Public Life Of Benjamin Franklin.1
By Jacob Abbott.

Benjamin Franklin entered upon his
career as a public man when very near the
middle of the active portion of his life. His history,
therefore, naturally divides itself into two
equal portions, each entirely distinct from the
other. Until the age of about thirty-five he was
simply a Philadelphia mechanic, discharging his
duties, however, in that capacity so gracefully
and with such brilliant success, as to invest industry,
and frugality, and all the other plain and
unpretending virtues of humble life with a sort
of poetic charm which has been the means of
commending them in the most effectual manner,
to millions of his countrymen. At length, having
accomplished in this field a work equal to the
labor of any ordinary life-time, he was by a sudden
shifting of the scene in the drama of his life,
as it were, withdrawn from it, at once and entirely,
and ushered into a wholly different sphere.
During all the latter half of his life he was almost
exclusively a public man. He was brought
forward by a peculiar combination of circumstances
into a most conspicuous position; a position,
which not only made him the object of
interest and attention to the whole civilized world,
but which also invested him with a controlling
power in respect to some of the most important
events and transactions of modern times. Thus
there lived, as it were, two Benjamin Franklins,
Benjamin Franklin the honest Philadelphia printer,
who quietly prosecuted his trade during the
first part of the eighteenth century, setting an
example of industry and thrift which was destined
afterward to exert an influence over half
the world—and Benjamin Franklin the great
American statesman, who flourished in the last
part of the same century, and occupied himself
in building and securing the foundations of what
will perhaps prove the greatest political power
that any human combination has ever formed.
It is this latter history which is to form the subject
of the present article.

It is remarkable that the first functions which
Franklin fulfilled in public life were of a military
character. When he found that his thrift and
prosperity as a citizen, and the integrity and
good sense which were so conspicuous in his
personal character, were giving him a great ascendency
among his fellow men, he naturally
began to take an interest in the welfare of the
community; and when he first began to turn his
attention in earnest to this subject, which was
about the year 1743, there were two points which
seemed to him to demand attention. One was,
the want of a college in Philadelphia; the other,
the necessity of some means of defense against
foreign invasion. Spain had been for some time
at war with England, and now France had joined
with Spain in prosecuting the war. The English
colonies in America were in imminent danger
of being attacked by the French forces. The
influence of the Friends was, however, predominant
in the colonial legislature, and no vote
could be obtained there for any military purposes;
though the governor, and a very considerable
part of the population, were extremely desirous
that suitable preparations for defending
the city should be made.

There was thus much diversity of sentiment
in the public mind, and many conflicting opinions
were expressed in private conversation; but
every thing was unsettled, and no one could tell
what it was best to undertake to do.

Under these circumstances Franklin wrote and
published a pamphlet entitled Plain Truth, placing
the defenseless condition of the colony in a
strong light, and calling upon the people to take
measures for averting the danger. This pamphlet
produced a great sensation. A meeting of
the citizens was convened. An enrollment of
the citizens in voluntary companies was proposed
and carried by acclamation. Papers were
circulated and large numbers of signatures were
[pg 290]
obtained. The ladies prepared silken banners,
embroidering them with suitable devices and
presented these banners to the companies that
were formed. In a word, the whole city was
filled with military enthusiasm. The number
of men that were enrolled as the result of this
movement was ten thousand.

Such a case as this is probably wholly without
a parallel in the history of the world, when the
legislative government of a state being held back
by conscientious scruples from adopting military
measures for the public defense in a case of imminent
danger, the whole community rise voluntarily
at the call of a private citizen, to organize
and arm themselves under the executive power.
There was, it is true, very much in the peculiar
circumstances of the occasion to give efficiency
to the measures which Franklin adopted, but
there are very few men who, even in such circumstances,
would have conceived of such a design,
or could have accomplished it, if they had
made the attempt.

The officers of the Philadelphia regiment, organized
from these volunteers, chose Franklin
their colonel. He however declined the appointment,
considering himself, as he said, not qualified
for it. They then appointed another man.
Franklin, however, continued to be foremost in
all the movements and plans for maturing and
carrying into effect the military arrangements
that were required.

Among other things, he conceived the idea of
constructing a battery on the bank of the river
below the town, to defend it from ships that might
attempt to come up the river. To construct this
battery, and to provide cannon for it, would require
a considerable amount of money; and in
order to raise the necessary funds, Franklin proposed
a public lottery. He considered the emergency
of the crisis, as it would seem, a sufficient
justification for a resort to such a measure. The
lottery was arranged, and the tickets offered for
sale. They were taken very fast, for the whole
community were deeply interested in the success
of the enterprise. The money was thus raised
and the battery was erected. The walls of it
were made of logs framed together, the space
between being filled with earth.

The great difficulty, however, was to obtain
cannon for the armament of the battery. The
associates succeeded at length in finding a few
pieces of old ordnance in Boston which they
could buy. These they procured and mounted
in their places on the battery. They then sent
to England to obtain more; and in the mean time
Franklin was dispatched as a commissioner to
New York, to attempt to borrow some cannon
there, to be used until those which they expected
to receive from England should arrive. His
application was in the end successful, though
the consent of Governor Clinton, to whom the
application was made, was gained in a somewhat
singular way. “At first,” says Franklin,
“he refused us peremptorily; but at dinner with
his council, where there was great drinking of
Madeira wine, as the custom of the place then
was, he softened by degrees, and said he would
lend us six. After a few more bumpers he advanced
to ten; and at length he very good-naturedly
conceded eighteen.”

The pieces thus borrowed were eighteen pounders,
all in excellent order and well mounted on
suitable carriages. They were soon transported
to Philadelphia and set up in their places on the
battery, where they remained while the war lasted.
A company was organized to mount guard
there by day and night. Franklin himself was
one of this guard, and he regularly performed
his duty as a common soldier, in rotation with
the rest. In fact, one secret of the great ascendency
which he acquired at this time over all
those who were in any way connected with him,
was the unassuming and unpretending spirit
which he manifested. He never sought to appropriate
to himself the credit of what he did,
but always voluntarily assumed his full share of
all labors and sacrifices that were required.

[pg 291]

The members of the society of Friends were
very numerous in Philadelphia at this time, and
they held a controlling influence in the legislature.
And inasmuch as the tenets of their society expressly
forbade them to engage in war or war-like
operations of any kind, no vote could be obtained
in the legislature to provide for any military
preparations. The Friends, however, were
not disposed to insist so
tenaciously upon their views
as to be unwilling that others
should act as they saw fit.
It was even thought that
many of them were willing
to encourage and promote
the measures which Franklin
was pursuing for the defense
of the province, so
far as they could do so without
directly violating their
professed principles by acting
personally in furtherance
of them.

Various instances occurred
of this tacit acquiescence
on the part of the
Friends in the defensive
preparations which were
going forward. It was proposed for example
that the fire-company which has already been
alluded to, should invest their surplus funds in
lottery tickets, for the battery. The Friends
would not vote for this measure, but a sufficient
number of them absented themselves from the
meeting to allow the others to carry it. In the
legislature moreover, they would sometimes grant
money “for the king’s use” the tacit understanding
being that the funds were to be employed for
military purposes. At one time, before the question
of appropriating the surplus funds of the fire
company was disposed of, Franklin had an idea—which
he proposed to one of his friends—of
introducing a resolution at a meeting of the company,
for purchasing a fire-engine with the money.
“And then,” said he, “we will buy a cannon
with it, for no one can deny that that is a fire-engine.”

Soon after this Franklin went as a commissioner
from the government, to make a treaty
with a tribe of Indians at Carlisle, in the interior
of Pennsylvania. On the night after the treaty
was concluded, a great uproar was heard in the
Indian camp, just without the town. The commissioners
went to see what was the matter.
They found that the Indians had made a great
bonfire in the middle of the square around which
their tents were pitched, and that all the company,
men and women, were around it, shouting,
quarreling and fighting. The spectacle of their
dark colored bodies, half naked, and seen only by
the gloomy light of the fire, running after and
beating one another with firebrands, accompanied
by the most unearthly yellings, presented
a dreadful scene. The frenzy of the people was
so great that there was no possibility of restraining
it, and the commissioners were obliged
to retire and leave the savages to themselves.

After this Franklin returned to Philadelphia
and devoted his attention to a variety of plans
for the improvement of
the city, in all of which his
characteristic ingenuity in
devising means for the accomplishment
of his plans,
and his calm and quiet, but
efficient energy in carrying
them into effect, were as
conspicuous as ever. One
of the first enterprises in
which he engaged was the
founding of a hospital for
the reception and cure of
sick persons. The institution
which he was the means
of establishing has since become
one of the most prominent
and useful institutions
of the country. He caused
a petition to be prepared and presented to the
Assembly, asking for a grant from the public funds
in aid of this undertaking. The country members
were at first opposed to the plan, thinking that it
would mainly benefit the city. In order to diminish
[pg 292]
this opposition, Franklin framed the petition
so as not to ask for a direct and absolute
grant of the money that was required, but caused
a resolve to be drawn up granting the sum of
two thousand pounds from the public treasury on
condition that the same sum should previously be
raised by private subscription. Many of the
members were willing to vote for this, who would
not have voted for an unconditional donation; and
so the vote was passed without much opposition.

After this the private subscriptions went on
very prosperously; for each person who was applied
to considered the conditional promise of the
Assembly as an additional motive to give, since
every man’s donation would be doubled by the
public grant, if the required amount was made
up. This consideration had so powerful an influence
that the subscriptions soon exceeded the
requisite sum. Thus the hospital was founded.

Franklin interested himself also in introducing
plans for paving, sweeping and lighting the streets
of the city. Before this time the streets had
been kept in very bad condition. This was the
case, in fact, at that period, in almost all cities—in
those of Europe as well as those of America.
In connection with this subject Franklin relates
an incident that occurred when he was in London,
which illustrates very strikingly both the
condition of the cities in those days, and the
peculiar traits of Franklin’s character. It seems
that he found one morning at the door of his
lodgings a poor woman sweeping the pavement
with a birch broom. She appeared very pale and
feeble, as if just recovering from a fit of sickness.
“I asked her,” says Franklin, “who employed
her to sweep there.” “Nobody,” said she, “but
I am poor and in distress, and I sweeps before
gentlefolks’ doors and hopes they will give me
something.”

Instead of driving the poor woman away,
Franklin set her at work to sweep the whole
street clean, saying that when she had done it he
would pay her a shilling. She worked diligently
all the morning upon the task which Franklin
had assigned her, and at noon came for her
shilling. This incident, trifling as it might seem,
led Franklin to a long train of reflections and calculations
in respect to the sweeping of the streets
of cities, and to the formation of plans which were
afterward adopted with much success.

In the year 1755, Franklin became connected
with the famous expedition of General Braddock
in the western part of Pennsylvania, which ended
so disastrously. A new war had broken out between
the French and the English, and the
French, who had long held possession of Canada,
and had gradually been extending their posts
down into the valley of the Mississippi, at length
took possession of the point of confluence of the
Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, where Pittsburg
now stands. Here they built a fort, which
they called Fort Du Quesne. From this fort, as
the English allege, the French organized bands
of Indians from the tribes which lived in the
neighborhood, and made predatory incursions into
the English colonies, especially into Pennsylvania.
The English government accordingly
sent General Braddock at the head of a large
force, with instructions to march through the
woods, take the fort, and thus put an end to
these incursions.

General Braddock landed with his troops at a
port in Virginia, and thence marched into Maryland
on his way to Pennsylvania. He soon found
himself in very serious difficulty, however, from
being unable to procure wagons for the transportation
of the military stores and other baggage
which it was necessary to take with the army in
going through such a wilderness as lay between
him and fort Du Quesne. He had sent all about
the country to procure wagons, but few could be
obtained.

In the mean time the Assembly at Philadelphia
made arrangements for Franklin to go to Maryland
to meet General Braddock on his way, and
give him any aid which it might be in his power
to render. They were the more inclined to do
this from the fact that for some time there had
been a good deal of disagreement and contention
between the colony of Pennsylvania and the
government in England, and they had heard that
General Braddock was much prejudiced against
the Assembly on that account. They accordingly
dispatched Franklin as their agent, to proceed
to the camp and assure General Braddock
of the desire of the Assembly to co-operate with
him by every means in their power.

Franklin found when he reached the camp,
that the general was in great trouble and perplexity
for want of wagons, and he immediately
undertook to procure them for him. He accordingly
took a commission from the general for
this purpose, and went at once to Lancaster, in
Pennsylvania, and there issued circulars which
he sent to all the farmers in the country, inviting
[pg 293]
them to bring their wagons to Lancaster, and
offering them advantageous terms for the hire of
them. These measures were perfectly successful.
The wagons came in, in great numbers, and
an abundant supply was speedily obtained. This
success was owing partly to Franklin’s sagacity
in knowing exactly where to send for wagons,
and what sort of inducements to offer to the
farmers to make them willing
to bring them out, and
partly to the universal respect
and confidence that
was felt toward him personally,
which led the farmers
to come forward readily
at his call and on his promise,
when they would
have been suspicious and
distrustful of any offers
which Braddock could have
made them through any of
the English officers under
his command. A train of
one hundred and fifty wagons,
and two hundred and
fifty carrying horses were
very soon on their way to
the camp.

Encouraged by the success of these measures,
Franklin conceived of another plan to promote
the comfort and welfare of Braddock’s army.
He procured a grant of money from the Assembly
to be applied to purchasing stores for the
subaltern officers, who, as he had learned, were
very scantily supplied with the articles necessary
for their comfort. With this money he purchased
a supply of such commodities as he judged would
be most useful in camp, such as coffee, tea,
sugar, biscuit, butter, cheese, hams, &c., and
dividing these stores into parcels, so as to make
one for each officer in the army, he placed the
parcels upon as many horses, and sent them to
the camp. The supply intended for each officer
made a load for one horse.

Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, to
promote the success of Braddock’s expedition, it
was destined, as is well known, to come to a
very disastrous end. Braddock allowed himself
to fall into an ambuscade. Here he was attacked
by the Indians with terrible fury. The men
stood their ground as long as possible, but finally
were seized with a panic and fled in all directions.
The wagoners—men who had come from the
Philadelphia farms in charge of the wagons that
had been furnished in answer to Franklin’s call—in
making their escape, took each a horse out of
his team, and galloped away, and thus the wagons
themselves and all the provisions, ammunition,
and military stores of every kind, fell into the
hands of the enemy. Braddock himself was
wounded, nearly half of the troops were killed,
and the whole object of the expedition was completely
frustrated. The wounded general was
conveyed back about forty miles to the rear, and
there, a few days afterward, he died.

Of course a feeling of great alarm was awakened
throughout Pennsylvania as the tidings of
this disaster were spread abroad. Every one
was convinced that some efficient measures must
at once he adopted to defend the country from
the incursions of the French and Indians on the
frontier. There was, however, a very serious
difficulty in the way of taking such measures.

This difficulty was, an obstinate quarrel which
had existed for a long time between the governor
and the Assembly. The governor was appointed
in England, and he represented the views and
the interests of the English proprietors of the
colony. The Assembly were elected by the people
of the colony, and of course represented their
interests and views. Now the proprietors had
instructed the governor to insist that their property
should not be subject to taxation; and to
refuse his assent to all bills for raising money
unless the property of the proprietors should be
exempted. On the other hand the colonists maintained
that the land belonging to the proprietors
was as justly subject to taxation as any other
property; and they refused to pass any bills for
raising money unless the property of the proprietors
was included. Thus nothing could be done.

This dispute had already been long protracted
and both parties had become somewhat obstinate
in their determination to maintain the ground
which they had respectively taken. Even now
[pg 294]
when the country was in this imminent danger,
it was some time before either side would yield,
while each charged upon the other the responsibility
of refusing to provide the means for the
defense of the country.

At length, however, a sort of compromise was
made. The proprietors offered to contribute a
certain sum toward the public defense, and the
Assembly consented to receive the contribution
in lieu of a tax, and passed a law for raising
money, exempting the proprietors’ land from being
taxed. The sum of sixty thousand pounds
was thus raised, and Franklin was appointed one
of the commissioners for disposing of the money.

A law was also enacted for organizing and
arming a volunteer militia; and while the companies
were forming, the governor persuaded
Franklin to take command of the force, and proceed
at the head of it to the frontier. Franklin
was reluctant to undertake this military business,
as his whole life had been devoted to entirely different
pursuits. He, however, accepted the appointment,
and undertook the defense of the
frontier.

There was a settlement of Moravians about
fifty or sixty miles from Philadelphia, at Bethlehem,
which was then upon the frontier. Bethlehem
was the principal settlement of the Moravians,
but they had several villages besides.
One of these villages, named Gnadenhütten, had
just been destroyed by the Indians, and the whole
settlement was in great alarm. Franklin proceeded
to Bethlehem with his force, and having
made such arrangements and preparations as
seemed necessary there, he obtained some wagons
for his stores, and set off on a march to
Gnadenhütten. His object was to erect a fort
and establish a garrison there.

It was in the dead of winter, and before the
column had proceeded many miles a violent storm
of rain came on, but there were no habitations
along the road, and no places of shelter; so the
party were obliged to proceed. They went on
toiling heavily through the mud and snow.

They were of course in constant danger of an
attack from the Indians, and were the more apprehensive
of this from the fact that on such a
march they were necessarily in a very defenseless
condition. Besides, the rain fell so continually
and so abundantly that the men could not
keep the locks of their muskets dry. They went
on, however, in this way for many hours, but at
last they came to the house of a solitary German
settler, and here they determined to stop for the
night. The whole troop crowded into the house
and into the barn, where they lay that night
huddled together, and “as wet,” Franklin says,
“as water could make them.” The next day,
however, was fair, and they proceeded on their
march in a somewhat more comfortable manner.

They arrived at length at Gnadenhütten, where
a most melancholy spectacle awaited them. The
village was in ruins. The country people of the
neighborhood had attempted to give the bodies of
the murdered inhabitants a hurried burial; but they
had only half performed their work, and the first
duty which devolved on Franklin’s soldiers was to
complete the interment in a proper manner. The
next thing to be thought of was to provide some
sort of shelter for the soldiers; for they had no
tents, and all the houses had been destroyed.

There was a mill near by, around which were
several piles of pine boards which the Indians
had not destroyed. Franklin set his troops at
work to make huts of these boards, and thus in
a short time his whole army was comfortably
sheltered. All this was done on the day and
evening of their arrival, and on the following
morning the whole force was employed in commencing
operations upon the fort.

The fort was to be built of palisades, and it
was marked out of such a size that the circumference
was four hundred and fifty-five feet. This
would require four hundred and fifty-five palisades;
for the palisades were to be formed of logs,
of a foot in diameter upon an average, and eighteen
feet long. The palisades
were to be obtained
from the trees in the neighborhood,
and these trees
were so tall that each tree
would make three palisades.
The men had seventy axes
in all, and the most skillful
and able woodmen in the
company were immediately
set at work to fell the trees.
Franklin says that he was
surprised to observe how
fast these axmen would cut
the trees down; and at
length he had the curiosity
to look at his watch when
two men began to cut at a
pine. They brought it
down in six minutes; and
on measuring it, where they had cut it off, Franklin
found the diameter of the tree to be fourteen
inches.

While the woodmen were cutting the palisades
a large number of other laborers were employed
in digging a trench all around the circumference
[pg 295]
of the fort to receive them. This trench was
made about three feet deep, and wide enough to
receive the large ends of the palisades. As fast
as the palisades were cut they were brought to
the spot, by means of the wagon wheels which
had been separated from the wagon bodies for
this purpose. The palisades were set up, close
together, in the trench, and the earth was rammed
in around them; thus the inclosure of the fort
was soon completed.

A platform was then built all around on the
inside, for the men to stand upon to fire through
the loop holes which were left in the palisades
above. There was one swivel gun, which the
men had brought with them in one of the wagons.
This gun they mounted in one corner of
the fort, and as soon as they had mounted it they
fired it, in order, as Franklin said, to let the Indians
know, if any were within hearing, that they
had such artillery.

There were Indians within hearing it seems;
several bands were lurking in the neighborhood,
secretly watching the movements of Franklin’s
command. This was found to be the case a short
time after the fort was completed, for when
Franklin found his army securely posted he sent
out a party of scouts to explore the surrounding
country to see if any traces of Indians could be
found. These men saw no Indians, but they
found certain places on the neighboring hills
where it was evident that Indians had been lurking
to watch the proceedings of the soldiers in
building the fort. Franklin’s men were much
struck with the ingenious contrivance which the
Indians had resorted to, in order to escape being
observed while thus watching. As it was in the
depth of the winter it was absolutely necessary
for them to have a fire, and without some special
precaution a fire would have betrayed them, by
the light which it would emit at night, or the
smoke which would rise from it by day. To avoid
this, the Indians, they found, had dug holes in the
ground, and made their fires in the bottoms of
the holes, using charcoal only for fuel, for this
would emit no smoke. They obtained the charcoal
from the embers, and brands, and burnt ends
of logs, which they found in the woods near by.
The soldiers found by the marks on the grass
around these holes that the Indians had been
accustomed to sit around them upon the edges,
with their feet below, near the fire.

The building and arming of such a fort, and
the other military arrangements which Franklin
made on the frontier produced such an impression
upon the Indians that they gradually withdrew,
leaving that part of the country in a tolerably secure
condition. Soon after this Franklin was
summoned by the governor to return to Philadelphia,
as his presence and counsel were required
there. He found on his arrival that he
had acquired great fame by the success of his
military operations. In fact quite a distinguished
honor was paid to him, soon after this time, on
the occasion of his going to Virginia on some
public business. The officers of the regiment
resolved to escort him out of the town, on the
morning when he was to commence his journey.
He knew nothing of this project until just as he
was coming forth, when he found the officers at the
door, all mounted and dressed in their uniforms.
Franklin says that he was a good deal chagrined
at their appearing, as he could not avoid their
accompanying him, though if he had known it
beforehand he should have prevented it.

[pg 296]

While Franklin was thus acquiring some considerable
military renown in America, he was becoming
quite celebrated as a philosopher on the
continent of Europe. It seems that some years
before, the library society of Philadelphia had received
some articles of electrical apparatus from
England, and Franklin had performed certain experiments
with them which led him to believe,
what had not been known before, that lightning
was an electrical phenomenon. He wrote some
account of his experiments, and of the views
which they had led him to entertain, and sent it
to the person from whom the library society had
received the apparatus. These papers attracted
much attention, and were at length laid before the
Royal Society of London, and soon afterward
published in the transactions of the Society. In
this form they were seen by a distinguished
French philosopher, the Count de Buffon, who
caused them to be be translated into the French
language and published at Paris. By this means
the attention of the whole scientific world was
called to Franklin’s speculations, and as the correctness
of his views was fully established by subsequent
investigations and
experiments, he acquired
great renown. He was
elected a member of the
various scientific societies,
and the Royal Society of
London sent him a magnificent
gold medal.

This medal was brought
to America to be delivered
to Franklin by a new Governor,
Captain Denny, who
was about this time appointed
over the colony of
Pennsylvania. The course
of public business had often
brought Franklin and the
former governor into conflict
with each other; for
the governor, as has already
been said, represented the interests of the English
proprietors of the colony, while Franklin
espoused very warmly the cause of the people.
The governor often sent messages and addresses
to the Assembly censuring them for the course
of proceeding which they had followed in reference
to taxing the proprietors’ lands, and the
Assembly often appointed Franklin to draw up
suitable replies. The new governor seems to
have been pleased with having the medal intrusted
to his charge, as he intended in commencing
his administration, to do all in his power
to propitiate Franklin, so as to secure the great
influence which the philosopher had now begun
to wield in the province, in his favor.

When Governor Denny arrived at Philadelphia
and entered upon the duties of his office, he determined
on giving a great entertainment to the
people of Philadelphia, and to take that occasion
for presenting Franklin with his medal. This
he accordingly did; and he accompanied the
presentation with an appropriate speech, in which
he complimented Franklin in a very handsome
manner for his scientific attainments, and spoke
in flattering terms of the renown which he was
acquiring in Europe. After the dinner, he took
Franklin aside into a small room, leaving the
general company still at the table, and entered
into conversation with him in respect to the affairs
of the province and the contemplated measures
of his administration. He had been advised,
he said, by his friends in England, to cultivate a
good understanding with Franklin, as a man capable
of giving him the best advice, and of contributing
most effectually to making his administration
easy. He said a great deal about the
friendly feeling toward the colony which was
entertained by the proprietors, and about the advantage
which it would be to all concerned, and
to Franklin in particular, if the opposition which
had been made to the proprietor’s views should
be discontinued, and harmony restored between
them and the people of the colony.

During all this time while the governor was
plying his guest with these flatteries and promises,
he was offering him wine and drinking his
health; for the people at the dinner table,
when they found that the governor did not return,
[pg 297]
sent a decanter of Madeira and some glasses
into the room where he and Franklin were sitting.
All these civilities and blandishments, however,
on the part of the governor seem to have been
thrown away. Franklin replied with politeness,
but yet in such a manner as to evince a full determination
to adhere faithfully to the cause of
the colonists, in case any farther encroachments
on their rights should be attempted.

In fact the breach between the people of the
colony and the proprietors in England soon began
to grow wider, under
the administration of the
new governor, than they had
ever been before, until at
length it was decided to
send Franklin to England
to lay a remonstrance and
petition against the proceedings
of the proprietors, before
the king. Franklin
accordingly took passage on
board of a packet which was
to sail from New York.

A great many embarrassments
and delays, however,
supervened before he finally
set sail. In the first place,
he was detained by certain
negotiations which were entered
into between Governors
Loudoun of New York, and Denny of Philadelphia
on the one part, and the Philadelphia
Assembly on the other, in a vain attempt to compromise
the difficulty, until the packet in which
he had taken passage had sailed, carrying with
her all the stores which he had laid in for the
voyage. Next, he found himself detained week
after week in New York by the dilatoriness and
perpetual procrastination of Governor Loudoun,
who kept back the packets as they came in, one
after another, in order to get his dispatches prepared.
He was always busy writing letters and
dispatches, but they seemed never to be ready; so
that it was said of him by some wags that he was
like the figure of St. George upon the tavern signs,
“who though always on horseback never rides on.”

After being detained in this way several weeks,
it was announced that the packets were about to
sail, and the passengers were all ordered to go on
board. The packets proceeded to Sandy Hook,
and there anchored to wait for the governor’s final
dispatches. Here they were kept waiting day
after day for about six weeks, so that at last the
passengers’ stores were consumed, and they had
to obtain a fresh supply; and one of the vessels
became so foul with the incrustation of shells and
barnacles upon her hull, that she required to be
taken into dock and cleaned. At length, however,
the fleet sailed, and Franklin, after various adventures,
arrived safely one foggy morning at Falmouth
in England.

The vessel narrowly escaped shipwreck on the
Scilly Islands as they were approaching the town
of Falmouth. Although the wind was not violent,
the weather was very thick and hazy, and
there was a treacherous current drifting them
toward the rocks as they attempted to pass by
the island and gain the shore. There was a
watchman stationed at the bow, whose duty it
was to keep a vigilant look-out. This watchman
was called to from time to time by an officer on
the deck, “Look out well before there,” and he
as often answered “Ay, ay;” but he neglected
his duty, notwithstanding, being probably half
asleep at his station; for suddenly all on deck
were alarmed by an outcry, and looking forward
they saw the light-house which stood upon the
rocks, looming up close before them. The ship was
immediately brought round by a kind of manœuvre
considered very dangerous in such circumstances,
but it was successful in this case, and
thus they escaped the impending danger. The
passengers were all aware of the peril they were
in, and many of them were exceedingly alarmed.
In fact, the shipmaster and the seamen considered
it a very narrow escape. If the ship had gone
upon the rocks, the whole company would probably
have perished.

