practice also the author gives numerous examples from letters "not published in the correspondence of Napoleon I."

We have said enough to show that M. D'Haussonville is no indiscriminate admirer of all that was said and done by Napoleon I. The fact that his work has appeared in the "Revue des deux Mondes," that its publication has not been interrupted, and that he is now allowed to republish it in a separate form, is the strongest illustration of the immense difference between the present system, which places the press of France under the control of law, (although of law which in England would be accounted most oppressive,) and that which subjected it to avertissements." We are very sure that a very few years ago no journal would have dared to publish this work. That such a work should have obtained any degree of popularity in France illustrates another fact hardly less important-how much the popularity of the name of Napoleon I. has been diminished (at least among the more educated classes) within the last few years. Under the restoration he came to be looked back upon only as the conqueror who had so often led the armies of France to victory.

All the suffering which in every country affects many classes after the close of a long war, and which was so severely felt in England in 1816, 1817, &c., was naturally laid to the score of the Bourbons. They were accused of having lowered France from the pinnacle of glory to which he had raised it. It was the name of Napoleon that carried the election of the present Emperor, first as President then as Emperor. As Frenchmen have become weary of a rule which they connect with that of Napoleon I., they have become more willing to examine how far his "glory" was a real benefit to France. We suspect this feeling has not to any very considerable degree spread among the peasantry; that it has become general in the higher classes we are sure.

If France at all resembles England, it is quite possible that this reaction against the blind idolatry of Napoleon which formerly prevailed, may, at least for a time, go farther than reason warrants. For, assuredly, however we may feel the deep moral degradation of his character, his genius will ever be more and more highly appreciated as we more minutely study his life. M. D'Haussonville is far from underrating it. His whole narrative brings Napoleon before us in the strongest relief, as a man able with almost equal ease to grasp every subject to which it was his interest to turn his attention; who detected with an unerring instinct the peculiar gifts and character of every man with whom he had any dealings, and saw with the eye of genius whom he could employ, and for what

purpose; and of whom it may be much doubted whether, in any one instance, he was mistaken. Until his head had been turned by a prosperity and glory such as, perhaps, no other man ever attained, he was, alike in every relation of war, politics, legislation, and diplomacy, as wary as he was daring. That he had to do with the weakest opponent never seems to have appeared to him a reason for neglecting any one precaution which could have been necessary against the strongest. When he had made up his mind to seize Rome, although the Pope was without any means of resistance, although he was himself distant from it by half a continent, and although he had brave, able, and trustworthy servants on the spot, he thought it necessary exactly to prescribe in writing all the most minute particulars of the combinations desirable for the purpose; to arrange exactly the number of men to be despatched from the north of Italy, and the number from Naples, the days on which they were to arrive at the different points, and how they were to combine. With characteristic disregard of truth and honour, he detailed the falsehoods to be communicated at different parts of the proceeding to the Government of the Holy Father, and gave especial orders that, as soon as his troops had entered Rome, supposing the people to submit in quiet, the French Minister was to give a ball, to which the chief ladies of Rome and the French officers were to be invited; and that meanwhile all measures were to be taken, by placing French soldiers in the post-office and every other public office, to accustom the Romans to see the administration of their city in the hands of the French. Should any resistance arise, it was at once and sternly to be put down by grape-shot. All this time he continued to assure the Pope's Government, first that his troops were merely passing through the States of the Church on their way to Naples, and were not to enter Rome; and when they had entered it, that they had come merely to seize some brigands, who were devastating the Neapolitan States, and who found refuge under the Pope's Government. Those who have read the similar complaints against the administration of Pius IX. which have been so loudly made by the Roman correspondents of London newspapers for the last few years, will not be surprised to hear, that when Rome had been occupied on this pretence, not so much as one person there was even charged with being a brigand. The pretence had served its purpose, and was quietly laid aside. În short, it is impossible to read M. D'Haussonville's narrative without feeling that, for the purpose of silently occupying Rome, the great Emperor thought it worth while to lavish all his genius and all his treachery, as

freely as when, nearly at the same time, he allured the royal family of Spain into his trap at Bourdeaux.

No doubt, the circumstances of the revolutionary era afforded him a matchless opportunity of action, but never was there a man whose success, and we may also say whose fall, was more wholly his own.

Almost every real mistake that he ever made may be traced to a moral, not an intellectual defect. There was one exception to the penetrating power with which his eagle eye penetrated and appreciated the character of all with whom he had to do. When he had to do with men to whom conscience and the fear and love of God were not mere specious words, but realities by which their lives were governed, his penetration failed him, for he was morally incapable of realizing the existence of such a character. No reader of the volumes before us can doubt that this moral incapacity was the one cause of every serious mistake into which he fell. In dealing, for instance, with Pius VII. and with Consalvi, he overreached himself: because he could not find it possible to believe that in their minds their own interests, however serious, so far from being the leading consideration, actually had no place at all when their duty to God and the Church was in question. It was only this incapacity to conceive of conscience as a real governing principle, which led him to commit himself to a contest with the Church, from which, when it had once begun, his pride and his interest alike forbade him to draw back. He had never imagined that he was bringing himself into collision. with men who could not be moved either by munificent bribes or by tremendous threats; and that he should really be compelled either to give up that to which he had publicly committed himself, or else to push matters to the last extremities of violence and open tyranny. And thus he found himself involved unawares in a struggle, in which it was simply impossible that he should prevail, and yet in which he was afraid, as well as ashamed, to be defeated. It was this moral defect alone which blinded him to a danger, of which thousands of poor peasants in his dominions could have warned him. For they were conscious of what he, with all his genius, did not know,-the truth expressed by Pius IX. in words which have echoed through the world, NoN POSSUMUS, and which Pius VII. stated to the diplomatist, a real though unavowed agent of Napoleon, sent to sound him in his prison at Savona :- "When opinions are founded on the voice of conscience and the sense of duty, they become unalterable. Believe me, there is in this world no physical force VOL. XII.—NO. XXIII. [New Series.]

