take a peaceful retrospect of the past, and embrace with hopeful serenity the mystery of the grave. A conscience void of offence, a sense of duty done and acceptance found, could alone have enabled Washington to say, a few hours before his death, "Doctor, I am dying, and have been dying a long time; but I am not afraid to die."

The last words of many great men teach us that no thought is more soothing to the dying pillow than the recollection of the faithful discharge of some high and important trust. Nelson, when dying in the cockpit of the Victory, exclaimed again and again to his friend, Captain Hardy, with much fervour, "Thank God, I have done my duty! I have done my duty!" They were the last words he spoke. Men who have been entrusted with some high mission to accomplish in the world's destiny, have been raised into heroes and sustained as martyrs by an absorbing sense of the importance of their work. When Gustavus Adolphus was found by his enemies wounded on the field of battle, amid a heap of dying men, it was with a pride only to be equalled in the hour of victory that he cried out, "I am the King of Sweden, and seal with my blood the liberty and religion of the whole German nation!" The illustrious Sir Henry Vane, a man great in all the actions of his life, and greatest of all in his sufferings, who withstood, in his firm and unselfish devotion to the cause of human liberty, the unconstitutional enactments of Charles and the military absolutism of Cromwell, found a satisfaction in reviewing his unshaken constancy to principle, which the terrors of the scaffold were unable to affect. "Blessed be the Lord," he said, a few moments before execution, "that I have kepta conscience void of offence till this day. I bless the Lord I have not deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer!" Hampden, with, enduring patriotism, prayed, when mortally wounded, "O Lord! save my bleeding country. Have these realms in thy special keeping. Confound and level in the dust those who would rob the people of their liberty and lawful prerogative. Let the king see his error, and turn the hearts of his wicked counsellors from the malice and wickedness of their designs!" Sir John Elliot was another of the victims of this reign of oppression. Reduced to extreme debility by long imprisonment, he in

structed a painter, just before his death, to depict his emaciated countenance, and forwarded the portrait to his son, to be hung up by the side of one which represented him in the vigour of health, that it might serve as "a perpetual memorial of his hatred of tyranny." This proud feeling of freedom from selfreproach can only be tasted by those who, in the midst of every temptation, have "preserved the chastity of their honour." How bitterly Cranmer lamented at the last one hour of weakness, a weakness, nevertheless, almost atoned for by the noble heroism with which he thrust the hand which had signed his recantation into the flames, and exclaimed as he watched it consume, "This hand hath offended-this unworthy right hand!"

How

Few things are more humbling to a mind whose sensibility is quickened by the nearness of death, than the recollection of wasted or misdirected powers. Many a trick played with conscience; many a tortuous scheme of policy, in which truth and justice were made of little account, are seen, it may be, for the first time, in their real character, stripped of every subterfuge which disguised them; and the conscience revolts from its own handiwork. pregnant with instruction are the bitter words of Wolsey !-words amongst his latest, and almost literally adopted by the great dramatist,-" If I had served God as diligently as I have served the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs!" The last reflections of Newton taught him, too, humility; buta humility destitute of self-reproach. He felt the feebleness of his powers, the narrow limit of his opportunities, and his words serve, not as a warning to us to repudiate the pursuits he adorned with his genius, but as a lesson to reprove the presumption of self-confidence, and remind us that we do but touch the confines of truth. "I don't know," he said, "what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Such is the befitting spirit of the inquirer; and the man who begins his investigations with this reverential self-diffidence, in emulating the temper of Newton, will be most likely to imitate his success.

"The ruling passion strong in death' has been already illustrated with sufficient frequency. Abundant facts show us that those features of character to which freest play is given in the activity of health, usually maintain their ascendancy to the last. When told that the

enemy retreated, General Wolff, stricken to death on the Heights of Abrahain, exclaimed, "Now, God be praised! I shall die happy." And with these words the hero expired. Another soldier, wounded like Wolff in the hour of victory, showed in a somewhat different light the predominance of his professional and customary feelings.

