The branch of study to which Napoleon directed his almost undivided attention, was mathematics. He paid but little attention to the languages, and still less to the elegant arts; nay, even in writing he is said to have taken so little pleasure, as to neglect it almost entirely; whence it has arisen, that we never hear of any paper written by him in his riper years, without a note of wonder either at its illegibility, or its legible incorrectness, both in character and orthoepy.

With a book of mathematics or history-Euclid or Plutarch in his hand, his great delight was to shut himself up in his little garden, to walk, and to meditate. His mind seemed for a long time to disdain all lower occupations and less important studies; but a desire for action at last broke in upon his repose, and he had no sooner mixed with his school-fellows for this purpose, than he began to act the part of the incipient general among them, taught them the military exercise, and instituted for their usual sports the combats of the Roman circus, and the evolutions of the Macedonian phalanx. His school-fellows began now to testify an uncommon degree of respect and attachment towards him; they felt, and were the first to pay tri bute to that fascinating, or rather commanding influence, which was afterward so principal a means of raising him to empire and renown.

In the hard winter of 1783, Napoleon conceived the idea of constructing a little fort of snow. With the assistance of some of his most zealous comrades, and with no other instruments than the ordinary garden tools, he perfected a complete quadrangle, defended at the corners by four bastions, the walls of which were three feet and a half high. So well was it executed, that some remains of it were in existence many weeks afterward. While it lasted, nothing but sieges and sallies were the order of the day.

Some of his leisure hours he employed in writing a poem on the liberty of his native country, Corsica. It was constructed on the idea, that the genius of his country had appeared to him in a dream, and putting a poignard in his hand, had called on him for vengeance. The effort appears to have been an abortive one; since, beyond the bare mention of the piece, nothing more of it is recorded.

After he had passed five years in this academy, the royal inspector, on his annual examination, found him so well informed in the art of fortification, that he removed him to the ecole militaire at Paris, where he arrived on the 17th of October, 1784. Here young Napoleon was under the direction of able and meritorious officers, and found excellent teachers in all the arts and sciences, particularly those connected with war.

In the mathematics, he had the celebrated Monge for his preceptor, and benefited so much by his instructions, that on passing his first examination, after joining the school, he was placed as an officer in the corps of engineers.

While yet a cadet, he went on one occasion, to witness the ascent of a balloon, in the Champ de Mars. Impelled by an eager curiosity, he made his way through the crowd, and unperceived, entered the inner fence which contained the apparatus for inflating the silken globe. It was then very nearly filled, and restrained from its aerial flight by the last cord only; when Napoleon requested the aeronaut to permit him to mount the car in company with him. This, however, was refused, from an apprehension that the feelings of the boy might embarrass the experiments; on which Buonaparte is stated to have exclaimed, "I am young, it is true, but fear neither the powers of earth, nor of air!" sternly adding, "Will you let me ascend?" The erratick philosopher sharply replied, "No, sir, I will not; I beg that you will retire." The little cadet, enraged at the refusal, instantly drew a small sabre, which he wore with his uniform, cut the balloon in several places, and destroyed the curious apparatus which the aeronaut had constructed with infinite labour and ingenuity, for the purpose of his experiment.

Such was the last notable act of the boyhood of Napoleon Buonaparte; it would seem as if on the verge of manhood, he had in this one adventure, prefigured the whole of that extraordinary career which he afterwards run; as the clouds aspiring, as the air trackless; its only object to ascend; its only rudder the whirlwind; a vapour its impulse; downfall its destiny.

WONDERFUL MEMORY OF WILLIAM LYON.

William Lyon, a strolling player, who performed at the theatre in Edinburgh, and who was excellent in the part of Gibby, the Highlander, gave a surprising instance of memory. One evening over his bottle, he wagered a crown bowl of punch, a liquor of which he was very fond, that next morning, at the rehearsal, he would repeat a Daily Advertiser from beginning to end. At the rehearsal, his opponent reminded him of his wager, imagining, as he was drunk the night before, that he must certainly have forgot it, and rallied him on his ridiculous bragging of his memory. Lyon pulled out the paper, desired him to look at it and be judge himself whether he did or did not win his wager. Notwithstanding the want of connection between the paragraphs, the variety of advertisements, and the general chaos which goes to the composition of any

newspaper, he repeated it from beginning to end, without the least hesitation or mistake. I know this to be true, and believe the parallel cannot be produced in any age or nation. Lyon died about four years ago, at Edinburgh, where he had played with great success.

[We heard of this performance many years since, when the Daily Advertiser, though larger than other papers, was not so large and crowded as it has been of late. It is said, that the late Mr. Heidegger could name all the signs from the Exchange to St. James' on one side the street, after once walking to observe them.]

ACCOUNT OF JOHN LUDWIG.

It is usual for the commissaries of excise in Saxony to appoint a peasant in every village in their district to receive the excise of the place, for which few are allowed more than one crown, and none more than three.

