feeling
of shame to meet the pure and lovely being to whom he had paid his
addresses; yet, he had forsaken her--her, recently his polar star--the
object of his thoughts by day and of his dreams by night! Yes, he had
forsaken her, and taken a dreary, debauched abode with those who go down
to the grave, unwept, unhonored, and unlamented.

Brief, indeed, was the earthly career of Edward Nordheimer. His youthful
habit of enjoying an occasional glass, had led him gradually,
imperceptibly, perhaps, but surely to the verge of the grave!

How dreadful must thy summons be, oh! Death, to such an one! to any one,
indeed, who, regardless of the great and wise purposes for which he was
created, has passed his days and nights in drunkenness and debauchery;
who, having fallen from his high estate--disappointed his own hopes of
usefulness, respectability, and honor among men; having frustrated the
fond, ardent hopes of parents, the wishes of troops of friends, finds
himself at last on a drunkard's death-bed, with the awful consciousness
of having laughed to scorn the responsibilities resting on his immortal
soul!

I need not attempt to describe the effect (for who can portray the
extreme bitterness of the human heart?) which the melancholy,
soul-harrowing change in Edward, produced on the mind of his lady-love,
or expose to the curious gaze, the broken fountains of her soul. Aware
as she was, however, that all efforts had failed to reclaim the idol of
her bosom, it would be difficult to tell if she more mourned his exit
from the earth than his departure from that course which leads to
happiness and peace. But he was gone, and forever. The eyes, that once
looked so fondly on her, were closed in their last sleep; the tongue
that had so oft and so truly pronounced the soft, musical accents of
love, was a noiseless instrument, and that voice, the very whisperings
of which had sent such a thrill of joy to her once happy heart, was now
forever hushed. The cold embrace of death was around him, and the places
which once knew him were to know him no more.

The unfortunate, broken-hearted maiden, became regardless of every
attraction of society--every attention of friends--for hers was a
sorrow, calm, indeed, but deep and abiding withal--a disappointment as
well as a grief, of that peculiarly delicate nature, for which there is
no earthly consolation. She felt that the world had lost its interest,
its attraction, its delight: her Edward was no more. Her uncle noticed
with deep solicitude the change wrought in her by the utter wreck and
sudden dispersion of all her hopes of happiness, and with this
sympathizing relative she readily consented to seek, on the distant
shores of America, that peace of mind compared with which thrones and
empires and principalities and powers are but vanity and dust.

Her feelings, on leaving her native Germany, may be inferred from the
circumstances already related. They were those peculiar to all, who for
the first time depart from their own country, who for the first time bid
their native land good-night, who for the first time bid an adieu,
perhaps final, to the green fields, the pure skies, the sunny and
endeared spots around the home of infancy and love. Others know not how
oft, how tenderly they are remembered, or how strongly the affections
cling to them, when a wide waste of ocean rolls between our "ain dear
home" and us. If we have left it in prosperity to visit the grand and
beautiful in nature, in other lands, or, reluctantly departed from it in
adversity, with the hope of improving our fortunes, in either case, the
mind ever yearns for the spot where every object, tree, flower, rock,
and shrub is associated with our earliest, our happiest days, where
every breeze is fragrant and refreshing as the breath of Araby.

With these sympathies for a then distant home, I entered fully into the
situation, the feelings, and affections of the brother and sister before
me and watched with deep interest, their every look and movement.
Presently a boatman sounded the signal of departure, then a long and
hearty embrace, a fond and mutual kiss was exchanged, and the
interesting couple parted. The packet was soon seen moving slowly up the
basin, and on the deck, gazing at her brother, stood the beautiful
sister, playing, meanwhile, on her guitar, and singing the air "Home."
With what sweetness and feeling did she warble that music! How
expressive those silent tokens of sorrow which then bedewed her fair,
pale cheek!

The bright, beautiful sun of an autumnal day was sinking in the west,
and when its golden, lingering rays no longer tinged objects living or
inanimate, neither the guitar nor the sweet voice of the German maiden
was heard, nor were her features visible.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have often asked myself, is that sister now happy? Has she recovered
her wonted cheerfulness? Has she forgotten Edward Nordheimer? Is she
married? Is she living? Alas! perhaps, in seeking an asylum in the far
wilds of the West, she has measured out her own span upon earth, fallen,
as many before have fallen, a victim to some disease peculiar to a new,
uncultivated country.