We

speak of Sir John Moore, whose shoulder had been carried away by a cannon-ball, before Corunna. He was carried from the field in a blanket, and when Captain Harding was about to unbuckle his belt, to remove his sword, which pressed against him-" the sword he had never disgraced"-the General said faintly, "No, Harding; it is as well as it is. Í had rather it should go out of the field with me." The men shed tears as they bore their dying commander, for in him the soldier had not destroyed the man. He dismissed the surgeons, who offered him assistance, with these memorable words: "You can be of no service to me; go to the soldiers to whom you may be useful: I am beyond the reach of your skill,”—words which deserve to be recorded by the side of those of the gallant Sidney, who was returning from the field of battle pale, languid, and thirsty from excess of bleeding, and eagerly asked for water. It was brought him, but it had no sooner approached his lips, than he resigned it to a dying soldier whose ghastly countenance attracted his notice, saying, "This man's necessity is still greater than mine." Of both it may be said their death was of a piece with their life; and the same remark holds good of others who have neither been overcome with terror at the last moment, nor shown in it anything affected or inconsistent with their previous character. Sir Thomas Moore exhibited the same cheerfulness and harmless mirth at his execution, for which he had ever been remarkable. Observing that the scaffold was so weak that it was ready to fall, he said, "Master lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself," -and, when he laid his head on the

block, he desired the executioner to wait till he had removed his beard, for that had never offended his highness. The Earl of Strafford, under similar circumstances, maintained his habitual and observed, composure, "I do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed. Think," he added, in the quaint manner of the day, turning to take leave of his friends, "that you now accompany me the fourth time to my marriage-bed. That block must be my pillow, and here I shall rest from all my labours. No thoughts of envy, no dreams of treason, nor jealousies, nor cares, for the King, the State, or myself, shall interrupt this easy sleep." And Sir Walter Raleigh, as he asked for the axe and felt its edge, exclaimed, "It is a sharp medicine, but this is that will cure all sorrows." can we omit the words of Legrand d'Alleray, an aged representative of France, who stood arraigned with his wife before the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror. The judge, anxious to save him, hinted at various means by which he might evade the charge; but the old man interrupted him, saying, “I thank you for the efforts you make to save me; but it would be necessary to purchase our lives by a lie. My wife and myself prefer rather to die. We have grown old together without ever having lied. We will not do so now, to save a remnant of life."

Nor

The dying have often give utterance, to aphorisms of great truth and power. Such were the words of Raleigh when told by the executioner to lie with his head toward the East: "No matter how the head lie, so that the heart be right." Such was the apostrophe of Madame Roland, first an illustrious servant, and then a martyr, of the Revolution, as she stood beneath the guillotine and bent to the statue of liberty close at hand: "Oh, Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name! "Take

heed by all means," was the last council of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury to his son, "of blood, whether it be in public or in private quarrel, and God will prosper thee in all thy ways." "God bless you," said Bentinck as he parted from his biographer a few days before his untimely death, we must work and the country will gather about

us.'

And this is truly the conclusion of the whole matter, the one great lesson

taught us by the concurrent testimony of the illustrious dead-"Work," "Do your duty," "Live well," Be good men." Seeing in the clear light of eternity, they tell us of the divinity of labour, and charge us to serve our generation, and by honest, earnest toil in the cause of man seek to stamp a goodly impress on our age. If all men were thus workers, all would be great; and each in his province may be. There is ever error to be combated and truth to be spread, ever wrong to be redeemed, ever suffering to be relieved. We need an age of workers to speed the "good time.'

MARSHAL SOULT, DUKE OF
DALMATIA.

THE era of the French Revolution was one of the most terrible, but, at the same time, one of the most magnificent episodes of history; exciting the wildest hopes by its early promises of freedom; inaugurating a succession of brilliant, but bloody, military operations; and ultimately binding in the fetters of an armed despotism, a great nation that had caught an indistinct and transient glimpse of freedom. Peoples, first betrayed by their leaders, and then flattered into the endurance and support of the worst excesses of a lawless ambition; thrones and constitutions prostrate together; cities in ruins, peaceful villages swept away; and fields of battle strewn with millions of slain; are the prominent features of the picture painted by the pencil of history as her mourning spirit lingers over these scenes. The revolutionary movement was a signal failure. The first aspirations after liberty were succeeded by a feverish passion for conquest; and for a score of years, Europe presented the melancholy spectacle of a fierce and relentless war, conducted on the one side with no motive more intelligible than the gratification of personal vanity, and sustained on the other, not in the hope of achieving any positive good for mankind, but solely to check the career of a conqueror who would have planted the iron heel of military despotism on the world.

