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Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

WEAL AND WOE.

While in his shady haunts of murmuro as The tide has ebbed, and we a little band

leaves Are left alone upon the silent sand;

The wandering cuckoo called from grove to Why are these sad dark rocks of waves bereft, She stirred not, till the gathered autumn

grove, And storm-tossed weeds as spellbound seamarks left

sheaves To show where once the eager waters spread ?

Were garnered, and the sad, complaining

dove The vigorous life is gone -- we softiy tread, Now touched with awe, our careless laughter That the fair earth was stripped of all its

Sent everywhere a mourning voice abroad, stilled, By the stern grandeur of the bare rocks chilled.

treasure-hoard.

Then stirred she in the cavern where she The tide has ebbed, and we who saw it flow

slept Lamenting ask, “ Ah, wherefore dost thou go, And the dark.fringed eyelids slowly rose, Old ocean, hiding in thy southern caves, Baring the great sad eyes, that never wept, While all the north' laments thy ebbing Though filled with sorrow nought can cloud waves?”

or close, And far-off whispers from th' horizon come, Sad as the voice of cold winds that have swept From flying winds that hither, thither roam.

Over eternal snows, “Children of men, 'twixt heaven and earth And wail all night around the silent door ye go

Of some deserted house upon a lonely moor. In this strange fate of wandering to and fro, Now drawn to good and now to evil deed,

She wandered down over the trackless hills, Until from earth's vibration ye are freed. Through woodlands, to the dwellings of Why wonder ocean has its ebb and flow,

mankind, While man alternates still 'twixt weal and And ever at her glance, that blights and chills, woe?”

The leaves fell thick and thicker down the Academy. BEATRIX L. TOLLEMACHE.

wind. She breathed upon the gardens, and her

breath Slew all the colors of the summer flowers.

They hung their heads in death, AUTUMN'S BRIEF REIGN.

No more to be revived by any showers, When the winds moan at night,

Till, when the long, long winter is outworn, And down them float, like ghosts of faded | The faint sun welcome back the first spring

dreams, The yellow leaves, which when the sun was

Before her face there sped bright

The last late swallow, now, with hurried wings, Were wont to flutter in its golden beams, And dance for sheer delight,

Fast fleeting to the summer and the south, Then, while the world is hung with misty Their latest leaves, and Boreas call, who

Ere the sad trees should shed wreaths,

brings Comes sad-eyed Autumn down the pathless

The snow-clouds at the first blast of his height,

mouth, O'er wind-swept heaths That soon shall hide their heads in winter's Bind in his iron bonds the waters and the land.

And winter, with a fierce, relentless hand, garb of white. All the long summer through she lay asleep

Through all the land she went 'Mongst the bare hilltops, in a lonely grot,

A veiled shape clothed round with mystery; Where no step sounded, save some mountain Till at the last the sound of winds was blent sheep,

Around her with the murmur of the sea. Wandering thither from its pasture-plot

And down she passed, even to the utmost In the green vale below.

strand, Above her rose the mountains, peak on peak

And heard the tempest moaning in the Of everlasting snow,

north, At dawning bright with many a crimson Saw mighty billows gathering round the land, streak,

With white crests bursting forth; And when the sun was low,

Then slowly faded she into the night, Flushing with evening tints and golden bars,

A dusky cloud upon the face of heaven, Slowly to change to dark beneath the eternal And Winter smote upon the sea with might,

And with a crash of billows rent and riven, stars.

'Midst sound of rushing wind and waves that Soft was her sleep, while in the happy plains

Far down below, the languid summer lay, Seized with his frozen grip the borders of the Where, bathed in sunny hours and gentle rains,

shore. The flowery meadows sicpt, knee-deep in

S. CORNISH WATKINS. hay.

Longman's Magazine.

morn.

roar,

From The Contemporary Review. now at last published are full of the most MEMOIRS OF GENERAL MARBOT.

