* * * * *


BONAPARTE ATTEMPTS SUICIDE.


While we endeavour to sum up the mass of misfortunes with which
Bonaparte was overwhelmed at this crisis, it seems as if Fortune had
been determined to show that she did not intend to reverse the lot of
humanity, even in the case of one who had been so long her favourite,
but that she retained the power of depressing the obscure soldier, whom
she had raised to be almost king of Europe, in a degree as humiliating
as his exaltation had been splendid. All that three years before seemed
inalienable from his person, was now reversed. The victor was defeated,
the monarch was dethroned, the ransomer of prisoners was in captivity,
the general was deserted by his soldiers, the master abandoned by his
domestics, the brother parted from his brethren, the husband severed
from the wife, and the father torn from his only child. To console him
for the fairest and largest empire that ambition ever lorded it over, he
had, with the mock name of emperor, a petty isle, to which he was to
retire, accompanied by the pity of such friends as dared express their
feelings, the unrepressed execrations of many of his former subjects,
who refused to regard his present humiliation as an amends for what he
had made them suffer during his power, and the ill-concealed triumph of
the enemies into whose hands he had been delivered.

A Roman would have seen, in these accumulated disasters, a hint to
direct his sword's point against his breast; a man of better faith would
have turned his eye back on his own conduct, and having read, in his
misuse of prosperity, the original source of those calamities, would