whose taste and munificence in patronizing the fine arts cannot be too
highly praised. It is throughout a masterly performance, and one of
which the English school of art has just cause to be proud. We intend
to let Mr. Haydon describe it in his own vivid style:--

"Napoleon was peculiarly alive to poetical association as produced by
scenery or sound; village bells with their echoing ding, dong, dang,
now bursting full on the ear, now dying in the wind, affected him as
they affect every body alive to natural impressions, and in the eve of
all his great battles, you find him stealing away in the dead of the
night, between the two hosts, and indulging in every species of
poetical reverie.

"It was impossible to think of such a genius in captivity, without
mysterious associations of the sky, the sea, the rock, and the
solitude with which he was enveloped, I never imagined him but as if
musing at dawn, or melancholy at sun-set, listening at midnight to the
beating and roaring of the Atlantic, or meditating as the stars gazed
and the moon shone on him: in short Napoleon never appeared to me but
at those moments of silence and twilight, when nature seems to
sympathize with the fallen and when if there be moments fit, in this
turbulent earth, for celestial intercourse, one must imagine these
would be the moments immortal spirits might select to descend within
the sphere of mortality, to soothe and comfort, to inspire and support
the afflicted.

"Under such impressions the present picture was produced,--I imagined
him standing on the brow of an impending cliff and musing on his past
fortunes,--imagined sea birds screaming at his feet,--the sun just
down,--the sails of his guard ship glittering on the horizon, and the