interesting and exciting matter; the narWhat inexhaustible stores there appear rative never flags for a single page. Marto be of private memoirs of the great rev-bot's position as aide-de-camp brought olutionary epoch of France from 1789 to him into contact with all the leading gen1815! Not a year passes without further erals of the period, and often with Napoinstalments of them issuing from the leon himself. His descriptions of his press. Nor is there any sign that we have personal adventures are of extraordinary come to the end of the series, or that the interest; and he gives hundreds of incidemand of the public for them is satiated. dents throwing light on the condition of Louis Blanc and Taine speak of having the army and the relations of its generals had access to many private narratives of to one another and to their chief. The this period, of great value, which have story is connected by short and lucid acnot yet seen the light. Among the latest, counts of the general manæuvres in the and certainly the most valuable of such several campaigns of Napoleon. There works, is that just published by the de. is, however, nothing very new in these. scendants of General Marbot, an officer A comparison with Thiers's history shows whose name scarcely appears in any his- that he must have revised his account tory of the time, but who served with great from that source. What is of real value distinction in the Grande Armée of Napo- and interest is his own personal experi. leon from 1799 to the fall of the Empire. ence. Some of his adventures and hairHe acted as aide.de-camp successively to breadth escapes are so extraordinary as five marshals — Bernadotte, Augereau, almost to surpass the credible. Murat, Lapnes, and Masséna — and had Marbot, however, left the reputation of the singular good fortune to be present a man of the highest honor. He wrote and to escape, not without many wounds, this account of his military experiences but with his life, from nearly all the great for the benefit of his family, and appar. historic battles of the period. He served ently with no intention of publishing it; in the campaigns of Marengo, Austerlitz, his descendants have oniy recently been Jena, Wagram, Portugal, Moscow, Leipsic, induced to make it public. He had by and Waterloo. He was present at the writing a defence of the emperor's stratsieges of Genoa and Saragossa. He was egy in the campaign of Wagram earned with Murat at Madrid; with Lannes in the gratitude of Napoleon, who left him pursuit of Sir John Moore's army; and by his will one hundred thousand francs, with Masséna in his advance on Lisbon, with the request that he would undertake and during the winter before the lines of a history of the wars in which he was Torres Vedras, and in the subsequent engaged. The contents of the book retreat into Spain. He commanded a breathe in every page sentiments which cavalry regiment in the Russian campaign, do honor to him. It is impossible, then, and led it safely across the Bérésina; and to doubt his general veracity. The ut. finally was present in the two disastrous most that has been suggested by some defeats of Leipsig and Waterloo. He critics in France is that Marbot was a gained every step of promotion, from that good raconteur, and that in frequently of a private in the ranks to that of colonel, telling the stories of his adventures he by acts of bravery in the field; he was may have unconsciously improved them. thirteen times severely wounded ; at the Although these memoirs are not written restoration of the monarchy he was one of with the literary style of De Ségur, or in those excepted from the amnesty, and the solemn and tragic tone of Férenzac, forced into exile, but later he became they are in many respects more interestattached to the Duke of Orleans, was made ing. They strike one as more real in the general, served as his aide-de-camp at the sense that they mainly describe the inci. siege of Antwerp and in two campaigns dents which came under the writer's perin Africa, and finally died in 1854. sonal view; they give the impression of

The three bulky volumes of memoirs I these great wars from the point of view of

a staff officer, just as the memoirs of Fri- the existing government of France, and casse gave those of the common soldiers to grasp supreme power. Bonaparte did of the Republic, and those of Coignet of his best, by adroit flattery, to gain General the soldiers of the Empire. They breathe Marbot to his cause, but failing in this, he the life of the Grande Armée, the spirit artfully tried to give the impression to the which animated the officers and men, and public that Marbot was with him by walkwhich made it the greatest engine of war ing arm in arm through the city in the which has ever been known. most confidential manner. The general Marbot belonged to a family settled in saw what was coming, and believed it to the Dordogne, not of noble birth, but liv be inevitable, but he would not be a party ing noblement-that is to say, on their to the overthrow of the Republic. Marown resources, without any other industry, celline was introduced to Bonaparte, who or any profession than that of arms. They took him by the ear, a sign with him of gave three generals to France in the last the most friendly condescension, and said: hundred years. His mother's seven broth-"This lad will one day be a second Geners were all in the army, and all of them eral Marbot." The general, wishing to emigrated during the Revolution. His father, a Republican by conviction, rose rapidly in the army during the early period of the Revolution, became a general, and was a deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He was appointed to the command of the Army of Paris in 1799, but when, shortly after, a plot was formed by Siéyès and others to place the government in the hands of a single military chief, and the general was sounded on the subject, he refused to give his aid. He agreed that the misfortunes of the country demanded a prompt remedy, but having sworn to maintain the existing Constitution, he would not avail himself of the authority which his command gave him over the troops of his division to overthrow the Constitution. He resigned his post, and asked for an active command in the field. Bernadotte followed his example. General Marbot was appointed to a division in the Army of Italy under Masséna; he took with him his son Marcelline, the author of these memoirs, then a lad of only seventeen. He was at this early age so timid by nature, that his father said he was more fit to be a girl, and called him Mademoiselle Marcelline. The lad soon showed that within a delicate frame he had a heart of steel, great physical endurance, and presence of mind and resource in time of peril.

leave Lyons the next morning, found that every horse in the town had been engaged by Bonaparte for a round of inspection of the fortifications. He was much annoyed by this, but contented himself, saying: "This is the beginning of omnipotence." He was obliged to descend the Rhone to Avignon in a barge, and was wrecked on a sandbank. From Avignon he went to Aix, and while there was invited to a grand banquet by the Radicals of Cavaillon, who left him to pay the bill of fifteen hundred francs for the entertainment, which included ortoians and the best of wines. Some of these patriots desired to pay their share, but the others said it would be an insult to the general.

