260 ST. HELENA. 



quailed, are now tenanted by cart-horses ! Passing on I entered 

 a small chamber, with two windows looking towards the north. 

 Between these windows are the marks of a fixed sofa ; on that 

 couch Napoleon died. The apartment is now occupied by a 

 threshing machine. Hence we were conducted onwards to a 

 large room, which formerly contained a billiard-lable, and whose 

 front looks out upon a little latticed veranda, where the imperial 

 peripatetic enjoyed the luxury of six paces to and fro — his fa- 

 vourite promenade. The white-washed walls are scorrrd with 

 names of every nation, and the paper of the ceiling has been 

 torn off in strips, as holy relics. Many couplets, chiefly French, 

 extolling and lamenting the departed hero, adorn or disfigure 

 (according to their qualities) the plaster walls. 

 "The emperor's once well-kept garden, 



'AmJ still where many a garden-flower grows wild,' 

 is now overgrown and choked with weeds. At the end of a 

 walk still exists a small mound, on which it is said the hero of 

 Lodi, Marengo, and Auslerlitz, amused himself by erecting a 

 mock battery. The little chunamed tank, in which he fed some 

 fiesh-water fish, is quite dried up; and the mud wall, through 

 a hole in which he r-cconnoitered the passers-by, is, like the great 

 owner, returned to earth | 



" About half an acre round the grave is railed in. At the gate 

 we were received by an old corporal of the St. Helena corps, 

 who has the care of the place. The tomb itself consists of a 

 stpiare stone, about Wn feet by seven, surrounded with a plain 

 iron railing. Four or five weeping willows, their stems leaning 

 towards llie grave, hang their pensile branches over it. » * * 

 The willows are decaying fast, and one of them rests upon the 

 sharp spears of tiie railing, which are buried in its trunk — as 

 tliough it were committing suicide for very grief? The foliage 

 of the rest is thinned and disfigured by the frequent and almost 

 excusable depredations of visitors. Fresh cuttings, have how- 

 ever, been planted by the governor, who intends, moreover, to 

 set cypresses round the outer fence." 



