"I his former pride and predicted for himself | how he had sinned against my country. He another course of unparalleled glory.- alone had opened the abyss by which we "If we have another such success to-mor- were all engulphed." So Marmont abánrow, the enemy will repass the Rhine quicker doned the broken hopes of the Empire. than they passed it, and I shall be again on Good councillors urged upon Napoleon the the Vistula. But," he added, with a grimace, necessity of abdication, and the great and "I shall then make peace on the natural proud soldier capitulated to destiny. boundaries of the Rhine." have only one regret," writes the Duke of Marmont at Vauchamps took Prince Our- of Ragusa," and it is that I did not follow ousoff prisoner, and kept his sword. General Napoleon to Elba after he had descended Grouchy, he says, came in while this trophy from the throne, regardless of any consewas lying on his table, and begged it as a quences that might have accrued to myself." gift. Marmont at once presented it to him. Instead of this, he ruminated at Paris over "But what was my astonishment when I the character of the abased potentate, and read, a few days after, in the Moniteur the his moralizings take a very candid form. following paragraph ::-M. Carbarel, Aidea Satanic pride,” an de-Camp to General Grouchy, has arrived in He attributes to him " Paris, and has forwarded to the Empress, on "extraordinary contempt of men,”—“ valuthe part of that General, the sword of Prince ing as nothing the interests of humanity," Ourousoff, whom he took prisoner at the Then why should he follow that monster to battle of Vauchamps." Does not an incident Elba? His last anecdote of Napoleon illussuffice to describe a man's whole character? trates the aberrations of his vanity. Few new triumphs fell to Marmont's "Before the commencement of the camshare. Louis the Eighteenth issued his proc-paign of 1815 he ordered General Bernard, lamation; the Marshal retired from Sezanne who took charge of his topographical to Gué-a-Trem, from Rheims to Fisme, from bureau, to bring him a map of France as Fere-Champenoise to Paris. The defence of well as a map of the northern frontier. He the capital was entrusted to him by Joseph, carried almost to extravagance his mania for who set the example of desertion. The cap than that?" he asked. No, sire, this is colossal maps. Have you nothing larger itulation followed, which was imputed to Marmont by the Emperor as an act of trea- the same scale as that of the Low Counthe only map you can consult, it being on son. Napoleon took refuge at Fontaine- tries. And is this the whole of France?' bleau, the Senate proclaimed his downfall, "Yes, sire.' He seemed, standing with his arms crossed, to lose himself in contemplation for some minutes, and then said, Poor France; why she is no more than a breakfast!''' the connection of the Marshal with the Empire was at an end. It is clear that no treason was committed. Marmont had received a written authorization from Joseph, under whose commands he was, to Marmont interrupts his narrative at the negotiate the surrender of Paris, to which portals of the restored monarchy, to sum up he consented only after a desperate struggle the history of his personal relations with seven times renewed, and closed by a develop- Napoleon. It has been said of him that he ment of irresistible force on the part of the was Napoleon's favorite, and treated by him enemy. From January to March Marmont's as a son. M. de Montholon talks of Bonatroops had been sixty-seven times under fire; parte, when a lieutenant of artillery, sharhe had himself charged at the head of a ing his means of existance with Marmont, column sword in hand. And now, recount- who declares the story to be false and ridicu ing the circumstances of his defeat, he adds lous. He repeats his complaints of having a succession of insinuations against individ- been slowly promoted, jealously rewarded, uals, accuses Talleyrand of intrigue and unjustly rebuked, and continually misunderLavallette of ingratitude. The distinction stood. At the same time he knew that drawn by Napoleon, however, between an Napoleon prized his services, and he imputes honorable man and a man of honor might well recur to his mind. "Was it necessary to devote himself to him even at the expense of France?" "However profound was the interest I felt in Napoleon, I could not forget to him that he launched the charge of treason recklessly and insincerely. Marmont, however, seems to have nourished a peculiar sympathy with this man, whose character he so laboriously defaces, for he says, " Napo leon, probably, was the being I loved the | he had uttered a mot à la Louis-Quatorze. most during my From the affairs of the Court the Marshal turns in a brief but painful episode, to the affairs of his own family. The Duchess, during his long absence, had revelled in fashionable displays, and, upon his installing himself at home, seemed in no hurry to accommodate her mode of life to his wishes or necessities. He proposed "an amiable separation," resigned her jointure, and left her, as he affirms, to exercise her malice in a perpetual cabal with his enemies, of whom he had many, jealous and implacable. life." In 1814, no longer a Bonapartist, he was a courtier of the Restoration, and moved in the same society with Talleyrand, the Abbé Louis, Bournouville, and Dupont, conversed with the King, and enjoyed the light life of Bourbon palaces. Of the individuals at the head of