French writer's independent judgments me with a relief

of the island, initiated improvements in the ports, and proposed after the Napoleonic genuflexions of M. Masson, who has to make Porto Ferrajo a free harbour to serve as a place of call himself called his prostrate creed "a religion," and we are and depot for the Levantine navigation."

not dosed usque ad nauseam with details like that idolater's M. Gruyer tells in his lively way bow Elba became the intimate catalogue of Josephine's garters and underlinen, or European cynosure, a hundred visitors, some even from his analysis of her sensations in her confidential interviews Norway, landing daily on the island. The majority were with the First Consul ; neither are we treated to pages of English admirers of the captive, some of them Peers and pathology like M. Levy's diagnosis of a mysterious malady politicians (the author forgets Lady Jersey and the young • Napoleon. King of Elba. From the French of rani Omer. With 38 Dins- tmttons. London W. lleinemrum. [10e. net.] love with the hero," who would be asked to meet Madame these whirlwinds old and cherished friendships suffered ship- which was believed to have visited certain members of the wreck. The name of Mr. Frederic Harrison disappears from Napoleon family.

his correspondence, and, saddest of all, though he never lost Possessing Carlyle's love of topographical studies, M. Grayer his ol 1 instinctive affection for Mr. John Morley, he had to took a ticket rid Leghorn for Elba, where he found to his mourn that through no fault of either he had lost all that delight that " the Vandalism of modern improvement " had he most cherished in their old relationship. " How can I not disturbed the walls and buildings of ninety years ago, so find any comfort in intimate intercourse with one who con- that the very stones of the paths might have been trodden by scientiously regards me as the willing or witless instrument the hero. Observing the strange permanency of the insular of a wicked betrayal, or abominable mismanagement, of the palaces, houses, names, and families, the writer says :- highest public interests P " Only a year or two earlier it had " The history I read lives and breathes again—instead of dried

been :— phrases set in unknown scenes, the past is there, living before me. I can see them all as if they existed to-day : the Emperor

" What are you doing John Morley, John Morley, aging a little, but always alert ; inscrutable Madame Mere, the

What are you doing in town ? venerable Corsican ; Pauline, the sweet and beautiful Venus ' ; Are you sorely, John Morley, assaulting the Tory the fair Polish lady, Walewska ; the old devoted but grumbling Lawgivers, and smiting them down?" Bertrand, the wise Drouot, the watch-dog Cambronne, making up

But with loss came gain, and those years of trial taught the little Court of a day, where under the veil of comedy is

ghunder-cloud of the Return."

The conflicts provoked in Napoleon's mind by the abdication Fitzjames Stephen. This was a friendship which death only of Fontainebleau, with the journey to Frejus, and the voyage could sever. thence to Elba on H.M.S. Undaunted ' under the guardian- Rewarded with an earldom and other marks of regard ship of the European Commissioner, Sir Neil Campbell, s and appreciation by his Royal mistress, Lytton left India scarcely affected his unextinguishable desire and colossal in June, 1880, saddened by the knowledge that the Forward capacity for active work. After a day spent in wretched ar policy in Afghanistan had largely contributed to the downfall insul parodies of the religious and civil ceremonials of his political friends at home. To the end misfortune proper on a Royal accession, the Emperor called for a horse that he might take a gallop across country, afterwards, in the pursued him ; an extraordinary financial muddle in the military department gave fresh occasion for his enemies to middle of the night, ringing up poor Bertrand and the director of the lucrative fiscal iron mines of Rio, M. Pons.

news of our defeat at Maiwand. From his place in the House He told that amazed official that he would breakfast with him adminis-

while King Napoleon was instituting new systems of civil, j planned, all the old guns and ammunition cleared out and beside those of Byron. Lytton gave freely Elbans with military tastes by the foundation of a school on are consummate nsummate the lines of the Paris Polytechnic. But the King's attention was not absorbed by the measures necessary for his pro- tection against Bourbon conspirators and marauding Barbary