It was Sunday morning and the bells were
ringing for church when the passengers landed.
Franklin with the others went to church immediately,
with hearts full of gratitude to God, as
he says, for the deliverance which they had experienced.
He then went to his inn and wrote
[pg 298]
a letter to his family giving them an account of
his voyage.

A few days after
this he went up to
London, and began
to devote himself
to the business
of his agency.

He found, however,
that he made
very slow progress
in accomplishing
his object, for the
ministry were so
much engaged
with other affairs,
that for a long time
he could not obtain
a hearing.
He however was not idle. He wrote pamphlets
and articles in the newspapers; and every thing
that he wrote was of so original a character, and
so apposite, and was moreover expressed with so
much terseness and point, that it attracted great
attention and acquired great influence.

In fact, Franklin was distinguished all his life
for the genius and originality which he displayed
in expressing any sentiments which he wished
to inculcate upon mankind. One of the most
striking examples of this is the celebrated Parable
against persecution of which he is generally
considered the author; it is as follows:

This parable, the idea of which Franklin probably
obtained from some ancient Persian books,
he wrote out and committed to memory, and he
used to amuse himself sometimes by opening
the Bible, and repeating the parable as if he were
reading it from that book; and he found, he
said, that very few auditors
were sufficiently acquainted
with the contents
of the sacred volume
to suspect the deception.

He often expressed
the sentiments which he
wished to inculcate, in
some unusual and striking
form, as in this instance.
His conversation
assumed somewhat
the same character, so
that wherever he was,
his sayings and doings
always attracted great attention.

In respect to this parable on persecution, although
it is generally considered as the production
of Franklin, it was never really claimed as
such by him. In fact, Franklin himself did not
publish it. It was published without his knowledge,
by a friend of his in Scotland, the celebrated
Lord Kames, who inserted it in a volume of
his writings, saying it was “furnished to him”
by Franklin. Lord Kames resided in Scotland,
and Franklin became acquainted with him during
a visit which he made to that country in the summer
of 1759. Lord Kames became very greatly
interested in Franklin’s character, and a warm
friendship and constant correspondence was kept
up between the two philosophers for many years,
as long, in fact, as Lord Kames lived; for Franklin
was the survivor.

[pg 299]

Franklin’s residence while he was in London
was in Craven-street, near the Strand, at the
house of a Mrs. Stevenson. This house is still
commemorated in the London Guide Books,
among other places of historical interest in the
metropolis, on account of its having been the
home of the distinguished philosopher so long.
Franklin lived on very friendly terms with Mrs.
Stevenson and her family, while he remained in
her house, and he interested himself in the studies
and instruction of
her daughter. At
the same time he
kept up a constant
and familiar correspondence
with his
wife and family at
home. One of his
sons was with him
during his residence
in England
having accompanied
him when he
came over. His
friends were very
desirous that he
should send for his
wife to come to
England too, and
more especially his
daughter Sally,
who was a very attractive
and agreeable
young lady,
just arrived to
years of woman-hood.
One of
Franklin’s most intimate
friends, Mr.
Strahan, a member
of Parliament,
wrote to Mrs.
Franklin very urgently
requesting
her to come to England
with her
daughter. Franklin
himself, however,
seems not to
have seconded this
proposition very
strongly. He
knew, in the first
place, that his wife
had an irresistible
repugnance to undertaking a sea voyage, and
then he was continually hoping that the long
and weary negotiations in which he was engaged
would be brought soon to an end, so that he could
return himself to his native land.

At length, after an infinite variety of difficulties
and delays, the object for which Franklin had
been sent to England was in the main accomplished.
It was decided that the lands of the
proprietors should be taxed as well as the property
of the colonists. There were several other
measures which he had been desirous of securing,
which he found then impracticable. Still his
object in the main was accomplished, and the
Assembly were well satisfied with what he had
done. He accordingly concluded to return to
America.

He left England about the end of August, in
1762, in company with ten sail of merchant ships
under convoy of a man-of-war. They touched at
Madeira on the passage, where they were very
kindly received by the inhabitants, and Franklin
was very much interested in the observations
which he made on the island and its productions.
After remaining on the island for a few days, and
furnishing the ships with provisions and refreshments
of all kinds, the ships sailed again. They
proceeded southward until they reached the trade
winds, and then westward toward the coast of
America. All this time the weather was so favorable,
and the water was so smooth, that there
were very few days when the passengers could
[pg 300]
not visit from ship to ship, dining with each other
on board the different vessels, which made the
time pass very agreeably; “much more so,” as
Franklin said, “than when one goes in a single
ship, as this was like traveling in a moving village
with all one’s neighbors about one.”

He arrived at home on the 1st of November,
after an absence of between five and six years.
He found his wife and daughter well—the latter,
as he says, grown to quite a woman, and with
many amiable accomplishments, acquired during
his absence. He was received too with great
distinction by the public authorities and by the
people of Philadelphia. The Assembly voted him
twelve thousand pounds for his services, and also
passed a vote of thanks, to be presented to him in
public by the Speaker. His friends came in great
numbers to see him and congratulate him on his
safe return, so that his house for many days was
filled with them. Besides these public and private
honors bestowed upon himself, Franklin experienced
an additional satisfaction also at this time
on account of the distinction to which his son
was attaining. His son had been appointed Governor
of New Jersey just before his father left
England, and he remained behind when his father
sailed, in order to be married to a very agreeable
West India lady to whom he had proposed himself,
with his father’s consent and approbation.
The young governor and his bride arrived in
Philadelphia a few months after Franklin himself
came home. Franklin accompanied his son
to New Jersey, where he had the pleasure of
seeing him warmly welcomed by people of all
ranks, and then left him happily established in
his government there.

Soon after this Franklin, who still held the office
of postmaster for the colonies, turned his attention
to the condition of the post-office, and
concluded to make a tour of inspection with reference
to this business in all the colonies north
of Philadelphia. He took his daughter with him
on this journey, although it was likely to be a
very long and fatiguing one. He traveled in a
wagon, accompanied by a saddle horse. His
daughter rode on this horse for a considerable
part of the journey. At the beginning of it she
rode on the horse only occasionally; but, as she
became accustomed to the exercise, she found it
more and more agreeable, and on the journey
home she traveled in this manner nearly all the
way from Rhode Island to Philadelphia.

Not long after this time new Indian difficulties
occurred on the frontiers, which called for the
raising of a new military force to suppress them.
A law was accordingly proposed in the Assembly
for providing the necessary funds for this purpose
by a tax. And now it was found that the question
which Franklin had been sent to Europe to
arrange, namely, the question of taxing the proprietary
lands had not, after all, been so definitely
settled as was supposed. The language of the
law was this: “The uncultivated lands of the proprietaries
shall not be assessed higher than the
lowest rate at which any uncultivated lands belonging
to the inhabitants shall be assessed;”
and on attempting to determine the practical application
of this language, it was found to be
susceptible of two interpretations. The Assembly
understood it to mean that the land of the proprietaries
should not be taxed higher than that
of any of the inhabitants, of the same quality.
Whereas the governor insisted that the meaning
must be that none of the proprietaries’ land should
be taxed any higher than the lowest and poorest
belonging to any of the inhabitants. The language
of the enactment is, perhaps, susceptible
of either construction. It will certainly bear the
one which the governor put upon it, and as he
insisted, in the most absolute and determined
manner, upon his view of the question, the Assembly
were at length compelled to yield; for
the terrible danger which impended over the colony
from the Indians on the frontier would not
admit of delay.

The people of the colony, though thus beaten
in the contest and forced to submit, were by no
means disposed to submit peaceably. On the
contrary a very general feeling of indignation and
resentment took possession
of the community, and at
length it was determined to
send a petition to the King
of Great Britain, praying
him to dispossess the proprietaries
of the power which
they were so obstinately determined
on abusing, and to
assume the government of
the colonies himself, as a
prerogative of the crown.
The coming to this determination
on the part of the
colony was not effected without
a great deal of debate,
and political animosity and
contention, for the governor
of course had a party on
his side, and they exerted
themselves to the utmost to prevent the adoption
of the petition. It was, however, carried against
all opposition. The Speaker of the Assembly
[pg 301]
however, refused to sign the bill when it was
passed, and he resigned his office to avoid the
performance of this duty, an act which would of
course greatly please the proprietary party. The
majority of the Assembly then elected Franklin
Speaker, and he at once signed the bill. This
proceeding made Franklin specially obnoxious to
the proprietary party, and at the next election of
members of the Assembly they made every possible
effort in Franklin’s district to prevent his
being chosen. They succeeded. Franklin lost
his election by about twenty-five votes out of four
thousand. But though the proprietary interest
was thus the strongest in Franklin’s district, it
was found when the new Assembly came together
that the party that was opposed to them
was in a majority of two-thirds; and in order to
rebuke their opponents for the efforts which they
had made to defeat Franklin in his district, they
immediately passed a vote to send him to England
again, as a special messenger, to present the petition
which they had voted, to the king.

The animosity and excitement which attended
this contest was of course extreme, and the character
and the whole political course of Franklin,
were assailed by his enemies with all the violence
and pertinacity that characterize political contests
of this kind at the present day. Franklin, however,
bore it all very good-naturedly. Just before
he sailed, after he had left Philadelphia to repair
to the ship, which was lying some distance down
the river, he wrote a very affectionate letter to
his daughter to bid her farewell and give her his
parting counsels. “You know,” said he, in this
letter, “that I have many enemies, all, indeed,
on the public account (for I can not recollect that
I have in a private capacity given just cause of
offense to any one whatever), yet they are enemies,
and very bitter ones; and you must expect
their enmity will extend in some degree to you,
so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified
into crimes, in order
the more sensibly to wound
and afflict me. It is, therefore,
the more necessary for
you to be extremely circumspect
in all your behavior,
that no advantage may be
given to their malevolence.”
Then followed various counsels
relating to her duty to
her mother, her general deportment,
her studies, and
her obligations to the
church. The church with
which Franklin was connected
was of the Episcopal
denomination, and he took a
great interest in its prosperity;
though he manifested
the same liberality and public
spirit here as in all the other relations that he
sustained. At one time, for example, it was proposed
by certain members of the congregation to
form a sort of colony, and build a new church in
another place. A portion of the people opposed
this plan as tending to weaken the mother church,
but Franklin favored it, thinking that in the end
the measure would have a contrary effect from
the one they apprehended. He compared it to the
swarming of bees, by which, he said, the comfort
and prosperity of the old hive was increased, and
a new and flourishing colony established to keep
the parent stock in countenance. Very few persons,
at that period, would have seen either the
expediency or the duty of pursuing such a course
in respect to the colonization of a portion of a
church: though now such views are very extensively
entertained by all liberal minded men, and
many such colonies are now formed from thriving
churches, with the concurrence of all concerned.

But to return to the voyage. Franklin was to
embark on board his ship at Chester, a port situated
down the river from Philadelphia, on the
confines of the State of Delaware. A cavalcade
of three hundred people from Philadelphia accompanied
him to Chester, and a great company
assembled upon the wharf, when the vessel was
about to sail, to take leave of their distinguished
countryman and wish him a prosperous voyage.
The crowd thus assembled saluted Franklin with
acclamations and cheers, as the boat which was
to convey him to the vessel slowly moved away
from the shore. The day of his sailing was the
7th of November, 1764, about two years after
his return from his former visit.

[pg 302]

The voyage across the Atlantic was a prosperous
one, notwithstanding that it was so late
in the season. Franklin wrote a letter home to
give his wife and daughter an account of his
voyage, before he left the vessel. On landing he
proceeded to London, and went directly to his old
landlady’s, at Mrs. Stevenson’s, in Craven-street,
Strand. When the news of his safe arrival
reached Philadelphia, the people of the city celebrated
the event by ringing the bells, and other
modes of public rejoicing. The hostility which
had been manifested toward him had operated to
make him a greater favorite than ever.

Franklin now began to turn his attention toward
the business of his agency. He had not been
long in England, however, before difficulties
grew up between the colonies and the mother
country, which proved to be of a far more serious
character than those which had been discussed
at Philadelphia. Parliament claimed the right to
tax the colonies. The colonies maintained that
their own legislatures alone had this right, and a
long and obstinate dispute ensued. The English
government devised all sorts of expedients to assess
the taxes in such a way that the Americans
should be compelled to pay them; and the Americans
on their part met these attempts by equally
ingenious and far more effectual contrivances for
evading the payment. For a time the Americans
refused to use any British commodities, in order
that the people of England might see that by the
persisting of the government in their determination
to tax the colonies, they would lose a very
valuable trade. Franklin joined in this effort,
insomuch that for a long time he would not make
purchases in England of any articles to send home
to his family. At length the difficulty was in
some measure compromised. One of the most
obnoxious of the acts of Parliament for taxing
America was repealed, and then for the first time
Franklin purchased and sent home to his wife
and daughter quite a trunk full of dresses—silks,
satins, and brocade—with gloves, and bottles of
lavender water, and other such niceties to fill
the corners. He told her, in the letter which he
sent with this trunk, that, as the Stamp Act was
repealed, he was now willing that she should
have a new gown.

In fact the great philosopher’s attention was
attracted at this time in some degree to the effect
of dress upon his own personal appearance, for
on making a visit to Paris, which he did toward
the close of 1767, he says that the French tailor
and perruquier so transformed him as to make
him appear twenty years younger than he really
was.

Franklin received a great deal of attention
while he was in Paris, and he seems to have enjoyed
his visit there very highly. The most distinguished
men in the walks of literature and
science sought his society, for they all knew well
his reputation as a philosopher; and many of
them had read his writings and had repeated the
experiments which he had made, and which had
awakened so deep an interest throughout the
whole learned world. Franklin received too,
many marks of distinction and honor from the
public men of France—especially
from those who
were connected with the
government. It was supposed
that they had been
watching the progress of
the disputes between England
and her colonies, and
secretly hoping that these
disputes might end in an
open rupture; for such a
rupture they thought would
end in weakening the power
of their ancient rival. Sympathizing
thus with the
party in this contest which
Franklin represented, they
naturally felt a special interest
in him. Franklin was
presented at court, and received
into the most distinguished society in the
metropolis.

After a time he returned again to England, but
he found when he arrived there that the state of
things between the English government and the
[pg 303]
American colonies was growing worse instead of
better. Parliament insisted on its right “to bind
the colonies,” as their resolve expressed it, “in
all cases whatsoever.” The Americans, on the
other hand, were more and more determined to
resist such a claim. Parliament adopted measures
more and more stringent every day, to compel
the colonies to submit. They passed coercive
laws; they devised ingenious modes of levying
taxes; they sent out troops, and in every possible
way strengthened the military position of the
government in America. The colonists, on the
other hand, began to evince the most determined
spirit of hostility to the measures of the mother
country. They held great public assemblages;
they passed violent resolves; they began to form
extensive and formidable combinations for resisting
or evading the laws. Thus every thing portended
an approaching conflict.

Franklin exerted all his power and influence
for a long time in attempting to heal the breach.
He wrote pamphlets and articles in the newspapers
in England defending, though in a tone of
great candor and moderation,
the rights of America,
and urging the ministry and
people of England not to
persist in their attempts at
coercion. At the same
time he wrote letters to
America, endeavoring to
diminish the violence of the
agitation there, in hopes
that by keeping back the
tide of excitement and passion
which was so rapidly
rising, some mode of adjustment
might be found to
terminate the difficulty. All
these efforts were, however,
in vain. The quarrel grew
wider and more hopeless
every day.

About this time the administration of the colonial
affairs for the English government was committed
to a new officer, Lord Hillsborough, who
was now made Secretary of State for America;
and immediately new negotiations were entered
into, and new schemes formed, for settling the
dispute. Two or three years thus passed away,
but nothing was done. At length Lord Hillsborough
seems to have conceived the idea of winning
over Franklin’s influence to the side of the
English government by compliments and flattering
attentions. He met him one morning in
Dublin, at the house of the Lord-lieutenant of
Ireland, where he paid him special civilities, and
invited him in the most cordial manner to visit him
at his country mansion at Hillsborough, in the
north of England. Franklin was then contemplating
a journey northward, and in the course
of this journey he stopped at Hillsborough. He
and his party were received with the greatest
attention by his lordship, and detained four days,
during which time Franklin was loaded with
civilities.

If these attentions were really designed to
make Franklin more manageable, as the representative
of the colonies in the contest that was
going on, they wholly failed of their object; for
in the negotiations which followed, Franklin continued
as firm and intractable as ever. In fact, not
long after this, he came directly into conflict with
Lord Hillsborough before the Board of Trade,
when a certain measure relating to the colony—one
which Lord Hillsborough strongly opposed,
and Franklin as strenuously advocated—was in
debate. At last after a long contest Franklin
gained the day; and this result so changed his
lordship’s sentiments toward Franklin that for
some time he treated him with marked rudeness.
At one time Franklin called to pay his respects
to Lord Hillsborough on a day when his lordship
was holding a levee, and when there were a number
of carriages at the door. Franklin’s coachman
drove up, alighted, and was opening the
carriage for Franklin to dismount, when the porter
came out, and in the most supercilious and
surly manner rebuked the coachman for opening
the door of the carriage before he had inquired
whether his lordship was at home; and then
turning to Franklin he said, “My lord is not at
home.”

Lord Hillsborough, however, recovered from
his resentment after this, in the course of a year;
and at length on one occasion his lordship called
upon Franklin in his room, and accosted him in a
very cordial and friendly manner, as if no difficulty
between them had ever occurred.

In the mean time the determination in America
to resist the principle of the supremacy of
Parliament over the colonies, became more and
more extended. A disposition was manifested
by the several colonies to combine their efforts
for this end, and one after another of them sent
out commissions to Franklin to act as their agent,
as well as agent for Pennsylvania. Things went
on in this way until a certain tragical affair occurred
in Boston, known generally in American
accounts of these events as the Boston massacre,
which greatly increased the popular excitement
among the people of the colonies.

[pg 304]

This massacre, as it was called, was the shooting
of some persons in a crowd in State-street
in Boston, by the British soldiers. It originated
thus: A company of boys one day undertook to
burn effigies of certain merchants who persisted
in importing British goods and secretly selling
them, thus taking sides as it were against their
countrymen in the contest that was going on.
While doing this a man whom they considered a
spy and informer came by; and the boys, in some
way or other, became involved in a quarrel with
him. The man retreated to his house; the boys
followed him and threw snow-balls and pieces of
ice at the house when he had gone in. The man
brought a gun to the window and shot one of the
boys dead on the spot.

This of course produced a very intense excitement
throughout the city. The soldiers naturally
took part with those supposed to favor British
interests; this exasperated the populace against
them, and finally, after various collisions, a case
occurred in which the British officer deemed it
his duty to order the troops to fire upon a crowd
of people that were assembled to taunt and threaten
them, and pelt them with ice and snow.
They had been led to assemble thus, through
some quarrel that had sprung up between a sentinel
and one of the young men of the town.
In the firing three men were killed outright,
and two more were mortally wounded. The
killing of these men was called a massacre,
and the tidings of it produced a universal and
uncontrollable excitement throughout the provinces.

In proportion, however, as the spirit of resistance
to British rule manifested itself in America,
the determination became more and more firm
and decided on the part of the British government
not to yield. It is a point of honor with
all governments, and especially with monarchical
governments, not to give way in the slightest
degree to what they call rebellion. There were,
however, a few among the British statesmen who
foresaw the impossibility of subduing the spirit
which was manifesting itself in America, by any
force which could be brought to bear upon so
distant and determined a population. Lord
Chatham was one of
these; and he actually
brought forward in Parliament,
in 1775, just
before the revolution
broke out, a bill for
withdrawing the troops
from Boston as the first
step toward a conciliatory
course of measures.
Franklin was present in
Parliament, by Chatham’s
particular request,
at the time when this
motion was brought forward.
In the speech
which Lord Chatham
made on this occasion,
he alluded to Franklin,
and spoke of him in the
highest terms. The motion
was advocated too,
by Lord Camden, another of the British peers,
[pg 305]
who made an able speech in favor of it. On the
other hand it was most violently opposed by
other speakers, and Franklin himself was assailed
by one of them in very severe terms. When
the vote came to be taken, it was lost by a
large majority; and thus all hope of any thing
like a reconciliation disappeared.

A great variety of ingenious devices were resorted
to from time to time to propitiate Franklin,
and to secure his influence in America, in
favor of some mode of settling the difficulty, which
would involve submission on the part of the colonies.
He was for example quite celebrated for
his skill in playing chess, and at one time he
was informed that a certain lady of high rank desired
to play chess with him, thinking that she
could beat him. He of course acceded to this
request and played several games with her. The
lady was a sister of Lord Howe, a nobleman who
subsequently took a very active and important
part in the events of the revolution. It turned
out in the end that this plan of playing chess was
only a manœuvre to open the way for Franklin’s
visiting at Mrs. Howe’s house, in order that Lord
Howe himself might there have the opportunity
of conferring with him on American affairs without
attracting attention. Various conferences
were accordingly held between Franklin and
Lord Howe, at this lady’s house, and many other
similar negotiations were carried on with various
other prominent men about this time, but they
led to nothing satisfactory. In fact, the object
of them all was to bring over Franklin to the
British side of the question, and to induce him
to exert his almost unlimited influence with the
colonies to bring them over. But nothing of this
sort could be done.

Ten years had now passed away since Franklin
went to England, and it began to appear very
obvious that the difficulties in which his mission
had originated, could not be settled, but would
soon lead to an open rupture between the colonies
and the mother country. Franklin of course concluded
that for him to remain any longer in England
would be of no avail. He had hitherto exerted
all his power to promote a settlement of the
dispute, and had endeavored to calm the excitement
of the people at home, and restrain them
from the adoption of any rash or hasty measures.
He now, however, gave up all hope of a peaceable
settlement of the question, and returned to
America prepared to do what lay in his power to
aid his countrymen in the approaching struggle.

It was in May, 1775, that Franklin arrived in
Philadelphia, just about the time that open hostilities
were commenced between the colonies and
the mother country. Though he was now quite
advanced in age, being about seventy years old,
he found himself called to the discharge of the
most responsible and arduous duties. A Continental
Congress had been summoned—to consist
of delegates from all
the colonies. Franklin
was elected, on the next
day after his arrival, as a
member of this body, and
he entered at once upon
the discharge of the duties
which his position brought
upon him, and prosecuted
them in the most efficient
manner. In all the measures
which were adopted
by Congress for organizing
and arming the country,
he took a very prominent
and conspicuous part. In
fact so high was the estimation
in which he was
held, on account of his
wisdom and experience,
and the far-reaching sagacity
which characterized all his doings, that
men were not willing to allow any important
business to be transacted without his concurrence;
and at length, notwithstanding his advanced
age, for he was now, as has been said,
about seventy years old, they proposed to send
him as a commissioner into Canada.

The province of Canada had not hitherto
evinced a disposition to take part with the other
colonies in the contest which had been coming
on, and now Congress, thinking it desirable to
secure the co-operation of that colony if possible,
decided on sending a commission there to confer
with the people, and endeavor to induce them
to join the general confederation. Franklin was
appointed at the head of this commission. He
readily consented to accept the appointment,
though for a man of his years the journey, long
as it was, and leading through such a wilderness
as then intervened, was a very formidable undertaking.
So few were the facilities for traveling
in those days that it required five or six weeks
to make the journey. The commissioners left
Philadelphia on the 20th of March, and did not
reach Montreal until near the end of April. In
fact after commencing the journey, and finding
how fatiguing and how protracted it was likely
to be, Franklin felt some doubt whether he should
ever live to return; and when he reached Saratoga
[pg 306]
he wrote to a friend, saying that he began
to apprehend that he had undertaken a fatigue
which at his time of life might prove too much
for him; and so he had taken paper, he said, to
write to a few friends by way of farewell.

He did, however, safely return, after a time,
though unfortunately the mission proved unsuccessful.
The Canadians were not disposed to
join the confederation.

At length early in the spring of 1776 the leading
statesmen of America came to the conclusion
that the end of the contest in which they were
engaged must be the absolute and final separation
of the colonies from the mother country, and
the establishment of an independent government
for America. When this was resolved upon, a
committee of five members of Congress, namely
Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston,
were appointed a committee to prepare
a declaration of independence. The original
resolution, on the basis of which the appointment
of this committee was made, was as follows:

“Resolved, That these united colonies are and
of right ought to be free and independent states,
and that all political connection between them and
Great Britain is, and of right ought to be totally
dissolved.”

This resolution was first proposed and debated
on the 8th of June. Some of the provinces were
however found to be not quite prepared for such
a measure, and so the debate was adjourned.
The vote was finally taken on the 1st of July,
and carried by a majority of nine out of thirteen
colonies. Pennsylvania and South Carolina were
against it; Delaware was divided; and New York
did not vote, on account of some informality in
the instructions of her delegates.

In the mean time
the committee had
proceeded to the
work of drawing up
the declaration of
independence. Jefferson
was appointed
to write the document,
and he, when
he had prepared his
draft, read it in committee
meeting for
the consideration of
the other members.
The committee approved
the draft substantially
as Jefferson
had written it,
and it was accordingly
reported to
Congress and was
adopted by the vote
of all the colonies.

For by the time
that the final and
decisive vote was to
be taken, the delegates
from all the
colonies had received
fresh instructions
from their constituents,
or fresh intelligence
in respect to
the state of public
sentiment in the
communities which
they represented, so
that at last the concurrence
of the colonies
was unanimous
in the act of separation;
and all the
members present on
the 4th of July, the
day on which the
declaration was passed, excepting one, signed the
paper; thus making themselves individually and
personally responsible for it, under the awful
pains and penalties of treason.

[pg 307]

In connection with these discussions in relations
to the declaration of independence, a curious
instance is preserved of the tone of good
humor and pleasantry which always marked the
intercourse which Franklin held with others,
even in cases where interests of the most momentous
importance were concerned. When
Jefferson had read his draft in the presence of
the committee, the several members had various
suggestions to make, and amendments to propose,
as is usual in such cases; while the author,
as is also equally usual, was very sensitive to
these criticisms, and was unwilling to consent
to any changing of his work. At length Jefferson
appearing to be quite annoyed by the changes
proposed, Franklin consoled him by saying that
his case was not quite so bad, after all, as that of
John Thompson, the hatter. “He wrote a sign,”
said Franklin, “to be put up over his door, which
read thus, ‘John Thompson makes and sells hats
for ready money.’ On showing his work to his
friends they one and all began to amend it. The
first proposed to strike out ‘for ready money,’
since it was obvious, he said, that if a hatter sold
hats at all he would be glad to sell them for ready
money. Another thought the words ‘makes and
sells hats,’ superfluous—that idea being conveyed
in the word ‘hatter;’ and finally a third proposed
to expunge the ‘hatter,’ and put the figure of a
hat after the name, instead, which he said would
be equally well understood, and be more striking.
Thus the composition was reduced from ‘John
Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready
money,’ to simply ‘John Thompson,’ with the
figure of a hat subjoined.” The whole story was
perhaps fabricated by Franklin on the spot, for
the occasion. It answered its purpose, however,
perfectly. Jefferson laughed, and his good-humor
was restored.

In the mean time during the summer of 1776
the hostile operations which had been commenced
between the new government and the parent
state were prosecuted on both sides with great
vigor. Great Britain however did not yet give
up all hope of persuading the revolted provinces
to return. The English government sent out
Lord Howe with instructions to communicate
with the leading men in America and endeavor
to effect some accommodation of the difficulty.
When Lord Howe arrived in this country he attempted
to open communications with the Americans
through Franklin, but insuperable difficulties
were encountered at the outset. Lord Howe
could only treat with the American authorities as
private persons in a state of rebellion, and the
offers he made were offers of pardon. The
American government indignantly rejected all
such propositions. In a letter which he wrote in
reply to Lord Howe Franklin says, “Directing
pardons to be offered to the colonies, who are the
very parties injured, expresses indeed that opinion
of our ignorance, baseness, and insensibility,
which your uninformed and proud nation has
long been pleased to entertain of us: but it can
have no other effect than that of increasing our
resentment.” Of course all hope of an accommodation
was soon abandoned, and both parties began
to give their whole attention to the means
for a vigorous prosecution of the war.

