Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has, at a more advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance, to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is purged of its film;' and things the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having lost in vulgar occupation and vulgar amusements, his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth; 'The meanest floweret of the vale, We now take leave of this valuable work, which has renewed and extended all our previous impressions of the powerful talents of its distinguished author. There is enough, we venture to think, even in our slight sketch of its contents, to satisfy our readers that it is the production of a man who merits the highest praise, as well for his abilities as for the noble and virtuous sentiments by which he is animated. We have but little to add to the observations which have incidentally fallen from us, in our progress through the work, as to its general merits. Willing as we are, in works of great excellence, to leave censure to those who exult in the errors of superior minds as their appropriate and easy prey;'-we still feel ourselves bound in duty to state, that Mr. Stewart is often faulty in not sufficiently developing and connecting his ideas; that he often contents himself with hints and loose general remarks, when the subject required full and continuous elucidation; and that he rarely condescends to assist his reader by concisely stating the sum of what he proposes to prove, and the grounds and limits of his argument. His style is remarkable for its purity and elegance; for its harmonious flow and uniform majesty; but it is somewhat too diffuse and oratorical for pure metaphysical discussion; though it must at the same time he admitted, that it has lent graces and attractions to metaphysical inquiry which few writers have ever been able to communicate. ART. II. Confession du Général Buonaparté à l'Abbé Maury, &c. &c. dédiée au Général Kléber. Par le Général Sarrazin, &c. Egerton. 1811. THERE are, probably, few individuals in Europe whose com forts have not been, or may not be abridged by the all pervading influence of Buonaparte. There are none so insulated as to view him with indifference. His talents and his vices, his achievements and his crimes furnish matter not only of speculative inquiry, but of anxious meditation: and there is no passage of Buonaparte's life, nor any quality of his mind or temper, which does not excite in every reader of his history, in whatever part of the world, a silent and involuntary reference to future possible contingencies in which he may himself unhappily have a share. It is interesting to investigate the process, and to measure the steps by which an individual born in the humblest walks of private life has advanced from obscurity to the possession of the highest rank which fortune can bestow on human ambition; to mark the quick and dexterous audacity with which he has seized and profited by every advantage which a series of unexampled vicissitudes successively threw in his way; and to contemplate the skill with which he has recombined and consolidated all the elements of a mighty power which had been scattered abroad by the explosion of the revolutionary volcano. But it is doubly interesting to examine and calculate the means of mischief, which such a series of successes, however earned, has accumulated in the hands of this daring and prosperous adventurer, when we know that the destined employment of those means is for the destruction of this country; and that we must therefore be prepared to oppose to them, so long as his life shall endure, a vigilant and unintermitting resistance. Every publication, therefore, of whatever nature, or from whatever pen, which promises to afford a new insight into the actions and character of so extraordinary a man, offers a sure incentive to our curiosity. The anecdotes which have been collected, respecting Buonaparte are, as might be expected, almost innumerable. For a time, those only were sought which tended to indicate, in the youthful candidate for military fame, the future hero of Lodi, of Arcole, of Roveredo, &c.; his early vices were concealed; his wellknown ferocity glossed over; his ambition considered as the instinct of conscious superiority; and, so strong and durable was the illusion which his triumphs and his artifices had cast around him, that we scarcely know how to fix the date at which the persevering display of his malignant nature began to shame his admirers into silence. The The tide of popular opinion, indeed, appears, at length, to be effectually turned, and many indications concur to shew, that the indignant spirit of resentment, which has burst forth in the Spanish peninsula, is with difficulty repressed in many other parts of Europe. Indeed, we rather fear the too sudden and impatient display, than doubt the extent and sincerity of this feeling. That it is very general in France itself, can scarcely be questioned by those who consider the numberless privations imposed upon the people, the vexations of the police, and the multiplied miseries inflicted by the conscription. But public opinion will never subvert a military despotism. On the army alone, which raised their general to the throne, and continues to support him on it, must the stability of his power eventually depend. We are, therefore, much more anxious to acquire information respecting the temper of that army, and the characters and views of its principal officers, than to ascertain the degree of impatience with which a cruelly oppressed nation submits to slavery. We should also be glad to know exactly the degree of estimation in which the great military talents of Buonaparte (for great they unquestionably must be acknowledged to be) are held by the intelligent and unprejudiced companions of his triumphs; for the purpose of discovering how far he is indebted to this estimation, for the great ascendancy which he has acquired. It was not therefore without a very lively interest that we took up the publication of General Sarrazin: and although our reliance upon what we might find there was necessarily to be qualified by many obvious considerations arising from the peculiar circumstances under which the General presents himself to the notice of the British nation, we yet began the perusal of this performance with hopes which, we are sorry to say, have by no means been realized. Of the writer we know nothing beyond what is contained in his preface to this publication, and in his printed Answer to the