"He bequeathed a network of roads to a country where it was

He developed its resources according to the laws of modern political economy. He taught the peasants to clear the deserted

and dug cisterns for years of drought. He revived the commerce

M.P., " Johnny " Russell !) and "aristocratic damsels half in Mere and Princess Pauline at the Royal table, and had carriages placed at their disposal. The enormous demand for food and lodgings, and for busts of the Emperor and other local marble souvenirs, brought large profits to the natives, the craze further developing to the gain of Corsica, many pilgrims afterwards crossing to that island to hunt up Napoleonic relics. The observed of all these observers, in his turn, lavished on his foreign worshippers rings, watches, and snuff- boxes with portraits of the donor, some of them costing 2400. The crew of the 'Undaunted' were tipped by him with one thousand bottles of wine and one thousand dollars, the captain receiving a splendid rresent, and on George III.'s birthday his grand enemy showed at a ball on one of our ships, where he sat on the bridge beneath the flags of England and Elba. Our author says of the visitors:—

" With one accord they flocked over the seas, panting to inspect the glory that bad filled the world, the fallen demi-god, whom they imagined, solitary and sublime, crowned with a dazzling aureole, finger on chin, eye darting lightning-flashes, delivering himself from time to time of weighty utterances. Instead, what did they find? A thick-set, corpulent little man, with the profile of an Italian Polichinello, and nostrils stained with snuff, sharing a bouillabaisse cooked in their saucepans on the beach with the tunny fishers, and apparently enjoying it."

Further describing the Emperor as playing quoits or kiss- in-the-ring or blind-man's-buff with ill-dressed ladies of the Elban bourgeoisie, or victimising the faithful Bertrand with

practical jokes, the author goes on to say that when such scenes as these succeeded a farcical reception or amateur play at the brand-new Palazzo Mulini, with its bathroom, dining- room, and theatre all in one,

"the aristocrats stood aghast, the tourists sneered, and not a few went back to the Continent with a smile of pity for this worse decadence than that at Fontainebleau, this painful spectacle of the moral humiliation of the hero of Austerlitz, fallen so low beneath the burden of ennui and misfortune."

After an elaborate description of the escape from the island, M. Grayer discusses, in somewhat zigzag order, numerous facts throwing light on the Emperor's statement at St. Helena that his return to France had been planned before be left Fontainebleau. To believe the testimony of Sir Neil Campbell, hardly had the 'Undaunted' weighed anchor at Frejus, when the ex-Emperor let fall remarks suggesting that he was already looking forward to a restoration of his power; then, after landing in his insular kingdom, be talked of the excitability of the French, who, he said, would not keep quiet for six months after the Allied armies recrossed the frontier. But why did Napoleon prefer "the miserable little hole," as he called Elba, to his birthplace Corsica, which had been offered him ? Because he desired, not sovereignty of tangible dimensions, but a temporary foothold where he could "lie low" and watch the Continent for the exact hour suitable for his prospective escape. What with travellers, commercial agents, newspapers, intercepted letters, messages from Bona- partist friends and Committees, and hints from the Paris Prefecture of Police, his knowledge of what concerned him was always up-to-date. He even heard from Vienna that Talley- rand was privately laying before the members of the Congress a proposal for his seizure and transport to the Azores, or some other Transatlantic regions, or, best of all, to St. Helena. On February 15th, 1815, Campbell drafted an alarming report to Lord Castlereagh, but did not send it "for fear of being laughed at." Sailing, however, in H.M.S. 'Partridge' to Leghorn, he proceeded to Florence, and meeting there our Under-Secretary of the Foreign Department, who had just come from Vienna, read to him the cancelled despatch. That

official ridiculed Sir Neil's fears, and told him not to worry about "Boney," who was now "quite forgotten in Europe," a remark which made him think that he had perhaps been misreading his man. But no! On February 28th the janitor returned to the island, but the bird had flown ! He bad sailed away the day before with his Home Fleet of one brig and four feluccas, followed by little transports carrying an army nine hmidred strong.

This author's claim to have resuscitated the Elban episode,

which had previously "wanted the sacred bard," is refuted by his bibliography and page references : be had many prede- cessors, French and foreign,—e.g., M. Pellet, whose work is as good value as his own. Virgil calls " Ilva " the borne of steel, " insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis. ' M. Gruyer, as we saw, knows of the mines, and so does M. Pellet; neither gentleman appears to be acquainted with their mention in the Aeneid.