the boundless Atlantic, an island bristling with bayonets, hedged with sentinels all around its precipitous cliffs, intersected with chains of military posts, guard-houses and patrols, and surrounded by a fleet of the swiftest cruisershow idle must it be to say that his escape from France was impossible, and his surrender in no sense and in no degree voluntary! For our parts, we consider it to have been so easy, that no difficulty lay in the way but his indomitable pride, which would consent to no sacrifice of his personal dignity. Had he resembled Louis Philippe and Pio Nono, rather than Charles X., he might, as Mr. Jones, or Smith, or Brown, or as Chawles Yellowplush, have reached in safety the shores of this universal asylum for the defeated and expelled, flared up into a noisy distinction like Kossuth and other temporary lions among us, and fretted out his weary life afterwards in peaceful exile.

Again; while we admit that his imprisonment was necessary to the peace of the world, and that the example of Elba gave good reason for extreme caution in his safe-keeping, still we allege that his captivity was, in many circumstances of detail, designedly embittered and uselessly severe; a course of treatment as impolitic as it was cruel and unjust.

We acknowledge that his place of confinement was well chosen; but why the insulting show of disarming him, depriving him of money, subjecting him to domiciliary visits? Nor should he have been conveyed to his desolate prison until it was made ready for his reception; until a comfortable house was chosen or built; a lodging decent for the accommodation of one accustomed to the usages of European life. We are told that on landing, after a voyage of many weeks, nothing was arranged for him; that he could not even obtain a bath; and that the repairs of the miserable cottage assigned him, continued to annoy him, nearly to the conclusion of his wretched existence.

England kept him in durance as a prisoner of war most absurdly in a time of profound peace; a special act of Parliament, however, was passed to define his status, which was still left, curiously enough, undefined, and her inconsistency confessed in her acquiescence in the appointment of Com

missioners by the Allied Powers, who obviously regarded him as a prisoner of state under their supervision. Admitting them formally upon the island, she still repelled their interference on every occasion, and discouraged every effort to visit or recognize him on their parts, with a jealousy tenacious, captious and ultimately successful; for they all left the place without having once seen their protege or victim. This jealousy of all friendly, indifferent, or even supervisory notice of him, manifested itself in every possible manner. Mr. Balcombe, suspected of not being sufficiently unfriendly to him, is driven from the island, and the firm, of which he was a member, required to expunge his name from their contracts. Capt. Lutyens was reproved and superseded for a most passive act of ordinary civility. Capt. Poppleton is strongly censured "for betrayal of the confidential trust reposed in him," because of the inference, that he had not treated Bonaparte savagely enough, drawn from the fact that he had received from him, or some one about him, the parting present of a snuff-box; and that he reported this to Lord Bathurst and not to the Governor. If any of his attendants, or even one of the medical men permitted to visit him, stated that he was indisposed or his health impaired, offence was obviously taken at once, and insinuations thrown out against the honesty, capacity and truthfulness of the unlucky reporter. These are carefully reproduced by Mr. Forsyth, and, with most absurd reiteration, urged ignorantly and ridiculously against O'Meara, Stokoe and Antommarchi, in particular.

As to the obstinate refusal of the title of Emperor to Napoleon, we simple republicans cannot read the story without mingled pity and contempt. The stereotyped rank of General, which was thrust pertinaciously upon him, was chosen without any reason whatever. He had been a General, it is true; but so he had been Lieutenant, when he first made himself felt at Toulon. The best comment upon the truculent folly of England in this particular, may be found in her present quiet recognition of "the Nephew of my Uncle"Louis Napoleon, as Napoleon the Third, Emperor of France or of the French. Rome made it her proud boast, "debellare

superbos, parcere subjectis;" but whom has England ever spared? Her instinct, her universal habit, is to rob, rend and trample. God protect us all from her mercy or her justice!

This little but bitter trifling, is probably to be attributed to Lord Bathurst, then at the head of Government; but we shall see how promptly, nay eagerly, he was seconded by his several subordinates. In the memoranda for Sir Geo. Cockburn, whose best claim to the selection as first jailor, was his piratical conduct in the Chesapeake during our war of 1812, the prisoner is called General Bonaparte. In the Admiral's reply to Bertrand's first note, he ludicrously declares that he has "no cognizance of any Emperor being on the Island ;" and afterwards, that he has "no knowledge of the person designated Emperor!" Upon this Forsyth sagely remarks: "there is some affectation in this letter; we can only smile at Sir G. C.'s doubts as to who was meant by the Emperor;" and acknowledges that, "upon the question of the Imperial title, it is difficult to refute the arguments used by Napoleon in favour of his right to be styled Emperor." Going on to assert that "we had not recognized that title when he was on the throne of France," he adds, with the most innocent simplicity, "it cannot be doubted that if he had been willing at any time to make peace, England would have treated with him in his character of Emperor" and afterwards, with an inconsistency equally simple and innocent, and self-contradictory-"indeed, she did so at Chatillon, in 1814."