The American government soon turned their
thoughts to the subject of forming some foreign
alliance to help them in the impending struggle;
and they presently proposed to send Franklin to
France to attempt to open a negotiation for this
purpose with the government of that country.
Franklin was now very far advanced in life and his
age and infirmities would naturally have prompted
him to desire repose—but he did not decline
the duty to which he was thus called; and all
aged men should learn from his example that they
are not to consider the work of life as ended, so
long as any available health and strength remain.

Franklin arrived in Paris in the middle of
winter in 1776. He traveled on this expedition
wholly as a private person, his appointment as
commissioner to the court of France having been
kept a profound secret, for obvious reasons.
He however, immediately entered into private negotiations
with the French ministry, and though
he found the French government disposed to afford
the Americans such indirect aid as could be
secretly rendered, they were not yet willing to
form any alliance with them, or to take any open
ground in their favor. While this state of things
continued, Franklin, of course, and his brother
commissioners could not be admitted to the
French court; but though they were all the
time in secret communication with the government,
they assumed the position at Paris of private
gentlemen residing at the great capital for
their pleasure.

Notwithstanding his being thus apparently in
private life, Franklin was a very conspicuous object
of public attention at Paris. His name and
fame had been so long before the world, and his
character and manners were invested with so
singular a charm, that he was universally known
and admired; all ranks and classes of people
were full of enthusiasm for the venerable American
philosopher. Pictures, busts, and medallions
of the illustrious Franklin were met on every
hand. He was received into the very highest
[pg 308]
society, being welcomed by all circles with the
greatest cordiality and interest.

At length, after the lapse of about a year, the
progress of the Americans in making good their
defense against the armies of the mother country
was so decided, that it began to appear very
probable that the independence of the country
would be maintained, and the French government
deemed that it would be safe for them to enter
into treaties of commerce and friendship with
the new state. This was accordingly done in
February, 1778, though it necessarily involved
the consequence of a war with England.

When these treaties were at length signed,
Franklin and the two other commissioners were
formally presented at court, where they were received
by the French monarch as the acknowledged
representatives of an independent and sovereign
power, now for the first time taking her
place among the nations of the earth. This was
an event in the life of Franklin of the highest
interest and importance, since the open negotiations
of the American government by France
made the success of the country, in its effort to
achieve its independence, almost certain, and thus
it was the seal and consummation of all that he
had been so laboriously toiling to accomplish for
fifty years. For we may safely say that the
great end and aim of Franklin’s life, the one object
which he kept constantly in view, and to
which all his efforts tended from the beginning
to the end of his public career, was the security
of popular rights and popular liberty against the
encroachments of aristocratic prerogative and
power; and the establishment of the independence
of these United States, which he saw thus
happily settled at last, sealed and secured this
object for half the world.

As soon as the event of the acknowledgment
of the independence
of the United States
of America, by the
French government
transpired, the
whole subject of the
conflict between the
late colonies and the
mother country assumed
a new aspect
before mankind.
The British government
became now
more desirous than
ever to contrive
some means of settling
the dispute
without entirely losing
so important a
portion of their ancient
dominion. A
great many applications
were made to
Franklin, by the
secret agents of
the British government,
with a view
of drawing off the
Americans from
their alliance with
the French, and
making a separate
peace with them.
Franklin, however,
would listen to no
such proposals, but
on the contrary,
made them all
known to the
French government.

Another consequence
of the recognition of American
independence was that a large number of
young French gentlemen desired to proceed to
America and join the army there. Many of them
applied to Franklin for commissions—more in
fact than could possibly be received. Among
[pg 309]
those who were successful was the Marquis de
La Fayette, then a young man, who came to
this country with letters of recommendation from
Franklin, and who afterward distinguished himself
so highly in the war.

After this, Franklin remained in France for
several years, at first as commissioner, and afterward
as minister plenipotentiary of the government
at the French court, during all which time
the most arduous and the most responsible public
duties devolved upon him. He concluded
most important negotiations with other foreign
powers. He received of the French government
and transmitted to America vast sums of money
to be used in the prosecution of the war. He
conferred with various other commissioners and
embassadors who were sent out from time to
time from the government at home. In a word,
there devolved upon him day by day, an uninterrupted
succession of duties of the most arduous
and responsible character.

It is a curious illustration of the manner in
which the tastes and habits of early life come
back in old age, that Franklin was accustomed
at this time, for recreation, to amuse himself
with a little printing office, which he caused to
be arranged at his lodgings—on a small scale it
is true—but sufficiently complete to enable him
to live his youth over again, as it were, in bringing
back old associations and thoughts to his
mind by giving himself up to his ancient occupations.
The things that he printed in this little
office were all trifles, as he called them, and were
only intended for the amusement of his friends;
but the work of producing them gave him great
pleasure.

The time at length arrived when England began
to conclude that it would be best for her to
give up the attempt to reduce her revolted colonies
to subjection again; and negotiations for
peace were commenced at Paris, at first indirectly
and informally, and afterward in a more open
and decided manner. In these negotiations
Franklin of course took a very prominent part.
In fact the conclusion and signing of the great
treaty of peace between Great Britain and the
United States, by which the independence of
this nation was finally and fully acknowledged,
was the last crowning act of Franklin’s official
career. The treaty was signed in 1783, and
thus the work of the great statesman’s life
was ended. His public life, in fact, began and
ended with the beginning and the end of that
great protracted struggle by which the American
nation was ushered into being. His history is
then simply the history of the establishment of
American independence; and when this work
was achieved his duty was done.

Soon after the peace was made, Franklin prepared
to take leave of France, in order to return
to his native land. He had contemplated a tour
over the continent before going back to America,
but the increasing infirmities of age prevented
the realization of this plan. When the time arrived
for leaving Paris, almost all the rank, fashion,
and wealth of the city gathered around him
to bid him farewell. He was borne in the queen’s
palanquin to Havre, and accompanied on the
journey by numerous friends. From Havre he
crossed the channel to Southampton, and there
took passage in the London packet for Philadelphia.

The voyage occupied a period of forty-eight
days, at the end of which time the ship anchored
just below Philadelphia. The health-officer
of the port went on board, and finding no sickness
gave the passengers leave to land. The
passengers accordingly left the ship in a boat,
and landed at the Market-street wharf, where
crowds of people were assembled, who received
Franklin with loud acclamations, and accompanied
him through the streets, with cheers and
rejoicings, to his door.

In a word, the great philosopher and statesman,
on his return to his native land, received
the welcome he deserved, and spent the short
period that still remained to him on earth, surrounded
by his countrymen and friends, the object
of universal respect and veneration. But
great as was the veneration which was felt for
his name and memory then, it is greater now,
and it will be greater and greater still, at the
end of every succeeding century, as long as any
written records of our country’s early history remain.

Napoleon Bonaparte.2
The Syrian Expedition.
By John S. C. Abbott.

Though, after the Battle of the Pyramids,
Napoleon was the undisputed master of
Egypt, still much was to be accomplished in pursuing
the desperate remnants of the Mamelukes,
and in preparing to resist the overwhelming forces
which it was to be expected that England and
Turkey would send against him. Mourad Bey
had retreated with a few thousand of his horsemen
into Upper Egypt. Napoleon dispatched
General Desaix, with two thousand men, to pursue
him. After several terribly bloody conflicts,
Desaix took possession of all of Upper Egypt as
far as the cataracts. Imbibing the humane and
politic sentiments of Napoleon, he became widely
renowned and beloved for his justice and his
clemency. A large party of scientific men accompanied
the military division, examining every
object of interest, and taking accurate drawings
of those sphinxes, obelisks, temples, and sepulchral
monuments, which, in solitary grandeur,
have withstood the ravages of four thousand
years. To the present hour, the Egyptians remember
with affection, the mild and merciful,
yet efficient government of Desaix. They were
never weary with contrasting it with the despotism
of the Turks.

In the mean time Napoleon, in person, made
an expedition to Suez, to inspect the proposed
route of a canal to connect the waters of the
Mediterranean with the Red Sea. With indefatigable
activity of mind he gave orders for the
construction of new works to fortify the harbor of
Suez, and commenced the formation of an infant
marine. One day, with quite a retinue, he made
an excursion to that identical point of the Red
Sea which, as tradition reports, the children of
Israel crossed three thousand years ago. The
tide was out, and he passed over to the Asiatic
shore upon extended flats. Various objects of
interest engrossed his attention until late in the
afternoon, when he commenced his return. The
twilight faded away, and darkness came rapidly
on. The party lost their path, and, as they were
wandering, bewildered among the sands, the
rapidly returning tide surrounded them. The
darkness of the night increased, and the horses
floundered deeper and deeper in the rising waves
The water reached the girths of the saddles, and
dashed upon the feet of the riders, and destruction
seemed inevitable. From this perilous position
Napoleon extricated himself, by that presence
of mind, and promptness of decision, which
seemed never to fail him. It was an awful hour
and an awful scene. And yet, amidst the darkness
and the rising waves of apparently a shoreless
ocean, the spirit of Napoleon was as unperturbed
as if he were reposing in slippered ease
upon his sofa. He collected his escort around
him, in concentric circles, each horseman facing
outward, and ranged in several rows. He then
ordered them to advance, each in a straight line.
When the horse of the leader of one of these
columns lost his foothold, and began to swim,
the column drew back, and followed in the
direction of another column, which had not yet
lost the firm ground. The radii, thus thrown
out in every direction, were thus successively
withdrawn, till all were following in the direction
of one column, which had a stable footing. Thus
escape was effected. The horses did not reach
the shore until midnight, when they were wading
breast deep in the swelling waves. The tide
[pg 311]
rises on that part of the coast to the height of
twenty-two feet. “Had I perished in that manner,
like Pharaoh,” said Napoleon, “it would
have furnished all the preachers of Christendom
with a magnificent text against me.”

England, animated in the highest degree by
the great victory of Aboukir, now redoubled her
exertions to concentrate all the armies of Europe
upon Republican France. Napoleon had been
very solicitous to avoid a rupture with the Grand
Seignor at Constantinople. The Mamelukes who
had revolted against his authority had soothed
the pride of the Ottoman Porte, and purchased
peace by paying tribute. Napoleon proposed to
continue the tribute, that the revenues of the
Turkish Empire might not be diminished by the
transfer of the sovereignty of Egypt from the
oppressive Mamelukes to better hands. The
Sultan was not sorry to see the Mamelukes punished,
but he looked with much jealousy upon
the movements of a victorious European army
so near his throne. The destruction of the
French fleet deprived Napoleon of his ascendency
in the Levant, and gave the preponderance
to England. The agents of the British government
succeeded in rousing Turkey to arms, to
recover a province which the Mamelukes had
wrested from her, before Napoleon took it from
the Mamelukes. Russia also, with her barbaric
legions, was roused by the eloquence of England,
to rush upon the French Republic in this
day of disaster. Her troops crowded down from
the north to ally themselves with the turbaned
Turk, for the extermination of the French in
Egypt. Old enmities were forgotten, as Christians
and Mussulmans grasped hands in friendship,
forgetting all other animosities in their
common hatred and dread of Republicanism.
The Russian fleet crowded down from the Black
Sea, through the Bosphorus, to the Golden Horn,
where, amidst the thunders of artillery, and the
acclamations of the hundreds of thousands who
throng the streets of Constantinople, Pera, and
Scutari, it was received into the embrace of the
Turkish squadron. It was indeed a gorgeous
spectacle as, beneath the unclouded splendor
of a September sun, this majestic armament
swept through the beautiful scenery of the Hellespont.
The shores of Europe and Asia, separated
by this classic strait, were lined with admiring
spectators, as the crescent and the cross,
in friendly blending, fluttered together in the
breeze. The combined squadron emerged into
the Mediterranean, to co-operate with the victorious
fleet of England, which was now the
undisputed mistress of the sea. Religious animosities
the most inveterate, and national antipathies
the most violent were reconciled by the
pressure of a still stronger hostility to those
principles of popular liberty which threatened to
overthrow the despotism both of the Sultan and
the Czar. The Grand Seignor had assembled an
army of twenty thousand men at Rhodes. They
were to be conveyed by the combined fleet to
the shores of Egypt, and there effect a landing
under cover of its guns. Another vast army
was assembled in Syria, to march down upon
the French by way of the desert, and attack
them simultaneously with the forces sent by the
fleet. England, and the emissaries of the Bourbons,
with vast sums of money accumulated from
the European monarchies, were actively co-operating
upon the Syrian coast, by landing munitions
of war, and by supplying able military
engineers. The British Government was also
accumulating a vast army in India, to be conveyed
by transports up the Red Sea, and to fall
upon the French in their rear. England also
succeeded in forming a new coalition with Austria,
Sardinia, Naples, and other minor European
states to drive the French out of Italy, and with
countless numbers to invade the territory of
France. Thus it would be in vain for the Directory
to attempt even to send succors to their
absent general. And it was not doubted that
Napoleon, thus assailed in diverse quarters by
overpowering numbers, would fall an easy prey
to his foes. Thus suddenly and portentously
peril frowned upon France from every quarter.

Mourad Bey, animated by this prospect of the
overthrow of his victorious foes, formed a widespread
conspiracy, embracing all the friends of
the Mamelukes and of the Turks. Every Frenchman
was doomed to death, as in one hour, all
over the land, the conspirators, with scimitar and
poniard, should fall upon their unsuspecting foes.
In this dark day of accumulating disaster the
genius of Napoleon blazed forth with new and
terrible brilliance.

But few troops were at the time in Cairo, for
no apprehension of danger was cherished, and
the French were scattered over Egypt, engaged
in all plans of utility. At five o’clock on the
morning of the 21st of October, Napoleon was
awoke from sleep by the announcement that the
city was in revolt, that mounted Bedouin Arabs
were crowding in at the gates, that several officers
and many soldiers were already assassinated.
He ordered an aid immediately to take a number
of the Guard, and quell the insurrection. But
a few moments passed ere one of them returned
covered with blood, and informed him that all
the rest were slain. It was an hour of fearful
peril. Calmly, fearlessly, mercilessly did Napoleon
encounter it. Immediately mounting his
horse, accompanied by a body of his faithful
Guards, he proceeded to every threatened point.
Instantly the presence of Napoleon was felt. A
perfect storm of grape-shot, cannon-balls, and
bomb-shells swept the streets with unintermitted
and terrible destruction. Blood flowed in torrents.
The insurgents, in dismay, fled to the
most populous quarter of the city. Napoleon
followed them with their doom, as calm as destiny.
From the windows and the roofs the insurgents
fought with desperation. The buildings
were immediately enveloped in flames. They
fled into the streets only to be hewn down with
sabres and mown down with grape-shot. Multitudes,
bleeding and breathless with consternation,
sought refuge in the mosques. The mosques
were battered down and set on fire, and the
[pg 312]
wretched inmates perished miserably. The calm
yet terrible energy with which Napoleon annihilated
“the murderers of the French,” sent a
thrill of dismay through Egypt. A large body
of Turks, who had surprised and assassinated a
party of the French, intrenched themselves in a
small village. Their doom was sealed. The
next day a long line of asses, heavily laden with
sacks, was seen entering the gates of Cairo.
The mysterious procession proceeded to the public
square. The sacks were opened, and the
ghastly, gory heads of the assassins were rolled
upon the pavements. The city gazed upon the
spectacle with horror. “Such,” said Napoleon,
sternly, “is the doom of murderers.” This language
of energetic action was awfully eloquent.
It was heard and heeded. It accomplished the
purpose for which it was uttered. Neither Turk
nor Arab ventured again to raise the dagger
against Napoleon. Egypt felt the spell of the
mighty conqueror, and stood still, while he gathered
his strength to encounter England, and
Russia, and Turkey in their combined power.
What comment shall be made upon this horrible
transaction. It was the stern necessity of diabolical
war. “My soldiers,” said Napoleon, “are
my children.” The lives of thirty thousand
Frenchmen were in his keeping. Mercy to the
barbaric and insurgent Turks would have been
counted weakness, and the bones of Napoleon
and of his army would soon have whitened the
sands of the desert. War is a wholesale system
of brutality and carnage. The most revolting,
execrable details are essential to its vigorous
execution. Bomb-shells can not be thrown affectionately.
Charges of cavalry can not be made
with a meek and lowly spirit. Red-hot shot,
falling into the beleagured city, will not turn
from the cradle of the infant, or from the couch
of the dying maiden. These horrible scenes
must continue to be enacted till the nations of
the earth shall learn war no more.

Early in January, Napoleon received intelligence
that the vanguard of the Syrian army,
with a formidable artillery train, and vast military
stores, which had been furnished from the English
ships, had invaded Egypt, on the borders
of the great Syrian desert, and had captured El
Arish. He immediately resolved to anticipate
the movement of his enemies, to cross the desert
with the rapidity of the wind, to fall upon
the enemy unawares, and thus to cut up this
formidable army before it could be strengthened
by the co-operation of the host assembled at
Rhodes.

Napoleon intended to rally around his standard
the Druses of Mount Lebanon, and all the
Christian tribes of Syria, who were anxiously
awaiting his approach, and having established
friendly relations with the Ottoman Porte, to
march, with an army of an hundred thousand
auxiliaries, upon the Indus, and drive the English
out of India. As England was the undisputed
mistress of the sea, this was the only point
where Republican France could assail its unrelenting
foe. The imagination of Napoleon was
lost in contemplating the visions of power and
of empire thus rising before him.

For such an enterprise the ambitious general,
with an army of but ten thousand men, commenced
his march over the desert, one hundred
and fifty miles broad, which separates Africa
from Asia. The Pacha of Syria, called Achmet
the Butcher, from his merciless ferocity, was
execrated by the Syrians. Napoleon had received
delegations from the Christian tribes entreating
him to come for their deliverance from the most
intolerable oppression, and assuring him of their
readiness to join his standard. The English,
to divert the attention of Napoleon from his
project upon Syria, commenced the bombardment
of Alexandria. He understood the object
of the unavailing attack, and treated it with disdain.
He raised a regiment of entirely a new
[pg 313]
kind, called the dromedary regiment. Two men,
seated back to back, were mounted on each
dromedary; and such was the strength and endurance
of these animals, that they could thus
travel ninety miles without food, water, or rest.
This regiment was formed to give chase to the
Arab robbers who, in fierce banditti bands, were
the scourge of Egypt. The marauders were
held in terror by the destruction with which they
were overwhelmed by these swift avengers.
Napoleon himself rode upon a dromedary. The
conveyance of an army of ten thousand men,
with horses and artillery, across such an apparently
interminable waste of shifting sand, was
attended with inconceivable suffering. To allay
the despair of the soldiers, Napoleon, ever calm
and unagitated in the contemplation of any catastrophe
however dreadful, soon dismounted, and
waded through the burning sands by the side of
the soldiers, sharing the deprivations and the
toils of the humblest private in the ranks. Five
days were occupied in traversing this forlorn
waste. Water was carried for the troops in
skins. At times portions of the army, almost
perishing with thirst, surrendered themselves to
despair. The presence of Napoleon, however,
invariably reanimated hope and courage. The
soldiers were ashamed to complain when they
saw their youthful leader, pale and slender, and
with health seriously impaired, toiling along by
their side, sharing cheerfully all their privations
and fatigues. The heat of these glowing deserts,
beneath the fierce glare of a cloudless sun, was
almost intolerable. At one time, when nearly
suffocated by the intense heat, while passing by
some ruins, a common soldier yielded to Napoleon
the fragments of a pillar, in whose refreshing
shadow he contrived, for a few moments, to shield
his head. “And this,” said Napoleon, “was no
trifling concession.” At another time a party of
the troops got lost among the sand hills and
nearly perished. Napoleon took some Arabs on
dromedaries, and hastened in pursuit of them.
When found they were nearly dead from thirst,
fatigue, and despair. Some of the younger soldiers,
in their frenzy, had broken their muskets
and thrown them away. The sight of their beloved
general revived their hopes, and inspired
them with new life. Napoleon informed them
that provisions and water were at hand. “But,”
said he, “if relief had been longer delayed, would
that have excused your murmurings and loss of
courage? No! soldiers, learn to die with honor.”

After a march of five days they arrived before
El Arish, one of those small, strongly fortified
military towns, deformed by every aspect of
poverty and wretchedness, with which iron despotism
has filled the once fertile plains of Syria.
El Arish was within the boundaries of Egypt.
It had been captured by the Turks, and they had
accumulated there immense magazines of military
stores. It was the hour of midnight when
Napoleon arrived beneath its walls. The Turks,
not dreaming that a foe was near, were roused
from sleep by the storm of balls and shells, shaking
the walls and crushing down through the
roofs of their dwellings. They sprang to their
guns, and, behind the ramparts of stone, fought
with their accustomed bravery. But after a
short and bloody conflict, they were compelled
to retire, and effected a disorderly retreat. The
garrison, in the citadel, consisting of nearly two
thousand men, were taken prisoners. Napoleon
was not a little embarrassed in deciding what to
do with these men. He had but ten thousand
soldiers with whom to encounter the whole
power of the Ottoman Porte, aided by the fleets
of England and Russia. Famine was in his
camp, and it was with difficulty that he could
obtain daily rations for his troops. He could not
keep these prisoners with him. They would eat
the bread for which his army was hungering;
they would demand a strong guard to keep them
from insurrection; and the French army was
already so disproportionate to the number of its
foes, that not an individual could be spared from
active service. They would surely take occasion,
in the perilous moments of the day of battle, to
rise in revolt, and thus, perhaps, effect the total
destruction of the French army. Consequently,
to retain them in the camp was an idea not to be
entertained for a moment. To disarm them, and
dismiss them upon their word of honor no longer
to serve against the French, appeared almost
equally perilous. There was no sense of honor
in the heart of the barbarian Turk. The very
idea of keeping faith with infidels they laughed
to scorn. They would immediately join the
nearest division of the Turkish army, and thus
swell the already multitudinous ranks of the foe,
and even if they did not secure the final defeat
of Napoleon, they would certainly cost him the
lives of many of his soldiers. He could not
supply them with food, neither could he spare
an escort to conduct them across the desert to
Egypt. To shoot them in cold blood was revolting
to humanity. Napoleon, however, generously
resolved to give them their liberty, taking their
pledge that they would no longer serve against
him; and in order to help them keep their word,
he sent a division of the army to escort them, one
day’s march, toward Bagdad, whither they promised
to go. But no sooner had the escort commenced
its return to the army, than these men,
between one and two thousand in number, turned
also, and made a straight path for their feet to the
fortress of Jaffa, laughing at the simplicity of
their outwitted foe. But Napoleon was not a
man to be laughed at. This merriment soon
died away in fearful wailings. Here they joined
the marshaled hosts of Achmet the Butcher. The
bloody pacha armed them anew, and placed them
in his foremost ranks, again to pour a shower of
bullets upon the little band headed by Napoleon.
El Arish is in Egypt, eighteen miles from the
granite pillars which mark the confines of Asia
and Africa. Napoleon now continued his march
through a dry, barren, and thirsty land. After
having traversed a dreary desert of an hundred
and fifty miles, the whole aspect of the country
began rapidly to change. The soldiers were delighted
to see the wreaths of vapor gathering in
[pg 314]
the hitherto glowing and cloudless skies. Green
and flowery valleys, groves of olive-trees, and
wood-covered hills, rose, like a vision of enchantment,
before the eye, so long weary of gazing
upon shifting sands and barren rocks. Napoleon
often alluded to his passage across the desert,
remarking that the scene was ever peculiarly
gratifying to his mind. “I never passed the
desert,” said he, “without experiencing very
powerful emotions. It was the image of immensity
to my thoughts. It displayed no limits.
It had neither beginning nor end. It was an
ocean for the foot of man.” As they approached
the mountains of Syria, clouds began to darken
the sky, and when a few drops of rain descended,
a phenomenon which they had not witnessed for
many months, the joy of the soldiers was exuberant.
A murmur of delight ran through the army,
and a curious spectacle was presented, as, with
shouts of joy and peals of laughter, the soldiers,
in a body, threw back their heads and opened
their mouths, to catch the grateful drops upon
their dry and thirsty lips.

But when dark night came on, and, with saturated
clothing, they threw themselves down, in
the drenching rain, for their night’s bivouac, they
remembered with pleasure the star-spangled
firmament and the dry sands of cloudless, rainless
Egypt. The march of a few days brought
them to Gaza. Here they encountered another
division of the Turkish army. Though headed
by the ferocious Achmet himself, the Turks were,
in an hour, dispersed before the resistless onset
of the French, and all the military stores, which
had been collected in the place, fell into the hands
of the conqueror. But perils were now rapidly
accumulating around the adventurous band. England,
with her invincible fleet, was landing men,
and munitions of war and artillery, and European
engineers, to arrest the progress of the audacious
and indefatigable victor. The combined squadrons
of Turkey and Russia, also, were hovering
along the coast, to prevent any possible supplies
from being forwarded to Napoleon from Alexandria.
Thirty thousand Turks, infantry and horsemen,
were marshaled at Damascus. Twenty
thousand were at Rhodes. Through all the
ravines of Syria, the turbaned Musselmans, with
gleaming sabres, were crowding down to swell
the hostile ranks, already sufficiently numerous
to render Napoleon’s destruction apparently certain.
Still unintimidated, Napoleon pressed on,
with the utmost celerity, into the midst of his
foes. On the 3d of March, twenty-three days after
leaving Cairo, he arrived at Jaffa, the ancient
Joppa. This place, strongly garrisoned, was surrounded
by a massive wall flanked by towers.
Napoleon had no heavy battering train, for such
ponderous machines could not be dragged across
the desert. He had ordered some pieces to be
forwarded to him from Alexandria, by small
vessels, which could coast near the shore. But
they had been intercepted and taken by the vigilance
of the English cruisers. Not an hour,
however, was to be lost. From every point in
the circumference of the circle, of which his little
band was the centre, the foe was hurrying to
meet him. The sea was whitened with their
fleets, and the tramp of their dense columns
shook the land. His only hope was, by rapidity
of action, to defeat the separate divisions before
all should unite. With his light artillery he
battered a breach in the walls, and then, to save
the effusion of blood, sent a summons to the commander
to surrender. The barbarian Turk, regardless
of the rules of civilized warfare, cut off
the head of the unfortunate messenger, and raised
the ghastly, gory trophy, upon a pole, from one
of the towers. This was his bloody defiance and
his threat. The enraged soldiers, with extraordinary
intrepidity, rushed in at the breach and
took sanguinary vengeance. The French suffered
very severely, and the carnage, on both
sides, was awful. Nothing could restrain the
fury of the assailants, enraged at the wanton
murder of their comrade. For many hours a
scene of horror was exhibited in the streets of
Jaffa, which could hardly have been surpassed
had the conflict raged between fiends in the
world of woe. Earth has never presented a
spectacle more horrible than that of a city taken
by assault. The vilest and the most abandoned
of mankind invariably crowd into the ranks of an
army. Imagination shrinks appalled from the
contemplation of the rush of ten thousand demons,
infuriated and inflamed, into the dwellings
of a crowded city.

