person and his kingdom? Yes, sire, nothing less than the imminent. dangers of the state, would allow me to express myself to you with the frankness you ought to expect from all your faithful subjects, and especially from your marshals; from those who dared to uplift their voice, on the most difficult occasions, when the absolute will and blind ambition of a master were every thing, and the counsels of wisdom and prudence were nothing.

I believed, that after iny letter of yesterday to the minister of war, he would have judged sufficient the reasons which I gave for refusing to sit in a court-martial where I could not preside. I find myself mistaken, as he has transmitted me a positive order from your majesty on this subject.

Placed in the cruel dillemma of offending your majesty, or of disobeying the dictates of my conscience, it becomes my duty to explain myself to your majesty.

I enter not into the inquiry whether marshal Ney is guilty or innocent; your justice and the equity of his judges will answer it to posterity, which weighs in the same balance kings and their subjects. But the subject on which I cannot be silent, and on which I must speak distinctly to your majesty, is the critical position into which you are rushing. Alas! has not enough of the French blood been shed?— Are not our misfortunes sufficiently great? The humiliation of France, is it not pushed to the last extreme? Aud when it is necessary to rectify, to soften, to calm, it is then, you, are required to sign new proscriptions! Oh sire! if those who direct your councils had only in view your good, they would tell you that never did the scaffold make friends--Do they then believe that death is terrible for those who have so often braved it? It is the allies who require of France ************* But, sire, is there no danger for your person and your august dynasty from them? They entered the country as your allies, and what title do they merit from the people of Alsace, or Lorraine, and of the capital? They have demanded the price of their friendship; they have required securities from those they came to deliver; they have required the inhabitants of the countries they occupy to deliver up their arms: and in two thirds of the kingdom, there remains not even a single fowling piece. They have required that the French army should be disbanded; and there remains not a single man at his colours; not a single piece of cannon is harnessed. They have demanded the delivery of our fortresses, and if some of them still hold out, it is because their commandants cannot believe your majesty has ordered their surrender. So much condescension ought surely have softened their passions. But, no! they wish to render your majesty odious to your subjects; they wish to guard against every possible danger by striking off the heads of those soldiers and statesmen whose names they cannot hear without being reminded of their own humiliation.

Let then the French general be allowed to say in the face of Europe, that if our armies have overrun the neighbouring countries, they purchased their conquests with their volour and blood. Let your majesty consider; will the allies ever forgive their conquerors? It is their shame and humiliation which they wish to efface, and not to strengthen your throne, which is more shaken by their outrages than established by their vengeance! But when you have given up every

thing, what can you refuse? If the fate of Poland is to be ours, what means of resistance have you left? Your armies?-you have none ! Your fortresses!--they are in the hands of the allies! Your marshals, your generals, your statesmen ?--their heads will have fallen! will you then resort to the people-to that people so humiliated, so much despised? Is it those who formed your councils? The recollection of the month of March 1815, must show your majesty what you have to expect from their zeal and attachment. There remains then no other resource than a reliance upon the generosity of your allies and our enemies. Have you then forgotten that in order to gratify the man who occupied the throne, they refused you one after another an asylum in their dominions? So completely had they recognized his legitimacy, that in their treaties with him, they never thought of stipulating an indemnity for you. Did not Engiand herself negotiate with him? Would she not again have treated with him at Prague, had his pretensions been less extravagant? Did not the people of London drag the carriage of his minister, when you were not even permitted to appear at court? Was your restoration thought of when they negociated at Chaterey? Had it not been for the hostile occupation of Bordeaux, and the loyalty manifested by the people of that city, a treaty would have been signed with Napoleon. Sull more recently, at the Congress of Vienna, was your majesty's minister able to obtain a guarantee for the integrity of our territory? Oh, sire, the man of Eiba may have had correspondencies and intelligence in France; but who were they that went to seek for him? Who told the English fleet to suffer them to pass? Has the admiral who was entrusted with the superintendance of the island been prosecuted? Had not the king of Prussia 80,000 men near our frontiers, who might have marched upon Paris, and reached it before Napoleon? Are not the Prussian cannon daily placed in battery before your palace, and pointed against your residence ? And yet you can rely on the generosity of your allies! And yet under such circumstances, you require me to take my seat in a tribunal where I shall perhaps figure in my turn, not as a judge, but as a prisoner at the bar! Did not I lead the French army, in 1794, to the borders of the Ebro? Even now, the poinards of those who struck Brune, and -, and so many others, glitter before my eyes, and shall I in my own person sanction a judicial murder? Ah no! while there remains to my unhappy country only a shadow of existence, shall I associate my name with that of her oppressors? No, sire! you yourself cannot but approve my resolution. What shall 25 years of glorious labours be sullied in a single day? Shall my locks, bleached under the helmet, be only proofs of my shame? No, sire! it shall not be said that the elder of the marshals of France contributed to the misfortunes of his country-but my honour is exclusively my own, and no human power can ravish it from me. If my name is to be the only heritage left to my children, at least let it not be disgraced!