affairs, all were corrupt, he says, except three: Dessoles, Jancourt, and Montesquiou. As for Talleyrand, he was neither so wicked nor so able as ho had been represented. He was corrupt to a degree unprecedented in ancient or modern times. The Abbé Louis was a brute, Dalberg a greedy traitor, Bournouville an incapable, Dupont a miser. Once, at a council, Marmont was so incensed by the insolence of the Abbé Louis, that he threatened to fling him out of the window; but Talleyrand interposed, and said, "Monsieur Louis, you must talk about these matters more calmly." The royal Louis made a more agreeable impression, when with his Gascon solemnity he said to the Marshal," My dear Marmont, when one has commanded in ten battles, one belongs to the family of kings." But the Bourbon speedily illustrated the truth that his dynasty never learned any thing and never forgot any thing; he insulted the Old Guard; he insisted on the most empty pedantries, and from the first displayed as much vanity as dullness. The Seventh Volume of the Memoirs relates to one of the most remarkable epochs in the career of Napoleon, but is rendered less interesting than those which preceded it by the circumstance that Marmont was no longer with his former chief. He was at Paris before the return from Elba; he left the capital with the King: he heard only the distant rumors of Waterloo, and when Louis the Eighteenth died, he was among the relics of the Empire, a man not forgiven by one party or trusted by another. He witnessed all that took place at the death and obsequies of the sickly Bourbon. A "The moment the physician who held the King's wrist pronounced him to be dead, the Duchess of Angoulême turned towards Monsieur and saluted him as King. minute afterwards, the Duke Charles de announced to us, Gentlemen, the King is Damas came, and, with tears in his eyes, dead!' Again a few minutes, and the Duke of Blacas came forward, and said, Gentlemen, the King!' and Charles the Tenth appeared." A parasitical literature of commentaries, will, no doubt, spring up around these Memoirs, dealing so freely as they do with public and private character. Marmont distinctly accuses Prince Eugene of having, in 1814, disobeyed the orders of the Emperor Napoleon in the furtherance of his own selfish objects. Marmont describes his brain as capable of retaining every thing and producing nothing. His pride was ridiculous. When the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia dined with him, he first seated himself, and then signified his pleasure that they should do the same. Reviewing the troops from a balcony, he ordered a chair of state to be placed for himself, and common chairs for the other sovereigns, who, however, preferred to stand, and thought he had chosen a fauteuil on account of his bodily infirmities. On the subject of these infirmities the Duke of Ragusa has much to insinuate. Among the mental infirmities of Louis was a habit of believing in the beauty of his own mots. Thus, when De Luxembourg carved a duck in the English fashion, the King M. Planat de La Faye, formerly an officer looked pompously round the table and in the Imperial Artillery, who has had shouted "The English fashion! the English access to the original correspondence in the fashion! Be French, Sir, before every archives of the ducal house of Leuchtenthing! He thought, says Marmont, that | berg, undertakes to prove that Prince "He intrigued in his own interest; he abandoned himself to the strange belief that he could, as King of Italy, survive the Empire." But Eugene in January wrote to his wife: "Bah, I shall never be King! In February, Napoleon was in the highest spirits: *It Eugene so far from having sacrificed the Emperor to his own egotism, obeyed him in every thing, rejected all corrupt proposals, and fulfilled to the letter his duty towards France and towards Napoleon. The letters "I have destroyed the army of Silesia, quoted are those of Prince Eugene hinself, composed of Russians and Prussians. I beMaximilian-Joseph, king of Bavaria, Prince gan yesterday to beat Schwarzenberg. I Augustus of Tour and Taxis, Napoleon, have in four days made from thirty to forty Gen. Danthouard, the Duke of Otranto, rals, five or six hundred officers, from a hunthousand prisoners, including twenty genethe Duke of Feltre, and Count Tascher de dred and fifty to two hundred cannon, and La Pagerie. They bear upon the circuman immense quantity of baggage. stance of Napoleon's order to Eugene to is possible that we may preserve Italy." evacuate Italy, to negotiate an armistice He evinced a tender sympathy in the sufwith the Austrians, to garrison only Man-ferings of Eugene's wife, "the vice-queen," tua, Alessandria, and Genoa, and to retire then about to give birth to a child, and recwith the main body of his forces into ommended that she should be brought to France. This order, asserts Marmont, Paris. Eugene, however, seems to have Eugene evaded; but M. de La Faye adduces misunderstood his solicitude, for a remonthe evidence of authentic documents to strance from him elicited the following: refute the charge. Some of Napoleon's instructions to his Italian Generalissimo are particularly characteristic. On the 17th of November, 1813, he wrote: "My son, I have received a letter from you, and one from the vice-queen, both full of extravagance. You must have lost your head; it was simply in a spirit of dignity and honor that I desired her to come to Paris, knowing her to be too susceptible in her feelings to desire that her accouchement should take place among the Austrians. for her to give birth to her child in the *Nothing would be more natural than middle of her family. * * You must be mad to suppose that this suggestion has any thing to do with politics. I never change in my style or my tone, and I write to you as I have always written.' A letter in cipher accompanying this reccommended that Piedmont and Genoa should be left untouched, and that the rest of Italy should be divided into two kingdoms. M. de La Faye's case in favor of Eugene will be best understood, however, after a careful perusal of the documents he has printed, and a comparison of them with the "It is a great consolation for me to have somewhat vague statement in the Marmont nothing to fear in Italy." Memoirs. PASSAGE IN NEWTON.