through the loose sand and stony pavement of the Arabian desert, or breaking forth at the grassy foot of a grove-crowned hill, the fountains of the earth are inviting objects of contemplation, through their association with the ideas of purity and benevolence, independently of being beautiful parts of natural scenery. Hence we may sympathize with the sentiment that inspired the ancient songs of the Well, and regard as an appropriate homage, when under due restraints, that principle of veneration for the waters which pervaded the mind of all antiquity, and has survived in some rural customs to the present day. Milton, in his Comus, alludes to the honors formerly paid to the Severn: "The shepherds at their festivals Carol her good deeds loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream, Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils." There is an elegant custom still observed by the villagers of Tissington, in Derbyshire, of a similar kind-that of dressing their wells with flowers on Ascension day. There are five copious springs issuing out of the limestone, which are decorated with boughs of laurel and white thorn, interspersed with the flowers of the season, arranged in various patterns and inscriptions. The effect is singularly beautiful; and the procession of the peasantry to sing at each well-a graceful usage handed down from a remote age-forms a very agreeable spectacle. THE three potentates of the ballad who had buried | Corsica! Pulpits, books, pamphlets and newspapers the famous old "king of grain," and thought they held up the emperor as something to be feared and had seen and heard the last of him, were not possibly hated; and little children, whenever they were told more taken aback at the reappearance of that bearded that "Bony was coming," would go howling into blade, than are these other kings of the East just garrets and coal-cellars for safety. It was only after now, at the apparition of the "Emperor Napoleon" Napoleon was dead and gone that people began to at the head of three or four hundred thousand armed have moderate notions of him, and to recognize him men! They thought, when they had hewn him as no worse than the other respectable homicides→ down, put the clods of St. Helena on his head, and the Alexanders, Hannibals, Cæsars, and so forth. sworn at Verona that he was defunct, there was an Nay, things have been for some time latterly run. end of him. But here he is again-"with a differ-ning to the other extreme; and we have histories of ence." His portentous aspect perplexes them with fear of change; though they still can comfort themselves with the idea that he has already overthrown two world renowed republics. About half a century ago, when the emperor of the French first became a great fact, mighty was the dread inspired by his name in the homes of the British isles. Napoleon was synonymous with every thing alarming and diabolical. The young were taught to consider him a cruel ogre who had cut off the heads of the king and queen of France, and went about with "Fee fa fum; I smell the blood of an Englisman!" He was pointed out in the Revelations some proved he was the monster with seven heads and ten horns-and preachers solemnly alluded to him in the pulpits. His name was taken up and examined, and, whether broken into syllables, or turned into anagram-not "mild anagram," by any means-the name of a fiend or a beast was always plainly discoverable. We remember to have seen some such dreadful dividings and interpretings. There was "Apollyon. The N being taken away, you had the undeniable name of the demon-as pronounced-near enough, diabolically speaking, for all useful purposes! When "Nap" was removed there was left "O Leon!"-a lion a wild beastgoing about seeking whom he may devour! The "Eon" or "Eon," was an emanation-a spiritthat is to say, an evil spirit. However twisted, "Napoleon" was awful, and the man himself had, in fact, been seen in Patmos before he was seen in Napoleon, of the imaginative order, representing him as the splendid hero, with a great many showy virtues-saying and doing many more fine things than he ever did in his life. He is made melodra. matic and highly attractive to the juvenile and general tastes. Formerly it was the custom to "point a moral," as it is now to" adorn a tale," with him and his fate. They used to say it was the retri. bution of Heaven which demolished his dynasty. But the moralists were apparently mistaken-seeing that Providence has been bringing it back again. It is but too common to take portions, acts as it were, of the great providential drama for the whole. "That bloody and most bootless Waterloo" has been countervailed-its results nullified. The thousands upon thousands died there in vain to settle the Bourbon dynasty in France and drive the Napo leonic away forever; and it is curious to consider that just as the Duke of Wellington was going down to sleep beside Nelson, in the vault of St. Paul's, the "Emperor Napoleon" was, virtually, once more in Paris, with the strong will and the military means to continue those plans which the British generalis. simo had fought so vigorously to overthrow! Destiny has, doubtless, preserved the Bonaparte family for some great revolutionary ends in Europe-such as we shall begin to guess at, presently, when Louis Napoleon will attempt to push the French frontiers to the Rhine, and Leopold be heard from Belgium calling the Holy Alliance to the rescue. A wonderful race, certainly, these Bonapartes the most remarkable family of modern times; or, indeed, of any times! They first appeared like petrels in a great European tempest, "to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm;" they disappeared in the hush of society that followed the close of the Napoleonic wars; and lo! we have had them lately crowding abroad again at the noise of one more mighty commotion of the elements! For good or