Concluding Observations. 1 19 



appealed to divine omens when he was about to pass 

 the Kubicon. Napoleon once was as vehement in 

 professing the religion of Mahomet as Simon Peter 

 was in denying Him in whose service he died a 

 martyr ; but some of the most interesting passages 

 in biography describe the fallen Emperor, towards 

 the close of the last of three periods into which his 

 chequered life has been divided, bearing strong testi- 

 mony to the influence of Christianity on the world 

 at large, and contrasting his own power, when 

 highest, and that of other founders of kingdoms, 

 Avith what that Religion had already achieved from 

 an origin which appeared most unlikely. "Who 

 knows how powerfully the teachings of his infancy, 

 of which he sometimes spoke, were secretly working 

 in a spirit by nature peculiarly intense ? 



The popular idol, Sir Walter Scott, at a trying time, 

 when he deeply felt the want of human sympathy, 

 and was thinking more of realities than of fiction or 

 romance, found not a little consolation in the belief 

 (which advanced science teaches to be at least quite . 

 possible, if not probable) that the spirits of even hu- 

 man friends who have disappeared from this life have, 

 wherever they are, still lively interest in our welfare. 

 On his return to Abbotsf ord, after a short unavoidable 

 absence, he found the lifeless body of Lady Scott, 

 from whom he had parted but a few days before. 

 He describes himself as lonely, aged, and embar- 

 rassed, impoverished, deprived of the sharer of his 

 thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down his 



