structions which it had transmitted to the Count La Garde, and the government of Spain thought they could do no less than follow its example. It was not generally known that these important documents would be read to the Cortes; and in consequence the public galleries were not crowded, though rather well attended. Sir William A'Court was in the ambassador's tribune, to which also several English gentlemen were, by his politeness, admitted. The attendance of the Deputies was full.

"The Cortes had been previously engaged upon a question relating to ecclesiastical property; but from the manner in which it was treated, it was easy to perceive that the minds of the Deputies were full of anxiety and fervour upon another subject. Now and then this sentiment broke out, and there was a partial cheer, when Senor Velasco, a clergyman, said, I have learned to suffer privations; but there is no sa crifice which I can deem too great for the benefit of Spain; and even though I were about to become the victim of indigence, still my last resources should be exhausted for the Constitution and the liberty of the nation.' This discussion was suspended when the Secretaries of State entered the hall of the Cortes, about two o'clock in the afternoon, and M. San Miguel appeared in the rostrum. Upon the instant every person present was breathless with attention, and the silence that pervaded the hall, the tribunes, and galleries, was as profound as ifit were a desert.

"After a short preface, he proceeded to read the note transmitted by the French government to Count la Garde, which having been already familiar to the deputies and strangers, excited little attention. San Miguel's enunciation is bad. He gave no emphasis to those sentences, even in the answer to the French note, which was understood to be from his own pen. Yet no aid of elocution was necessary to render every word that fell from him impressive in the highest degree. When he came to that passage of his answer, which says that Spain was indifferent as to the results of the Congress of Verona, because secure of its principles, and firm in the determination of defending, at every hazard, its present political system, and national independence,' there was a general burst of enthusiasm, many of the deputies and spec. tators clapping their hands. These applauses were renewed at the close of almost every subsequent paragraph; and, when this paper was concluded, they were continued for several minutes.

"The Austrian note was heard in silence, until the Minister came to the words, and a military rebellion never can form the basis of an auspicious and permanent government;' but there was then a short murmur of indignation, which would have

been louder, but for the intense desire to hear what followed. The assembly, taking it altogether, seemed struck with surprise at the light in which this note represented the Spanish revolution. When they heard it said that the principal instruments of the Spanish revolution had excited Naples and Piedmont to follow the example of the Peninsula, Riego, Galiano, Arguelles, and others, smiled at the assertion, wondering at the hardihood of Metternich, who could put forth such a falsehood. Yet it was soon evident, that this note was drawn up with tact, and knowledge of human nature, for before the general indignation was raised to its height, it was wonderfully softened by that appeal to national pride, which was so artfully wrought up in the allusion to the peculiar position of Austria. The House of Austria, looking to its own history, cannot but find in it the most powerful motives of friendship, solicitude, and sympathy for a nation, which is able to record, with just pride, ages of glorious recollection, during which the sun never set upon her dominions; and which, possessing respectable institutions, hereditary virtues, religious sentiments, and love for her kings, has distinguished herself in every age by a patriotism always faithful, always generous, and very frequently heroic.' This just and eloquent passage had an electric effect. You saw that the men were for a moment subdued; for flattery, so finely covered and directed, could not fail to touch every chord of national feeling. But this result was only for the moment; for although the remainder of the note was framed in language alternately soothing and severe, the terms in which the King was spoken of as a captive, and the authors of the constitution represented as acknowledging its impracticability, excited unqualified hostility. When the note was concluded, however, there was no very general expression of indignation, as its effect was in some measure qualified by the friendly and admonitory tone in which it ended.

"After pausing a few minutes, San Miguel proceeded to read the note from Prussia. Everything depends upon the manner in which it is done. There was a great deal of flattery in the commencement of the Prussian note; but it sounded hollow. The consequence was, that it was laughed at.

The dignity of the assembly could scarcely be preserved when that passage was read, which stated that the Cortes 'presented nothing more than a conflict of opinions and objects, and a struggle of interests and passions, in the midst of which the most foolish resolutions and propositions have been constantly crossed, combated, and neutralized.' This picture of the Cortes, and its debates, if not false, was at least well calculated to excite laughter.

he concluded, there was a general look up to the ambassador's tribune, to see what effect it produced there. He spoke for an hour and ten minutes; and when he first rose, often during his speech, and when he sat down, he was cheered by the populace, and even by the deputies, in the most lively and affectionate manner.

After all, these men deserve a better fate than to be the slaves of the Bourbons and the Inquisition. Their first experiment has been crude, and it deserved to fail. But honest lovers of monarchy may join in the wish that the Spaniard shall" be a man yet."

The volume closes with some general views of the arts, amusements, habits, and costume of the people. These

notices are drawn up with grace and intelligence. The writer followed the King to Seville, and a curious account of the royal progress and reception is given. The course of the magnificent Guadalquivir, and Cadiz, are touched upon, which, with the writer's return through the French army, then marching on Madrid, make up a narrative of peculiar interest at the present time; and for its general manliness and simplicity, its truth-telling spirit, and its clearness of political view, it is unquestionably a safer guide to the feelings of the Spanish people, as well as a more honourable testimony to individual authorship, than any work that has hitherto appeared on the Peninsular Revolution.