We can only attribute these results to the want of that moral preparation on the part of the French people without which no nation can really enjoy the immunities or consolidate the insti

tutions of freedom; nor until better agencies than the sword have impregnated society with the principles of wisdom, virtue, and magnanimity, can we hope to see liberty take deep and permanent root in any community. Man has, indeed, an inalienable title to it; and violence may for a time secure its concession; but Authority will infallibly recover its lost ground, and forge even heavier chains for its victims than those from which they have broken. The truest friends of freedom are those who labour most to propogate its spirit, by infusing into society a high tone of moral sentiment. Ă people cannot be robbed of liberty who are prepared for it; nor a people be made free, who are not.

:

France, at the close of the last century, was unfitted for the successful development of free institutions, by reason both of profound ignorance and of deep moral corruption. Infidels and profligates were the chief apostles and preachers of French liberty. They denied God and immortality and the people applauded with shouts. Instead of pictures of severe virtue and heroic self-devotion, the early annals of the Revolution are filled with scenes of frantic excess. War was one of the first channels through which the popular excitement found vent. Napoleon, fitted by nature for a soldier and a usurper, found a people prepared for his ambitious schemes; and from the first hour of his advent on the scene, we recognise in France nothing but a vast military organisation, and nothing in her history but the glittering, though uncertain, fortunes of a collosal army. Viewed even at this distance of time, the eye becomes dazzled by the bril liancy of the era with which the name of THE EMPEROR is associated.

Ardent admirers of the principles of peace, we cannot yet look without a species of admiration at the energies which war on a great scale seldom fails to evoke. Soldiers not only become historical characters from their important share in moulding the destinies of the world, but often claim our homage for their powers of intellect, their strength of purpose, their indomitable resolution and perseverance,-essential elements, all of them, of real greatness of character. Nor in paying this homage, need we cease to deplore that the forces we admire had not a holier

direction, nor forget the higher reverence due to the greatness of moral principle, the magnanimity of virtue.

Napoleon's staff contained a galaxy of military genius. All revolutions are fertile of great men. If it is true that the man often stamps his impress on the age, the converse is true also, that an age of stirring incidents and great necessities, seldom fails to upturn from the depths of society a man to answer to its call. The revolutionary era unquestionably created many great soldiers. Napoleon selected his higher officers with wonderful discrimination. Untrammelled by the prestige of rank, he was enabled to choose them for moral qualities alone; and the consequence was, that the generals by whom he was surrounded, were, as a body, unequalled in the armies of the world.

Immediately on the assumption of sovereign power, the Emperor created eighteen marshals of France, four of them members of the Imperial Senate, who had fought their last battles, and were reposing on their laurels; the remainder were men still in active military service.

With scarcely an exception these last were men of humble origin. Jourdan, Bessiére, Augereau, Bernadotte, Lannes, Murat, Ney, and Soult were the sons of mechanics or small tradesmen, and had all entered the army as privates.

Nicholaus Jean-de-Dieu Soult was born at St. Amans, in the department of Tarin, near Toulons, on the 29th of March, 1769, within a few months of the Duke of Wellington and Bonaparte. He was only sixteen when he enlisted in a regiment of royal infantry. He was promoted for good conduct, to the rank of corporal after two years service, and three years afterwards to that of serjeant. Making his profession a study, he soon acquired the reputation of being a good instructor in military exercises, and in 1791 was made sub-lieutenant of grenadiers. In the course of the following year he successively became adjutant-major, and captain.

In 1793, Soult distinguished himself at the battle of Oberfieldsheim, and was charged with conducting the movement of two battalions in the Vosges. He was afterwards [present, under Jourdan, at the unsuccessful battle of Kaiserslautern; and we next hear of his being placed at the head of a corps

charged with an assault against the camp of Marsthal, where he gained a brilliant success, capturing two flags and a large number of prisoners. On the 29th of January, 1794, he was raised to the rank of major, and on the 15th of May following was made a colonel. From this time the military history of Soult may be said properly to commence.

On the 26th of September, 1794, was fought the celebrated battle of Fleurus, on the banks of the Moselle, said to have decided, for the time, the fate of the low countries, and to have saved France from Austrian invasion. Soult was present at this engagement as chief of the staff of General Lefebvre, who commanded the advanced_guard of the army. The coolness and sagacity of the young officer, whose advice was frequently solicited by his superior, is acknowledged to have contributed much to the brilliant fortunes of the day. The right wing of the army, under the command of Marceau, retired in confusion before the impetuous onset of the Austrian dragoons, and it was with great difficulty the general effected his own retreat to Lefebvre's division. In an agony of despair he demanded a succour of four battalions, that he might drive back the enemy from the post they had just carried. "Give them to me," exclaimed the excited man, "or I will blow my brains out." Lefebvre consulted his aid-de-camp, who said that to detach the smallest portion of the troops at such a moment, would endanger the safety of the division. Marceau, indignant that an officer so much his inferior should presume to decide upon such a point, demanded, "Pray, sir, who are you?" "No matter,' replied Soult, "whoever I