-Having heard it confidently advanced by a gentleman of great information, that "Sir Isaac Newton had said that prophecy would be fulfilled when mankind should move at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and when language should be darted," I should be very much obliged if any one could inform me where I could find the above fact in print. -Notes and Queries. MDCLXXXIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVIII. 2 THE BATTLE OF PRAGUE.-It is not known I am told, who composed this once famous piece of music. Are there any surmises on the subject? HENRY T. RILEY. [This piece has been attributed to Franz Kotzwara or Koczwara, a musician born in Prague, who came to London about the year 1791, after which he published some songs and instrumental music.]-Notes and Queries. From The Literary Gazette. Herder's Remains. Unpublished Letters by Herder and his Wife, Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, &c. Edited by H. Düntzer and F. G. von Herder. 3 vols. Frankfort: Meidingen. "His fame," said Napoleon of Dante, "is increasing and will increase, because nobody ever reads him." Though, as regards the "Divine Comedy," this saying may well display less kindness than keenness, and less justice than either, there is certainly more than one reputation to which it is sufficiently applicable. Writers there are, who after having rendered the most illustrious services to mankind, after lives spent in the dissipation of error and the discovery of new truths or the confirmation of old ones, find their labors superseded through no fault of their own, but through an accession of knowledge forbidding mankind to tarry by the old landmarks, even though these may have been set up by giants. In such cases it is that we learn to know Fame as a true goddess, preserving alike the benefactor from oblivion and the benefitted from ingratitude. The hero of intellectual research can never die, his name may be rarely pronounced, his pages seldom perused, the exact nature of his achievements imperfectly remembered, but his memory survives, to be held in honor long after the knowledge which it was his unspeakable toil to win has become part of the very alphabet of mental culture imparted to the peasant and the schoolboy. Thoughts like these naturally arise to the mind on hearing the now somewhat unfrequent name of Herder. Not having been the last, he cannot in our day be among the first of the cursores qui vitaï lampada tradunt. His works hardly seem to be much read, many students of German do not even know their names. Though conventionally inscribed among the five great classics of Teutonic literature, it may be doubted whether he be as often quoted as Lavater, for example, or Jacobi. Yet he is rarely named without respect and admiration. It is felt that if his ideas attract less attention now, the reason is that they have become commonplace through universal reception. This is decisive of their value, and amply justifies the publication of the three thick volumes of correspondence before us, which appear very fairly edited. That these letters are not so interesting as might have been expected, considering the brilliant pens from which they proceed, may be easily accounted for by the facilities for real intercourse enjoyed by the writers. Men will seldom cover sheets with what they may have an opportunity of conveying by word of mouth in a week. These documents throw notwithstanding an important light on the relations in which the literary Dii majores of the period stood to one another, and their interest has been enhanced by the editors' diligence in hunting up the keys to allusions rendered obscure by lapse of time. Goethe's correspondence comes first-the Hesperus of this literary firmamemt. It shows distinctly that he loved Herder, while, at the same time, he could not avoid a mild consciousness of his own superiority. The men were, indeed, singularly contrasted, and it is hardly conceivable that their friendship would have continued so long as it did but for Goethe's peculiar power of taking possession of other minds, and pervading them with an influence from which there was no escape. All who have had much personal intercourse with him have left their testimony to the inexplicable spell of that great, cold, calm mind, before whose silent energy opposition and contrariety vanished like metals in an alkehest. He seemed, they say, to diffuse himself around them like the air; they acknowledged his presence in every breath they drew; yet if his force were too great to be resisted, it was too evenly distributed to be oppressive. The same impression of universality accompanies him into his writing; we seem