for evil-and, being believers in the unvanquished principle of progress, we think the good must predominate the Bonapartes will be greatly identified with the history of this whole century. It is curious to trace their origin and rise, in the last, and the course of their meteoric chief between the island of his cradle and that of his temporary grave. The egg-shaped island of Corsica—about one hundred miles long by forty-five broad-became, in the course of ages, the home of a strangely mixed population derived from the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Saracens, Germans, Gauls and Italians, who had possessed or overrun it in turn. Seneca, who lived in it for some time, says it was famous for its atheists, brigands, fillibusters and such wild folk, as well as for its honey. In the eighteenth century it was in the possession of Genoa. In 1730, the Corsicans being extremely turbulent, the Genoese sold them and their island, in God's name, to France; as Isabella the Fat, for instance, should sell us the island of Cuba and have done with it But the angry islanders would not be sold. They fell into a violent state of chronic insurrection that puzzled the purchasers a good deal. In 1753, or thereabouts, the Corsicans chose a king—a fleeting, shadowy personage whom we remember best in connection with the Spectator-King Theodore. He left his island in disgust-as Sancho Panza did his island of Barataria-and as little cumbered with worldly goods, and came to London. There he became bankrupt, and when put into the king's-bench and being asked for a schedule of his effects, gave "the kingdom of Corsica!" Poor Theodore died in London, and the French, at last, drove out the famous patriot Pascal Paoli (the friend of Johnson and Boswell) and succeeded in bringing the isle, in 1769, under the dominion of France. Little did Louis XV. or Choiseul -the minister who had exerted himself so much to get the island-dream of the new-born subject who, that very year, came squalling into the circle of the monarchy! The king of France rejoiced that Corsica was his own, just as Madame Letitia Bonaparte was bringing Napoleon into the world to sit, one day, on that Capetian throne of his. The seizure of Corsica by Louis was, in fact, as full of evil omen for his race as the winning of the spoils of Pallas was of old for the Latian Turnus. Nescia mens hominum fati sortisquæ future! as Dan Virgil says. Poor King Theodore, in his pauper's grave, was astonishingly avenged, and by the son, too, of his sometime friend, Signor Carlo, the lawyer of Ajaccio. That period was pregnant with remarkable men and things. Most people were saying just then, that it was a period and prospect of platitudes-all the mighty picturesque of history and homicide had gone by—the day of great characters was over! Just as they talk now, since Webster and the others are gone. But great men will be "living after the Agamemnons," and the earthquakes will come. There was one in the British Isles the other day, and one in New England the other night!* The close of the nineteenth century will be as full of wonderful things as was that of the eighteenth. In 1789, when the grievances of a thousand years sprang up simultaneously for redress in France, Carlo Bonaparte had been four years in his grave, and Madame Letitia, then thirty-six years old, kept her family of eight children at Ajaccio, where her half-brother, the Abbé Fesch, also lived with them, and, doubtless, shared his income with his straightened relatives. They formed a fateful household circle-wearing invisibly, as it were, their future crowns and coronets. The eldest was Giuseppe, (the names were afterward Frenchified) about twenty-three years old, a lawyer like his father; the second, Napolione, two years younger, who had been educated at the military academy of Brienne, and was now "a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere" "A very young soldier of the king, It is curious to consider Napoleon a poor officer of King Louis; more curious to consider what his life might have been if the Bourbons had held their own. He would probably have become a general of great skill; but rather discontented, and unpopular with his superiors. The third of the Bonapartes was Luciano, a spirited young scholar from the college of Autun-full of grand ideas of liberty and republicanism; the next, Marianna-afterward Eliza; the next, Luigi-who never dreamed he was to be the father of the emperor of 1853; and then came the three youngest: Maria Annonciada—afterward Pauline, Caroline, and Gierolamo-the present dissatisfied uncle, and the only survivor of the "giant brood" which first chipped their shells in that old nest of Ajaccio! All the family were friendly to the first French Revolution. They could scarcely be otherwiseseeing that they were nurtured on the traditions of rebellion, which lingered round all the hills and hearthstones, and breathed in the very atmosphere of poor, old, fighting Corsica, with her Theodores, and her Paolis, and her forty years or so of cut-andthrust, and general hot water! Father Carlo had, now and then, flourished a good Ferrara with the aforesaid chiefs; and had bequeathed it, in a raving manner on his feverish death-bed, to his second son, who would be nothing but a soldier. While Luciano astonished the folks at Ajaccio with his grand harangues about liberty, the rights of man, and the no *Our readers, of course, know that we allude to the actual, unfigurative earthquake which took place in England in October, and those subsequent shocks experienced in several parts of New England on the inidnight between the 26th and 27th of November last. "Come, madam," retorted he, smiling, "let these good citizens here decide which of us both seems the better fed." A mighty shout of French laughter came to put down the Amazon along with the rest of the sans culottes, and the triumph of the