Since the time alluded to, I have often seen in my mind's eye, the
intellectual, beautiful face, and the graceful figure of that sister. I
have seen her as she stood on the deck of the little packet gazing with
tearful eyes at her lonely brother, and as I recalled the trials and
sorrows through which she had passed, have fancied I heard her
melancholy voice again warbling the same plaintive air which caused my
heart to sink within me when I really heard it. Yes, she often rises in
memory, and ever with a strong, a sad impression of the pang which rent
her heart, as her own native Bremen faded forever from her sight!
Bremen! the scene of all her joys, of all her woes! Of her first--only
love! The burial-place of her parents! Bremen! within whose precincts
lie also entombed the cold and perishing remains of Edward Nordheimer!
of him whom she had so truly loved, and who in other, happier days, as
fondly loved her.




CONSPIRACY OF THE CLOCKS.


When Cardinal Montalto assumed the tiara under the title of Sixtus V.,
he speedily threw off the disguise which had enveloped his former life,
smoothed the wrinkles from his now proud forehead, raised his piercing
eyes--heretofore cautiously vailed by their downcast lids--and made the
astounded conclave know that in place of a docile instrument they had
elected an inflexible master. Many glaring abuses existed in Rome, and
these the new pope determined to reform. It was the custom for the
nobles, whether foreigners or natives, to be escorted whenever they went
out by a numerous body of pages, valets, soldiers, and followers of all
kinds, armed, like their masters, to the teeth. Sometimes a noble's
"following" resembled an army rather than an escort; and it frequently
happened that when two such parties met in a narrow street, a violent
struggle for precedence would take place, and blood be freely shed by
those who had had no previous cause of quarrel. Hence came the warlike
meaning--which it still retains--of the word _rencontre_. Sixtus V.
resolved to put down this practice, and seized the opportunity of an
unusually fierce combat taking place on Easter-day within the very
precincts of St. Peter's.

Next morning an official notice was posted on the city walls,
prohibiting every noble without exception from being followed by more
than twenty attendants. Every one also, of whatever degree, who should
himself carry, or cause his people to carry any sort of fire-arms
(pocket-pistols being especially mentioned), should thereby incur the
penalty of death. At this notice Pasquin jested, and the nobles laughed,
but no one dared to indulge in bravado, until the following incident
occurred.

Just after the promulgation of the pope's orders, Ranuccio Farnese, the
only son of the Duke of Parma, arrived in Rome. His first care was to
wait on the new pontiff; and being presented by his uncle, Cardinal
Farnese, the young prince met the reception due to his rank and to his
merit. Already his talents and courage gave promise of his becoming a
worthy successor to his father; and the Roman nobles vied with each
other in doing honor to the heir of one of the richest duchies in the
peninsula. On the evening after his arrival he was invited by Prince
Cesarini to a magnificent banquet. Wine flowed freely, and the night
waxed late, when the gay guests began to discuss the recent edict of his
holiness. Several wild young spirits, and among them Ranuccio, declared
themselves ready to brave it openly. Next morning, however, when sobered
by sleep, they all, with one exception, judged it expedient to forget
their bravado. Ranuccio alone felt a strong desire to try conclusions
with the pope. Although a feudatory of the Holy See, he was not a Roman,
and he was a prince. Sixtus V. would probably think twice before
touching a head that was almost crowned. Besides, youths of twenty love
adventure, and it is not every day that one can enjoy the pleasure of
putting a pope in a dilemma. Ranuccio, in short, went to the Vatican and
asked an audience of his holiness. It was immediately granted, and the
prince, after having, according to the custom, knelt three times,
managed adroitly to let fall at the very feet of Sixtus a pair of
pistols loaded to the muzzle.

Such audacity could not go unpunished. Without a moment's hesitation the
pope summoned his guards, and ordered them to arrest and convey to Fort
St. Angelo the son of the Duke of Parma, who had just condemned himself
to death. War might be declared on the morrow; an outraged father might
come, sword in hand, to demand the life and liberty of his son. What
cared Sixtus? He was resolved to restore but a corpse.