Napoleon, shocked at the outrages which were
perpetrated, sent two of his aids to appease the
fury of the soldiers, and to stop the massacre.
Proceeding upon this message of mercy, they
advanced to a large building where a portion of
the garrison had taken refuge. The soldiers
were shooting them as they appeared at the windows,
battering the doors with cannon-balls, and
setting fire to the edifice, that all might be consumed
together. The Turks fought with the
energies of despair. These were the men who
had capitulated at El Arish, and who had violated
their parole. They now offered to surrender
again, if their lives might be spared. The aids,
with much difficulty, rescued them from the rage
of the maddened soldiers, and they were conducted,
some two thousand in number, as prisoners
into the French camp. Napoleon was walking
in front of his tent, when he saw this multitude
of men approaching. The whole dreadfulness
of the dilemma in which he was placed
flashed upon him instantaneously. His countenance
fell, and in tones of deep grief he exclaimed,
“What do they wish me to do with
these men? Have I food for them—ships to
convey them to Egypt or France? Why have
they served me thus?” The aids excused themselves
for taking them prisoners, by pleading that
he had ordered them to go and stop the carnage.
“Yes!” Napoleon replied sadly, “as to women,
children, and old men, all the peaceable inhabitants,
but not with respect to armed soldiers. It
was your duty to die, rather than bring these unfortunate
creatures to me. What do you want
me to do with them?”

[pg 315]

A council of war was immediately held in the
tent of Napoleon, to decide upon their fate. Long
did the council deliberate, and, finally, it adjourned
without coming to any conclusion. The
next day the council was again convened. All
the generals of division were summoned to attend.
For many anxious hours they deliberated,
sincerely desirous of discovering any measures
by which they might save the lives of the unfortunate
prisoners. The murmurs of the French
soldiers were loud and threatening. They complained
bitterly of having their scanty rations
given to the prisoners; of having men again liberated
who had already broken their pledge of
honor, and had caused the death of many of their
comrades. General Bon represented that the
discontent was so deep and general, that unless
something were expeditiously done, a serious revolt
in the army was to be apprehended. Still the
council adjourned, and the third day arrived without
their being able to come to any conclusion
favorable to the lives of these unfortunate men.
Napoleon watched the ocean with intense solicitude,
hoping against hope that some French vessel
might appear, to relieve him of the fearful burden.
But the evil went on increasing. The murmurs
grew louder. The peril of the army was
real and imminent, and, by the delay, was already
seriously magnified. It was impossible
longer to keep the prisoners in the camp. If set
at liberty, it was only contributing so many more
troops to swell the ranks of Achmet the Butcher,
and thus, perhaps, to insure the total discomfiture
and destruction of the French army. The
Turks spared no prisoners. All who fell into
their hands perished by horrible torture. The
council at last unanimously decided that the men
must be put to death. Napoleon, with extreme
reluctance, signed the fatal order. The melancholy
troop, in the silence of despair, were led,
firmly fettered, to the sand hills, on the sea-coast,
where they were divided into small squares, and
mown down by successive discharges of musketry.
The dreadful scene was soon over, and they
were all silent in death. The pyramid of their
bones still remains in the desert, a frightful memorial
of the horrors of war.

As this transaction has ever been deemed the
darkest blot upon the character of Napoleon, it
seems but fair to give his defense in his own
words: “I ordered,” said Napoleon at St. Helena,
“about a thousand or twelve hundred to be
shot. Among the garrison at Jaffa a number of
Turkish troops were discovered, whom I had taken
a short time before at El Arish, and sent to Bagdad,
on their parole not to be found in arms
against me for a year. I had caused them to be
escorted thirty-six miles, on their way to Bagdad,
by a division of my army. But, instead of proceeding
to Bagdad, they threw themselves into
Jaffa, defended it to the last, and cost me the
lives of many of my brave troops. Moreover, before
I attacked the town I sent them a flag of
truce. Immediately after, we saw the head of the
bearer elevated on a pole over the wall. Now,
if I had spared them again, and sent them away
on their parole, they would directly have gone to
Acre, and have played over, for the second time,
the same scene that they had done at Jaffa. In
justice to the lives of my soldiers, as every general
ought to consider himself as their father, and
them as his children, I could not allow this. To
leave as a guard a portion of my army, already
reduced in number in consequence of the breach
of faith of those wretches, was impossible. Indeed,
to have acted otherwise than as I did, would
probably have caused the destruction of my whole
army. I, therefore, availing myself of the rights
of war, which authorize the putting to death prisoners
taken under such circumstances, independent
of the right given to me by having taken the
city by assault, and that of retaliation on the
Turks, ordered that the prisoners, who, in defiance
of their capitulation, had been found bearing
arms against me, should be selected out and shot.
The rest, amounting to a considerable number,
were spared. I would do the same thing again
to-morrow, and so would Wellington, or any general
commanding an army under similar circumstances.”
Whatever judgment posterity may pronounce
upon this transaction, no one can see in
it any indication of an innate love of cruelty in
Napoleon. He regarded the transaction as one
of the stern necessities of war. The whole system
is one of unmitigated horror. Bomb-shells
are thrown into cities to explode in the chambers
of maidens and in the cradles of infants, and the
incidental destruction of innocence and helplessness
is disregarded. The execrable ferocity of
the details of war are essential to the system. To
say that Napoleon ought not to have shot these
prisoners, is simply to say that he ought to have
relinquished the contest, to have surrendered himself
and his army to the tender mercies of the
Turk; and to allow England, and Austria, and
Russia, to force back upon the disenthralled
French nation the detested reign of the Bourbons.
England was bombarding the cities of
France, to compel a proud nation to re-enthrone
a discarded and hated king. The French, in self-defense,
were endeavoring to repel their powerful
foe, by marching to India, England’s only
vulnerable point. Surely, the responsibility of
this war rests with the assailants, and not with
the assailed. There was a powerful party in the
British Parliament and throughout the nation,
the friends of reform and of popular liberty, who
sympathized entirely with the French in this conflict,
and who earnestly protested against a war
which they deemed impolitic and unjust. But
the king and the nobles prevailed, and as the
French would not meekly submit to their demands,
the world was deluged with blood. “Nothing
was easier,” says Alison, “than to have disarmed
the captives and sent them away.” The
remark is unworthy of the eloquent and distinguished
historian. It is simply affirming that
France should have yielded the conflict, and submitted
to British dictation. It would have been
far more in accordance with the spirit of the
events to have said, “Nothing was easier than
for England to allow France to choose her own
[pg 316]
form of government.” But had this been done,
the throne of England’s king, and the castles of
her nobles might have been overturned by the
earthquake of revolution. Alas, for man!

Bourrienne, the rejected secretary of Napoleon,
who became the enemy of his former benefactor,
and who, as the minister and flatterer of Louis
XVIII., recorded with caustic bitterness the career
of the great rival of the European kings, thus
closes his narrative of this transaction: “I have
related the truth; the whole truth. I assisted
at all the conferences and deliberations, though,
of course, without possessing any deliberative
voice. But I must in candor declare, that had I
possessed a right of voting, my voice would have
been for death. The result of the deliberations,
and the circumstances of the army, would have
constrained me to this. War, unfortunately, offers
instances, by no means rare, in which an immutable
law, of all times and common to all nations,
has decreed that private interests shall succumb
to the paramount good of the public, and
that humanity itself shall be forgotten. It is for
posterity to judge whether such was the terrible
position of Bonaparte. I have a firm conviction
that it was. And this is strengthened by the fact,
that the opinion of the members of the council
was unanimous upon the subject, and that the
order was issued upon their decision. I owe it
also to truth to state, that Napoleon yielded only
at the last extremity, and was, perhaps, one of
those who witnessed the massacre with the deepest
sorrow.” Even Sir Walter Scott, who, unfortunately,
allowed his Tory predilections to dim
the truth of his unstudied yet classic page, while
affirming that “this bloody deed must always remain
a deep stain upon the character of Napoleon,”
is constrained to admit, “yet we do not
view it as the indulgence of an innate love of
cruelty; for nothing in Bonaparte’s history shows
the existence of that vice; and there are many
things which intimate his disposition to have been
naturally humane.”

Napoleon now prepared to march upon Acre,
the most important military post in Syria. Behind
its strong ramparts Achmet the Butcher had
gathered all his troops and military stores, determined
upon the most desperate resistance.
Colonel Philippeaux, an emissary of the Bourbons,
and a former school-mate of Napoleon, contributed
all the skill of an accomplished French
engineer in arming the fortifications and conducting
the defense. Achmet immediately sent intelligence
of the approaching attack to Sir Sydney
Smith, who was cruising in the Levant with
an English fleet. He immediately sailed for Acre,
with two ships of the line and several smaller vessels,
and proudly entered the harbor two days before
the French made their appearance, strengthening
Achmet with an abundant supply of engineers,
artillerymen, and ammunition. Most unfortunately
for Napoleon, Sir Sydney, just before
he entered the harbor, captured the flotilla, dispatched
from Alexandria with the siege equipage,
as it was cautiously creeping around the headlands
of Carmel. The whole battering train, amounting
to forty-four heavy guns, he immediately
mounted upon the ramparts, and manned them
with English soldiers. This was an irreparable
loss to Napoleon, but with undiminished zeal
the besiegers, with very slender means, advanced
their works. Napoleon now sent an officer with
a letter to Achmet, offering to treat for peace
“Why,” said he, in this, “should I deprive an
old man, whom I do not know, of a few years of
life? What signify a few leagues more, added
to the countries I have conquered? Since God
has given victory into my hands, I will, like him,
be forgiving and merciful, not only toward the
people, but toward their rulers also.” The barbarian
Turk, regardless of the flag of truce, cut
off the head of this messenger, though Napoleon
had taken the precaution to send a Turkish prisoner
with the flag, and raised the ghastly trophy
upon a pole, over his battlements, in savage defiance.
The decapitated body he sewed up in a
sack, and threw it into the sea. Napoleon then
issued a proclamation to the people of Syria:
“I am come into Syria,” said he, “to drive out
the Mamelukes and the army of the Pacha. What
right had Achmet to send his troops to attack me
in Egypt? He has provoked me to war. I have
brought it to him. But it is not on you, inhabitants,
that I intend to inflict its horrors. Remain
quiet in your homes. Let those who have
abandoned them through fear return again. I
will grant to every one the property which he
possesses. It is my wish that the Cadis continue
their functions as usual, and dispense justice;
that religion, in particular, be protected and revered,
and that the mosques should continue to be
frequented by all faithful Mussulmans. It is
from God that all good things come; it is he
who gives the victory. The example of what has
occurred at Gaza and Jaffa ought to teach you
that if I am terrible to my enemies, I am kind to
my friends, and, above all, benevolent and merciful
to the poor.”

The plague, that most dreadful scourge of the
East, now broke out in the army. It was a new
form of danger, and created a fearful panic. The
soldiers refused to approach their sick comrades,
and even the physicians, terrified in view of the
fearful contagion, abandoned the sufferers to die
unaided. Napoleon immediately entered the hospitals,
sat down by the cots of the sick soldiers,
took their fevered hands in his own, even pressed
their bleeding tumors, and spoke to them words
of encouragement and hope. The dying soldiers
looked upon their heroic and sympathizing friend
with eyes moistened with gratitude, and blessed
him. Their courage was reanimated and thus
they gained new strength to throw off the dreadful
disease. “You are right,” said a grenadier,
upon whom the plague had made such ravages,
that he could hardly move a limb; “your grenadiers
were not made to die in a hospital.” The
physicians, shamed by the heroism of Napoleon,
returned to their duty. The soldiers, animated
by the example of their chief, no longer refused
to administer to the wants of their suffering comrades,
and thus the progress of the infection in
[pg 317]
the army was materially arrested. One of the
physicians reproached Napoleon for his imprudence,
in exposing himself to such fearful peril.
He coolly replied, “It is but my duty. I am the
commander-in-chief.”

Napoleon now pressed the siege of Acre. It
was the only fortress in Syria which could stop
him. Its subjugation would make him the undisputed
master of Syria. Napoleon had already
formed an alliance with the Druses and other
Christian tribes, who had taken refuge from the
extortions of the Turks, among the mountains
of Lebanon, and they only awaited the capture
of Acre to join his standard in a body, and to
throw off the intolerable yoke of Moslem despotism.
Delegations of their leading men frequently
appeared in the tent of Napoleon, and their prayers
were fervently ascending for the success of
the French arms. That in this conflict Napoleon
was contending on the side of human liberty, and
the allies for the support of despotism, is undeniable.
The Turks were not idle. By vast exertions
they had roused the whole Mussulman
population to march, in the name of the Prophet,
for the destruction of the “Christian dogs.” An
enormous army was marshaled, and was on its
way for the relief of the beleagured city. Damascus
had furnished its thousands. The scattered
remnants of the fierce Mamelukes, and the mounted
Bedouins of the desert, had congregated, to
rush, with resistless numbers, upon their bold
antagonist.

Napoleon had been engaged for ten days in an
almost incessant assault upon the works of Acre,
when the approach of the great Turkish army
was announced. It consisted of about thirty
[pg 318]
thousand troops, twelve thousand of whom were
the fiercest and best-trained horsemen in the
world. Napoleon had but eight thousand effective
men with which to encounter the well-trained
army of Europeans and Turks within the walls
of Acre, and the numerous host rushing to its
rescue. He acted with his usual promptitude.
Leaving two thousand men to protect the works
and cover the siege, he boldly advanced with but
six thousand men, to encounter the thirty thousand
already exulting in his speedy and sure destruction.
Kleber was sent forward with an advance-guard
of three thousand men. Napoleon
followed soon after, with three thousand more.
As Kleber, with his little band, defiled from a
narrow valley at the foot of Mount Tabor, he
entered upon an extended plain. It was early
in the morning of the sixteenth of April. The
unclouded sun was just rising over the hills of
Palestine, and revealed to his view the whole embattled
Turkish host spread out before him. The
eye was dazzled with the magnificent spectacle,
as proud banners and plumes, and gaudy turbans
and glittering steel, and all the barbaric martial
pomp of the East was reflected by the rays of
the brilliant morning. Twelve thousand horsemen,
decorated with the most gorgeous trappings
of military show, and mounted on the fleetest
Arabian chargers, were prancing and curveting
in all directions. A loud and exultant shout of
vengeance and joy, rising like the roar of the
ocean, burst from the Turkish ranks, as soon as
they perceived their victims enter the plain. The
French, too proud and self-confident to retreat
before any superiority in numbers, had barely
time to form themselves into one of Napoleon’s
impregnable squares, when the whole cavalcade
of horsemen, with gleaming sabres and hideous
yells, and like the sweep of the wind, came rushing
down upon them. Every man in the French
squares knew that his life depended upon his
immobility; and each one stood, shoulder to
shoulder with his comrades, like a rock. It is
impossible to drive a horse upon the point of a
bayonet. He has an instinct of self-preservation
which no power of the spur can overcome. He
can be driven to the bayonet’s point, but if the
bayonet remains firm he will rear and plunge,
and wheel, in defiance of all the efforts of his
rider to force his breast against it. As the immense
mass came thundering down upon the
square, it was received by volcanic bursts of fire
from the French veterans, and horse and riders
rolled together in the dust. Chevaux-de-frise
of bayonets, presented from every side of this
living, flaming citadel, prevented the possibility
of piercing the square. For six long hours this
little band sustained the dreadful and unequal
conflict. The artillery of the enemy plowed their
ranks in vain. In vain the horsemen made reiterated
charges on every side. The French, by
the tremendous fire incessantly pouring from
their ranks, soon formed around them a rampart
of dead men and horses. Behind this horrible
abattis, they bid stern defiance to the utmost fury
of their enemies. Seven long hours passed away
while the battle raged with unabated ferocity.
The mid-day sun was now blazing upon the exhausted
band. Their ammunition was nearly expended.
Notwithstanding the enormous slaughter
they had made, their foes seemed undiminished
in number. A conflict so unequal could not
much longer continue. The French were calling
to their aid a noble despair, expecting there to
perish, but resolved, to a man, to sell their lives
most dearly.

Matters were in this state, when at one o’clock
Napoleon, with three thousand men, arrived on
the heights which overlooked the field of battle.
The field was covered with a countless multitude,
swaying to and fro in the most horrible clamor
and confusion. They were canopied with thick
volumes of smoke, which almost concealed the
combatants from view. Napoleon could only distinguish
the French by the regular and unintermitted
volleys which issued from their ranks,
presenting one steady spot, incessantly emitting
lightning flashes, in the midst of the moving multitude
with which it was surrounded. With that
instinctive judgment which enabled him, with the
rapidity of lightning, to adopt the most important
decisions, Napoleon instantly took his resolution.
He formed his little band into two squares, and
advanced in such a manner as to compose, with
the square of Kleber, a triangle inclosing the
Turks. Thus, with unparalleled audacity, with
six thousand men he undertook to surround
thirty thousand of as fierce and desperate soldiers
as the world has ever seen. Cautiously and
silently the two squares hurried on to the relief
of their friends, giving no sign of approach, till
they were just ready to plunge upon the plains.
Suddenly the loud report of a cannon upon the
hills startled with joyful surprise the weary
heroes. They recognized instantly the voice of
Napoleon rushing to their rescue. One wild
shout of almost delirious joy burst from the ranks.
“It is Bonaparte! It is Bonaparte!” That name
operated as a talisman upon every heart. Tears
of emotion dimmed the eyes of those scarred and
bleeding veterans, as, disdaining longer to act
upon the defensive, they grasped their weapons
with nervous energy, and made a desperate onset
upon their multitudinous foes. The Turks
were assailed by a murderous fire instantaneously
discharged from the three points of this triangle.
Discouraged by the indomitable resolution with
which they had been repulsed, and bewildered by
the triple assault, they broke and fled. The
mighty host, like ocean waves, swept across the
plain, when suddenly it was encountered by one
of the fresh squares, and in refluent surges rolled
back in frightful disorder. A scene of horror
now ensued utterly unimaginable. The Turks
were cut off from retreat in every direction. The
enormous mass of infantry, horse, artillery, and
baggage, was driven in upon itself, in wild and
horrible confusion. From the French squares
there flashed one incessant sheet of flame. Peal
after peal, the artillery thundered in a continuous
roar. These thoroughly-drilled veterans fired with
a rapidity and a precision which seemed to the
[pg 319]
Turks supernatural. An incessant storm of cannon-balls,
grape-shot, and bullets pierced the motley
mass, and the bayonets of the French dripped
with blood.

Murat was there, with his proud cavalry—Murat,
whom Napoleon has described as in battle
probably the bravest man in the world. Of
majestic frame, dressed in the extreme of military
ostentation, and mounted upon the most
powerful of Arabian chargers, he towered, proudly
eminent, above all his band. With the utmost
enthusiasm he charged into the swollen tide of
turbaned heads and flashing scimitars. As his
strong horse reared and plunged in the midst of
the sabre strokes falling swiftly on every side
around him, his white plume, which ever led to victory,
gleamed like a banner over the tumultuous
throng. It is almost an inexplicable development
of human nature to hear Murat exclaim, “In the
hottest of this terrible fight, I thought of Christ,
and of his transfiguration upon this very spot, two
thousand years ago, and the reflection inspired
me with ten-fold courage and strength.” The
fiend-like disposition created by these horrible
scenes, is illustrated by the conduct of a French
soldier on this occasion. He was dying of a
frightful wound. Still he crawled to a mangled
Mameluke, even more feeble than himself, also
in the agonies of death, and, seizing him by the
throat, tried to strangle him. “How can you,”
exclaimed a French officer, to the human tiger,
“in your condition, be guilty of such an act?”
“You speak much at your ease,” the man replied,
“you who are unhurt; but I, while I am
dying, must reap some enjoyment while I can.”

The victory was complete. The Turkish
army was not merely conquered, it was destroyed.
As that day’s sun, vailed in smoke, solemnly
descended, like a ball of fire, behind the hills
of Lebanon, the whole majestic array, assembled
for the invasion of Egypt, and who had boasted
that they were “innumerable as the sands of the
sea or as the stars of heaven,” had disappeared
to be seen no more. The Turkish camp, with
four hundred camels and an immense booty, fell
into the hands of the victors.

This signal victory was achieved by a small
division of Napoleon’s army, of but six thousand
men, in a pitched battle, on an open field. Such
exploits history can not record without amazement.
The ostensible and avowed object of Napoleon’s
march into Syria was now accomplished.
Napoleon returned again to Acre, to prosecute
with new vigor its siege, for, though the
great army, marshaled for his destruction, was
annihilated, he had other plans, infinitely more
majestic, revolving in his capacious mind. One
evening he was standing with his secretary upon
the mount which still bears the name of Richard
Cœur de Lion, contemplating the smouldering
scene of blood and ruin around him, when, after
a few moments of silent thought, he exclaimed,
“Yes, Bourrienne, that miserable fort has cost
me dear. But matters have gone too far not to
make a last effort. The fate of the East depends
upon the capture of Acre. That is the key of
Constantinople or of India. If we succeed in
taking this paltry town, I shall obtain the treasures
of the Pacha, and arms for three hundred
thousand men. I will then raise and arm the
whole population of Syria, already so exasperated
by the cruelty of Achmet, and for whose fall all
classes daily supplicate Heaven. I shall advance
on Damascus and Aleppo. I will recruit my
army, as I advance, by enlisting all the discontented.
I will announce to the people the breaking
of their chains and the abolition of the tyrannical
governments of the Pachas. The Druses
wait but for the fall of Acre, to declare themselves.
I am already offered the keys of Damascus.
My armed masses will penetrate to Constantinople,
and the Mussulman dominion will
be overturned. I shall found in the East a new
and mighty empire, which will fix my position
with posterity.”

With these visions animating his mind, and
having fully persuaded himself that he was the
child of destiny, he prosecuted, with all possible
vigor, the siege of Acre. But English and Russian
and Turkish fleets were in that harbor.
English generals, and French engineers, and European
and Turkish soldiers, stood, side by side,
behind those formidable ramparts, to resist the
utmost endeavors of their assailants, with equal
vigor, science, and fearlessness. No pen can describe
the desperate conflicts and the scenes of
carnage which ensued. Day after day, night after
night, and week after week, the horrible slaughter,
without intermission, continued. The French
succeeded in transporting, by means of their
cruisers, from Alexandria, a few pieces of heavy
artillery, and the walls of Acre were reduced to
a pile of blackened ruins. The streets were
plowed up, and the houses blown down by bomb-shells.
Bleeding forms, blackened with smoke,
and with clothing burnt and tattered, rushed
upon each other, with dripping sabres and bayonets,
and with hideous yells which rose even
above the incessant thunders of the cannonade.
The noise, the uproar, the flash of guns, the enveloping
cloud of sulphurous smoke converting
the day into hideous night, and the unintermitted
flashes of musketry and artillery, transforming
night into lurid and portentous day, the forms of
the combatants, gliding like spectres, with demoniacal
fury through the darkness, the blast of
trumpets, the shout of onset, the shriek of death,
presented a scene which no tongue can tell nor
imagination conceive. There was no time to
bury the dead, and the putrefaction of hundreds
of corpses under that burning sun added appalling
horrors. To the pure spirits of a happier
world, in the sweet companionship of celestial
mansions, loving and blessing each other, it must
have appeared a spectacle worthy of pandemonium.
And yet the human heart is so wicked,
that it can often, forgetting the atrocity of such
a scene, find a strange pleasure in the contemplation
of its energy and its heroism. We are
indeed a fallen race.

There were occasional lulls in this awful storm,
during which each party would be rousing its
[pg 320]
energies for more terrible collision. The besiegers
burrowed mines deep under the foundations
of walls and towers, and with the explosion of
hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, opened volcanic
craters, blowing men and rocks into hideous
ruin. In the midst of the shower of destruction
darkening the skies, the assailants rushed, with
sabres and dripping bayonets, to the assault.
The onset, on the part of the French, was as furious
and desperate as mortal man is capable of
making. The repulse was equally determined
and fearless.

Sir Sydney Smith conducted the defense, with
the combined English and Turkish troops. He
displayed consummate skill, and unconquerable
firmness, and availed himself of every weapon of
effective warfare. Conscious of the earnest desire
of the French soldiers to return to France,
and of the despair with which the army had been
oppressed when the fleet was destroyed, and thus
all hope of return was cut off, he circulated a
proclamation among them, offering to convey
safely to France every soldier who would desert
from the standard of Napoleon. This proclamation,
in large numbers, was thrown from the ramparts
to the French troops. A more tempting offer
could not have been presented, and yet so strong
was the attachment of the soldiers for their chief,
that it is not known that a single individual availed
himself of the privilege. Napoleon issued a
counter proclamation to his army, in which he
asserted that the English commodore had actually
gone mad. This so provoked Sir Sydney, that
he sent a challenge to Napoleon to meet him in
single combat. The young general proudly replied,
“If Sir Sydney will send Marlborough
from his grave, to meet me, I will think of it.
In the mean time, if the gallant commodore wishes
to display his personal prowess, I will neutralize
a few yards of the beach, and send a tall
grenadier, with whom he can run a tilt.”

In the progress of the siege, Gen. Caffarelli
was struck by a ball and mortally wounded.
For eighteen days he lingered in extreme pain,
and then died. Napoleon was strongly attached
to him, and during all the period, twice every
day, made a visit to his couch of suffering. So
great was his influence over the patient, that
though the wounded general was frequently delirious,
no sooner was the name of Napoleon announced,
than he became perfectly collected, and
conversed coherently.

The most affecting proofs were frequently
given of the entire devotion of the troops to Napoleon.
One day, while giving some directions
in the trenches, a shell, with its fuse fiercely
burning, fell at his feet. Two grenadiers, perceiving
his danger, instantly rushed toward him,
encircled him in their arms, and completely shielded
every part of his body with their own. The
shell exploded, blowing a hole in the earth sufficiently
large to bury a cart and two horses. All
three were tumbled into the excavation, and
covered with stones and sand. One of the men
was rather severely wounded; Napoleon escaped
with but a few slight bruises. He immediately
elevated both of these heroes to the rank of officers.

“Never yet, I believe,” said Napoleon, “has
there been such devotion shown by soldiers to their
general, as mine have manifested for me. At
Arcola, Colonel Muiron threw himself before me,
covered my body with his own, and received the
[pg 321]
blow which was intended for me. He fell at my
feet, and his blood spouted up in my face. In
all my misfortunes never has the soldier been
wanting in fidelity—never has man been served
more faithfully by his troops. With the last
drop of blood gushing out of their veins, they exclaimed,
Vive Napoleon.”

The siege had now continued for sixty days.
Napoleon had lost nearly three thousand men,
by the sword and the plague. The hospitals
were full of the sick and the wounded. Still,
Napoleon remitted not his efforts. “Victory,”
said he, “belongs to the most persevering.”
Napoleon had now expended all his cannon-balls.
By a singular expedient he obtained a fresh supply.
A party of soldiers was sent upon the
beach, and set to work, apparently throwing up
a rampart for the erection of a battery. Sir
Sydney immediately approached with the English
ships, and poured in upon them broadside after
broadside from all his tiers. The soldiers, who
perfectly comprehended the joke, convulsed with
laughter, ran and collected the balls as they rolled
over the sand. Napoleon ordered a dollar to
be paid to the soldiers for each ball thus obtained.
When this supply was exhausted, a few horsemen
or wagons were sent out upon the beach,
as if engaged in some important movement, when
the English commodore would again approach and
present them, from his plethoric magazines, with
another liberal supply. Thus for a long time
Napoleon replenished his exhausted stores.