Arrived at Nice, Marcelline entered as a private in the First Regiment of Hussars, which formed part of the division which his father commanded. A mentor was assigned to him, one Pertelay, a type of the hussar of the time. This man's face was divided by an immense scar; he had a long pigtail, moustaches half a foot in length, curled with wax, and losing themselves in his ears, and two wide plaits of hair which descended from his shako to his chest. In order to conform as far as possible to this type, which was that affected by the regiment, the young man was taken to a hairdresser, who rigged him out with false hair for a pigtail, plaits, and moustaches, so as to give him the necessary appearance of ferocity.

There is an interesting account of the Marbots, father and son, on their way to Italy, meeting at Lyons with General Within a few weeks Marcelline was able Bonaparte, then returning from Egypt, to show his quality and to earn promotion. with the full determination to overthrow A detachment of fifty hussars, under the

command of a lieutenant, was ordered to | traordinary bravery - when about to make reconnoitre a certain district. The lieu- a charge at the head of the cavalry, was tenant met with an accident by the fall of accustomed s'habiller en bête, as he called his horse, and was unable to proceed. it. He divested himself of his coat and Sergeant Canon, who then took command, remained behind at a drink-shop, complaining of illness. The men then chose young Marbot as their leader. Under his command they surprised a hundred Austrian hussars, took seventeen of them prisoners, and escaped with great difficulty from a large force of Austrians. On their return they found Canon asleep at the drink-shop, with an enormous ham before him and two empty wine bottles. On reporting themselves to General Serras he began to abuse Canon, when Pertelay exclaimed: "Do not blame him, general, he is such a coward that if he had led us the expedition would never have succeeded." The general broke Canon on the spot, took his stripes from him in the presence of the regiment, and made Marbot sergeant in his place, without even suspecting that he was the son of the general commanding one of the divisions of the army.

A month later Marbot was engaged in another affair, in which thirty hussars, led by a younger brother of Pertelay, surprised a battery of Austrian artillery, and carried off six guns. One-third of the men engaged were killed or wounded. General Championnet, who commanded in chief, was so delighted with their action that he availed himself of a recent decree of the first consul, and awarded three swords of honor, carrying with them after a time the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and a commission as sub-lieutenant, to the detachment, allowing them to chose themselves who should receive these rewards. Their leader having been killed, they unanimously selected Marbot, who was nominated sub-lieutenant in December, 1799.

Among other types described by Marbot of this period is that of General Ma card, commanding a division of cavalry. "He was one of those officers raised by hazard and by their courage, and who, while of real value before the enemy, were not less incapable from their want of instruction of holding high rank. This singular person · - a real Colossus, of ex

shirt, leaving only his breeches, his boots, and his plumed hat. Thus, naked to the waist, he exposed to view a trunk as hairy as that of a bear. Once equipped en bête, clenching his sabre, he rushed on the foe, swearing like a pagan, but he seldom came to close quarters, for the singular and terrible sight of this half-naked giant covered with hair, and who presented himself with yells, so terrified his foes that they flew on all sides, thinking they had to do with a wild beast." Marbot gives illustrations of the extreme ignorance of this man. "It must not be supposed," he adds, "that all the officers in the Army of Italy were like him; it contained in its ranks a great number of men distinguished by their education and their manners; but at this time it also included some chiefs who were very much out of place in the superior ranks. They were weeded out by degrees."

Marbot, having got his commission, became aide-de-camp to his father. The army shortly after retreated, under Masséna, to Genoa, and there underwent one of the most terrible sieges of modern times. In the course of it General Marbot was severely wounded, and later died of fever in his son's arms. The sufferings of the army and of the inhabitants were very great. Masséna maintained order only by enforcing the most rigid discipline. Any officer who did not punctually execute orders was broken without pity, by virtue of powers then conferred on commanders-in-chief. Marbot gives an illustration in the case of a Colonel Sarcleux, who failed to bring his regiment into position at the appointed time, and was the cause of the failure of a sortie which the marshal had planned. The marshal deprived him of his command, and announced it in an order of the day. Sarcleux would have shot himself if he could have re-established his honor by so doing. Instead of this he shouldered a musket and took his place in the ranks of the regiment he had commanded.

Marbot, after the death of his father,