LAS CASES is a well-meaning, easy, silly, old gentleman, whom we really like, in spite of all the lies with which his volumes are crammed. Indeed he seems himself de bonne foi, literally be lieves all the nonsense dictated to him, and has just the credulous and obsequious swallow necessary for a follower of Napoleon. There could be no work which we would have been more glad to possess, than the one which this pretends to be a Journal of Napoleon's free and unmade-up conversations. But, first of all, when the Ex-Emperor knew that M. Las Cases was taking down every word that dropt from his mouth, that the Docteur O'Meara was doing the same, and every one else that came near him, we may conceive how naturally, how much without a motive he spoke, and how much the detail of these theatrical conversations unmasks him. In fact, the great man seems to have been kept at St Helena in a continual state of pleading-no matter what he was doing, what time of the day, dined or undined, in bed or in bath, there were ever his eternal companions, the Grand Marechal, or Count this, or Count that, with pencil and ass-skin, ready to note down his crudities. And had they kept him at it, (for at times we have whole continued pages of his pleading,) how faithfully reported by Las Cases, who never, perhaps, belonged to the "glorious company," we leave that learned body to determine. Nay, so impartial an account is this of

Napoleon's private life and conversations, that it was afterwards overlooked and revised by the Emperor's self, lest anything unfavourable but true should have escaped the pen of the officious, but not over-prudent, jackall.

In the minor details, we dare say the volumes are correct. We have no doubt that the Emperor tore his stocking, put on clean ones, coughed so many times a-day, and burnt his coxendix with his bath-spout. Nay, we will go farther, and believe, with the Count de Las Cases, that he was a good-natured, amiable man in his interior, and, like Sir Anthony, "the easiest man led in the world, when he had his own way."

is pulling the ears of all his household, as was his custom, we believe a joke; nay, more, or, as Las Cases calls it, a tendresse, though, for ourselves, we should have dispensed with it. That he pulled the Pope by his grey locks (if old Chiaramonte had a single lock about his tonsure,) around the Corridores of Fontainbleau, is another story not to be swallowed. And, by the by, it is to be remarked, that all these calumnies were not propagated by the English ministry, as Buonaparte himself always said; but, from Las Cases' own admission, they were fabricated by those around his person; so that even his counsellor of state, poor Las Cases himself, had acquired a false and horrible idea of the Emperor. Whatever Napoleon's own counsellor of state may have credited, we certainly do not

believe that he lived in incest with his own sister:-the murder of D'Enghien, the massacre of prisoners, and poisoning of the sick at Jaffa, with respect to which he sought to brave public opinion, much more than to plead excuses before it, are sufficient, and strongly enough attested, to blast his moral character in public acts.

on.

In private life, we think him to have been amiable. Passion of any kind he had none all his scoldings and talking big to his Marshals and lacqueys, were, by his own confession, put An hundred times in Las Cases, we hear him confess that all his bursts of passion were pretended, and calculated for a purpose. No doubt those towards Sir Hudson Lowe were as real, and with as much calculation called forth. Passion, indeed!—What business had he ever to be in one?-the luckiest dog in Christendom, and out of it-that ran the most glorious career that ever modern ran, and was set down with nothing to trouble him, in good dry lodgings for the rest of his days, to write his Memoirs, and pinch the lugs of Counts and Marshals. Besides, physically, how could he be passionate a fellow without an ounce of bile in his composition, so snugly larded upon the ribs, that he never once felt his heart beat, as he confessed to Las Cases, nor ever experienced pain either in head or stomach? No-he had not even the excuse of hasty temper for one of his crimes, to save his morality, nor yet the same excuse for one of his blunders, to save his character for talent.

The most, indeed the only interesting parts of these volumes, are those dictated by Napoleon himself, giving an account of the battles of Ariole, Rivoli, and that period of his Italian campaigns; as also the anecdotes and remarks on the leading characters of the revolution and consulate. The character of Sieyes is finely developed; and mostly all his Marshals are portrayed in lively traits; his hatred of Moreau and Bernadotte is undisguised; he cannot allow them even talent. Nothing surprises one so much in Napoleon, as the total want of liberality towards his enemies. We look for something above envy and petty passions in a being whom his own genius certainly had placed on such an unparalleled eminence. Even of his own generals, those who had acquired fame as tacticians, he never would allow their

merit-Massena, his fils cheri de la victoire, he speaks slightingly of in these volumes-Soult, he says, would make merely a good ordonnateur, a proper minister at war-Moreau and Bernadotte we have already mentioned. But with respect to his enemies, to those who foiled and conquered him, nothing can equal his spite and malice. His pleading against the Duke of Wellington for winning the battle of Waterloo, is very serious, and most ridiculous; and his exposure of the faults of the English general, shews only with what odds of fortune against Wellington he yet contrived to beat the Emperor. The first gravamen of Napoleon is, that the Duke was surprised in his intrenchments-the more wonderful and praiseworthy, then, the talent that could change a surprise into a victory. But whose fault was it, that Wellington was surprised? Buonaparte can answer, that it was that of the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, "who, if he had sent an aid-de-camp direct to Brussels, he would have arrived there, with news of Napoleon's approach, at six in the evening, whereas it was not till eleven that his approach was known to Wellington." His next complaint against the Duke is, the arrangement of forces, and the want of artillery or cavalry among the English at Quatre Bras. To this we may oppose Napoleon's own words:-" Ney received orders on the 16th to advance with the 43,000 men which he commanded, forming the left wing of the army, before Quatre Bras, and there take up his position, &c. The Prince of Orange, with only 9000 men, preserved this important position against Ney till three in the afternoon." This, from Buonaparte's own mouth, shews that the Duke knew his men, and what they could effect; 9000 of them, headed by the young Prince of Orange, against 43,000, led by the veteran Ney. The next accusation of Napoleon against the Duke of Wellington commences thus :-" The English general gave us battle at Waterloo on the 18th. This act was contrary to the interests of his nation," &c. &c. We believe that this article of impeachment needs no very elaborate answer. But what ought the English general to have done, in the opinion of the Emperor Napoleon ?-Hear it, good Momus, if thou knowest the French dialect, for we should be ashamed to put such stuff into English.

"On demandera que devait donc faire