One afternoon in May, a fleet of thirty sail of
the line was descried in the distant horizon, approaching
Acre. All eyes were instantly turned
in that direction. The sight awakened intense
anxiety in the hearts of both besiegers and besieged.
The French hoped that they were
French ships conveying to them succors from
Alexandria or from France. The besieged flattered
themselves that they were friendly sails,
bringing to them such aid as would enable them
effectually to repulse their terrible foes. The
English cruisers immediately stood out of the
bay to reconnoitre the unknown fleet. Great
was the disappointment of the French when they
saw the two squadrons unite, and the crescent
of the Turk, and the pennant of England, in
friendly blending, approach the bay together.
The Turkish fleet brought a reinforcement of
twelve thousand men, with an abundant supply
of military stores. Napoleon’s only hope was to
capture the place before the disembarkation of
these reinforcements. Calculating that the landing
could not be effected in less than six hours,
he resolved upon an immediate assault. In the
deepening twilight, a black and massy column,
issued from the trenches, and advanced, with the
firm and silent steps of utter desperation, to the
breach. The besieged knowing that, if they
could hold out but a few hours longer, deliverance
was certain, were animated to the most determined
resistance. A horrible scene of slaughter
ensued. The troops, from the ships, in the utmost
haste, were embarked in the boats, and
were pulling, as rapidly as possible, across the
bay, to aid their failing friends. Sir Sydney himself
headed the crews of the ships, and led them
armed with pikes to the breach. The assailants
gained the summit of the heap of stones into
which the wall had been battered, and even
forced their way into the garden of the pacha.
But a perfect swarm of janizaries suddenly
poured in upon them, with the keen sabre in one
hand, and the dagger in the other, and in a few
moments they were all reduced to headless
trunks. The Turks gave no quarter. The remorseless
Butcher sat in the court-yard of his
palace, paying a liberal reward for the gory head
of every infidel which was laid at his feet. He
smiled upon the ghastly trophies heaped up in
piles around him. The chivalric Sir Sydney must
at times have felt not a little abashed in contemplating
the deeds of his allies. He was, however,
fighting to arrest the progress of free institutions,
and the scimitar of the Turk was a fitting
instrument to be employed in such a service.
In promotion of the same object, but a
few years before, the “tomahawk and scalping-knife
of the savage” had been called into requisition,
to deluge the borders of our own land with
blood. Napoleon was contending to wrest from
the hand of Achmet the Butcher, his bloody
scimitar. Sir Sydney, with the united despots
of Turkey and of Russia, was struggling to help
him retain it.

Sir Sydney also issued a proclamation to the
Druses, and other Christian tribes of Syria, urging
them to trust to the faith of a “Christian
knight,” rather than to that of an “unprincipled
renegado.” But the “Christian knight,” in the
hour of victory, forgot the poor Druses, and they
were left, without even one word of sympathy,
to bleed, during ages whose limits can not yet
be seen, beneath the dripping yataghan of the
Moslem. Column after column of the French
advanced to the assault, but all were repulsed
with dreadful slaughter. Every hour the strength
of the enemy was increasing. Every hour the
forces of Napoleon were melting away, before
the awful storm sweeping from the battlements.
In these terrific conflicts, where immense masses
were contending hand to hand, it was found that
the scimitar of the Turk was a far more efficient
weapon of destruction than the bayonet of the
European.

Success was now hopeless. Sadly Napoleon
made preparations to relinquish the enterprise.
He knew that a formidable Turkish army, aided
by the fleets of England and Russia, was soon to
be conveyed from Rhodes to Egypt. Not an
hour longer could he delay his return to meet it.
Had not Napoleon been crippled by the loss of his
fleet at Aboukir, victory at Acre would have been
attained without any difficulty. The imagination
is bewildered in contemplating the results
which might have ensued. Even without the
aid of the fleet, but for the indomitable activity,
courage, and energy of Sir Sydney Smith, Acre
would have fallen, and the bloody reign of the
Butcher would have come to an end. This destruction
of Napoleon’s magnificent anticipations
[pg 322]
of Oriental conquest must have been a bitter
disappointment. It was the termination of the
most sanguine hope of his life. And it was a
lofty ambition in the heart of a young man of
twenty-six, to break the chains which bound the
countless millions of Asia, in the most degrading
slavery, and to create a boundless empire such
as earth had never before seen, which should develop
all the physical, intellectual, and social
energies of man.

History can record with unerring truth the
deeds of man and his avowed designs. The attempt
to delineate the conflicting motives, which
stimulate the heart of a frail mortal, are hazardous.
Even the most lowly Christian finds unworthy
motives mingling with his best actions.
Napoleon was not a Christian. He had learned
no lessons in the school of Christ. Did he merely
wish to aggrandize himself, to create and perpetuate
his own renown, by being the greatest
and the best monarch earth has ever known?
This is not a Christian spirit. But it is not like
the spirit which demonized the heart of Nero,
which stimulated the lust of Henry the Eighth,
which fired the bosom of Alexander with his invincible
phalanxes, and which urged Tamerlane,
with his mounted hordes, to the field of blood.
Our Saviour was entirely regardless of self in his
endeavors to bless mankind. Even Washington,
who though one of the best of mortals, must be
contemplated at an infinite distance from the Son
of God, seemed to forget himself in his love for
his country. That absence of regard for self can
not be so distinctly seen in Napoleon. He wished
to be the great benefactor of the world, elevating
the condition and rousing the energies of
man, not that he might obtain wealth and live in
splendor, not that he might revel in voluptuous
indulgences, but apparently that his own name
might be embalmed in glory. This is not a holy
motive. Neither is it degrading and dishonorable.
We hate the mercenary despot. We despise
the voluptuary. But history can not justly
consign Napoleon either to hatred or to contempt.
Had Christian motives impelled him, making all
due allowance for human frailty, he might have
been regarded as a saint. Now he is but a hero.

The ambitious conqueror who invades a peaceful
land, and with fire and blood subjugates a
timid and helpless people, that he may bow their
necks to the yoke of slavery, that he may doom
them to ignorance and degradation, that he may
extort from them their treasures by the energies
of the dungeon, the scimetar, and the bastinado,
consigning the millions to mud hovels, penury,
and misery, that he and his haughty parasites
may revel in voluptuousness and splendor, deserves
the execrations of the world. Such were
the rulers of the Orient. But we can not with
equal severity condemn the ambition of him, who
marches not to forge chains, but to break them;
not to establish despotism, but to assail despotic
usurpers; not to degrade and impoverish the
people, but to ennoble, and to elevate, and to enrich
them; not to extort from the scanty earnings
of the poor the means of living in licentiousness
and all luxurious indulgence, but to
endure all toil, all hardship, all deprivation cheerfully,
that the lethargic nations may be roused to
enterprise, to industry, and to thrift. Such was
the ambition of Napoleon. Surely it was lofty.
But far more lofty is that ambition of which
Christ is the great exemplar, which can bury self
entirely in oblivion.

Twenty years after the discomfiture at Acre,
Napoleon, when imprisoned upon the Rock of St.
Helena, alluded to these dreams of his early life.
“Acre once taken,” said he; “the French army
would have flown to Aleppo and Damascus. In
the twinkling of an eye it would have been on
the Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the
Druses, the Christians of Armenia, would have
joined it. The whole population of the East
would have been agitated.” Some one said, he
would have soon been reinforced by one hundred
thousand men. “Say rather, six hundred thousand,”
Napoleon replied. “Who can calculate
what would have happened! I would have
reached Constantinople and the Indies—I would
have changed the face of the world.”

The manner in which Napoleon bore this disappointment
most strikingly illustrates the truth
of his own remarkable assertion. “Nature seems
to have calculated that I should endure great reverses.
She has given me a mind of marble.
Thunder can not ruffle it. The shaft merely
glides along.” Even his most intimate friends
could discern no indications of discontent. He
seemed to feel that it was not his destiny to found
an empire in the East, and, acquiescing without
a murmur, he turned his attention to other enterprises.
“That man,” said he, with perfect
good-nature, speaking of Sir Sydney Smith,
“made me miss my destiny.” Napoleon ever
manifested the most singular magnanimity in recognizing
the good qualities of his enemies. He
indulged in no feelings of exasperation toward
Sir Sydney, notwithstanding his agency in frustrating
the most cherished plan of his life.—Wurmser,
with whom he engaged in such terrible
conflicts in Italy, he declared to be a brave
and magnanimous foe; and, in the hour of triumph,
treated him with a degree of delicacy and
generosity which could not have been surpassed
had his vanquished antagonist been his intimate
friend. Of Prince Charles, with whom he fought
repeated and most desperate battles in his march
upon Vienna, he remarked, “He is a good man,
which includes every thing when said of a prince.
He is incapable of a dishonorable action.” And
even of his eccentric and versatile antagonist at
Acre, Napoleon says, with great impartiality and
accuracy of judgment, “Sir Sydney Smith is a
brave officer. He displayed considerable ability
in the treaty for the evacuation of Egypt by the
French. He also manifested great honor in
sending immediately to Kleber the refusal of Lord
Keith to ratify the treaty, which saved the French
army. If he had kept it a secret for seven or
eight days longer, Cairo would have been given
up to the Turks, and the French army would
have been obliged to surrender to the English.
[pg 323]
He also displayed great humanity and honor in
all his proceedings toward the French who fell
into his hands. He is active, intelligent, intriguing,
and indefatigable; but I believe that he
is half crazy. The chief cause of the failure at
Acre was, that he took all my battering train,
which was on board several small vessels. Had
it not been for that I should have taken Acre in
spite of him. He behaved very bravely. He
sent me, by means of a flag of truce, a lieutenant
or midshipman, with a letter containing a challenge
to me, to meet him in some place he pointed
out, in order to fight a duel. I laughed at
this, and sent him back an intimation that when
he brought Marlborough to fight me, I would
meet him. Notwithstanding this, I like the character
of the man. He has certain good qualities,
and, as an old enemy, I should like to see him.”

A minute dissector of human nature may discern,
in this singular candor, a destitution of
earnestness of principle. The heart is incapable
of this indifference, when it cherishes a profound
conviction of right and wrong. It is undoubtedly
true that Napoleon encountered his foes upon
the field of battle, with very much the same feeling
with which he would meet an opponent in a
game of chess. These wars were fierce conflicts
between the kings and the people; and Napoleon
was not angry with the kings for defending
strongly their own cause. There were of course
moments of irritation, but his prevailing feeling
was that his foes were to be conquered, not condemned.
At one time he expressed much surprise
in perceiving that Alexander of Russia had
allowed feelings of personal hostility to enter into
the conflict. A chess-player could not have manifested
more unaffected wonder, in finding his
opponent in a rage at the check of his king.
Napoleon does not appear often to have acted
from a deep sense of moral obligation. His
justice, generosity, and magnanimity were rather
the instinctive impulses of a noble nature, than
the result of a profound conviction of duty. We
see but few indications, in the life of Napoleon,
of tenderness of conscience. That faculty needs
a kind of culture which Napoleon never enjoyed.

He also cherished the conviction that his opponents
were urged on by the same destiny by
which he believed himself to be impelled. “I
am well taught,” said Dryfesdale, “and strong
in the belief, that man does naught of himself.
He is but the foam upon the billow, which rises,
bubbles, and bursts, not by its own efforts, but
by the mightier impulse of fate, which urges
him.” The doctrine called destiny by Napoleon,
and philosophical necessity by Priestley, and divine
decrees by Calvin, assuming in each mind characteristic
modifications, indicated by the name
which each assigned to it, is a doctrine which
often nerves to the most heroic and virtuous endeavors,
and which is also capable of the most
awful perversion.

Napoleon was an inveterate enemy to dueling,
and strongly prohibited it in the army. One
evening in Egypt, at a convivial party, General
Lanusse spoke sarcastically respecting the condition
of the army. Junot, understanding his
remarks to reflect upon Napoleon, whom he almost
worshiped, was instantly in a flame, and
stigmatized Lanusse as a traitor. Lanusse retorted
by calling Junot a scoundrel. Instantly
swords were drawn, and all were upon their feet,
for such words demanded blood. “Hearken,”
said Junot, sternly, “I called you a traitor; I do
not think that you are one. You called me a
scoundrel; you know that I am not such. But
we must fight. One of us must die. I hate you,
for you have abused the man whom I love and
admire, as much as I do God, if not more.” It
was a dark night. The whole party, by the light
of torches, proceeded to the bottom of the garden
which sloped to the Nile, when the two half inebriated
generals cut at each other with their
swords, until the head of Lanusse was laid open,
and the bowels of Junot almost protruded from a
frightful wound. When Napoleon, the next
morning, heard of the occurrence, he was exceedingly
indignant. “What?” exclaimed he,
“are they determined to cut each other’s throats?
Must they go into the midst of the reeds of the
Nile to dispute it with the crocodiles? Have
they not enough, then, with the Arabs, the plague,
and the Mamelukes? You deserve, Monsieur
Junot,” said he, as if his aid were present before
him, “you richly deserve, as soon as you get
well, to be put under arrest for a month.”

In preparation for abandoning the siege of
Acre, Napoleon issued the following proclamation
to his troops. “Soldiers! You have traversed
the desert which separates Asia from Africa,
with the rapidity of an Arab force. The army,
which was on its march to invade Egypt, is destroyed.
You have taken its general, its field
artillery, camels, and baggage. You have captured
all the fortified posts, which secure the wells
of the desert. You have dispersed, at Mount
Tabor, those swarms of brigands, collected from
all parts of Asia, hoping to share the plunder of
Egypt. The thirty ships, which, twelve days
since, you saw enter the port of Acre, were destined
for an attack upon Alexandria. But you
compelled them to hasten to the relief of Acre.
Several of their standards will contribute to adorn
your triumphal entry into Egypt. After having
maintained the war, with a handful of men,
during three months, in the heart of Syria, taken
forty pieces of cannon, fifty stands of colors, six
thousand prisoners, and captured or destroyed
the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, and Acre, we
prepare to return to Egypt, where, by a threatened
invasion, our presence is imperiously demanded.
A few days longer might give you the hope
of taking the Pacha in his palace. But at this
season the castle of Acre is not worth the loss
of three days, nor the loss of those brave soldiers
who would consequently fall, and who are
necessary for more essential services. Soldiers!
we have yet a toilsome and a perilous task to
perform. After having, by this campaign, secured
ourselves from attacks from the eastward,
it will perhaps be necessary to repel efforts which
may be made from the west.”

[pg 324]

On the 20th of May, Napoleon, for the first
time in his life, relinquished an enterprise unaccomplished.
An incessant fire was kept up in
the trenches till the last moment, while the baggage,
the sick, and the field artillery were silently
defiling to the rear, so that the Turks had no
suspicion that the besiegers were about to abandon
their works. Napoleon left three thousand
of his troops, slain or dead of the plague, buried
in the sands of Acre. He had accomplished the
ostensible and avowed object of his expedition.
He had utterly destroyed the vast assemblages
formed in Syria for the invasion of Egypt, and
had rendered the enemy, in that quarter, incapable
of acting against him. Acre had been
overwhelmed by his fire, and was now reduced to
a heap of ruins. Those vague and brilliant dreams
of conquest in the East, which he secretly cherished,
had not been revealed to the soldiers.
They simply knew that they had triumphantly
accomplished the object announced to them, in
the destruction of the great Turkish army. Elated
with the pride of conquerors, they prepared
to return, with the utmost celerity, to encounter
another army, assembled at Rhodes, which was
soon to be landed, by the hostile fleet, upon some
part of the shores of Egypt. Thus, while Napoleon
was frustrated in the accomplishment of his
undivulged but most majestic plans, he still appeared
to the world an invincible conqueror.

There were, in the hospitals, twelve hundred
sick and wounded. These were to be conveyed
on horses and on litters. Napoleon relinquished
his own horse for the wounded, and toiled along
through the burning sands with the humblest
soldiers on foot. The Druses and other tribes,
hostile to the Porte, were in a state of great dismay
when they learned that the French were retiring.
They knew that they must encounter
terrible vengeance at the hands of Achmet the
Butcher. The victory of the allies riveted upon
them anew their chains, and a wail, which would
have caused the ear of Christendom to tingle,
ascended from terrified villages, as fathers and
mothers and children cowered beneath the storm
of vengeance which fell upon them, from the
hands of the merciless Turk. But England was
too far away for the shrieks to be heard in her
pious dwellings.

At Jaffa, among the multitude of the sick, there
were seven found near to death. They were
dying of the plague, and could not be removed.
Napoleon himself fearlessly went into the plague
hospital, passed through all its wards, and spoke
words of sympathy and encouragement to the
sufferers. The eyes of the dying were turned to
him, and followed his steps, with indescribable
affection, as he passed from cot to cot. The
seven who were in such a condition that their
removal was impossible, Napoleon for some time
contemplated with most tender solicitude. He
could not endure the thought of leaving them to
be taken by the Turks; for the Turks tortured to
death every prisoner who fell into their hands.
He at last suggested to the physician the expediency
of administering to them an opium pill,
which would expedite, by a few hours, their death,
and thus save them from the hands of their cruel
foe. The physician gave the highly admired reply,
“My profession is to cure, not to kill.” Napoleon
reflected a moment in silence, and said no
more upon the subject, but left a rear-guard of
five hundred men to protect them, until the last
should have expired. For this suggestion Napoleon
has been most severely censured. However
much it may indicate mistaken views of
Christian duty, it certainly does not indicate a
cruel disposition. It was his tenderness of heart,
and his love for his soldiers, which led to the
proposal. An unfeeling monster would not have
troubled himself about these few valueless and
dying men; but, without a thought, would have
left them to their fate. In reference to the severity
with which this transaction has been condemned,
Napoleon remarked at St. Helena, “I
do not think that it would have been a crime had
opium been administered to them. On the contrary,
I think it would have been a virtue. To
leave a few unfortunate men, who could not
recover, in order that they might be massacred
by the Turks with the most dreadful tortures, as
was their custom, would, I think, have been
cruelty. A general ought to act with his soldiers,
as he would wish should be done to himself.
Now would not any man, under similar
circumstances, who had his senses, have preferred
dying easily, a few hours sooner, rather
than expire under the tortures of those barbarians?
If my own son, and I believe I love my son as
well as any father does his child, were in a similar
situation with these men, I would advise it to be
done. And if so situated myself, I would insist
upon it, if I had sense enough and strength enough
to demand it. However, affairs were not so pressing
as to prevent me from leaving a party to take
care of them, which was done. If I had thought
such a measure as that of giving opium necessary,
I would have called a council of war, have stated
the necessity of it, and have published it in the
order of the day. It should have been no secret.
Do you think, if I had been capable of secretly
poisoning my soldiers, as doing a necessary
action secretly would give it the appearance of a
crime, or of such barbarities as driving my carriage
over the dead, and the still bleeding bodies of the
wounded, that my troops would have fought for
me with an enthusiasm and affection without a
parallel? No, no! I never should have done so
a second time. Some would have shot me in
passing. Even some of the wounded, who had
sufficient strength left to pull a trigger, would
have dispatched me. I never committed a crime
in all my political career. At my last hour I can
assert that. Had I done so, I should not have
been here now. I should have dispatched the
Bourbons. It only rested with me to give my
consent, and they would have ceased to live. I
have, however, often thought since on this point
of morals, and, I believe, if thoroughly considered,
it is always better to suffer a man to terminate
his destiny, be it what it may. I judged so afterward
in the case of my friend Duroc, who, when
[pg 325]
his bowels were falling out before my eyes, repeatedly
cried to me to have him put out of his
misery. I said to him ‘I pity you, my friend,
but there is no remedy, it is necessary to suffer
to the last.’ ”

Sir Robert Wilson recorded, that the merciless
and blood-thirsty monster Napoleon, poisoned at
Jaffa five hundred and eighty of his sick and
wounded soldiers, merely to relieve himself of
the encumbrance of taking care of them. The
statement was circulated, and believed throughout
Europe and America. And thousands still judge
of Napoleon through the influence of such assertions.
Sir Robert was afterward convinced of his
error, and became the friend of Napoleon. When
some one was speaking, in terms of indignation,
of the author of the atrocious libel, Napoleon replied,
“You know but little of men and of the
passions by which they are actuated. What
leads you to imagine that Sir Robert is not a
man of enthusiasm and of violent passions, who
wrote what he then believed to be true? He
may have been misinformed and deceived, and
may now be sorry for it. He may be as sincere
now in wishing us well as he formerly was in
seeking to injure us.” Again he said, “The
fact is that I not only never committed any crime,
but I never even thought of doing so. I have
always marched with the opinions of five or six
millions of men. In spite of all the libels, I have
no fear whatever respecting my fame. Posterity
will do me justice. The truth will be known,
and the good which I have done will be compared
with the faults which I have committed. I am
not uneasy as to the result.”

Baron Larrey was the chief of the medical
staff. “Larrey,” said Napoleon to O’Meara,
“was the most honest man, and the best friend
to the soldier whom I ever knew. Indefatigable
in his exertions for the wounded, he was seen on
the field of battle, immediately after an action,
accompanied by a train of young surgeons, endeavoring
to discover if any signs of life remained
in the bodies. He scarcely allowed a moment of
repose to his assistants, and kept them ever at
their posts. He tormented the generals, and
disturbed them out of their beds at night, whenever
he wanted accommodations or assistance
for the sick or wounded. They were all afraid
of him, as they knew that if his wishes were not
complied with, he would immediately come and
make a complaint to me.” Larrey, on his return
to Europe, published a medical work, which he
dedicated to Napoleon as a tribute due to him for
the care which he always took of the sick and
wounded soldiers. Assulini, another eminent
physician, records, “Napoleon, great in every
emergence, braved on several occasions the danger
of contagion. I have seen him in the hospitals
at Jaffa, inspecting the wards, and talking
familiarly with the soldiers attacked by the
plague. This heroic example allayed the fears
of the army, cheered the spirits of the sick, and
encouraged the hospital attendants, whom the
progress of the disease and the fear of contagion
had considerably alarmed.”

The march over the burning desert was long
and painful, and many of the sick and wounded
perished. The sufferings of the army were inconceivable.
Twelve hundred persons, faint with
disease, or agonized with broken bones or ghastly
wounds, were borne along, over the rough and
weary way, on horseback. Many were so exhausted
with debility and pain that they were
tied to the saddles, and were thus hurried onward,
with limbs freshly amputated and with
bones shivered to splinters. The path of the
army was marked by the bodies of the dead,
which were dropped by the way-side. There
were not horses enough for the sick and the
wounded, though Napoleon and all his generals
marched on foot. The artillery pieces were left
among the sand hills, that the horses might be
used for the relief of the sufferers. Many of the
wounded were necessarily abandoned to perish
by the way-side. Many who could not obtain a
horse, knowing the horrible death by torture
which awaited them, should they fall into the
hands of the Turks, hobbled along with bleeding
wounds in intolerable agony. With most affecting
earnestness, though unavailingly, they implored
their comrades to help them. Misery destroys
humanity. Each one thought only of himself.
Seldom have the demoralizing influences and the
horrors of war been more signally displayed than
in this march of twenty-five days. Napoleon was
deeply moved by the spectacle of misery around
him. One day as he was toiling along through
the sands, at the head of a column, with the
blazing sun of Syria pouring down upon his unprotected
head, with the sick, the wounded, and
the dying, all around him, he saw an officer, in
perfect health, riding on horseback, refusing to
surrender his saddle to the sick. The indignation
of Napoleon was so aroused, that by one
blow from the hilt of his sword he laid the officer
prostrate upon the earth, and then helped
a wounded soldier into his saddle. The deed
was greeted with a shout of acclamation from
the ranks. The “recording angel in heaven’s
chancery” will blot out the record of such violence
with a tear.

The historian has no right to draw the vail
over the revolting horrors of war. Though he
may wish to preserve his pages from the repulsive
recital, justice to humanity demands that the
barbarism, the crime, and the cruelty of war
should be faithfully portrayed. The soldiers refused
to render the slightest assistance to the
sick or the wounded. They feared that every
one who was not well was attacked by the
plague. These poor dying sufferers were not
only objects of horror, but also of derision. The
soldiers burst into immoderate fits of laughter in
looking upon the convulsive efforts which the
dying made to rise from the sands upon which
they had fallen. “He has made up his account,”
said one. “He will not get on far,” said another.
And when the exhausted wretch fell to rise no
more, they exclaimed, with perfect indifference,
“His lodging is secured.” The troops were harassed
upon their march by hordes of mounted
[pg 326]
Arabs, ever prowling around them. To protect
themselves from assault, and to avenge attacks,
they fired villages, and burned the fields of grain,
and with bestial fury pursued shrieking maids
and matrons. Such deeds almost invariably attend
the progress of an army, for an army is ever
the resort and the congenial home of the moral
dregs of creation. Napoleon must at times have
been horror-stricken in contemplating the infernal
instrumentality which he was using for the accomplishment
of his purposes. The only excuse
which can be offered for him is, that it
was then as now, the prevalent conviction of
the world that war, with all its inevitable abominations,
is a necessary evil. The soldiers were
glad to be fired upon from a house, for it furnished
them with an excuse for rushing in, and
perpetrating deeds of atrocious violence in its
secret chambers.

Those infected by the plague accompanied
the army at some distance from the main body.
Their encampment was always separated from
the bivouacs of the troops, and was with terror
avoided by those soldiers who, without the tremor
of a nerve, could storm a battery. Napoleon,
however, always pitched his tent by their
side. Every night he visited them to see if their
wants were attended to. And every morning he
was present, with parental kindness, to see them
file off at the moment of departure. Such tenderness,
at the hands of one who was filling the
world with his renown, won the hearts of the
soldiers. He merited their love. Even to the
present day the scarred and mutilated victims
of these wars, still lingering in the Hotel des
Invalides at Paris, will flame with enthusiastic
admiration at the very mention of the name of
Napoleon. There is no man, living or dead,
who at the present moment is the object of
such enthusiastic love as Napoleon Bonaparte.
And they who knew him the best love him the
most.

One day, on their return, an Arab tribe came
to meet him, to show their respect and to offer
their services as guides. The son of the chief
of the tribe, a little boy about twelve years of
age, was mounted on a dromedary, riding by
the side of Napoleon, and chatting with great
familiarity. “Sultan Kebir,” said the young
Arab to Napoleon, “I could give you good advice,
now that you are returning to Cairo.”
“Well! speak, my friend,” said Napoleon; “if
your advice is good I will follow it.” “I will
tell you what I would do, were I in your place,”
the young chief rejoined. “As soon as I got to
Cairo, I would send for the richest slave-merchant
in the market, and I would choose twenty
of the prettiest women for myself. I would then
send for the richest jewelers, and would make
them give me up a good share of their stock.
I would then do the same with all the other
merchants. For what is the use of reigning, or
being powerful, if not to acquire riches?” “But,
my friend,” replied Napoleon, “suppose it were
more noble to preserve these things for others?”
The young barbarian was quite perplexed in endeavoring
to comprehend ambition so lofty, intellectual,
and refined. “He was, however,”
said Napoleon, “very promising for an Arab.
He was lively and courageous, and led his troops
with dignity and order. He is perhaps destined
one day or other, to carry his advice into execution
in the market-place of Cairo.”

At length Napoleon arrived at Cairo, after an
absence of three months. With great pomp and
triumph he entered the city. He found, on his
return to Egypt, that deep discontent pervaded
the army. The soldiers had now been absent
from France for a year. For six months they
had heard no news whatever from home, as not
[pg 327]
a single French vessel had been able to cross
the Mediterranean. Napoleon, finding his plans
frustrated for establishing an empire which should
overshadow all the East, began to turn his
thoughts again to France. He knew, however,
that there was another Turkish army collected
at Rhodes, prepared, in co-operation with the
fleets of Russia and England, to make a descent
on Egypt. He could not think of leaving the
army until that formidable foe was disposed of.
He knew not when or where the landing would
be attempted, and could only wait.

One evening, in July, he was walking with a
friend in the environs of Cairo, beneath the
shadow of the Pyramids, when an Arab horseman
was seen, enveloped in a cloud of dust,
rapidly approaching him over the desert. He
brought dispatches from Alexandria, informing
Napoleon that a powerful fleet had appeared in
the Bay of Aboukir, that eighteen thousand
Turks had landed, fierce and fearless soldiers,
each armed with musket, pistol, and sabre; that
their artillery was numerous, and well served by
British officers; that the combined English, Russian,
and Turkish fleets supported the armament
in the bay; that Mourad Bey, with a numerous
body of Mameluke cavalry, was crossing the
desert from Upper Egypt to join the invaders;
that the village of Aboukir had been taken by
the Turks, the garrison cut to pieces, and the
citadel compelled to capitulate. Thus the storm
burst upon Egypt.

