LON 
fbtr.ebody to kill him. If we may believe the Paris pa¬ 
pers, this was the wife opinion of his favourite mamaluke. 
Rouftan. This perfonage, it feems, being of a very lofty 
mind, as is the cuftoin with valets, and of a very delicate 
fenfe of honour, as is the characteriftic of mamalukes, en¬ 
tered his mailer’s chamber at Fontainebleau, after carefully 
fliarpening a fword, and addreffed him in the following 
terms : 
Mam. Sir, after what has happened, of courfe you will 
not choofe to live. I have brought you my fword. Will 
you ufe it yourfelf, or iliall I pafs it through your body ? 
I am ready to obey your commands. 
Napol. It does not appear to me that either of thefe 
alternatives is neceflary. 
Mam. (with aftonilhment.) Neither! What! can you 
endure life after fach a reverie ? Then pray difpatch me 
with rhe fame weapon, or difmifs me from your fervice; 
for I will not live under fuch difgrace.—So faying, the 
mamaluke, without waiting either to be difpatched or dif- 
mified, haughtily leaves the room. 
We have been induced to fay a word or two more upon 
this point by the publication of an Ode to Napoleon, at¬ 
tributed to lord Byron, and bearing indeed evident marks 
of his (IVong w.ay of putting things. In this poem, 
among other ltanzas alluding to the fubjeil, are the fol¬ 
lowing i 
’Tis done—but yeilerday a king, 
And arm’d with kings to drive— 
And now thou art a namelefs thing; 
So abjeft— yet alive ! 
Is this the man of thoufand thrones, 
Who brew’d our earth with hodile bones? 
And can he thus furvive ) 
Since he, mifcall’d the Morning Star, 
Nor man, nor fiend, hath fall’n fo far. 
Ar.d earth has fpilt her blood for him, 
Who thus can hoard his own ! 
And monarchs bow’d the trembling limb. 
And thank’d him for a throne ! 
Fair Freedom ! We may hold thee dear. 
When thus thy mightied foes their fear 
In humbled guile have drown ! 
Oh ! ne’er may tyrant leave behind 
A brighter name to lure mankind ! 
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore 
Nor written thus in vain— 
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more. 
Or deepen every bain—• 
If thou hadb died as honour dies. 
Some new Napoleon might arife. 
To fiiame the world again— 
But who would foar the folar height. 
To fet in fuch a'darlefs night ? 
The conclufion .of this lad ftanza is poetically put, and fo 
are feveral of the conclufions of others. But what is to 
be underbood by dying “ as honour dies ?” Is it in battle, 
or on the fcafFold, or by his own hand ? For many 3n 
honourable man has died in battle, many a one on the 
fcafFold, and many a one (mibakenly, as modern wifdom 
has thought) by his own hand. But honour has alfo made 
its exit very quietly on occafion ; and by which of thefe 
deaths was Napoleon to perform what he promifed, and 
prove that “ adverfity was not too much for him ?” There 
is the point. As to thofe who pretend to think that Na¬ 
poleon would have done better in any kind of death, fo 
that he had died fomehow, we have no hefitation in at¬ 
tributing it either to bseer ignorance of human nature and 
its trials, or to their ulual mode of prejudging a quedion 
where it fuits them. Had Napoleon died in battle, we 
have no doubt that thefe very men would have accufed him 
of taking an opportunity to flip out of his difficulties ; 
and in like manner, had he died on the fcafFold, they 
would have exulted over him as a criminal, who could 
jBot efcape ;—had he died by his fc own hand, they would 
Vou. XIII. No. 914. 
D O N. 39,5 
have cried out, “ See there the man who was not to be 
overcome by adverfity!” 
We do not argue that his merely continuing to live 
under the weight of thofe feelings with which all agree 
to load him, will prove him a great man. It remains to 
be difeovered how he lives, and with what fort of temper 
and views. But his not putting himfelf to death in the 
fird indance, makes him fomething better in our minds 
than a mere Catiline or JVIaximinus; and if he leads a rea- 
fonable life in his exile, and does what little he can to 
make thole about him comfortable, in recompenfe of all 
the mifery his foldierfhip has inflicted, we fhall fay, not 
that he mas a great tnan when he was emperor, but that 
he gave fome fymptoms at lad that he might have been. 
Elba lies juft off the coad of Tufcany, between Piombi- 
no and the northernmod point of Corlica ; and lias been 
celebrated from time immemorial for its mines of iron, 
which are dill worked. The loadftone... with which it 
abounds is laid to have an effefl in varying the compafs 
at fea to the di(lance of four leagues ; and, though fome 
travellers have denied or doubted this circumdance, others 
have dated that the needle has certainly been of no ufe at 
the didance of one league. The Greeks, on account of 
its forges, called the ifland Aithalia, or the footy; and it 
is praifed for its metals by Virgil and Rutilius under the 
name of llva. It is fUppofed to be about eighty miles in 
circumference, has two fpacious harbours, and contains 
a population of between twelve and thirteen thoufand fouls, 
who are charafterized, in a report made to the conluiar 
government, as “mild and indudrious.” The climate is 
fuperior to that of the continent; and, though the foil is 
{hallow and mountainous, and there is but one little river 
in the whole ifland, which does not run more than a mile 
from its fource, yet an abundance of fprings at once help 
its fertility and increafe its beauty; and it has plenty of 
wood and flowering fhrubs, and produces exquiiite fruit- 
trees—vines, citrons, and oranges. There are aifo two 
lucrative filheries on the coad. As a proof of the induf- 
trious character of the inhabitants, and of their readinefs 
to avail themfelves of any frefli advantages that may ac¬ 
crue to the ifland, it may be mentioned that Mr. Swin¬ 
burne, who vifited it in the courfe of a tour about forty- 
years back, and who has given the bed account of it we 
have feen, deferibes the little river above-mentioned as 
turning no lefs than feventeen mills, and as being kept in 
a very neat condition, with orange and other fruit-trees 
along the banks. Out of the productions of this ifland, 
Bonaparte may build himfelf a houfe of marble, may roof 
it with Hate, and run an iron railing about his park; he' 
may have garden-grounds of fruit and flowers, the orange, 
myrtle, and arbutus, and fupply his table with filh, vege¬ 
tables, wine, and a defert. Here too, on a tower upon a 
rock, he may have the profpeCt—on one fide, of his birth¬ 
place, the ifland of Corlica—on the other, he may view 
the eflates of his brother-in-law, the prince of Piombino; 
to the fouth-ead he may carry his eye over a range of con¬ 
tinent, til! he may fancy that Rome itfelf is dill obedient 
to his nod—and to the north-wed he may waft his fond, 
regrets towards Parma and Placentia, the domains of his 
wife and fon, in the neighbourhood of the plains of Ma¬ 
rengo ! 
Never perhaps did there exid an individual, who exer- 
cifed fo mighty and terrible an influence on the fate of 
civilized mankind, as the very extraordinary perfon of 
whom we are now to take our leave.—-If there are lubjefts- 
which it is difficult to render interesting, became they are 
unknown and little attended to, the difficulty here, "from 
a caufe direftly oppofite, is not lefs ferious. This fubjeel 
has been handled fo conllantly in every company and in 
every newfpaper, fo debafed by the ignoble mouthsthrough 
which it has paffed, as to render it lcarcely poflible to lay 
any thing which every one is not long ago tired of hearing. 
Yet, after all, the language hitherto held has been min¬ 
gled with fuch a torrent of national and party zeal, that 
the wife man may perhaps find reafon to adopt a ftr.ua 
5 foraewhat 