The news spread quickly: so much audacity on one side and so much
firmness on the other seemed almost incredible. Cardinal Farnese
hastened to the Vatican, and, falling at the feet of the pope, with
tears in his eyes pleaded his nephew's cause. He spoke of the youth of
the culprit and the loyalty of his father, who was then in Flanders
fighting the battles of the Holy See. Ranuccio had been but two days in
Rome--might he not fairly be supposed ignorant of the new enactment?
Then he belonged to a powerful house, which it might not be prudent for
even his holiness to offend; and, finally, he was closely related by
blood to the late pope, Paul III.

The holy father's reply was cruelly decisive. "The law," he said, "makes
no distinction: a criminal is a criminal, and nothing more. The
vicegerent of God on earth, my justice, like His, must be impartial; nor
dare I exercise clemency, which would be nothing but weakness."

The cardinal bent his head and retired.

Besieged incessantly by fresh supplications from various influential
quarters, the pope sent for Monsignor Angeli, the governor of Fort St.
Angelo. To him he gave imperative orders, that precisely at twenty-four
o'clock[2] that evening his illustrious prisoner's head should be struck
off.

    [2] In Italy the hours are reckoned from 1 to 24, commencing at
    sunset.

The governor returned to the castle, and signified to Ranuccio that he
had but two hours to live. The young man laughed in his face, and began
to eat his supper. He could not bring himself to believe that he, the
heir-apparent of the Duke of Parma, could be seriously menaced with
death by an obscure monk, whose only title to the pontificate seemed to
have been his age and decrepitude. Yet speedily the threat seemed to him
less worthy of derision, when he saw from his window a scaffold, bearing
a hatchet and a block, in process of erection. But who can describe his
dismay when his room was entered by a monk, who came to administer the
last rites of the church, followed by the executioner, asking for his
last orders!

Meantime Cardinal Farnese was not idle. He consulted with his friend,
Count Olivares, embassador from the court of Spain, and they resolved to
attempt to obtain by stratagem what had been refused to their prayers.
Two precious hours remained.

"Our only plan," said the cardinal, "is to stop the striking of all the
public clocks in Rome! Meantime do you occupy Angeli's attention."

His eminence possessed great influence in the city, and, moreover, the
control of the public clocks belonged to his prerogative. At the
appointed hour, as if by magic, time changed his noisy course into a
silent flight. Two clocks, those of St. Peter and St. Angelo, were put
back twenty minutes. Their proximity to the prison required this change,
and the cardinal's authority secured the inviolable secrecy of every one
concerned in the plot.

The execution was to be private; but Olivares, in his quality of
embassador, was permitted to remain with the governor. A single glance
assured him that the clock was going right--that is to say, that it was
quite wrong. Already the inner court was filled with soldiers under
arms, and monks chanting the solemn "Dies Irae." Every thing was prepared
save the victim. Olivares was with Angeli, and a scene commenced at once
terrible and burlesque. The embassador, in order to gain time, began to
converse on every imaginable subject, but the governor would not listen.

"My orders," he said, "are imperative. At the first stroke of the clock
all will be over."

"But the pope may change his mind." Without replying, the terrible
Angeli walked impatiently up and down the room, watching for the
striking of his clock. He called: a soldier appeared. "Is all prepared?"
All was prepared: the attendants, like their master, were only waiting
for the hour.

"'Tis strange," muttered the governor. "I should have thought--"

"At least," interposed Olivares, "if you will not delay, do not
anticipate." And monsignor resumed his hasty walk between the door and
window, listening for the fatal sound which the faithful tongue of the
clock still refused to utter.

Despite of the delay, however, the fatal hour approached. Ten minutes
more, and Ranuccio's fate would be sealed.

Meanwhile the cardinal repaired to the pope. As he entered, Sixtus drew
out his watch, and his eyes sparkled with revengeful joy. On the
testimony of that unerring time-piece Ranuccio was already executed.

"What seek you?" asked his holiness.

"The body of my nephew, that I may convey it to Parma. At least let the
unhappy boy repose in the tomb of his ancestors."

"Did he die like a Christian?"

"Like a saint," cried the cardinal, trembling at a moment's delay.
Sixtus V. traced the following words: "We order our governor of Fort St.
Angelo to deliver up to his eminence the body of Ranuccio Farnese."
Having sealed it with the pontifical signet, he gave it to the cardinal.