Napoleon immediately retired to his tent, where
he remained till 3 o’clock the next morning, dictating
orders for the instant advance of the troops;
and for the conduct of those who were to remain
in Cairo, and at the other military stations. At
4 o’clock in the morning he was on horseback,
and the army in full march. The French troops
were necessarily so scattered—some in Upper
Egypt, eight hundred miles above Cairo, some
upon the borders of the desert to prevent incursions
from Syria, some at Alexandria—that Napoleon
could take with him but eight thousand
men. By night and by day, through smothering
dust and burning sands, and beneath the rays of
an almost blistering sun, his troops, hungry and
thirsty, with iron sinews, almost rushed along,
accomplishing one of those extraordinary marches
which filled the world with wonder. In seven
days he reached the Bay of Aboukir.

It was the hour of midnight, on the 25th of
July, 1799, when Napoleon, with six thousand
men, arrived within sight of the strongly intrenched
camp of the Turks. They had thrown
up intrenchments among the sand-hills on the
shore of the bay. He ascended an eminence
and carefully examined the position of his sleeping
foes. By the bright moonlight he saw the
vast fleet of the allies riding at anchor in the
offing, and his practiced eye could count the
mighty host, of infantry and artillery and horsemen,
slumbering before him. He knew that the
Turks were awaiting the arrival of the formidable
Mameluke cavalry from Egypt, and for still
greater reinforcements, of men and munitions of
war, from Acre, and other parts of Syria. Kleber,
with a division of two thousand of the army,
had not yet arrived. Napoleon resolved immediately
to attack his foes, though they were
eighteen thousand strong. It was indeed an unequal
conflict. These janizaries were the most
fierce, merciless, and indomitable of men; and
their energies were directed by English officers
and by French engineers. Just one year before,
Napoleon with his army had landed upon that
beach. Where the allied fleet now rode so proudly,
the French fleet had been utterly destroyed.
The bosom of Napoleon burned with the desire
to avenge this disaster. As Napoleon stood silently
contemplating the scene, Murat by his
side, he foresaw the long results depending upon
the issue of the conflict. Utter defeat would be
to him utter ruin. A partial victory would but
prolong the conflict, and render it impossible for
him, without dishonor, to abandon Egypt and
return to France. The entire destruction of his
foes would enable him, with the renown of an
invincible conqueror, to leave the army in safety
and embark for Paris, where he doubted not that,
in the tumult of the unsettled times, avenues of
glory would be opened before him. So strongly
was he impressed with the great destinies for
which he believed himself to be created, that,
turning to Murat, he said, “This battle will decide
the fate of the world.” The distinguished
cavalry commander, unable to appreciate the
grandeur of Napoleon’s thoughts, replied, “At
least of this army. But every French soldier
feels now that he must conquer or die. And be
assured, if ever infantry were charged to the
teeth by cavalry, the Turks shall be to-morrow
so charged by mine.”

The first gray of the morning was just appearing
in the East, when the Turkish army
was aroused by the tramp of the French columns,
and by a shower of bomb-shells falling in the
midst of their intrenchments. One of the most
terrible battles recorded in history then ensued.
The awful genius of Napoleon never shone forth
more fearfully than on that bloody day. He
stood upon a gentle eminence, calm, silent, unperturbed,
pitiless, and guided, with resistless
skill, the carnage. The onslaught of the French
was like that of wolves. The Turks were driven
like deer before them. Every man remembered
that in that bay the proud fleet of France had
perished. Every man felt that the kings of Europe
had banded for the destruction of the French
Republic. Every man exulted in the thought
that there were but six thousand French Republicans
to hurl themselves upon England, Russia,
and Turkey combined, nearly twenty thousand
strong. The Turks, perplexed and confounded
by the skill and fury of the assault, were driven
in upon each other in horrible confusion. The
French, trained to load and fire with a rapidity
which seemed miraculous, poured in upon them
a perfect hurricane of bullets, balls, and shells.
They were torn to pieces, mown down, bayoneted,
and trampled under iron hoofs. In utter
consternation, thousands of them plunged into
[pg 328]
the sea, horsemen and footmen, and struggled
in the waves, in the insane attempt to swim to
the ships, three miles distant from the shore.
With terrible calmness of energy Napoleon
opened upon the drowning host the tornado of
his batteries, and the water was swept with
grape-shot as by a hail-storm. The Turks were
on the point of a peninsula. Escape by land
was impossible. They would not ask for quarter.
The silent and proud spirit of Napoleon
was inflamed with the resolve to achieve a victory
which should reclaim the name of Aboukir
to the arms of France. Murat redeemed
his pledge. Plunging with his cavalry into the
densest throng of the enemy, he spurred his fiery
steed, reckless of peril, to the very centre of the
Turkish camp, where stood Mustapha Pacha,
surrounded by his staff. The proud Turk had
barely time to discharge a pistol at his audacious
foe, which slightly wounded Murat, ere the dripping
sabre of the French general severed half of
his hand from the wrist. Thus wounded, the
leader of the Turkish army was immediately
captured, and sent in triumph to Napoleon. As
Napoleon received his illustrious prisoner, magnanimously
desiring to soothe the bitterness of
his utter discomfiture, he courteously said, “I
will take care to inform the Sultan of the courage
you have displayed in this battle, though it has
been your misfortune to lose it.” “Thou mayst
save thyself that trouble,” the proud Turk haughtily
replied. “My master knows me better than
thou canst.”

Before 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the whole
Turkish army was destroyed. Hardly an individual
escaped. About two thousand prisoners
were taken in the fort. All the rest perished,
either drowned in the sea, or slain upon the land.
Sir Sydney Smith, who had chosen the position
occupied by the Turkish army, with the utmost
[pg 329]
difficulty avoided capture. In the midst of the terrible
scene of tumult and death, the Commodore
succeeded in getting on board a boat, and was
rowed to his ships. More than twelve thousand
corpses of the turbaned Turks were floating in
the bay of Aboukir, beneath whose crimsoned
waves, but a few months before, almost an equal
number of the French had sunk in death. Such
utter destruction of an army is perhaps unexampled
in the annals of war. If God frowned
upon France in the naval battle of Aboukir, He
as signally frowned upon her foes in this terrific
conflict on the land.

The cloudless sun descended peacefully, in
the evening, beneath the blue waves of the Mediterranean.
Napoleon stood at the door of his tent,
calmly contemplating the scene, from whence all
his foes had thus suddenly and utterly vanished.
Just then Kleber arrived, with his division of two
thousand men, for whom Napoleon had not waited.
The distinguished soldier, who had long
been an ardent admirer of Napoleon, was overwhelmed
with amazement in contemplating the
magnitude of the victory. In his enthusiasm he
threw his arms around the neck of his adored
chieftain, exclaiming, “Let me embrace you, my
General, you are great as the universe.”

Egypt was now quiet. Not a foe remained to
be encountered. No immediate attack, from any
quarter, was to be feared. Nothing remained to
be done but to carry on the routine of the administration
of the infant colony. These duties
required no especial genius, and could be very
creditably performed by any respectable governor.

It was, however, but a barren victory which
Napoleon had obtained, at such an enormous expenditure
of suffering and of life. It was in vain
for the isolated army, cut off, by the destruction
of its fleet, from all intercourse with Europe, to
think of the invasion of India. The French
troops had exactly “caught the Tartar.” Egypt
was of no possible avail as a colony, with the
Mediterranean crowded with hostile English, and
Russian, and Turkish cruisers. For the same
reason, it was impossible for the army to leave
those shores and return to France. Thus the
victorious French, in the midst of all their triumphs,
found that they had built up for themselves
prison walls from which, though they
could repel their enemies, there was no escape.
The sovereignty of Egypt alone was too petty
an affair to satisfy the boundless ambition of Napoleon.
Destiny, he thought, deciding against
an Empire in the East, was only guiding him
back to an Empire in the West.

For ten months Napoleon had now received no
certain intelligence respecting Europe. Sir Sydney
Smith, either in the exercise of the spirit of
gentlemanly courtesy, or enjoying a malicious
pleasure in communicating to his victor tidings
of disaster upon disaster falling upon France,
sent to him a file of newspapers full of the most
humiliating intelligence. The hostile fleet, leaving
its whole army of eighteen thousand men,
buried in the sands, or beneath the waves, weighed
anchor and disappeared.

Napoleon spent the whole night, with intense
interest, examining those papers. He learned
that France was in a state of indescribable confusion;
that the imbecile government of the Directory,
resorting to the most absurd measures,
was despised and disregarded; that plots and
counter-plots, conspiracies and assassinations
filled the land. He learned, to his astonishment,
that France was again involved in war with
monarchical Europe; that the Austrians had invaded
Italy anew, and driven the French over the
Alps; and that the banded armies of the European
kings were crowding upon the frontiers of
the distracted republic. “Ah!” he exclaimed to
Bourrienne, “my forebodings have not deceived
me. The fools have lost Italy. All the fruit of
our victories has disappeared. I must leave
Egypt. We must return to France immediately,
and, if possible, repair these disasters, and
save France from destruction.”

It was a signal peculiarity in the mind of Napoleon
that his decisions appeared to be instinctive
[pg 330]
rather than deliberative. With the rapidity
of the lightning’s flash his mind contemplated all
the considerations upon each side of a question,
and instantaneously came to the result. These
judgments, apparently so hasty, combined all
the wisdom which others obtain by the slow and
painful process of weeks of deliberation and uncertainty.
Thus in the midst of the innumerable
combinations of the field of battle, he never suffered
from a moment of perplexity; he never
hesitated between this plan and that plan, but
instantaneously, and without the slightest misgivings,
decided upon that very course, to which
the most slow and mature deliberation would
have guided him. This instinctive promptness
of correct decision was one great secret of his
mighty power. It pertained alike to every subject
with which the human mind could be conversant.
The promptness of his decision was
only equaled by the energy of his execution. He
therefore accomplished in hours that which would
have engrossed the energies of other minds for
days.

Thus, in the present case, he decided, upon
the moment, to return to France. The details
of his return, as to the disposition to be made of
the army, the manner in which he would attempt
to evade the British cruisers, and the individuals
he would take with him, were all immediately
settled in his mind. He called Bourrienne, Berthier,
and Gantheaume before him, and informed
them of his decision, enjoining upon them the
most perfect secrecy, lest intelligence of his
preparations should be communicated to the allied
fleet. He ordered Gantheaume immediately
to get ready for sea two frigates from the harbor
of Alexandria, and two small vessels, with
provisions for four hundred men for two months.
Napoleon then returned with the army to Cairo.
He arrived there on the 10th of August, and
again, as a resistless conqueror, entered the city.
He prevented any suspicion of his projected departure,
from arising among the soldiers, by
planning an expedition to explore Upper Egypt.

One morning he announced his intention of
going down the Nile, to spend a few days in examining
the Delta. He took with him a small
retinue, and striking across the desert, proceeded
with the utmost celerity to Alexandria, where
they arrived on the 22d of August. Concealed
by the shades of the evening of the same day, he
left the town, with eight selected companions,
and escorted by a few of his faithful guards.
Silently and rapidly they rode to a solitary part
of the bay, the party wondering what this movement
could mean. Here they discovered, dimly
in the distance, two frigates riding at anchor,
and some fishing-boats near the shore, apparently
waiting to receive them. Then Napoleon announced
to his companions that their destination
was France. The joy of the company was inconceivable.
The horses were left upon the
beach, to find their way back to Alexandria.
The victorious fugitives crowded into the boats,
and were rowed out, in the dim and silent
night, to the frigates. The sails were immediately
spread, and before the light of morning
dawned, the low and sandy outline of the Egyptian
shore had disappeared beneath the horizon
of the sea.

Great Objects Attained By Little
Things.

There is nothing, however small, in nature
that has not its appropriate use—nothing,
however insignificant it may appear to us, that
has not some important mission to fulfill. The
living dust that swarms in clusters about our
cheese—the mildew casting its emerald tint over
our preserves—the lichen and the moss wearing
away the words of grief and honor engraved upon
the tombs of our forefathers, have each their appropriate
work, and are all important in the great
economy of nature. The little moss which so
effectually aroused the emotions of Mungo Park
when far away from his friends and kin, and when
his spirits were almost failing, may teach a moral
lesson to us all, and serve to inspire us with some
of that perseverance and energy to travel through
life, that it did Mungo Park in his journey through
the African desert. By the steady and long-continued
efforts of this fragile little plant, high
mountains have been leveled, which no human
power could have brought from their towering
heights. Adamantine rocks have been reduced
to pebbles; cliffs have mouldered in heaps upon
the shore; and castles and strongholds raised by
the hand of man have proved weak and powerless
under the ravages of this tiny agent, and
become scenes of ruin and desolation—the habitations
of the owl and the bat. Yet who, to look
upon the lichen, would think it could do all this?—so
modest that we might almost take it for a
part of the ground upon which we tread. Can
this, we exclaim, be a leveler of mountains and
mausoleums! Contemplate its unobtrusive, humble
course; endowed by nature with an organization
capable of vegetating in the most unpropitious
circumstances—requiring indeed little more
than the mere moisture of the atmosphere to sustain
it, the lichen sends forth its small filamentous
roots and clings to the hard, dry rock with a most
determined pertinacity. These little fibres, which
can scarcely be discerned with the naked eye, find
their way into the minute crevices of the stone;
now, firmly attached, the rain-drops lodge upon
their fronds or membranaceous scales on the surface,
and filtering to their roots, moisten the space
which they occupy, and the little plant is then
enabled to work itself further into the rock; the
dimensions of the aperture become enlarged, and
the water runs in in greater quantities. This
work, carried on by a legion ten thousand strong,
soon pierces the stony cliff with innumerable fissures,
which being filled with rain, the frost causes
it to split, and large pieces roll down to the levels
beneath, reduced to sand, or to become soil
for the growth of a more exalted vegetation.—This,
of course, is a work of time—of generations,
perhaps, measured by the span of human
life; but, undaunted, the mission of the humble
lichen goes on and prospers. Is not this a lesson
[pg 331]
worth learning from the book of nature?
Does it not contain much that we might profit
by, and set us an example that we should do well
to imitate? “Persevere, and despise not little
things,” is the lesson we draw from it ourselves,
and the poorest and humblest reader of this page
will be able to accomplish great things, if he will
take the precept to himself, engrave it upon his
heart, or hold it constantly before him; depend
upon it, you will gain more inspiration from these
words than from half the wise sayings of the philosophers
of old.

But nature is full of examples to stimulate us
to perseverance, and beautiful illustrations of
how much can be achieved by little things—trifles
unheeded by the multitude. The worms that
we tread in the dust beneath our feet, are the
choicest friends of the husbandman. A tract of
land rendered barren by the incrustation of stones
upon its surface, becomes by their labors a rich
and fertile plain; they loosen and throw up in
nutritious mealy hillocks the hardest and most
unprofitable soil—the stones disappear, and where
all was sterility and worthlessness, is soon rich
with a luxurious vegetation. We may call to
mind, too, the worm upon the mulberry-tree, and
its miles of fine-spun glistening silk; we may
watch the process of its transformation till the
choice fabric which its patient industry had produced
is dyed by an infusion gained from another
little insect (the Cochineal), and then, endowed
with the glory of tint and softness of texture, it
is cut into robes to deck the beauty of our English
wives and daughters. Yet, those ignorant
of their usefulness would despise these little laborers,
as they do others equally valuable. The
bee and the ant, again, are instances which we
may all observe—but how few will spare five
minutes to contemplate them. Yet, where is the
man, sluggard though he be, who would not shake
off his slothfulness on observing the patient industry
and frugal economy of the little ant? or
where is the drunkard and spendthrift who could
watch the bee, so busy in garnering up a rich
store for the coming winter—laboring while the
sun shone, to sustain them when the frost and
rain, and the flowerless plants shut out all means
of gaining their daily bread; and not put his
shoulder to the wheel, and think of old age, and
the clouds that are gathering in the heavens?
The worth of all the delicious sweets we have
derived from the industry of the little bee, is
nothing, when compared with the value of this
moral which they teach us.

If we turn from the book of Nature and open
the annals of discovery and science, many instances
of the importance of little things will start
up and crowd around us—of events which appear
in the lowest degree insignificant, being the cause
of vast and stupendous discoveries. “The smallest
thing becomes respectable,” says Foster,
“when regarded as the commencement of what
has advanced or is advancing into magnificence.
The first rude settlement of Romulus would have
been an insignificant circumstance, and might
justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not
at length commanded the world. The little rill
near the source of one of the great American
rivers is an interesting object to the traveler, who
is apprised as he steps across it, or walks a few
miles along its bank, that this is the stream which
runs so far, and gradually swells into so immense
a flood.” By the accidental mixing of a little
nitre and potash, gunpowder was discovered. In
ancient times, before the days of Pliny, some
merchants traveling across a sandy desert, could
find no rock at hand on which to kindle a fire to
prepare their food; as a substitute, they took a
block of alkali from among their heaps of merchandise,
and lit a fire thereon. The merchants
stared with surprise when they saw the huge
block melting beneath the heat, and running
down in a glistening stream as it mingled with
the sand, and still more so, when they discovered
into what a hard and shining substance it had
been transformed. From this, says Pliny, originated
the making of glass. The sunbeams dazzling
on a crystal prism unfolded the whole theory
of colors. A few rude types carved from a
wooden block have been the means of revolutionizing
nations, overthrowing dynasties, and rooting
out the most hardened despotisms—of driving
away a multitude of imps of superstition,
which for ages had been the terror of the learned,
and of spreading the light of truth and knowledge
from the frontiers of civilization to the coasts of
darkness and barbarism. “We must destroy the
Press,” exclaimed the furious Wolsey, “or the
Press will destroy us.” The battle was fought,
the Press was triumphant, and Popery banished
from the shores of Britain. The swinging of a
lamp suspended from a ceiling led Galileo to
search into the laws of oscillation of the pendulum;
and by the fall of an apple the great Newton
was led to unfold what had hitherto been
deemed one of the secrets of the Deity—a mystery
over which God had thrown a vail, which it
would be presumption for man to lift or dare to
pry beneath. Had Newton disregarded little
things, and failed to profit by gentle hints, we
should perhaps have thought so still, and our
minds would not have been so filled with the glory
of Him who made the heavens; but with these
great truths revealed to our understandings, we
exclaim from our hearts, “Manifold, O God! are
thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all.”

When the heart of the woolspinner of Genoa
was sickening with “hope deferred,” and his
men, who had long been straining their eyes in
vain to catch a glimpse of land, were about to
burst into open mutiny, and were shouting fearfully
to their leader to steer the vessel back again,
Columbus picked up a piece of wood which he
found floating upon the waters. The shore must
be nigh, he thought, from whence this branch has
wafted, and the inference inspired the fainting
hearts of his crew to persevere and gain the
hoped-for land; had it not been for this trifling
occurrence, Columbus would perhaps have returned
to Spain an unsuccessful adventurer. But
such trifles have often befriended genius. Accidentally
observing a red-hot iron become elongated
[pg 332]
by passing between iron cylinders, suggested
the improvements effected by Arkwright
in the spinning machinery. A piece of thread
and a few small beads were means sufficient in
the hands of Ferguson, to ascertain the situation
of the stars in the heavens. The discovery of
Galvani was made by a trifling occurrence; a
knife happened to be brought in contact with a
dead frog which was lying upon the board of the
chemist’s laboratory, the muscles of the reptile
were observed to be severely convulsed—experiments
soon unfolded the whole theory of Galvanism.
The history of the gas-light is curious, and
illustrates our subject. Dr. Clayton distilled
some coal in a retort, and confining the vapor in
a bladder, amused his friends by burning it as it
issued from a pin-hole; little did the worthy doctor
think to what purposes the principle of that
experiment was capable of being applied. It
was left for Murdoch to suggest its adoption as a
means of illuminating our streets and adding to
the splendor of our shops. Had Clayton not
made known his humble experiment, we probably
should still be depending on the mercy of a jovial
watchman for a light to guide us through the
dark thoroughfares of the city, or to the dim
glimmer of an oil lamp to display the luxury of
our merchandise.

These facts, which we have gleaned from the
fields of nature and from the annals of science,
may be useful to us all. If God has instilled the
instinct of frugality into the ant, and told us, in
his written word, to go learn her ways and be
wise, think you he will be displeased to observe
the same habits of economy in us, or deny us the
favor of his countenance, because we use with
care the talents he has intrusted to our keeping,
or the wealth he has placed within our reach?
Let not instances of the abuse of this feeling,
which spendthrifts in derision will be sure to
point out to you, deter you from saving, in times
of plenty, a little for a time of need. Avarice is
always despicable—the crime of the miser is
greater than that of the spendthrift; both are
extremes, both abuse the legitimate purposes of
wealth. It is equally revolting to read of two
avaricious souls, whose coffers could have disgorged
ten times ten thousand guineas, growing
angry over a penny, or fretting at the loss of a farthing
rushlight; but it is a sight quite as sad and
painful to observe the spendthrift squandering
in the mire the last shilling of an ample fortune,
and reducing his wife and children to beggary for
ever. Save, then, a little, although the thoughtless
and the gay may sneer. Throw nothing
away, for there is nothing that is purely worthless;
the refuse from your table is worth its
price, and if you are not wanting it yourself, remember
there are hundreds of your kind, your
brethren by the laws of God, who are groaning
under a poverty which it would help to mitigate,
and pale with a hunger which it might help to
satisfy. Where can you find your prescriptive
right to squander that which would fill the belly
of a hungry brother? A gentleman, some years
ago, married the daughter of a public contractor,
whose carts carried away the dust from our habitations;
he was promised a portion with his
bride, and on his nuptial day was referred to a
large heap of dust and offal as the promised dowry.
He little thought, as he received it with some
reluctance, that it would put two thousand pounds
into his pocket.

To achieve independence, then, you must practise
an habitual frugality, and while enjoying the
present, look forward to old age, and think now
and then of the possibility of a rainy day. Do
not fancy, because you can only save an occasional
penny now, that you will never become
the possessor of pounds. Small things increase
by union. Recollect, too, the precepts and life
of Franklin, and a thousand others who rose to
wealth and honor by looking after little things:
be resolute, persevere, and prosper. Do not wait
for the assistance of others in your progress
through life; you will grow hungry, depend upon
it, if you look to the charity or kindness of friends
for your daily bread. It is far more noble to gird
up your loins, and meet the difficulties and troubles
of human life with a dauntless courage. The
wheel of fortune turns as swiftly as that of a
mill, and the rich friend who has the power, you
think, to help you to-day, may become poor tomorrow—many
such instances of the mutability
of fortune must occur to every reader. If he be
rich, let him take the inference to himself. If
he has plenty, let him save a little, lest the wheel
should turn against him; and if he be poor and
penniless, let him draw from such cases consolation
and hope.

You are desirous of promotion in your worldly
position—you are ambitious of rising from indigence
to affluence?—resist, then, every temptation
that may allure you to indolence or every
fascination that may lead to prodigality. Think
not that the path to wealth or knowledge is all
sunshine and honey; look for it only by long
years of vigorous and well-directed activity; let
no opportunity pass for self-improvement. Keep
your mind a total stranger to the ennui of the
slothful. The dove, recollect, did not return to
Noah with the olive-branch till the second time
of her going forth; why, then, should you despond
at the failure of a first attempt? Persevere,
and above all, despise not little things; for,
you see, they sometimes lead to great matters in
the end.

The Sublime Porte.

In offering a few remarks upon the government
of Turkey, which, by common accord, is
known in Europe and the United States as “The
Sublime Porte,” it is not intended to quote history,
but rather to speak of it only in reference
to the present period. It is nevertheless necessary
to state that the Turks themselves call the
Turkish Empire Mémâliki-Othmanieh, or the
“Ottoman States” (kingdoms), in consequence
of their having been founded by Othman, the
great ancestor of the present reigning sovereign,
Abd-ul-Mejid. They are no better pleased with
the name of Turk than the people of the United
[pg 333]
States are, generally, with that of Yankee: it bears
with it a meaning signifying a gross and rude
man—something indeed very much like our own
definition of it, when we say any one is “no better
than a Turk;” and they greatly prefer being
known as Ottomans. They call their language
the “Ottoman tongue”—Othmanli
dilee—though
some do speak of it as the Turkish.

As regards the title, “The Sublime Porte,”
this has a different origin. In the earlier days
of Ottoman rule, the reigning sovereign, as is still
the case in some parts of the East, held courts
of justice and levees at the entrance of his residence.
The palace of the Sultan is always surrounded
by a high wall, and not unfrequently defended
by lofty towers and bastions. The chief
entrance is an elevated portal, with some pretensions
to magnificence and showy architecture.
It is guarded by soldiers or door-keepers well
armed; it may also contain some apartments for
certain officers, or even for the Sultan himself;
its covering or roof, projecting beyond the walls,
offers an agreeable shade, and in its external
alcoves are sofas more or less rich or gaudy.
Numerous loiterers are usually found lingering
about the portal, applicants for justice; and
there, in former times, when the Ottomans were
indeed Turks, scenes of injustice and cruelty
were not unfrequently witnessed by the passer-by.

This lofty portal generally bears a distinct
title. At Constantinople it has even grown into
one which has given a name to the whole government
of the Sultan. I am not aware, however,
that the custom here alluded to was ever in force
in that capital, though it certainly was in other
parts of the empire of Othman. It is not improbable
that it was usual with all the Sultans,
who, at the head of their armies, seldom had any
permanent fixed residence worthy of the name of
palace. Mahomet the Second, who conquered
Constantinople from the degenerate Greeks, may,
for some time after his entrance into the city of
Constantine—still called in all the official documents,
such as “Firmans,” or “Royal Orders,”
Kostantinieh—have held his courts of
justice and transacted business at the elevated portal of his
temporary residence. The term “Sublime Porte,”
in Turkish, is Deri Alieh, or the elevated and
lofty door; the Saxon word door being derived
from the Persian der, or
dor, in common use in
the Ottoman language, which is a strange mixture
of Tartar, Persian, and Arabic. The French,
or rather the Franks, in their earlier intercourse
with Turkey, translated the title literally “La
Sublime Porte,” and this in English has been
called, with similar inaccuracy, “The Sublime
Porte.”

Long since, the Ottoman Sultans have ceased
administering justice before their palaces, or indeed
any where else, in person. The office is
delegated to a deputy, who presides over the
whole Ottoman government, with the title of
Grand Vezir, or in Turkish, Véziri Azam, the
Chief Vezir, whose official residence or place of
business, once no doubt at the portal of his
sovereign, is now in a splendid edifice in the
midst of the capital. At Constantinople the
Ottoman government is also called the “Sublime
Government,” Devleti Alieh, a word closely
bordering on that of superiority and pre-eminence
claimed by the “Heavenly Government” of the
empire of China. The Sultan, in speaking of
his government, calls it “My Sublime Porte.”
The Grand Vezir being an officer of the highest
rank in the empire—a Pacha, of course, in fine,
the Pacha—his official residence is known in
Constantinople as that of the Pacha, Pacha Ka
pousee, i.e. the “Gate of the Pacha.” The chief
entrance to the “seraglio” of the former Sultans,
erected on the tongue of land where once stood
the republican city of Byzantium, called the
“Imperial Gate,” or the Babi Humayoon,
is supposed by some to have given rise to the title of
“The Sublime Porte;” but this is not correct.
It may have once been used as a court of justice,
certainly as a place where justice was wont to
be executed, for not unfrequently criminals were
decapitated there; and among others, the head
of the brave but unfortunate Aâli Pacha, of
Yanina in Albania, the friend of Lord Byron,
was exposed there for some days previous to its
interment beyond the walls of the city.