to be reading, not a German, but all Germany. Herder, on the other hand, was a concentrated man, who could exert a vigorous impulse upon two subjects or two men in turn, but not upon two at once. Accordingly he seldom had more than one great friend at a time. Goethe filled this position for nearly twenty years, during which time he exercised great influence on Herder's character and modes of thought. The following is a specimen of the way in which he proceeded when he thought that his friend's views required modification. Herder's spiritual-mindedness and love of abstract truth made him somwhat indifferent, not to say unfriendly, to those material manifestations of the beautiful in which Goethe took so much delight, and a passage in one of his sermons called down this re-mering and sketching all day long in the monstrance: open air. You will be glad to see my findinge. We have certainly discovered the most important objects here; the weather is splendid. I am dragging a terrible load of science to seek and the fortune to find all stones home with me, and have had the conthe slight and almost imperceptible variations by which one sort shades off into another. These form the stumbling-block and stupefaction of all collectors and system-mongers, whose terminology is sadly perplexed to find them a place." "Now let me put in a little plea for the fine arts. If the idea which you throw out in this place were to be made the theme of an essay, where it could be considered fully, or of a friendly discussion with those who understand you, it would be a different thing, but as it is, the remark falls as if from the sky, without qualification and without being led up to by any train of reasoning. I know that every one who has to care for himself and others does well to make himself practically useful, and that it is dangerous to allow too much scope to a passion for the beatiful. Yet is not this true of everything with which the great and wealthy enhance the enjoyment of life? Horses, dogs, hunts, games, feasts, dresses and diamonds, what time, what money do they not absorb! And The intimacy so honorable and useful to after all they do not elevate the soul, which both parties was doomed to immolation on the gifts of the muses do, and do at less cost. the altar of a great dramatic poet. Schiller, It seems to me that we should never be more omnipotent with Goethe, was disliked by rigorously careful in our language than when Herder. Goethe's most distinguishing charwe would warn against the excess of a good acteristics were, after all, those of artists. thing." He was free from their morbid irritability, but he possessed all their tastes and instincts. There can be no doubt that the influence exerted by Goethe was highly beneficial to Herder. His views became wider, his charity deeper, his sympathies more expansive. His mind acquired more calmness and balance; as Gothe's antipathy to merely scientific men, it should be noticed, frequently led him into awkward situations, most notoriously so in his opposition to Newton's Theory of Colors. Nothing attracted him either in man or in dumb nature; no circumstance crossed his path in actual life, no vision rose upon his busy brain, that he did not strive to render the other hand, possessed all the artist's beautiful in one way or another. Herder, on susceptibility" He was," said Jean Paul, "an oak whose twigs were sensitive plants he learned to control Wisdom to his wish, a man directs a boat, instead of hurrying after her, eager and breathless, as a boy pursues a kite. His disposition was exactly one to be benefitted by intercourse with a mind like Goethe's; his faults such as the contem--but his mental eye was blind to form and color. Saturated with dreams of Grecian plation of his friend's comprehensive liberality would best enable him to correct; his beauty, Schiller burst upon Goethe like an virtues too much the children of his feelings incarnation of the ideal he had long been to allow of that unpleasant habit of referring seeking. Had he not been Goethe he would everything to the head, that made it so much have envied him: as it was he emulated him, and we are indebted to the friendly competition for some of his finest works. Herder easier for Goethe to be admirable than amiable. Concise as the latter's epistles are, they are sufficient to display the writer's extraordinary versatility and many-sidedness. Now he has finished his "Tasso," and will come and read it speedily. Now he has just sketched a colossal head of Jupiter, and hopes his correspondent will approve of the whiskers. Now he is in ecstacies about his famous discovery of the maxillary bone in animals a trespass on the domain of physiologists highly irritating to those gentlemen. Now he is in the mountains, gathering pebbles-an occupation which seems to have afforded him much inward peace of mind: "Krause and I are here by ourselves, ham considered the impetuous stranger from a different point of view. Schiller was young; he middle-aged. Schiller was winning victories; he had won them, it was true, but then a reputation in the making interests the sons of men more than one finished to the last touch; and, without incurring any imputation of unworthy jealousy, Herder might still wish the space in the world's eye occupied by the author of "Don Carlos" somewhat less extensive, and his own somewhat more so. Besides these personal matters, the intellectual characteristics of the two were incongruous. Herder progressed |