Arrived at the palace gates, Farnese, agitated between fear and hope,
hastened to demand an entrance. A profound silence reigned within,
broken only by the distant note of the "De profundis." He rushed toward
the court. Was he too late?--had his stratagem succeeded? One look would
decide. He raised his eyes--his nephew still lived. His neck bare, and
his hands tied, he knelt beside the block, between a priest and the
executioner, faintly uttering the words of his last prayer. Suddenly the
chanting ceased; the cardinal flew toward the governor. Ere he could
speak, his gestures and his countenance lied for him:

"A pardon?--a pardon!" exclaimed Olivares. The soldiers shouted. The
executioner began to unloose his victim, when a sign from Angeli made
him pause. The governor read and re-read the missive.

"The _body_ of Ranuccio Farnese!" he repeated: "the criminal's name
would suffice. Why these words, '_The body of_?'"

"What stops you?" cried the cardinal, at that perilous moment looking
paler than his nephew.

"Read!" replied Angeli, handing him the pope's letter.

"Is that all?" said his eminence, forcing a smile and pointing to the
clock. "Look at the hour: it still wants two minutes of the time, and I
received that paper from his holiness more than a quarter of an hour
since."

The governor bowed: the argument was irresistible. Ranuccio was given up
to his deliverers. A carriage, with four fleet horses, waited outside
the prison, and in a few moments the cardinal and the young prince were
galloping along the road to Parma. Just then the clocks of Rome pealed
forth in unison, as if rejoicing that by their judicious silence they
had gained their master's cause. It might be well if lawyers in our day
would sometimes follow their example.

Monsignor Angeli, as the chronicle relates, was rather astonished at the
rapid flight of time after his prisoner's departure. In fact, the next
hour seemed to him as short as its predecessor was long. This
phenomenon, due to the simple system of compensation, was ascribed by
him to the peaceful state of his conscience. Although inflexible in the
discharge of what he esteemed his duty, he was in reality a kind-hearted
man, and felt sincere pleasure at what he honestly believed to be
Ranuccio's pardon.

On the morrow the Spanish embassador was the first to congratulate
Sixtus V., with admirable _sang froid_, on his truly pious clemency.
Olivares was only a diplomatist, but he played his part as well as if he
had been a cardinal, and made every one believe that he had been the
dupe of his accomplice. He had good reasons for so acting. His master,
Philip II., seldom jested, more especially when the subject of the joke
was the infallible head of the church; and he strongly suspected that
the clocks of Madrid might prove less complaisant than those at Rome.

Poor Angeli was the only sufferer. For no other crime than that of not
wearing a watch, the pope deprived him of his office, and imprisoned him
for some time in Fort St. Angelo. As to Cardinal Farnese, renouncing all
the praises and congratulations of his friends at Rome, he prudently
remained an absentee.




MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.[3]

    [3] Continued from the December Number

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A VILLAGE "SYNDICUS."


I sat up all night listening to the soldiers' stories of war and
campaigning. Some had served with Soult's army in the Asturias; some
made part of Davoust's corps in the north of Europe; one had just
returned from Friedland, and amused us with describing the celebrated
conference at Tilsit, where he had been a sentinel on the river side,
and presented arms to the two emperors as they passed. It will seem
strange, but it is a fact, that this slight incident attracted toward
him a greater share of his comrades' admiration than was accorded to
those who had seen half the battle-fields of modern war.

He described the dress, the air, the general bearing of the emperors;
remarking that, although Alexander was taller and handsomer, and even
more soldier-like than our own emperor, there was a something of calm
dignity and conscious majesty in Napoleon that made him appear
immeasurably the superior. Alexander wore the uniform of the Russian
guards, one of the most splendid it is possible to conceive, the only
thing simple about him was his sword, which was a plain sabre with a
tarnished gilt scabbard, and a very dirty sword-knot; and yet every
moment he used to look down at it and handle it with great apparent
admiration; and "well might he," added the soldier, "Napoleon had given
it to him but the day before."

To listen even to such meagre details as these was to light up again in
my heart the fire that was only smouldering, and that no life of peasant
labor or obscurity could ever extinguish. My companions quickly saw the
interest I took in their narratives, and certainly did their utmost to
feed the passion--now with some sketch of a Spanish marauding party, as
full of adventure as a romance; now with a description of northern
warfare, where artillery thundered on the ice, and men fought behind
entrenchments of deep snow.