All parties among his jailors seem to have enjoyed the fretfulness of their captive upon this tender subject, and played upon it with the feeling of the coachman who exults in having "established a raw." It is not possible otherwise to account for Lord Bathurst's unwillingness to evade the difficulties. presented continually in this question of title,-the interruption to correspondence, the mutual irritation, the ever-recurring discussion-by acquiescing in Bonaparte's proposal to assume an incognito, and employ some indifferent name, Baron Duroc or Col. Meudon. Nor can we exculpate Sir Hudson Lowe from the imputation of carrying this

point into more offensive extremes than any one else. Besides protesting formally, in a letter to Bertrand, against his use of the Imperial title, on the unintelligible ground, that "it was in contravention of the principle on which the French were allowed to stay on the Island," and threatening, for the same reason, to cease all correspondence with Count Montholon, he takes several minute occasions to pick an incidental and most irrelevant quarrel on the subject. Was he forgetful or false, when, in after life, he declares that "the importance of this matter had been exaggerated," and that "there was much less difficulty and embarrassment about the title," than had been asserted. Even Forsyth acknowledges what he calls "his error" here. But the widest charity cannot regard it as a mere error; his memory is not apt to be so unretentive or treacherous; nor was he quite so dull or wanting in sensitiveness on his own part. He must have become ashamed of his captious tenacity. When Mr. Hobhouse sent his recently published book, with every formal caution, to Bonaparte, Sir Hudson withheld it, because it contained the brief inscription, "Imperatori Napoleon." When Antommarchi arrives from Europe to assume the care of the illustrious patient, Sir Hudson chides him roughly for calling him, in the most incidental manner, "the Emperor" the dying lion must be spoken of as the inferior beast in whose skin they have thought fit to envelope him. And even when he is dead, the asinine kick is given to his remains with impotent malice.

When nearly approaching his end, Bonaparte expressed a desire to offer some token of grateful or kind feeling to the officers of the 20th Regiment, then keeping guard over him, as having shown some soldierly reluctance to inflict any avoidable annoyance upon a great Captain. He begged Dr. Arnott to present them, on his behalf, with certain English books from his small library. These books Dr. A. placed in the hands of the orderly officer of the day, Captain Lutyens, who received them for his comrades. We alluded above to the fact that Captain L., for simply accepting the books thus offered, was subjected to harsh and offensive reproof from Major Jackson, contained in a letter, written, says For

syth, "with the knowledge and full approval of Sir Hudson Lowe;" doubtless by his dictation; and the books were ordered to be refused and returned, because "it unfortunately happened," these are the advocate's own words-" it unfortunately happened that the Imperial title was written in them." Montholon prepares for the coffin of the lifeless Napoleon an inscription, touchingly simple, and, as it would seem, of style and brevity unobjectionable:

-NAPOLEON

Né à Ajaccio le 15 Aout 1769,

Mort à St. Hélène le 5 Mai 1821.

Sir Hudson tells us himself, that he rejected it as it was; but offered to admit it on the condition that the word "Bonaparte" should be added after "Napoleon."

It is to be remembered, that we are not writing of times and conditions in which physical or mechanical torture was of possible infliction upon a prisoner. Humanity has made progress definitely beyond this point. We say this, to be sure, with some misgivings, when we remember the English system of impressment, and her then recent treatment of Americans in the pandemonium of Dartmoor; but still we may trust that it is substantially true. Tamerlane could not now make a show of Bajazet in his cage; and a Haynau, fulfilling the orders of his master in degrading woman by corporal punishment, is held in universal horror and detestation, and hardly escapes with his life from the resentment even of London brewers and draymen. But the same advance in civilization which sets us above the gag, the mask and the chain, of former days, has refined the sensibilities and elevated the standard of comfort, mental and bodily. Paying the highest regard to the social position, so long held by and accorded to the illustrious person now discrowned and in hopeless captivity, we are not prepared to see him stopped by a sentinel in his melancholy stroll about the grounds allotted to him; kept always in sight by some of his guards; visited twice in the twenty-four hours, whether sick or well; restrained in the possession of money; forbidden to speak with any one whom he might meet, except in presence of a