am,

I am calm, and you are not. Do not blow out your brains, general; but lead on your men to the charge, and you shall have help the moment it can be spared." He had scarcely spoken when the Prince of Coburg and his grenadiers came on them like a torrent, and Soult was in a moment in the thickest of the fight. Marceau fought gallantly by his side. Again and again was the assault renewed, and as often repulsed by the gallantry of the French. All the army were routed but this single division; and even this was about under the direction of its general, to retire, when Soult interposed, and

besought him to maintain his ground, as the movements of the enemy convinced him they were about to abandon the attack. The judgment of the young soldier was speedily confirmed; and, after an obstinate engagement of eighteen hours, the Prince of Coburg fell back. As soon as the battle was over, Marceau said to Fefebvre, "This chief of your staff is no ordinary man; he has great merit, and will speedily attain great renown." Until the close of the brilliant, though brief, career of this general, Soult found in him a warm and energetic friend.

In November, 1794, he was promoted to the rank of general of brigade, but continued to serve under Lefebvre, having the command of the light troops, and proving of inestimable service to the successes and the fame of that officer. In the responsible post he now filled, Soult proved himself a rigid disciplinarian; but, at the same time, exhibited many traits of character which endeared him to the affections of the soldiery. He personally superintended their comforts, and always took care to be present at the time when provisions were served out, that he might satisfy himself of their being sound.

In 1796, Lefebvre's division served under Moreau, in Germany; and Soult had ample opportunities of displaying his characteristic coolness and bravery. He took a conspicuous part in carrying the almost impregnable position of Alterkirchen, leading his soldiers through a tempest of grape shot, carrying the batteries by an impetuous charge, and scaling heights which until then had been deemed impracticable. It was immediately after assisting at this brilliant victory that Soult was despatched in command of an advanced detachment of three battalions and five hundred cavalry to open the way for the left of the army. With a force of only six thousand men he was suddenly attacked by the Austrians to the number of 25,000. The contest was sustained for several hours with great obstinacy, until Soult's ammunition began to fail, and the energies of his men were almost exhausted. At this moment a column of cavalry unexpectedly appeared on the field; and this timely reinforcement was the means of saving this devoted band from destruction.

During this period Napoleon was en

gaged in the campaign of Italy; but the fame of the young general reached him; and he inquired one day of Massena if he deserved his high reputation. "For courage and judgment, he has scarcely an equal," was the reply of the veteran; and from this time Soult was honoured with the confidence and personal friendship of Napoleon; and his promotion was exceedingly rapid. In 1799 he was made a general of division, and took an important part in the battle of Stockach, on the 26th March. The same year he was sent to suppress the insurrection in Switzerland, and succeeded by a happy mixture of clemency and severity. After this expedition, he returned to join the main army under Massena, and passed into Italy, where he was created lieutenantgeneral. He was appointed to the chief command of the centre, consisting of 12,000 men, and in a series of actions against the Austrians, extending over several consecutive days, supplied the want of numbers, according to the language of Napoleon, by "bravery, intrepidity, and the necessity of conquering." At length, finding himself in an exposed and unprotected situation, his men almost entirely destitute of provisions, with not more than two rounds of ammunition, and surrounded by a force five times as numerous as his own, he determined to cut his way through the enemy, and, if possible, to effect a junction with Massena. answer to a summons to surrender, he replied, that "with bayonets Frenchmen never despaired." His men were inspired by the dauntless courage of their commander, and taking advantage with great skill, of the indecision of the Austrians, he secured his movements until a party detached by Massena came to his relief. In this same campaign he sallied out of the city of Genoa, when it was beleaguered by the enemy, at the head of 6,000 men, and returned with a supply of provisions and 1,000 prisoners. Three days after, the sortie was renewed, but with a less favourable result. "The action," says Napoleon, " was obstinate and bloody. Soult, after having performed prodigies of valour, fell severely wounded, and remained in the power of the enemy." His younger brother also served in this engagement, and was made prisoner at the same time. They were restored to liberty after the capitulation of Genoa.

In