it grieves me to confess, could even I contrive to muster up any
tolerable interest, even by all that the warlike spirit, formerly
manifested within that now decrepit shape, had wrought upon our
globe. There is no surer method of annihilating the magic influence
of a great renown than by exhibiting the possessor of it in the
decline, the overthrow, the utter degradation of his powers,--buried
beneath his own mortality,--and lacking even the qualities of sense
that enable the most ordinary men to bear themselves decently in the
eye of the world. This is the state to which disease, aggravated by
long endurance of a tropical climate, and assisted by old age,--for
he is now above seventy,--has reduced Bonaparte. The British
government has acted shrewdly in retransporting him from St. Helena
to England. They should now restore him to Paris, and there let him
once again review the relics of his armies. His eye is dull and
rheumy; his nether lip hung down upon his chin. While I was
observing him there chanced to be a little extra bustle in the
street; and he, the brother of Caesar and Hannibal,--the great
captain who had veiled the world in battle-smoke and tracked it
round with bloody footsteps,--was seized with a nervous trembling,
and claimed the protection of the two policemen by a cracked and
dolorous cry. The fellows winked at one another, laughed aside,
and, patting Napoleon on the back, took each an arm and led him
away.

Death and fury! Ha, villain, how came you hither? Avaunt! or I
fling my inkstand at your head. Tush, tusk; it is all a mistake.
Pray, my dear friend, pardon this little outbreak. The fact is, the
mention of those two policemen, and their custody of Bonaparte, had
called up the idea of that odious wretch--you remember him well--who
was pleased to take such gratuitous and impertinent care of my