The title of porte,
or door, is used in Constantinople
to designate other departments of the
government. The bureau of the Minister of War
is called the Seraskier Kapousee, or the Gate
of the Serasker (head of the army); and those
of the Ministers of Commerce and Police are called,
the one Tijaret Kapousee, and the other
Zabtieh
Kapousee. These, however are sufficient, without
mentioning any other facts, to explain the
origin and nature of the title of the Ottoman
government, known as “The Sublime Porte.”

The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire is known
by his subjects under the title of Sultân,
which word signifies a ruler; and generally as Shevketlu
Padischah Effendimiz, “His Majesty the Emperor
our Lord;” and all foreign governments now
recognize him as an Emperor, and call him by
the title of “Imperial Majesty.” The definition
of the word Padischah
is supposed to be “Father of Kings,”
and originally was Peder Schah, the
first part of it (Peder) being the origin of our
Saxon word Fâder, or father. In his own tongue
he is called Khan, in Persian
Shah, and in Arabic
Sultan, all meaning,
in extensu, the same, viz.
King, Sovereign, or Prince. He reigns over one
of the most extensive empires of the world, all
possessed or acquired by inheritance from his
ancestors, who obtained it by conquest.

Until the reign of the late Sultan, Mahmoud
the Second, the Ottoman sovereigns had their
residence in the “Seraglio” before alluded to, in
the city of Constantinople. Its high walls were
not, however, sufficiently strong to protect them
against the violence of the Janizaries, and after
their destruction the remembrance of the scenes
of their cruelty induced the late and present Sultan
to forsake it for the safer and more agreeable
banks of the Bosphorus. The extensive and very
picturesque buildings of the Seraglio are now
left to decay; they offer only the spectacle of
[pg 334]
the “dark ages” of Turkey, gloomy in their aspect,
as in their history, and yet occupying one
of the most favored spots in the world, on which
the eyes of the traveler are fixed as by a charm
in approaching the great capital of the East, and
on which they dwell with a parting feeling of
regret as he bids the magnificent “City of the
Sultan” farewell.

On the Bosphorus are two splendid palaces,
one on the Asiatic and the other on the European
shore. The first is called Beylerbey,
“Prince of Princes,” the latter
Teherâgiân,
“The Lights.”
Both are beautiful edifices, in excellent taste;
and, as architecture has done in all ages, they
serve to show the advance of the people who
erected them in the noblest of the arts.

The Turkish Sultan, in theory, is a despotic
sovereign, while in practice he is a very paternal
one. As the supreme head of the government,
he may exercise unlimited power; few checks
exist to preserve the lives and property of his
subjects against an influence which he might
exercise over them. His ancestors conquered
the country, and subjugated its inhabitants to
his rule with his troops; consequently it all belonged
to him, and could only be possessed by
his gift: thus, in fact, the empire is his, and the
concessions made by him to his subjects are free-will
offerings, which are not drawn from him by
compulsion on their part, but are grants on his,
in behalf of reform and civilization. The feudal
system of land-tenure was abolished by his father,
and there is now scarcely a feature of it remaining.
It is several years since the present Sultan
spontaneously renounced all the arbitrary power
hitherto possessed and frequently exercised by
his predecessors; at the same time he granted
all his subjects a “Charter of Rights,” called
the Hatti Sherif of Gulkhaneh, or imperial
sacred rescript of Gulkhaneh, named after a
summerhouse or Kiosckk within the precincts of
the Seraglio, where it was read before him by the
present Grand Vezir, Rechid Pacha, in the presence
of the whole diplomatic corps, and all the
ministers and other high officers of the Ottoman
government. In this charter the Sultan conceded
all the rights and privileges which could be expected
from a sovereign prince not reigning with
a constitutional form of government. He has
never withdrawn any of these privileges, or resumed
the power which he then renounced.
Moreover, this charter limited the power of all
his officers. The only punishments which they
can now exercise are fines and imprisonments of
limited extent. None can any longer inflict the
“bastinado,” nor capital punishment for crimes
of a graver nature; these are reserved for the
Councils or Boards at the capital and the chief
towns of each province. The sentences of the
latter are, in all cases, subject to the confirmation
of the former, and the decrees of the Council of
State, held at the Sublime Porte, are laid before
the Sultan previous to their adoption as laws.

The present Sultan, Abd-ul-Mejid, which name
is Arabic, and signifies “Servant of the Glorious”
(God), is now in his twenty-ninth year:
he succeeded his late illustrious father, Mahmoud
II., in 1839, when he was but seventeen
years of age. His father had inspired him with
the desire to improve his empire and promote
the welfare of his people by salutary reforms,
and frequently carried him with him to observe
the result of the new system which he had introduced
into the different branches of the public
service. Previous to his accession to the throne,
but little is known of his life, or the way in which
he was brought up. It may be supposed to have
been much like that of all Oriental princes. Except
when he attended his parent, he seldom left
the palace. He had several sisters and one
brother, all by other mothers than his own. The
former have, since his accession, died, with the
exception of one, the wife of the present Minister
of War. His brother still lives, and resides
with the Sultan in his palace. The mother of
the Sultan, who was a Circassian slave of his
father, is said to be a woman of a strong mind
and an excellent judgment. She exercised much
influence over her son when he ascended the
throne, and her counsels were greatly to his benefit.
He entertains for her feelings of the deepest
respect, and has always evinced the warmest
concern for her health and happiness. She is a
large, portly lady, yet in the prime of life; and
although she possesses a fine palace of her own,
near to that of her son, she mostly resides with
him. Her revenues are derived from the islands
of Chio and Samos.

In person the Sultan is of middle stature,
slender, and of a delicate frame. In his youth
he suffered from illness, and it was thought that
his constitution had been severely affected by it.
His features are slightly marked with the small
pox. His countenance denotes great benevolence
and goodness of heart, and the frankness and
earnestness of character which are its chief traits.
He does not possess the dignified and commanding
figure which eminently characterized his
father, and in conduct is simple and diffident.
His address, when unrestrained by official forms
and ceremony, is gentle and kind in the extreme—more
affable and engaging than that of his
Pachas; and no one can approach him without
being won by the goodness of heart which his
demeanor indicates. He has never been known
to commit an act of severity or injustice; his
purse and his hand have always been open for
the indigent and the unfortunate, and he takes a
peculiar pride in bestowing his honors upon men
of science and talent. Among his own subjects
he is very popular and much beloved; they perceive
and acknowledge the benefit of the reforms
which he has instituted, and he no longer need
apprehend any opposition on their part. In some
of the more distant portions of his empire, such
as Albania, where perhaps foreign influence is
exerted to thwart his plans, his new system of
military rule has not yet been carried out; but
it evidently soon will be, especially when its
advantage over the old is felt by the inhabitants.

The palaces of the Sultan, on both banks of
the Bosphorus, though externally showy, are
[pg 335]
very plain and simple in their interior arrangement.
They are surrounded by high walls, and
guarded by soldiery. The first block of buildings
which the traveler approaches on visiting them,
up the Bosphorus, are the apartments of the
eunuchs; the second his harem, or female
apartments; and the third those of the Sultan. Beyond
this are the offices of his secretaries, guard,
and band of music, all beyond the walls of the
palace. The number of eunuchs is some sixty
or eighty, and the females in the harem about
300 to 400. The Sultan never marries; all the
occupants of his harem are slaves, and he generally
selects from four to six ladies as his favorites,
who bear children to him, and who succeed
to his throne. The remainder of the females are
employed as maids of honor, who attend upon
his mother, his favorites, his brother’s mother,
favorite, if he has one, and upon his children.
Many hold offices in the palace, and are charged
with the maintenance of good order and regularity.
Many of them are aged females, who have
been servants to his father, his mother, and sisters,
and brother, and have thus claims upon his
kindness and protection. The only males who
have the right of entrance to the imperial harem
are the eunuchs, all of whom are black, and come
mutilated from Egypt. The chief of their corps
is an aged “gentleman of color,” possessing the
Sultan’s confidence in an eminent degree, and
in official rank is higher than any other individual
connected with the imperial palace. The
eunuchs are assigned to the service of the different
ladies of the harem, do their shopping in
the bazaars, carry their messages, and accompany
them on their visits. Indeed, their duties
are much like those of well-bred gallants in our
country, without any of the ambitious feelings
which animate the latter, and certainly they never
aspire to the possession of their affections. Some
of them grow wealthy, possess much property,
and slaves of both sexes, but as they can have
no families, the Sultan is their legal heir. Eunuchs
are possessed by many of the pachas and
other officers of rank, for the purpose of serving
their wives, sisters, and daughters: they cost
four or five times as much as an ordinary black
slave, and the highest officers seldom possess
more than ten of them at once. From them
much interesting information can at times be
procured relative to the most sacred and least
known of the Mussulman family system. They
are generally of mild disposition, gentle and amiable;
though this is not always the case, for they
sometimes are petulant, cross, and confoundedly
non-communicative.

The Sultan’s palace is peculiarly his private
home, and no officers of high rank occupy it with
him. He has four private secretaries and as
many chamberlains. He has also two aids-de-camp,
who are generally in command of the
body-guard, which has its quarters in the vicinity
of the palace. He seldom, however, commands
their attendance; their duties are to keep watch
at the principal entrances, and to salute him or
any other higher officers who may arrive at or
leave the royal residence. The secretaries write
out his orders, and the chief of their number receives
all foreign functionaries or Turkish dignitaries
who visit the palace on business. One of
them is the Sultan’s interpreter, and translates
articles for his perusal from the many foreign
papers received from Europe and America by the
Sultan. All official documents are sent to the
chief secretary by the different ministers of the
Sublime Porte, and those received from the foreign
embassies and legations are translated there,
previous to being transmitted to the Sultan. No
foreign legation ever transacts any official business
directly with the Sultan, or through the
chief (private) secretary; but the latter may be
visited on matters relating to the sovereign personally.
Documents from the Sublime Porte
are always communicated through the Grand
Vezir, who has a number of portfolios in which
these are placed, and he sends them to the palace
by certain functionaries charged especially with
their conveyance. Of these the Vezir possesses
one key, and the Sultan, or his chief secretary,
another. The sultan passes several hours of the
day, from eleven till three, in perusing these papers,
and in hearing their perusal by the private
secretary before him; and his imperial commands
are traced on their broad margin, either
by his own hand in red ink (as is customary in
China), or he directs his secretary to do it for
him. So very sacred are all manuscripts coming
from his pen, that these papers seldom ever leave
the bureaux to which they belong, except after
his decease. It is only on such documents that
the autograph of the Sultan is ever seen.

At about three o’clock the Sultan generally
leaves the palace in a caïque or barge, which,
being smaller than that used for official purposes,
is called the incognito
(tebdil), and visits the edifices
that he may be erecting, calls upon his sisters,
or spends the remainder of the day at one
of the many delightful nooks on the Bosphorus
or Golden Horn, where he possesses kiosks, or
summer-houses. Sometimes he takes with him
his brother or his sons; and he is strongly attached
to them. It is said that he is having the
latter instructed in the French language, in geography
and mathematics. The elder is some ten
years of age, but will not succeed his father to
the throne until after the death of his uncle, who,
by Mussulman law, is next in right to the reigning
Sultan. Inheritance, in Islam lands, runs
through all the brothers before it reverts to the
children of the eldest son. Females can not
succeed to the throne, and the house of Othman
would consequently become extinct with its last
male representative.

The Curse Of Gold. A Dream.

Mordant Lindsay threw off the long
black crape scarf and hat-band which, in the
character of chief mourner, he had that day worn
at the funeral of his wife, as he entered one of
the apartments at Langford, and moodily sought a
seat. The room was spacious, and filled with
[pg 336]
every luxury which wealth could procure or ingenuity
invent to add to its comfort or its ornament.
Pictures, mirrors, silken curtains, and
warm carpets; statues in marble and bronze
were scattered about in rich profusion in the
saloon, and its owner, in the deep mourning of
a widower, sat there—grieving truly—thinking
deeply; but not, as might have been supposed,
of the lady who had that day been laid in the
vault of his ancestors—no, he was regretting the
loss of a much brighter spirit than ever lived in
her pale proud face, or in the coldness of her calm
blue eye. Mordant Lindsay was apparently a
man of past fifty; his hair was streaked with
gray, though its dark locks still curled thickly
round his head; he bore on his face the marks
of more than common beauty, but time had left
its traces there, in the furrows on his brow; and
even more deeply than time, care. As a young
man, he had been very handsome, richly endowed
by nature with all those graces which too
often make captive only to kill; but fortune, less
generous, had gifted him but with the heritage
of a good name—nothing more—and his early
life had been passed in an attempt, by his own
means, to remedy the slight she had put upon
him at his birth. The object of his ambition was
gained—had been now for some years: he was
wealthy, the possessor of all the fair lands stretched
out before him as far as his eye could reach,
and a rent-roll not unworthy of one in a higher
station in life. Looked up to by the poor of
Langford as the lord of the manor, courted by
his equals as a man of some consequence. Was
he happy? See the lines so deeply marked on
his countenance, and listen to the sigh which
seems to break from the bottom of his heart.
You will find in them an answer.

How brightly the sun shines in through the
windows of the room, gilding all around with its
own radiance, and giving life and light to the
very statues! It shines even on his head, but
fails in warming his bosom; it annoys him, uncongenial
as it is with his sad thoughts, and he
rises and pulls down the blind, and then restlessly
wanders forth into the open air. The day is
close, for summer is still at its height, and Mordant
Lindsay seeks the shade of a group of trees
and lies down, and presently he sleeps, and the
sun (as it declines) throws its shadows on nearer
objects; and now it rests on him, and as it hovers
there, takes the form of that companion of his
childhood, who for long, with a pertinacity he
could not account for, seemed ever avoiding his
path, and flying from him when most anxiously
pursued; and he sees again those scenes of his
past life before him dimly pictured through the
vista of many years, and his dream runs thus:

He is a child at play, young and innocent, as
yet untainted by worldly ambition, and standing
by him is a beautiful figure, with long golden
hair, very bright, and shining like spun glass or
the rays of the summer sun. Her eyes seem
born for laughter, so clear, so mirthful, so full of
joy, and her spotless robe flows around her,
making every thing it comes in contact with graceful
as itself; and she has wings, for Happiness
is fickle and flies away, so soon as man proves
false to himself and unworthy of her. She joins
the child in his gambols, and hand in hand with
him sports beside him, gathering the same flowers
that he gathers, looking through his smiling
eyes as she echoes his happy laughter; and then
over meadow, past ditches, and through tangled
bushes, in full chase after a butterfly. In the
eagerness of the sport he falls, and the gaudy
insect (all unconscious of being the originator of
so many conflicting hopes and fears) flutters
onward in full enjoyment of the sun and the
light, and soon it is too far off to renew the chase.
Tears, like dewdrops, fill the child’s eyes, and he
looks around in vain for his companion of the
day. The grass is not so green without her;
even the bird’s song is discordant, and, tired, he
sadly wends his way toward home. “Oh, dear
mamma!” he exclaims, brightening up, as he
sees his mother coming toward him, and running
to her finds a ready sympathy in his disappointment
as she clasps her boy to her bosom and
dries his little tearful face, closely pressing him
to a heart whose best hopes are centred in his
well-being. Happiness is in her arms, and he
feels her warm breath upon his cheek as she
kisses and fondles him; and anon he is as cheerful
as he was, for his playmate of the day, now
returned with his own good-humor, accompanies
him for all the hours he will encourage her to
remain; sometimes hiding within the purple
flower of the scented violet, or nodding from beneath
the yellow cups of the cowslip, as the
breeze sends her laden with perfume back to him
again. And in such childish play and innocent
enjoyment time rolls on, until the child has reached
his ninth year, and becomes the subject and
lawful slave of all the rules in Murray’s Grammar,
and those who instill them into the youthful mind.
And then the boy finds his early friend (although
ready at all times to share his hours of relaxation)
very shy and distant; when studies are difficult
or lessons long, keeping away until the task is
accomplished; but cricket and bat and ball invariably
summon her, and then she is bright and
kind as of yore, content to forget old quarrels in
present enjoyment; and as Mordant dreamed, he
sighed in his sleep, and the shadow of Happiness
went still further off, as if frightened by his
grief.

The picture changes: and now more than
twenty years are past since the time when the
boy first saw the light, and he is sitting in the
room of a little cottage. The glass door leading
to the garden is open, and the flowers come clustering
in at the windows. The loveliness of the
child has flown, it is true, but in its place a fond
mother gazes on the form of a son whose every
feature is calculated to inspire love. The short
dark curls are parted from off his sunburnt forehead,
and the bright hazel eyes (in which merriment
predominates) glance quickly toward the
door, as if expecting some one. The book he has
been pretending to read lies idly on his lap, and
bending his head upon his hand, his eyes had
[pg 337]
shut in the earnestness of his reverie, he does not
hear the light footstep which presently comes
stealing softly behind him. The new-comer is a
young and very pretty girl, with a pale Madonna-looking
face, seriously thoughtful beyond her
years. She may be seventeen or eighteen, not
more. Her hands have been busy with the flowers
in the garden, and now, as she comes up behind
the youth, she plucks the leaves from off a
rose-bud, and drops them on his open book. A
slight start, and a look upward, and then (his
arms around her slight form) he kisses her fondly
and often. And Happiness clings about them,
and nestles closely by their side, as if jealous of
being separated from either, and they were happy
in their young love. How happy! caring for
naught besides, thinking of no future, but in each
other—taking no account of time so long as they
should be together, contented to receive the evils
of life with the good, and to suffer side by side
(if God willed it) sooner than be parted. They
were engaged to be married. At present, neither
possessed sufficient to live comfortably upon,
and they must wait and hope; and she did hope,
and was reconciled almost to his departure, which
must soon take place, for he has been studying
for a barrister, and will leave his mother’s house
to find a solitary home in a bachelor’s chambers
in London. Mordant saw himself (as he had been
then) sitting with his first love in that old familiar
place, her hand clasped in his, her fair hair
falling around her, and vailing the face she hid
upon his shoulder, and even more vividly still, the
remembrance of that Happiness which had ever
been attendant on them then, when the most trivial
incidents of the day were turned into matters
of importance, colored and embellished as they
were by love. He saw himself in possession of
the reality, which, alas! he had thrown away
for the shadow of it, and he longed for the recovery
of those past years which had been so unprofitably
spent, in a vain attempt at regaining it.
The girl still sat by him; they did not seem to
speak, and throughout that long summer afternoon
still they sat, she pulling the flowers (so
lately gathered) in pieces, and he playing with
the ringlets of her hair. And now the door opens,
and his mother enters, older by many years than
when she last appeared to him, but still the same
kind smile and earnest look of affection as she
turns toward her son. Her hand is laid upon his
arm (as he rises to meet her), and her soft voice
utters his name, coupled with endearment. “Mordant,
dearest, Edith and myself wish to walk, if
you will accompany us?” “Certainly,” is the
reply, and the three set out, and the dreamer
watched their fast receding forms down a shady
lane, until a turn lost them to his sight, and the
retrospective view had vanished, but quickly to
be replaced by another.

Again he sees the same youth, this time impatiently
walking up and down a close, dismal
room. The furniture is smoke-dried and dusty,
once red, now of a dark ambiguous color. The
sofa is of horse-hair, shining (almost white in
places) from constant friction. On the mantlepiece
hangs a looking-glass, the frame wrapped
round with yellow gauze to protect it from dirt
and here and there a fly-catcher, suspended from
the ceiling, annoys the inmate of the dusky room
by its constant motion. It is a lodging-house,
ready furnished, and the young man, who has
not left his home many months, is not yet accustomed
to the change, and he is wearied and unhappy.
He has just been writing to Edith, and
the thought of her causes him uneasiness; he is
longing to be with her again. Restlessly he
paces up and down the narrow chamber, unwilling
to resume studies, by the mastery of which he
could alone hope to be with her again, until a
knock at the hall-door makes him pause and sit
down; another knock (as if the visitor did not
care to be kept waiting). Mordant knew what
was coming; he remembered it all, and felt no
surprise at seeing in his dream a friend (now
long since dead) enter the apartment, with the
exclamation of “What, Lindsay! all alone? I
had expected to find you out, I was kept so long
knocking at your door. How are you, old fellow?”
and Charles Vernon threw himself into a
chair. “We are all going to the play,” continued
he, “and a supper afterward. You know
Leclerque? he will be one of the party—will you
come?” and Vernon waited for an answer. The
one addressed replied in the affirmative, and Mordant
saw (with a shudder) the same figure which
had lured him on in Pleasure to seek lost Happiness,
now tempting the youth before him. The
two were so like each other in outward appearance,
that he wondered not that he too was deceived,
and followed her with even more eagerness
than he had ever done her more retiring sister.
And then with that gay creature ever in
mind, Mordant saw the young man led on from
one place of amusement to another—from supper
and wine to dice and a gambling-table—until
ruin stared him in the face, and that mind, which
had once been pure and untarnished, was fast becoming
defaced by a too close connection with
vice.

Mordant was wiser now, and he saw how
flimsy and unreal this figure of Pleasure appeared—how
her gold was tinsel, and her laughter but
the hollow echo of a forced merriment—unlike his
own once possessed Happiness, whose treasures
were those of a contented spirit—whose gayety
proceeded from an innocent heart and untroubled
conscience. Strange that he should have been
so blinded to her beauties, and so unmindful of
the other’s defects; but so it had been. Mordant
sympathized with the young man as he watched
him running headlong toward his own misery;
but the scene continued before him—he had no
power to prevent it—and now the last stake is to
be played. On that throw of the dice rests the
ruin of the small property he has inherited from
his father. It is lost! and he beggared of the
little he could call his own; and forth from the
hell (in which he has been passing the night)
rushes into the street. It wants but one stroke
to complete the wreck of heart as well as of fortune,
and that stroke is not long in coming.

[pg 338]

Miserable, he returned to his lodgings, and alone
he thought of his position. He thought of Edith.
“Love in a cottage, even could I by my own
means regain what I have lost. Pshaw! the
thing is ridiculous. Without money there can
not be Happiness for her or for me.” A few
months had sadly changed him, who before saw
it only in her society. But now the Goddess of
his fancy stands before him—her golden curls of
the precious metal he covets—her eyes receiving
their brightness from its lustre, and in his heart
a new feeling asserts superiority, and he wishes
to be rich. With money to meet every want he
will command her presence—not sue for it; and
Mordant remembered how, in pursuance of this
ambition, gradually cooling toward her, he had at
last broken off his engagement with Edith—how
for some years, day and night had seen him toiling
at his profession, ever with the same object
in view, and how at last he had married a woman
in every way what he desired: rich in gold and
lands and worldly possessions, but poor in heart
compared with Edith.

The crowd jostle each other to get a nearer
view of the bride as she passes (leaning on her
father’s arm) from the carriage to the church-door.
The bridegroom is waiting for her, and
now joins her, and they kneel side by side at the
altar. Mordant remembers his wedding-day. He
is not happy, notwithstanding the feeling of gratified
pride he experiences as he places the ring
upon the fair hand of the Lady Blanche. No
emotion of a very deep kind tinges her cheek;
she is calm and cold throughout the ceremony.
She admires Mordant Lindsay very much; he
was of a good family, so was she; he very handsome
and young, and she past thirty. Matches
more incongruous have been made, and with
less apparent reason, and this needs no farther
explanation on her side. They are married
now, and about to leave the church. The young
man turns as he passes out (amidst the congratulations
of his friends), attracted by scarcely suppressed
sobs; but the cloaked figure from whom
they proceed does not move, and he recognizes
her not. It is Edith, and Mordant, as he gazes
on the scene before him, sees Happiness standing
afar off, afraid to approach too near to any
one of the party, but still keeping her eyes fixed
on the pale young mourner at that bridal, who,
bowed down with grief, sat there until the clock
warned her to go, as the doors were being closed.
The married pair (after a month spent abroad)
settles down at Langford; and the husband—was
he happy now? No, not yet—but expecting
to be from day to day, hoping that time would
alter for the better what was wanting to the
happiness of his home; but time flew on, and,
regardless of his hopes, left him the same disappointed
man that it found him—disappointed in
his wife, in his expectations of children—feeling
a void in his heart which money was inefficient
to supply. The drama was drawing to a close;
Mordant felt that the present time had arrived.
His wife was dead, and he in possession of every
thing which had been hers, but still an anxious,
unsatisfied mind prevented all enjoyment of life;
but yet one more scene, and this time Mordant
was puzzled, for he did not recognize either the
place or the actors.

On a bed on one side was stretched the figure
of a young woman. Her features were so drawn
and sharpened by illness, that he could not recall
them to his mind, although he had an idea that
he ought to know her face. She was very pale,
and the heat seemed to oppress her, for in a languid
voice she begged the lady (who was sitting
by her side) to open the window. She rose to
do so, and then Mordant saw that the scenery
beyond was not English, for hedges of myrtle
and scarlet geranium grew around in profusion,
and the odor of orange flowers came thickly into
the chamber of the dying girl. Raising herself
with difficulty, she called to her companion, and
then she said,

“I know I shall not now get better; I feel I
am dying, and I am glad of it. My life has been
a living death to me for some years. When I am
dead I would wish to be buried in England—not
here—not in this place, which has proved a grave
to so many of my countrymen. Let me find my
last resting-place, dearest mother, at home, in
our own little church-yard.”

The lady wept as she promised her child to
fulfill her last request, and Mordant saw that
Happiness had flown from the bed (around which
she had been hovering for some minutes) straight
up to heaven, to await there the spirit of the
broken-hearted girl, who was breathing her last
under the clear and sunny sky of Madeira.

Mordant shuddered as he awoke, for he had
been asleep for some time, and the evening was
closing in as he rose from the damp grass. It
was to a lonely hearth that he returned, and during
the long night which followed, as he thought
of his dream and of an ill-spent life, he resolved
to revisit his early home, in the hope that amidst
old scenes he might bring back the days when he
was happy. Was Edith still alive? He knew
not. He had heard she had gone abroad; she
might be there still. He did not confess it to
himself, but it was Edith of whom he thought
most; and it was the hope of again seeing her
which induced him to take a long journey to the
place where he had been born. The bells were
ringing for some merry-making as Mordant Lindsay
left his traveling carriage, to walk up the
one street of which Bower’s Gifford boasted. He
must go through the church-yard to gain the new
inn, and passing (by one of the inhabitants’ directions)
through the turnstile, he soon found himself
amidst the memorials of its dead. Mordant,
as he pensively walked along, read the names of
those whose virtues were recorded on their grave-stones,
and as he read, reflected. And now he
stops, for it is a well-known name which attracts
his attention, and as he parts the weeds which
have grown high over that grave, he sees inscribed
on the broken pillar which marks the
spot, “Edith Graham, who died at Madeira, aged
21.” And Mordant, as he looks, sinks down upon
the grass, and sheds the first tears which for
[pg 339]
years have been wept by him, and in sorrow of
heart, when too late, acknowledges that it is not
money or gratified ambition which brings Happiness
in this world, but a contented and cheerful
mind; and from that lonely grave he leaves
an altered man, and a better one.

Maurice Tiernay,
The Soldier Of Fortune.3

Anecdotes And Aphorisms.

As it is likely some of our readers have never
read “Napier’s Life of Montrose,” we think
it may not be amiss to insert an extract descriptive
of the execution of that nobleman. It need
scarcely be mentioned that this is the famous
Graham of Claverhouse, whom Sir Walter Scott
has drawn with such fine effect in one of his best
novels.