Report addressed by General Clarke, to Buonaparte,' which last indeed, sufficiently shows the means which he had of collecting, from other generals in the French army, an account of every military transaction during the war in which he had not himself participated. But he has related some facts respecting which he confesses himself to be merely the echo of public opinion, and attempts to establish others, of which his own belief is by no means creditable to his judgment. Still, however, an account of Buonaparte's military life, written by one of his generals, must be an object of some interest. We will, therefore, present to our readers a short description of the volume before us, the composition of which is rather singular; the first part being a dialogue between Buonaparte and the Abbé Maury; the second a dialogue between Maury and Berthier; and the third an extract from a work, intended for publi C 4 cation, cation, under the title of Notes Biographiques;' the lives here sketched being those of Berthier, Buonaparte, and Kleber. The two dialogues form a sort of drama, of which this is the fable. Buonaparte, having retired to rest towards the close of the night of the 1st of July, when the splendid ball, given by the Prince of Schwartzenberg, was so unexpectedly terminated by a dreadful conflagration, is tormented by hideous dreams, in which he supposes himself to be struggling with assassins, and utters such piercing shrieks, that he ultimately dissipates his own slumbers, and so completely alarms the imagination of the empress, that she firmly convinces herself, and at last persuades him, that he is tormented by the devil, and can only hope for repose, in this world or the next, by going to confession. For this pious purpose the repentant Buonaparte repairs to the Abbé Maury, fully determined to reveal all his misdemeanours and to obtain absolution. This Confession, which occupies the first 118 pages, is interrupted by the entrance of the empress. The scene then changes to the anti-chamber, where Berthier had long been expecting an audience of his master, and where a second dialogue, carried on in a very different tone, but generally turning on nearly the same topics, takes place between the grand almoner and the master of the imperial buck-hounds. In the third part, which is of nearly the same length as each of the former, the author assumes the sober language of an historian; and the intention of this appendix is to shew, that of the three personages employed in his dialogues, two perform their parts in perfect consistency with their real characters; but he has not taken the trouble to inform us whether the change which has been wrought in the lively and eloquent Abbé Maury since his transformation into a cardinal and an archbishop, has really been so complete as to justify the representation which he gives of him; or whether he meant only to draw a biggotted and canting confessor, without much solicitude as to the fidelity of the individual resemblance. With this exception, we are not disposed to question the dramatic truth of his characters; nor to deny that some advantage to his object may possibly be derived from the whimsical mode in which he has thought fit to arrange his materials. He may, perhaps, entertain hopes of being able to disseminate his work amongst his brethren in arms, in addressing whom it is much more politic to adopt the language of ridicule than that of indignation. By employing the penitent sinner as his own biographer; by causing him to use his own habitual style, and to blend the most humiliating avowals with expressions of his characteristic haughtiness and petulance; by occasionally introducing an embarrassing question, where it was ne cessary, cessary, to justify a long discussion; and by availing himself of other obvious advantages which the contrast of different characters naturally afforded; the author has certainly contrived to effect his purpose with less fatigue to himself, and with more amusement to the reader, than could otherwise have been reasonably expected.But the pleasantry, such as it is, which results from the dramatic form of the work, is incapable of being transfused into an abstract; and as General Sarrazin has unfortunately thought fit to reserve, for a future publication, the most recent, and consequently most interesting parts of his hero's history, we must content ourselves, for the present, with the somewhat tiresome task of repeating many facts which have long been known, for the sake of the comments with which they are accompanied. We believe that the early part of Buonaparte's life is related in strict conformity to truth. He received the first rudiments of education at the military school at Brienne, from whence he was removed to that of Paris, and began his career of service in the first regiment of artillery. Whilst poor, and a subaltern, he was a model of submission to military discipline and subordination; and devoted his whole time and attention to the unremitting study of his profession. The exploit which introduced him to public notice, was his pitiless execution of the orders of Barras and Fréron against the wretched inhabitants of Toulon; in consequence of which he obtained, in 1794, an employment on the staff of the army of Italy. His hopes being thus raised, he gave a loose to his turbulent ambition; criticised the talents of the general, and of all the superior officers whom he wished to supplant, and gave so much offence that, notwithstanding his protestations of Jacobinism, and of zeal for the good cause, he was arrested on suspicion of treason, and, though liberated, reduced to half pay, and compelled to go to Paris for the purpose of soliciting his restoration. This was the peTiod of his greatest distress; but became the source of his subsequent elevation. Never were the several factions, by which Paris aud the Republic were agitated, more nicely balanced than in 1795; never were their respective projects and means, and the characters of their leaders more easily discoverable, than at the moment when Buonaparte, whose natural sagacity was quickened by the excess of his misery, became a spectator of the busy scene, without any other occupation than that of meditating on the different roads which the approaching crisis might offer to his ambition. The Convention had confided to Barras their power over the whole military force. Barras, who had witnessed the conduct of Buonaparte at Toulon, when the period arrived at which the troops were to be called into action against the refractory sections of |