From the North Sea to the Adriatic, all Europe was now in arms. Great
armies were marching in every direction; some along the deep valley of
the Danube, others from the rich plains of Poland and Silesia; some were
passing the Alps into Italy, and some again were pouring down for the
Tyrol "Jochs," to defend the rocky passes of their native land against
the invader. Patriotism and glory, the spirit of chivalry and conquest,
all were abroad, and his must indeed have been a cold heart which could
find within it no response to the stirring sounds around. To the intense
feeling of shame which I at first felt at my own life of obscure
inactivity, there now succeeded a feverish desire to be somewhere and do
something to dispel this worse than lethargy. I had not resolution to
tell my comrades that I had served; I felt reluctant to speak of a
career so abortive and unsuccessful; and yet I blushed at the half
pitying expressions they bestowed upon my life of inglorious adventure.

"You risk life and limb here in these pine forests, and hazard existence
for a bear or a chamois goat," cried one, "and half the peril in real
war would perhaps make you a Chef d'Escadron, or even a general."

"Ay," said another, "we serve in an army where crowns are military
distinctions, and the epaulet is only the first step to a kingdom."

"True," broke in a third, "Napoleon has changed the whole world, and
made soldiering the only trade worth following. Massena was a
drummer-boy within my own memory, and see him now! Ney was not born to
great wealth and honors. Junot never could learn his trade as a
cobbler, and for want of better has become a general of division."

"Yes, and," said I, following out the theme, "under that wooden roof
yonder, through that little diamond-paned window the vine is trained
across, a greater than any of the last three first saw the light. It was
there Kleber, the conqueror of Egypt was born."

"Honor to the brave dead!" said the soldiers from their places around
the fire, and carrying their hands to the salute. "We'll fire a salvo to
him to-morrow before we set out!" said the corporal. "And so Kleber was
born there!" said he, resuming his place, and staring with admiring
interest at the dark outline of the old house, as it stood out against
the starry and cloudless sky.

It was somewhat of a delicate task for me to prevent my companions
offering their tribute of respect, but which the old peasant would have
received with little gratitude, seeing that he had never yet forgiven
the country nor the service for the loss of his son. With some
management I accomplished this duty, however, promising my services at
the same time to be their guide through the Bregenzer Wald, and not to
part with them till I had seen them safely into Bavaria.

Had it not been for my thorough acquaintance with the Tyroler dialect,
and all the usages of Tyrol life, their march would have been one of
great peril, for already the old hatred against their Bavarian
oppressors was beginning to stir the land, and Austrian agents were
traversing the mountain districts in every direction, to call forth that
patriotic ardor which, ill-requited as it has been, has more than once
come to the rescue of Austria.

So sudden had been the outbreak of this war, and so little aware were
the peasantry of the frontier of either its object or aim, that we
frequently passed recruits for both armies on their way to head-quarters
on the same day; honest Bavarians, who were trudging along the road with
pack on their shoulders, and not knowing, nor indeed much caring, on
which side they were to combat. My French comrades scorned to report
themselves to any German officer, and pushed on vigorously in the hope
of meeting with a French regiment. I had now conducted my little party
to Immenstadt, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps; and, having completed
my compact, was about to bid them good-by.

We were seated around our bivouac fire for the last time, as we deemed
it, and pledging each other in a parting glass, when suddenly our
attention was attracted to a bright red tongue of flame that suddenly
darted up from one of the Alpine summits above our head. Another and
another followed, till at length every mountain peak for miles and miles
away displayed a great signal fire! Little knew we that behind that
giant range of mountains, from the icy crags of the Glockner, and from
the snowy summit of the Orteler itself, similar fires were summoning all
Tyrol to the combat; while every valley resounded with the war cry of
"God and the Emperor!" We were still in busy conjecture what all this
might portend, when a small party of mounted men rode past us at a
trot. They carried carbines slung over their peasant frocks, and showed
unmistakably enough that they were some newly-raised and
scarcely-disciplined force. After proceeding about a hundred yards
beyond us they halted, and drew up across the road, unslinging their
pieces as if to prepare for action.

"Look at those fellows, yonder," said the old corporal, as he puffed his
pipe calmly and deliberately; "they mean mischief, or I'm much mistaken.
Speak to them, Tiernay; you know their jargon."