It was resolved to celebrate his entrance into
Edinburgh with a kind of mock solemnity. Thus
on Sunday, the 18th of May, the magistrates met
him at the gates, and led him in triumph through
the streets. First appeared his officers, bound
with cords, and walking two and two; then was
seen the Marquis, placed on a high chair in the
hangman’s cart, with his hands pinioned, and his
hat pulled off, while the hangman himself continued
covered by his side. It is alleged in a
contemporary record, that the reason of his being
tied to the cart was, in hope that the people
would have stoned him, and that he might
not be able by his hands to save his face. In
all the procession there appeared in Montrose
such majesty, courage, modesty, and even somewhat
more than natural, that even these women
who had lost their husbands and children in
his wars, and were hired to stone him, were,
upon the sight of him, so astonished and moved,
that their intended curses turned into tears and
prayers. Of the many thousand spectators only
one, Lady Jane Gordon, Countess of Haddington,
was heard to scoff and laugh aloud. Montrose
himself continued to display the same serenity
of temper, when at last, late in the evening,
he was allowed to enter his prison, and
found there a deputation from the Parliament.
He merely expressed to them his satisfaction at
the near approach of the Sunday as the day of
rest.

[pg 349]

“For,” said he, “the compliment you put upon
me this day was a little tedious and fatiguing.”

Montrose told his persecutors that he was
more proud to have his head fixed on the top
of the prison walls than that his picture should
hang in the king’s bed-chamber, and that far
from being troubled at his legs and arms being
dispersed among the four principal cities, he only
wished he had limbs to send to every city in
Christendom, as testimonies of his unshaken
attachment to the cause in which he suffered.
When Sir Archibald Johnson of Warriston, the
Clerk-Register, entered the prisoner’s cell, and
found him employed, early in the morning, combing
the long curled hair which he wore according
to the custom of the cavaliers, the visitor
muttered:

“Why is James Graham so careful of his
locks?”

Montrose replied with a smile:

“While my head is my own, I will dress and
adorn it; but when it becomes yours, you may
treat it as you please.”

Montrose, proud of the cause in which he was
to suffer, clad himself, on the day of his execution,
in rich attire—“more becoming a bridegroom,”
says one of his enemies, “than a criminal
going to the gallows.” As he walked along,
and beheld the instrument of his doom, his step
was not seen to falter nor his eye quail; to the
last he bore himself with such steadfast courage,
such calm dignity, as had seldom been equaled,
and never surpassed. At the foot of the scaffold,
a further and parting insult was reserved for
him: the executioner brought Dr. Wishart’s
narrative of his exploits and his own manifesto,
to hang round his neck; but Montrose himself
assisted in binding them, and smiling at this new
token of malice, merely said:—“I did not feel
more honored when his majesty sent me the garter.”

He then asked whether they had any more indignities
to put upon him, and finding there were
none, he prayed for some time, with his hat before
his eyes. He drew apart some of the magistrates,
and spoke awhile with them, and then
went up the ladder in his red scarlet cassock, in
a very stately manner, and never spoke a word;
but when the executioner was putting the cord
about his neck, he looked down to the people
upon the scaffold, and asked:

“How long shall I hang here?”

His head was afterward affixed to a spike at
the top of the Tolbooth, where it remained a
ghastly spectacle, during ten years.

There is another execution scene, that of the
courtly and enterprising Walter Raleigh, not
usually accessible to general readers.

Sir Walter Raleigh, on the morning of his
execution, received a cup of sack, and remarked
that he liked it as well as the prisoner who drank
of St. Giles’s bowl in passing through Tyburn,
and said, “It is good to drink if a man might
but tarry by it.” He turned to his old friend,
Sir Hugh Ceeston, who was repulsed by the
sheriff from the scaffold, saying:

“Never fear but I shall have a place.”

When a man extremely bald pressed forward
to see Raleigh, and to pray for him, Sir Walter
took from his own head a richly embroidered
cap, and placing it on that of the aged spectator,
said:

“Take this, good friend, to remember me, for
you have more need of it than I.”

“Farewell, my lords,” he exclaimed to a
courtly group, who took an affectionate leave of
him; “I have a long journey before me, and
must say good-by.”

“Now I am going to God,” said he, as he
reached the scaffold; and gently touching the
ax, continued, “This is a sharp medicine, but it
will cure all diseases.”

The very executioner shrunk from beheading
one so brave and illustrious, until the unintimidated
knight encouraged him, saying:

“What dost thou fear? Strike, man!”

In another moment the great soul had fled
from its mangled tenement.

Next shall be related the story of the Tower
Ghost; “communicated by Sir David Brewster
to Professor Gregory,” and authentically recorded
in “Letters on Animal Magnetism?”

At the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1821, the
guards of the Tower were doubled; and Colonel
S——, the keeper of the Regalia, was quartered
there with his family. Toward twilight one
evening, and before dark, he, his wife, son, and
daughter were sitting, listening to the sentinels,
who were singing and answering one another, on
the beats above and below. The evening was
sultry, and the door stood ajar, when something
suddenly rolled in through the open space. Colonel
S—— at first thought it was a cloud of
smoke, but it assumed the shape of a pyramid
of dark thick gray, with something working toward
its centre. Mrs. S—— saw a form. Miss
S—— felt an indescribable sensation of chill and
horror. The son sat at the window, staring at
the terrified and agitated party; but saw nothing.
Mrs. S—— threw her head down upon her arms
on the table, and screamed. The Colonel took
a chair, and hurled it at the phantom, through
which it passed. The cloud seemed to him to
revolve round the room, and then disappear, as it
came, through the door. He had scarcely risen
from his chair to follow, when he heard a loud
shriek, and a heavy fall at the bottom of the stair.
He stopped to listen, and in a few minutes the
guard came up and challenged the poor sentry,
who had been so lately singing, but who now lay
at the entrance in a swoon. The sergeant shook
him rudely, declared he was asleep at his post,
and put him under arrest. Next day the soldier
was brought to a court-martial, when Colonel
S—— appeared on his behalf, to testify that he
could not have been asleep, for that he had been
singing, and the Colonel’s family had been listening,
ten minutes before. The man declared that,
while walking toward the stair-entrance, a dreadful
figure had issued from the doorway, which he
took at first for an escaped bear on its hind legs.
It passed him, and scowled upon him with a
[pg 350]
human face, and the expression of a demon, disappearing
over the Barbican. He was so frightened
that he became giddy, and knew no more.
His story, of course, was not credited by his
judges; but he was believed to have had an
attack of vertigo, and was acquitted and released
on Colonel’s S——’s evidence.

That evening Colonel S—— went to congratulate
the man, but he was so changed that he
did not know him. From a glow of rude health
in his handsome face, he had become of the
color of bad paste. Colonel S—— said to
him:

“Why do you look so dejected, my lad? I
think I have done you a great favor in getting
you off; and I would advise you in future to
continue your habit of singing.”

“Colonel,” replied the sentry, “you have saved
my character, and I thank you; but as for any
thing else, it little signifies. From the moment
I saw that infernal demon, I felt I was a dead
man.”

He never recovered his spirits, and died next
day, forty-eight hours after he had seen the
spectre. Colonel S—— had conversed with the
sergeant about it, who quietly remarked:

“It was a bad job, but he was only a recruit,
and must get used to it like the rest.”

“What!” said Colonel S——, “have you
heard of others seeing the same?”

“Oh, yes,” answered the sergeant, “there are
many queer, unaccountable things seen here, I
assure you, and many of our recruits faint a time
or two; but they get used to it, and it don’t hurt
them.”

“Mrs. S—— never got used to it. She remained
in a state of dejection for six weeks, and
then died. Colonel S—— was long recovering
from the impression, and was reluctant to speak
of it; but he said he would never deny the thing
he had seen.”

What explanation Sir David Brewster has
given of this singular apparition, the present writer
does not happen to know. We quote it for its
strangeness, and leave the reader to make of it
what he can. We proceed with a curious instance
of mental absence:

Lessing, the German philosopher, being remarkably
absent, knocked at his own door one
evening, when the servant looking out of the
window, and not recognizing him, said:

“The professor is not at home!”

“Oh, very well!” replied Lessing, composedly
walking away; “I shall call another time.”

There is an anecdote of successful coolness,
of earlier date, which will serve very well to accompany
the foregoing:

Charles II., after his restoration, appears,
according to custom, to have neglected his most
faithful adherent, Lord St. Albans, who nevertheless
was a frequenter of the court. One day,
when a gentleman had requested an interview
of his majesty to ask for a valuable office then
vacant, the king in jest desired the Earl of St.
Albans to personate him, which he did before
the whole court; but, after hearing the stranger’s
petition with an air of dignified authority, he said
that the office was by no means too great for so
deserving a subject. “But,” added the earl,
gravely, “I have already conferred it on my
faithful adherent, Lord St. Albans, who constantly
followed my father’s fortunes and my own,
having never before received any reward.” The
king was so amused by this ready jest that he
instantly confirmed the gift to his clever representative.

But we have yet a cooler thing (though somewhat
different in character) than either of the
preceding to bring forward, and which, if true, is
really one of the strangest incidents that could
happen in a man’s experience.

Barthe, a writer of French comedies, hearing
that his intimate friend Colardeau was on the
point of death, instantly hastened to the sick
man’s chamber, and finding him still in a condition
to listen, addressed him thus:

“My dear friend, I am in despair at seeing
you in this extremity, but I have still one favor
to ask of you; it is that you will hear me read
my ‘Homme Personnel.’”

“Consider,” replied the dying man, “that I
have only a few hours to live.”

“Alas! yes; and this is the very reason that
makes me so desirous of knowing what you think
of my play.”

His unhappy friend heard him to the end without
saying a word, and then in a faint voice, observed,
that there was yet one very striking feature
wanted to complete the character which he
had been designing.

“You must make him,” said he, “force a friend
who is dying to listen to a comedy in five acts.”

Our collector has treasured up two or three
tolerable anecdotes of that artfullest of “dodgers,”
Talleyrand, which, though not new to every body
are likely to have a novelty for some, and there
fore may bear quoting.

After the Pope had excommunicated him, he
is reported to have written to a friend, saying,
“Come and comfort me; come and sup with me.
Every body is going to refuse me fire and water;
we shall therefore have nothing this evening but
iced meats, and drink nothing but wine.” When
Louis XVIII., at the restoration, praised Talleyrand
for his talents and influence, the latter modestly
disclaimed the compliment, but added, with
an arch significance, “There is, however, some
inexplicable thing about me which prevents any
government from prospering that attempts to set
me aside.” The next is exquisitely diplomatic.
A banker, anxious about the rise or fall of stocks,
came once to Talleyrand for information respecting
the truth of a rumor that George III. had
suddenly died, when the statesman replied, in a
confidential tone, “I shall be delighted if the information
I have to give be of any use to you.”
The banker was enchanted at the prospect of obtaining
authentic intelligence from so high a
source; and Talleyrand, with a mysterious air
continued, “Some say the King of England is
dead; others, that he is not dead; for my own
part, I believe neither the one nor the other. I
[pg 351]
tell you this in confidence, but do not commit
me.” No better parody on modern diplomacy
could easily be written.

A Curious Page Of Family History.

The Chambellans were an old Yorkshire family,
which once had held a high place among
the landed gentry of the county. A knight of
that family had been a Crusader in the army of
Richard Cœur de Lion; and now he lay, with all
his insignia about him, in the parish church,
while others of his race reposed in the same
chancel, under monuments and brasses, which
spoke of their name and fame during their generation.
In the lapse of time the family had become
impoverished, and gradually merged into
the class of yeomen, retaining only a remnant of
the broad lands which had once belonged to them.
In 1744-5, the elder branch of the family, consisting
of the father, two sons, and a daughter,
resided at what had once been the mansion-house.
It had been built originally in the reign of Stephen,
and was a curious specimen of different
kinds of architecture, bearing traces of its gradual
transformation from the stronghold of the
days when it was no metaphor to say that every
man’s house was his castle, down to the more
peaceful dwelling of lawful and orderly times,
It had now become little more than a better sort
of farm-house. What had been the tilt-yard was
filled with a row of comfortable barns, cart-sheds,
and hay-stacks: a low wall of rough gray stones
inclosed a small garden: a narrow gravel walk,
edged on each side with currant-trees and gooseberry-bushes,
led up to the fine old porch, embowered
in the ivy and creepers which covered
nearly the whole of the building with its luxuriant
growth. The old gateway at the entrance
of the yard was still surmounted with the “coat
armor” of the family, carved in stone; but the
gates themselves had long ago disappeared, and
been replaced by a common wooden farm-yard
gate. The “coat armor” itself was covered with
moss, and a fine crop of grass and house-leek
grew among the stones of the walls, to which it
would have communicated a desolate appearance,
if the farm-yard arrangements had been less orderly.

Halsted Hall, as it was called, was six miles
from the city of York, and stood about a mile
from the main road. The only approach to it
was by a long rough lane, so much cut up by
the carts and cattle that it was almost impassable
to foot-passengers, except in the height of summer
or depth of winter, when the mud had been
dried up by the sun or the frost.

The father and brothers attended the different
fairs and markets in the ordinary course of business;
their sister, Mary Chambellan, managed
the affairs of the house and dairy. She led a
very secluded life, for they had no neighbors,
and of general society there was none nearer
than the city itself. Mary, however, had plenty
of occupation, and was quite contented with her
lot. She was nearly seventeen, tall, well-formed,
and with an air of composed dignity which suited
well with her position, which was of great responsibility
for so young a person. Her mother,
who had been dead rather more than a year, had
been a woman of superior education and strong
character. To her Mary owed all the instruction
she had ever received, and the tinge of refinement
which made her manners very superior
to those of either her father or brothers. She,
however, was quite unconscious of this, and they
all lived very happily together in the old out-of-the-way
place.

It happened that, in the spring of 1745, an
uncle of her mother’s, who resided at York, was
about to celebrate the marriage of one of his
daughters; Mary Chambellan, with her father and
brothers, were invited to the festivities. The
father would have sent an excuse for himself and
Mary; he was getting old, and did not like to be
put out of his usual ways. The brothers, however,
pleaded earnestly that their sister might
have a little recreation. Finally consent was
obtained, and she went with her brothers.

It was a very fine wedding, and a ball and
supper finished the rejoicings. Some of the officers,
quartered with their regiments in York,
were invited to this ball. Among others was a
certain Captain Henry Pollexfen. He was a
young man of good family in the south of England,
heir to a large fortune; and extremely
handsome and attractive on his own account, independent
of these advantages.

He was, by all accounts, a type of the fine,
high-spirited young fellow of those days; good-tempered,
generous, and overflowing with wild
animal life and spirits, which he threw off in a
thousand impetuous extravagances. He could
dance all night at a ball, ride a dozen miles to
meet the hounds the following morning, and, after
a hard day’s sport, sit down to a deep carouse,
and be as fresh and gay after it as if he had been
following the precepts of Lewis Cornaro. The
women contended with each other to attract his
attentions; but although he was devoted to every
woman he came near, and responded to their
universal good-will by flirting indefatigably, his
attentions were so indiscriminate, that there was
not one belle who could flatter herself that she
had secured him for her “humble servant”—as
lovers were then wont to style themselves. Mary
Chambellan was not, certainly, the belle of the
wedding ball-room, and by no means equal in
fortune or social position to most of the women
present; but whether from perverseness, or caprice,
or love of novelty, Henry Pollexfen was
attracted by her, and devoted himself to her exclusively.

The next York Assembly was to take place in
a few days; and this young man, who did not
know what contradiction meant, made Mary
promise to be his partner there. Old Mr. Chambellan,
however, who thought his daughter had
been away from home quite long enough, fetched
her back himself on the following day; and Mary
would as soon have dared to ask to go to the
moon as to remain to go to the assembly. Henry
Pollexfen was extremely disappointed when he
[pg 352]
found that Miss Chambellan had returned home;
but he was too much caressed and sought after
to be able to think long about the matter, and so
his sudden fancy soon passed away.

In the autumn of the same year he met one
of her brothers in the hunting field. Accident
threw them together toward the close of a hard
day’s run; when, in clearing a stone fence, some
loose stones were dislodged, and struck Captain
Pollexfen’s horse, laming him severely. Night
was coming on; it was impossible to return to
his quarters on foot; and young Chambellan invited
his fellow-sportsman to go home with him—Halsted
Hall being the nearest habitation.
The invitation was accepted. Although old Mr.
Chambellan would as soon have opened his doors
to a dragon; yet even he could find no fault
under the circumstances, and was constrained to
welcome their dangerous guest with old-fashioned
hospitality. He soon became so charmed with
his visitor, that he invited him to return, and the
visitor gladly did so.

His almost forgotten admiration for Mary revived
in full force the moment he saw her again.
He soon fell desperately and seriously in love
with her. Mary’s strong and gentle character
assumed great influence over his mercurial and
impetuous disposition. That she became deeply
attached to him was nothing wonderful; she
could scarcely have helped it, even if he had not
sought to win her affections.

In a short time, he made proposals of marriage
for her to her father, who willingly consented,
feeling, if the truth must be told, very much flattered
at the prospect of such a son-in-law.

Henry Pollexfen then wrote a dutiful letter to
his own father, telling him how much he was in
love, and how earnestly he desired permission to
follow his inclinations. Old Mr. Pollexfen had,
like many other fathers, set his heart upon his
son’s making a brilliant match; and although,
after consulting the “History of Yorkshire,”
where he found honorable mention made of the
Chambellan family, he could offer no objection
on the score of birth; yet he thought his son
might do better. He was too wise to make any
direct opposition; on the contrary, he gave his
conditional consent, only stipulating for time.
He required that twelve months should elapse
before the marriage took place, when his son
would be little more than two-and-twenty, while
Mary would be not quite nineteen. He wrote
paternal letters to Mary, and polite epistles to
her father. He even applied at head-quarters
for leave of absence for his son; whom he immediately
summoned up to London, where his
own duties, as member of parliament, would detain
him for some time.

Under any other circumstances, Captain Pollexfen
would have been delighted with this arrangement;
but, as it was, he would infinitely
have preferred being allowed to marry Mary at
once. However, there was no help for it. Old
Mr. Chambellan, himself urged the duty of immediate
obedience to his father’s summons, and
Pollexfen departed.

For many weeks his letters were as frequent
as the post would carry them. He was very
miserable under the separation; and, much as
she loved him, Mary could not wish him to be
otherwise. His regiment was suddenly ordered
abroad; the necessary hurry of preparation, and
the order to join his detachment at Canterbury
without delay, rendered it quite impossible for
Captain Pollexfen to see Mary before his departure.
He wrote her a tender farewell, sent her
his picture, and exhorted her to write frequently,
and never to forget him for an instant; promising,
of course, everlasting constancy for himself.

There was little chance that Mary should forget
him, in that old lonely house, without either
friends or neighbors. Besides, the possibility of
ceasing to love her affianced husband never occurred
to her. With Captain Pollexfen it was
different. Under no circumstances was his a
character that would bear absence unchanged;
and the distraction of foreign scenes, and the
excitement of his profession, soon banished the
image of Mary from his mind. At length he felt
it a great bore that he was engaged to be married.
The regiment remained sixteen months
absent, and he heartily hoped that she would
have forgotten him.

Mary’s father died shortly after her lover’s departure;
the family property descended to her
brothers, and she was left entirely dependent
upon them. Captain Pollexfen’s letters had entirely
ceased; Mary had received no communication
for more than six months, when she saw
the return of his regiment announced, and his
name gazetted as colonel. He, however, neither
came to see her, nor wrote to her, and Mary became
seriously ill. She could no longer conceal
her sufferings from her brothers. Under the impression
that she was actually dying, they wrote
to her lover, demanding the cause of his silence,
and telling him of her situation. Colonel Pollexfen
was conscience-stricken by this letter. He
declared to the brothers that he intended to act
as became a man of honor, and wrote to Mary
with something of his old affection, revived by
remorse; excusing his past silence, begging forgiveness,
and promising to go down to see her,
the instant he could obtain leave of absence.

Under the influence of this letter Mary revived;
but the impression made upon her future husband
soon passed away—he daily felt less inclination
to perform his promise. He was living in the
midst of fashionable society, and was more courted
than ever, since by the death of his father he
had come into possession of his fortune. He
began to feel that he had decidedly thrown himself
away; and by a most unnatural transition,
he hated Mary for her claims upon him and considered
himself a very ill-used victim.

Mary’s brothers, finding that Colonel Pollexfen
did not follow his letter, nor show any signs
of fulfilling his engagement, would not submit to
any more trifling. The elder made a journey to
London, and demanded satisfaction, with the intimation
that the younger brother would claim
[pg 353]
the same right when the first affair was terminated.

Colonel Pollexfen was not, of course, afraid
of having even two duels on his hands at once;
he had already proved his courage too well to
allow a suspicion of that sort. His answer was
characteristic. He told young Chambellan that
he was quite ready to meet both him and his
brother, but that he was under a previous engagement
to marry their sister, which he wished
to perform first, as otherwise circumstances might
occur to prevent it; he should then be quite at
their service, as it was his intention to quit his
bride at the church-door, and never to see her
again!

The brothers, looking upon this as a pretext
to evade the marriage altogether, resolved, after
some deliberation, to accept his proposal. They
had great difficulty in prevailing upon their sister
to agree to their wishes; but they none of them
seriously believed that he would carry out his
threat, and Mary fancied that all danger of a
duel would be evaded. A very liberal settlement
was drawn up by Colonel Pollexfen’s direction,
which he signed, and sent down to the bride’s
family. On the day appointed, Mary and her
brothers repaired to the church; a traveling chariot
and four horses stood at the door. On entering,
they found Colonel Pollexfen pointing out
to a friend who accompanied him the monuments
belonging to the Chambellan family. As soon
as he perceived them he took his place at the
altar, and the ceremony commenced without delay.
As soon as it was concluded, he bowed
with great politeness to all present, and said,
“You are all here witnesses that I have performed
my engagement!” Then, without even
looking at his bride, he quitted the church, and,
accompanied by his friend, entered the carriage
which was in waiting, and drove rapidly away!
Mary was carried senseless from the church,
and for several weeks continued dangerously
ill.

The real strength of her character now showed
itself. She made no complaint; she did not even
assume her husband’s name, but took the appellation
of Mrs. Chambellan. The settlement was
returned to Colonel Pollexfen’s lawyer, with an
intimation that it would never be claimed. She
stilled the anger of her brothers, and would not endure
a word to be said against her husband. She
never alluded to him herself. A great change
came over her; she did not seem to suffer nearly
so much from her cruel position as might have
been expected; her melancholy and depression
gave place to a steady determination of purpose.
In the brief space during which she and her husband
had stood before the altar, she had realized
the distance that existed between their positions
in life. With a rare superiority, she understood
how natural it was that he should have felt no
desire to fulfill his boyish engagement; she owned
in her heart that she was not fitted to be the
wife and companion of such a man as he had now
become. Had she seen all this sooner, she would
have at once released him; now she could no
longer do so, and she resolved to fit herself to fill
the station to which, as his wife, she had been
raised.

The brief interview before the altar had stimulated
to desperation her attachment to him: and
she felt that she must win him back or die.
Mary had received very little education. In those
days the education bestowed on most women was
very limited; but Mary fancied that all gentlewomen,
who moved in society, were well-informed;
and her first step was to obtain some elementary
books from the master of a boy’s school
at York, and begin, with undoubting simplicity,
to learn history and geography, and all the things
which she supposed every lady of her husband’s
acquaintance knew. A thirst for information was
soon aroused in her; she had few advantages and
very little assistance; but her energies and perseverance
surmounted all obstacles, and she found
a present reward in her labor. Her life ceased
to seem either lonely or monotonous. Still, the
spirit that worked within her was far more precious
than any actual result she obtained. She
had a noble object in view; and, unconsciously
to herself, it purified her heart from all bitterness,
or wounded vanity, or impatience. A great
sorrow nobly borne, is a great dignity. The very
insult which had seemed to condemn her to a
wasted existence, was transformed into a source
of life and fruitfulness, by the wise humility with
which she accepted it.

Ten years passed thus, and in the matured
woman of thirty, few could have recognized the
forsaken girl of nineteen. But the present only
fulfilled the promise which was then latent in her
character.

All this time her husband had endeavored to
forget that he was married. Shortly after the
ceremony, he went abroad with his regiment;
and after some time spent in active service, he
returned to England, and quitted the army with
the brevet rank of general. He resided partly
in London and partly in Bath, leading the usual
life of a man of fashion in those days, and making
himself remarkable for his brilliant extravagances.

About that time a young and beautiful actress
appeared, who speedily became the object of
adoration to all the young men of fashion about
town.

General Pollexfen was one of her lovers, and
carried her off one night from the theatre, when
she came off the stage between the acts. He
allowed her to assume his name, and lavished a
fortune upon her caprices; although her extravagance
and propensity to gambling involved him
in debt.

Ten years had thus passed, when the cousin,
whose marriage was mentioned at the beginning
of this story, was ordered to Bath by her physician.
She entreated Mary to accompany her,
who, after some persuasion, consented. It was
a formidable journey in those days, and they were
to stay some months. They found a pleasant
lodging. Mary, with some reluctance, was drawn
into society, and occasionally accompanied her
[pg 354]
cousin to the Assemblies, which were then in
high vogue.

General Pollexfen was absent from Bath when
his wife arrived there. He had been called up
to London by some lawyer’s business, and calculated
upon being absent three weeks.

It so chanced, however, that the business was
concluded sooner than he expected, and that
he returned to Bath without announcing his
coming. He went at once to the Assembly, and
was walking through the rooms in a chafed and
irritable mood (having that night discovered the
treachery of the beautiful actress, which had long
been known to every body else), when a voice
struck his ear which caused him to turn suddenly.
He saw, near at hand, a dignified and
beautiful woman, who reminded him of some one
he had seen before. She turned away on perceiving
him—it was Mary. She had recognized
her husband, and, scarcely able to stand, she took
the arm of her cousin, and reached the nearest
seat. Her husband, forgetting every thing else
in his impatience to learn who it was who had
thus startled vague recollections, went hastily up
to the Master of the Ceremonies, and desired to
be introduced to—his own wife!

By some fatality, the Master of the Ceremonies
blundered, and gave the name of Mary’s cousin.
This mistake gave Mary courage; for years she
had dreamed of such a meeting, and the fear of
losing the opportunity nerved her to profit by it.
She exerted herself to please him. He had been
rudely disenchanted from the graces of fine ladies,
and was in a humor to appreciate the gentle home
influence of Mary’s manners; he was enchanted
with her, and begged to be allowed to follow up
the acquaintance, and to wait upon her the next
morning. Permission was of course given, and
he handed Mary and her cousin to their chairs.

Mary was cruelly agitated; she had not suffered
so much during the ten preceding years;
the suspense and anxiety were too terrible to endure;
it seemed as though morning would never
come. Her husband was not much more to be
envied. He had discovered that she resembled
the woman he had once so much loved, and then
so cruelly hated—whom he married, and deserted;
but though tormented by a thousand fancied
resemblances, he scarcely dared to hope that it
could be she. The next day, long before the lawful
hour for paying morning visits, he was before
her door and obtained admittance. The resemblance
by daylight was more striking than it had
been on the previous evening; and Mary’s agitation
was equal to his own. His impetuous appeal
was answered. Overwhelmed with shame and
repentance, and at the same time happy beyond
expression, General Pollexfen passionately entreated
his wife’s forgiveness. Mary not only
won back her husband, but regained, with a
thousandfold intensity, the love which had once
been hers—regained it, never to lose it more!

The story soon became known, and created an
immense sensation. They quitted Bath, and retired
to her husband’s family seat in Cornwall,
where they continued chiefly to reside. They
had one son, an only child, who died when he
was about fifteen. It was an overwhelming affliction,
and was the one mortal shadow on their
happiness. They died within a few weeks of each
other; their honors and estates passing to a distant
branch of the family.