Permit me to ask your majesty, where were the accusers of Marshal Ney, when he was on the field of battle? Did they follow his steps and accuse him during 25 years of perils and labour? And if Russia and the allies cannot pardon the conqueror of Moskwa, can France forget the valiant hero of the Boresina ?-Sire, in the unfortunate retreat across that river, Ney saved the remnant of the army;

in that army I had relations and friends, and soldiers (who are the children of their chiefs) who had served under me; and shall I doom him to death who saved the lives of so many Frenchmen, to whom so many parents are indebted for their children. so many wives for their husbands? No, sire! if I cannot save my country and my own life, I will at least save my own honour; and if I feel any regret, it is that I have lived too long, since I have survived the glory of my country. Reflect, sir! this is perhaps the last time that truth will reach your throne ; it is both dangerous and unwise to push the brave to despair. Where is there, I will not say the marshal, but the man of honour, who is not compelled to regret not having sought death on the fatal field of Waterloo ? and perhaps if the unfortunate Ney had done there what he so often had done before, he would not have been this day dragged before a court-martial, and those who demand his death would have been seeking his protection. Excuse, sire, the frankness of an old marshal, who has always kept clear of intrigues, has known only his country and his profession; he believes that the same voice which was raised against the invasion of Spain and the war with Russia, might also speak the language of truth to the best of kings, the father of his subjects. If frankness is a virtue, it is not, I am conscious, the most profitable of the virtues, since although I am the eldest of the marshals, I am also the poorest.

I will not disguise the dangers in which the step I have taken may involve me, nor the disgrace it may draw down upon me from the vengeance of the courtiers; but if I have been fortunate enough to enlighten your majesty as to your true interests, I shall consider myself as but too happy, whatever may be the consequences, and if in descending to the tomb I may say with one of your ancestors,-All is lost. except honour,-I shall die contented.

It is a common practice with those who have outlived the susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat tales of romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets.

My observations on human nature have induced me to think otherwise. They have convinced me, that, however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking in the depth of the coldest bosoms, which when once enkindled, become impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effect.→→ Indeed, I am a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full extent of his doctrines. Shall I confess it? I believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love. I do not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own' sex; but I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave.

Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space, in the world's thought, and dominion over his fellow men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hid den treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventures; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless-for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.

To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs; it wounds some feelings of tenderness--it blasts some prospects of felicity; but he is an active being-he can dissipate his thoughts in the whirl of varied occupation, or plunge into the tide of pleasure; or, if the scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations, he can shift his abode at will, and take as it were, the wings of the morning, and can fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest.

But woman's is comparatively, a fixed, a secluded, and a meditative life. She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings; and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation? Her lot is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate.

How many bright eyes grow dim--How many soft checks grow pale, how many lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the cause that blighted their loveliness. As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is the nature of woman, to hide from the world the pangs of woanded affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace. With her the desire of the heart has failed. The great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the cheerful exercises which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulse, and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins.

Her rest is broken-the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy dreams--" dry sorrow drinks her blood," until her enfeebled frame sinks under the slightest injury. Look for her after a little while, and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave,

and wondering that one who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and beauty, should so speedily be brought down to "darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition, that laid her low--but no one knows the mental malady that previously sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler. She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove; graceful in its form, bright in its foilage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it suddenly withering when it should be most fresh and laxuriant. We see it dropping its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf; until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunder-bolt that could have smitten it with decay.

I have seen many instances of women running to waste and selfneglect, and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been exalted to heaven: and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their death through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility, languor, and melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointed love. But an instance of the kind was lately told me--the circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I shall but give them in the manner in which they were related.

Every one must recollect the tragical story of young EMMET, the Irish patriot; it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles in Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge of treason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so young, so intelligent--so brave-so every thing that we are apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial too, was so lofty and intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of treason against his country-the eloquent vindication of his name, and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of condemnation--all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern policy that

dictated his execution.

But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affections of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebrated Irish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman's first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened round his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If then his fate could awaken the sympathy, even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image! Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth--who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world, from whence all that was most lovely and loving, had departed.

But then the horrors of such a grave! so frightful! so dishonoured ! there was nothing for memory to dwell on, that could sooth the pang of separation--nothing of these tender though melancholy circumstances that endear the parting scene--nothing to melt sorrow into