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which can, in the long-run, contend with a moral force of this nature." Napoleon had hoped to find the purpose of the gentle, aged monk altered by long imprisonment and separation from his friends and counsellors. His agent, on bringing him back this answer, added that "he had found the Pope a little aged, but not unwell, calm, unruffled as ever, and without a tinge of bitterness in his remarks, even when speaking of the subjects which it was impossible that he should fail to feel most acutely." It is exactly against moral force such as this that physical force is utterly powerless.

This is, in truth, the one subject of the volumes before us. It is the history of a physical force utterly irresistible, breaking itself in the vain effort to overcome the force of conscience and the power of grace; that is, to conquer Him who lives in the Christian's heart. It divides itself naturally into two parts, separate in the main, although one sometimes runs into the other-Napoleon's relations to Rome and to the Catholics of France. His relations to Rome have the unity of an epic. They begin with the election of Pius VII. to the Chair of S. Peter in the conclave at Venice in the beginning of the year 1800, and end only with his own downfall. The present volumes, as we have said, continue the narrative only to January, 1811. Eleven years seem to a man who looks back after he has passed middle life but as a few days. But in those years were developed a series of events the most wonderful in modern history. When the history commences, the House of Austria, in full possession of the dignity and prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, was mistress of Italy, and in actual possession of the greater part of the States of the Church. Naples, virtually her vassal, held the remainder; and neither power made any secret of its resolution to keep permanently what it had got. The Austrian intrigues at the Conclave were aimed expressly at this object; and when, by a remarkable series of events, very well related by our author, the election fell, against the will of Austria, upon Pius VII., the resolution was at once shown to make him a mere tool of the Empire, and especially to refuse to give up the Legations. The whole position both of Austria and Naples towards the Pope was changed by one event-the Battle of Marengo. France, not Austria, became once more mistress of Italy; and for fourteen years it was from France, and France alone, that the Holy See had anything to fear. Napoleon's first measures were intended to gain the confidence of the Catholics of Italy, and they succeeded. He assured the clergy of the Milanese that when he had come into Italy two years before as a General under the Directory, he had been unable to adopt

a policy of his own-that as First Consul he was now

master.

All the changes then made, chiefly in discipline, were opposed to my views and wishes. As the mere instrument of a government which cared nothing for the Catholic religion, I was then unable to prevent the disorders which it was bent on stirring up, cost what they might, with the view of overthrowing it. Now I have full powers. I have resolved to employ every instrument which seems to me calculated to give security and confidence to that religion. France has been educated by her sufferings. Her eyes are

at length opened; she perceives that the Catholic religion is the only anchor which can keep her steady on the troubled waves, and save her from the tempest. She has invited it again to her bosom. In this good work I cannot conceal the fact that I have had a great share. I can assure you that the churches of France have been re-opened, that the Catholic religion is resuming its ancient dignity, and that the people look with reverence upon the consecrated pastors who are returning full of zeal to the midst of their abandoned flocks. As soon as I have an opportunity of communicating with the new Pope, I hope to have the happiness of removing every obstacle which could possibly stand in the way of the entire reconciliation of France with the Head of the Church. I shall be glad that the public should be informed, through the press, of the sentiments by which I am animated, that it may be known, not only in Italy and France, but in all Europe, what my dispositions

are.

No wonder that Catholic Italy threw itself with delight into the arms of a young hero who, in the moment of his most brilliant triumph, reversed without delay thus publicly, the fatal policy on which France had been acting for more than eight years. Hitherto, wherever the French troops took possession, the clergy had been driven out and persecuted. Foreign nations had seen the most venerable of the French clergy seeking in exile a precarious maintenance from the charity of surrounding nations, and had heard from them that they were themselves but the remnant which had escaped the guillotine. What a consolation such words as these from the mouth of the man who, almost at the same moment, had made himself master of France, and France mistress of Italy! Nor had the Italian clergy any reason to doubt that Bonaparte was a sincere Catholic. He was of a family Italian, Catholic, and religious. It is difficult for us to divest ourselves of the memory of his subsequent actions sufficiently to judge of him as Italian Catholics in 1800 necessarily judged. They did not, like us, know even the past-for instance, that he had made a profession of belief in Islamism equally satisfactory to the ulemas of Egypt only the year before.

The next measure of the First Consul was to bring about the