Mr. Christian Gotthold Hoffman, who is chief commissary of Dresden, and the villages adjacent, when he was auditing the accounts of some of these peasants in March, 1753, was told, that there was among them one John Ludwig, a strange man, who, though he was very poor and had a family, was yet continually reading in books, and very often stood the greatest part of the night at his door, gazing at the stars.

This account raised Mr. Hoffman's curiosity, and he ordered the man to be brought before him. Hoffman, who expected something in the man's appearance that corresponded with a mind superior to his station, was greatly surprised to see the most rustic boor he had ever beheld. His hair hung over his forehead down to his eyes, his aspect was sordid and stupid, and his manner was, in every respect, that of a plodding ignorant clown. Mr. Hoffman, after contemplating this unpromising appearance, concluded, that as the supposed superiority of this man was of the intellectual kind, it would certainly appear when he spoke; but even in this experiment he' was also disappointed. He asked him, if what his neighbours had said of his reading and studying was true? and the man bluntly and coarsely replied, "What neighbour has told you that I read and study? If I have studied, I have studied for myself, and I don't desire that you or any body else should know any thing of the matter." Hoffman, however, continued the conversation, notwithstanding his disappointment, and asked several questions concerning arithmetic, and the first rudiments of astronomy; to which he now expected vague and confused replies. But in this too, he had formed an erroneous prognostic; for Hoffman was struck not only with astonish

ment but confusion, to hear such definitions and explications as would have done honour to a regular academic in a public examination.

Mr. Hoffman, after this conversation, prevailed on the peasant to stay some time at his house, that he might further gratify his curiosity at such times as would be most convenient. In their subsequent conferences, he proposed to his guest the most abstracted and embarrassing questions, which were always answered with the utmost readiness and precision. The account which this extraordinary person gives of himself and his acquisitions, is as follows:

John Ludwig was born the 24th of February, 1715, in the village of Cossedaude, and was, among other poor children of the village, sent very young to school. The Bible, which was the book by which he was taught to read, gave him so much pleasure, that he conceived the most eager desire to read others, which, however, he had no opportunity to get into his possession. In about a year, his master began to teach him to write, but this exercise was rather irksome than pleasing at first; but when the first difficulty was surmounted, he applied to it with great alacrity, especially as books were put into his hand to copy as an exercise; and he employed himself almost night and day, not in copying particular passages only, but in forming collections of sentences, or events, that were connected with each other. When he was ten years old, he had been at school four years, and was then put to arithmetic, but this embarrassed him with innumerable difficulties, which his master would not take the trouble to explain, expecting that he should content himself with the implicit practice of positive rules. Ludwig, therefore, was so disgusted with arithmetic, that, after much scolding and beating, he went from school, without having learned any thing more than reading, writing, and his Catechism.

He was then sent into the field to keep cows, and in this employment he soon became clownish, and negligent of every thing else; so that the greatest part of what he had learned was forgotten. He was associated with the sordid and the vicious, and he became insensible like them. As he grew up, he kept company with women of bad character, and abandoned himself to such pleasures as were within his reach. But a desire of surpassing others, that principle which is productive of every kind of greatness, was still living in his breast; he remembered to have been praised by his master, and preferred above his comrades, when he was learning to read and write, and he was still desirous of the same pleasure, though he did not know how to get at it.

In the autumn of 1735, when he was about 20 years old, he bought a small Bible, at the end of which was a Chatechism, with references to a great number of texts, upon which the principles contained in the answers were founded. Ludwig had never been used to take any thing upon trust, and was, therefore, continually turning over the leaves of his Bible, to find the passages referred to in the Catechism; but this he found so irksome a task, that he determined to have the whole at one view, and therefore set about to transcribe the Catechism, with all the texts at large brought into their proper places. With this exercise he filled two quires of paper, and though when he began, the character was scarcely legible, yet, before he had finished, it was greatly improved; for an art that has been once learnt is easily recovered.

In the month of March, 1736, be was employed to receive the excise of the little district in which he lived, and he found, that in order to discharge this office, it was necessary for him not only to write, but to be master of the two first rules of arithmetic, addition and subtraction. His ambition had now an object, and a desire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather, better than others of his station, determined him once more to apply to arithmetic, however hateful the task, and whatever labour it might require. He now regretted that he was without an instructor, and would have been glad at any rate to have practised the rules without first knowing the rationale. His mind was continually upon the stretch to find out some way of supplying this want, and at last he recollected that one of his school-fellows had a book from which examples of several rules were taken by the master to exercise the scholars. He therefore went immediately in search of this school-fellow, and was overjoyed to find, upon inquiry, that the book was still in his possession. Having borrowed this important volume, he returned home with it, and beginning his studies as he went along, he pursued them with such application, that in about six months he was master of the rule of three with fractions.

The reluctance with which he began to learn the powers and properties of figures was now at an end; he knew enough to make him earnestly desirous of knowing more; he was therefore impatient to proceed from this book to one that was more difficult, and having at length found means to procure one that treated of more intricate and complicated calculations, he made himself master of that also before the end of the year 1739. He had the good fortune soon after to meet with a Treatise of Geometry, written by Pachek, the same author whose arithmetic he had been studying; and finding that this