I accordingly arose and advanced toward them, touching my hat in salute
as I went forward. They did not give me much time, however, to open
negotiations, for scarcely had I uttered a word, when bang went a shot
close beside me; another followed; and then a whole volley was
discharged, but with such haste and ill direction that not a ball struck
me. Before I could take advantage of this piece of good fortune to renew
my advances, a bullet whizzed by my head, and down went the left hand
horse of the file, at first on his knees, and then, with a wild plunge
into the air, he threw himself stone dead on the road, the rider beneath
him. As for the rest, throwing off carbines and cartouche-boxes, they
sprung from their horses, and took to the mountains with a speed that
showed how far more they were at home amidst rock and heather than when
seated on the saddle. My comrades lost no time in coming up; but while
three of them kept the fugitives in sight, covering them all the time
with their muskets, the others secured the cattle, as in amazement and
terror they stood around the dead horse.

Although the peasant had received no other injuries than a heavy fall
and his own fears inflicted, he was overcome with terror, and so certain
of death that he would do nothing but mumble his prayers, totally deaf
to all the efforts I made to restore his courage.

"That comes of putting a man out of his natural bent," said the old
corporal. "On his native mountains, and with his rifle, that fellow
would be brave enough; but making a dragoon of him is like turning a
Cossack into a foot soldier. One thing is clear enough, we've no time to
throw away here; these peasants will soon alarm the village in our rear,
so that we had better mount and press forward."

"But in what direction," said another; "who knows if we shall not be
rushing into worse danger?"

"Tiernay must look to that," interposed a third. "It's clear he can't
leave us now; _his_ retreat is cut off, at all events."

"That's the very point I was thinking of, lads," said I. "The beacon
fires show that the 'Tyrol is up,' and safely as I have journeyed hither
I know well I dare not venture to retrace my road; I'd be shot in the
first Dorf I entered. On one condition, then, I'll join you; and short
of that, however, I'll take my own path, come what may of it."

"What's the condition, then?" cried three or four together.

"That you give me the full and absolute command of this party, and
pledge your honor, as French soldiers, to obey me in every thing, till
the day we arrive at the head-quarters of a French corps."

"What, obey a Pekin! take the _mot d'ordre_ from a civilian that never
handled a firelock!" shouted three or four, in derision.

"I have served, and with distinction too, my lads," said I calmly; "and
if I have not handled a firelock, it is because I wielded a sabre, as an
officer of hussars. It is not here, nor now, that I am going to tell why
I wear the epaulet no longer. I'll render an account of that to my
superior and yours! If you reject my offer, and I don't press you to
accept it, let us at least part good friends. As for me, I can take care
of myself." As I said this, I slung over my shoulder the cross-belt and
carbine of one of the fugitives, and selecting a strongly-built,
short-legged black horse as my mount, I adjusted the saddle, and sprung
on his back.

"That was done like an old hussar, anyhow," said a soldier, who had been
a cavalry man, "and I'll follow you, whatever the rest may do." He
mounted as he spoke, and saluted as if on duty. Slight as the incident
was, its effect was magical. Old habits of discipline revived at the
first signal of obedience, and the corporal having made his men fall in,
came up to my side for orders.

"Select the best of these horses," said I, "and let us press forward at
once. We are about eighteen miles from the village of Wangheim; by
halting a short distance outside of it, I can enter alone, and learn
something about the state of the country, and the nearest French post.
The cattle are all fresh, and we can easily reach the village before
daybreak."

Three of my little "command" were tolerable horsemen, two of them having
served in the artillery train, and the third being the dragoon I have
alluded to. I accordingly threw out a couple of these as an advanced
picket, keeping the last as my aid-de-camp at my side. The remainder
formed the rear, with orders, if attacked, to dismount at once, and fire
over the saddle, leaving myself and the others to manoeuvre as
cavalry. This was the only way to give confidence to those soldiers who
in the ranks would have marched up to a battery, but on horseback were
totally devoid of self-reliance. Meanwhile I imparted such instructions
in equitation as I could, my own old experience as a riding-master well
enabling me to select the most necessary and least difficult of a
horseman's duties. Except the old corporal, all were very creditable
pupils; but he, possibly deeming it a point of honor not to discredit
his old career, rejected every thing like teaching, and openly protested
that, save to run away from a victorious enemy, or follow a beaten one,
he saw no use in cavalry.