young chief was complete at all points on that remarkable day. ble doings of the National Assembly-and Guiseppe, | the trembling Directory that he would settle this the eldest, participated in the enthusiasm of the time disagreeable business, if they would only leave it to in a more measured way-the Lieutenant Napolione, him! And they did. He then drew out his great who had got leave of absense, would take long, guns and his cavalry, and with sabre-strokes and the lonely walks about the rugged island, reading Plu- remorseless grape swept out of the streets of the tarch, and building castles in the air, and also find capital the last popular outbreak of the First revolutime to write essays on various subjects-the "Re- tion! volutions of Corsica" among the rest-which he for- "Down with those full-fed aristocrats, who don't warded, full of hope, to the redoubtable demagogue- | feel for the poor people!" cried a burly poissarde, aristocrat Mirabeau. In 1792, the musing and thread-shaking her big head and fist at the thin, sallow bare young lieutenant was in Paris, and, walking general, as he sat on horseback, in the commotion. one day about the streets with Bourrienne, witnessed the attack of the mob on the palace of the Tuileries. The spectacle stirred up his blood a good deal: he regarded the helplessness of the king with disgust, and felt that with a regiment of cavalry, and a carronade or so, he could sweep that outrageous tag-rag and bobtail to the devil! Three years later, he carried out a similar idea in grand style. But he now came back to Ajaccio, and began to ask himself what sort of a people these French were, after all; and, in 1793, he was summoned to take his first decisive step in life. In that year, Corsica was thrown into a ferment by the return of Paoli-who hoisted once more the flag of independence. But the times were changed. He brought the English with them -these instruments of Pitt, then regarded as "L'ennemi du genre humain," the enemy of the human race. That movement will never do! The Bonapartes are now French, and will have nothing to say to Paoli-with British bayonets at his side, and British gold in his pocket. Young Napoleon murmurs, moodily, "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes ;" and, So, to escape the hostility of the new masters of the island, the Napoleonidæ, with their penates, leave their ancestral home forever, and throw themselves into the arms of France-or rather seize it in their own; as Norman William seized England when he fell on his face on the shore at Pevensey. The continent was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, with the lieutenant for their guide. They could not have had a better. The Bonapartes were now on the grand march to glory. Barras sends for the conqueror of the sections, introduces the widow Beauharnois with her fascinating black eyes, hints she would make a very good wife, and says the army of Italy wants a commander. People declare that Barras should marry Josephine himself, and so forth. But what does that signify to the young man? Bah! let him but have that army-let him but clutch that military truncheon, and he will gladly marry the widow (who is, indeed, a very charming woman of 33, only six years his senior, with a charming boy and girl. The matter was agreed on. They were married; and very soon the ardent bridegroom was fighting in the heart of Italy against the Austrian generals and the elements; overcoming both, out of all rule of regulated warfare, and bringing that classic old peninsula in one campaign to the feet of the Five Hundred, in a continued storm of victory! In that year, 1796, the English left Corsica with curses to the French, and then Joseph and Lucien were returned as Deputies to the Council from their native island. Napoleon was now looked on as the best general of the republic; and the reception he met with in Paris, on his return from Italy, resembled one of the ovations of The mother and her family took up their residence the Roman generals in the old time. But his very at Marseilles, while the young soldier went pioneer- celebrity made him an object of alarm to the Direcing their way to fortune with his Toulon guns and history. They knew he was the idol of his army as sword. Joseph, who was now (1794) a war commissary, married Mademoiselle Clary, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of the city. Meantime, Napoleon was made a general of brigade. But on the fall of Robespierre, to whose party he and his brother were attached, the Bonapartes were suspected and thrown out of employment for a time, during which the poor young general thought of going away to fight for the Grand Turk. He had very little money in those days, used to lodge in garrets, living from hand to mouth, and write to Talma, the tragedian, congratulating him on his lucky profession and asking for the loan of a trifle. "But via the cloud that shadowed Borgia!" The terrible day of Vendemiaire came, in 1795, bringing out the swarming and fire-breathing sections for another hurly-burly-and Napoleon Bonaparte was there, to the fore, to tell well as the favorite of the people, and feared the influence he might exercise on the government. They resolved to remove to a distance a man so charged with peril to themselves, and sent him to Egypt-an exercise of power for which he repaid them on his return! In the shadow of the Pyramids, he had sternly resolved on the fate of these bungling Direc tors! Eliza Bonaparte had now married Captain Bacchiochi, a Corsican gentleman; and the gay Pauline, the spoiled pet and beauty of the family, had made a love-match with General Leclerc, who won her from a crowd of adorers. In 1799, all the Bonapartes-Madame Mere at their head-migrated from Marseilles to Paris, and along with them came a troop of poor relations, hungry and high-hearted, and wondering what that good Napolione was going to |