Nothing could be in better temper, however, nor more amicable, than our
discourses on this head; and as I let drop, from time to time, little
hints of my services on the Rhine and in Italy, I gradually perceived
that I grew higher in the esteem of my companions, so that ere we rode a
dozen miles together their confidence in me became complete.

In return for all their anecdotes of "blood and field," I told them
several stories of my own life, and, at least, convinced them that if
they had not chanced upon the very luckiest of mankind, they had, at
least, fallen upon one who had seen enough of casualties not to be
easily baffled, and who felt in every difficulty a self-confidence that
no amount of discomfiture could ever entirely obliterate. No soldier can
vie with a Frenchman in tempering respect with familiarity; so that
while preserving toward me all the freedom of the comrade, they
recognized in every detail of duty the necessity of prompt obedience,
and followed every command I gave with implicit submission.

It was thus we rode along, till in the distance I saw the spire of a
village church, and recognized what I knew must be Dorf Wangheim. It was
yet an hour before sunrise, and all was tranquil around. I gave the word
to trot, and after about forty minutes' sharp riding we gained a small
pine wood, which skirted the village. Here I dismounted my party, and
prepared to make my _entree_ alone into the Dorf, carefully arranging my
costume for that purpose, sticking a large bouquet of wild flowers in my
hat, and assuming as much as I could of the Tyrol look and lounge in my
gait. I shortened my stirrups, also, to a most awkward and inconvenient
length, and gripped my reins into a heap in my hand.

It was thus I rode into Wangheim, saluting the people as I passed up the
street, and with the short, dry greeting of "Tag," and a nod as brief,
playing the Tyroler to the top of my bent. The "Syndicus," or the ruler
of the village, lived in a good-sized house in the "Platz," which, being
market-day, was crowded with people, although the articles for sale
appeared to include little variety, almost every one leading a calf by a
straw rope, the rest of the population contenting themselves with a wild
turkey, or sometimes two, which, held under the arms, added the most
singular element to the general concert of human voices around. Little
stalls for rustic jewelry and artificial flowers, the latter in great
request, ran along the sides of the square, with here and there a booth
where skins and furs were displayed, more, however, as it appeared to
give pleasure to a group of sturdy jaegers, who stood around, recognizing
the track of their own bullets, than from any hope of sale. In fact, the
business of the day was dull, and an experienced eye would have seen at
a glance that turkeys were "heavy," and calves "looking down." No wonder
that it should be so; the interest of the scene being concentrated on a
little knot of some twenty youths, who, with tickets containing a number
in their hats, stood before the Syndic's door. They were fine-looking,
stalwart, straight fellows; and became admirably the manly costume of
their native mountains; but their countenances were not without an
expression of sadness, the reflection, as I soon saw, of the sadder
faces around them. For so they stood, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts,
their tearful eyes turned on the little band. It puzzled me not a little
at first to see these evidences of a conscription in a land where
hitherto the population had answered the call to arms by a levy "_en
masse_," while the air of depression and sadness seemed also strange in
those who gloried in the excitement of war. The first few sentences I
overheard revealed the mystery. Wangheim was Bavarian; although strictly
a Tyrol village, and Austrian Tyrol, too, it had been included within
the Bavarian frontier, and the orders had arrived from Munich at the
Syndicate to furnish a certain number of men by a certain day. This was
terrible tidings; for although they did not as yet know that the war was
against Austria, they had heard that the troops were for foreign
service, and not for the defense of home and country, the only cause
which a Tyroler deems worthy of battle. As I listened I gathered that
the most complete ignorance prevailed as to the service or the
destination to which they were intended. The Bavarians had merely issued
their mandates to the various villages of the border, and neither sent
emissaries nor officers to carry them out. Having seen how the "land
lay," I pushed my way through the crowd, into the hall of the Syndicate,
and by dint of a strong will and stout shoulder, at length gained the
audience chamber; where, seated behind an elevated bench, the great man
was dispensing justice. I advanced boldly, and demanded an immediate
audience in private, stating that my business was most pressing, and not
admitting of delay. The Syndic consulted for a second or two with his
clerk, and retired, beckoning me to follow.

"You're not a Tyroler," said he to me, the moment we were alone.

"That is easy to see, Herr Syndicus," replied I. "I'm an officer of the
staff, in disguise, sent to make a hasty inspection of 

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