And bid chivalric wars and loves Sound from Granada's high alcoves ;- Yet, oh!-when Glory's trumpet-tone THE CONSCRIPT. A TALE. IN the year 1808, in an obscure street, in Paris, resided Paul Chaise, the hero of my tale. So humble an individual needs no proud historian to detail the annals of his life. I collected my information upon the spot; for the truth of my narrative I can, therefore, pledge myself,-and I am not ambitious of higher praise. He was, at the period I have mentioned, an old man, about sixty years of age; but time had dealt kindly with him, and his patriarchal head and fine upright iron frame, seemed formed and fitted for endurance, and as though a century might roll on, without adding one furrow to his marble cheek, or a curve to his muscular figure. He had been an eye witness to some of the most frightful events of the Revolution, and an actor in many important ones: sometimes a leader,-often a sufferer, but always an honest independent man; enthusiastically attached to his country;-by which I mean, not that enlarged feeling of home which is sometimes mistaken for patriotism,-nothing relating to localities,—but love for his countrymen and jealousy of their rights, arising from the belief that they possessed a better nature and finer character than any other people in the known world. He had seen them crushed and trampled upon, till their essential characteristic-gay, philosophic light-heartedness-seemed pressed from out their being. The dejection was of momentary duration, but the reaction it produced was of a more important and determinate nature. Oppression taught them their own power the weight and value of their own energies. They learned to question the justice of the few governing the many;-they resisted tyranny, and conquered. It was a war of mind; and truth-as in the end it, ever, must-obtained the victory. But this is the bright side of the picture;— for men the slaves of passion-work out no good but through evil. It is a necessary ill, attendant on humanity ;-and the relation of the crimes and horrors that tarnished the lustre of the French Revolution, though it can raise no astonishment, must fill the mind with sorrow and disgust. He had served in several campaigns, under Buonaparte, with such attachment and fidelity as that extraordinary man alone, perhaps, was capable of exciting. There was always personal love mixed up with the feelings of the rudest soldiery towards Napoleon. He was master of something beyond graces of manner; he spoke to the hearts of all those with whom he had any communion,—and a sense of this almost magic influence pervaded the whole army. In spite, however, of marks of honour and favour received from Napoleon's own hand, the moment Paul Chaise discovered-or fancied he discovered—a falling from his high resolve,—a forgetfulness that the liberties of the people were placed in his hands, only upon trust,-when satisfied that he aimed at nothing less than despotic power-more intellectual and enlightened, certainly, but still, the same despotism that had before wrought its own ruin,-when, at length, the conviction was forced upon him that this ruler of kings and maker of princes, lord of half the world, was a slave to the imperial purple-himself the vassal of his own pride, he silenced the pleadings of his affections -retired from the army-bought a small house in Paris, (to which place he was attached, from its having been the theatre of so many influential and wonderful events,)—and, in the society of an affectionate wife and promising child, tried to shut his eyes to the increasing evil which his arm-lowly as it was had always been raised to prevent. Some kindly emotions, long, lingered round their old haunt; but, one by one, they died away, with the hope that fed them,-till, at last, contempt, made the more bitter by disappointment, was the only sentiment with which he regarded the conqueror. Still, his portrait, with folded arms, in his musing attitude,-retained its place in the best parlour; and a certain tetchiness of manner, whenever he was named, either in praise or censure, proved that indifference was not the feeling he excited. Anger born of love is easily displaced;-and, had the emperor ever thought or cared about him, or his opinions, he would have found little difficulty in again enthroning himself upon the veteran's heart. But years rolled on, marked only by the changes he most dreaded; and, just as his darling and only child, Eugene, had attained his twentieth year, (the conscriptive laws being in force,) Paul became suddenly and alarmingly awake to the evils of war, altogether. Its floating banners and inspiriting music, its triumphs and rejoicings, faded from his eye; and he saw only the desolation that follows it so closely, and so surely. It is, yet, too early to analyse the merits of Napoleon, either as a warrior, a statesman, or a man. While the earth yet trembles beneath our feet, we cannot coldly calculate on the causes and consequences of an earthquake ;—much less can we judge impartially of one, whose every step was an event that involved the fortunes and lives of numbers, in its action and developement,-while yet suffering or enjoying through him, who marched through a country to alter its aspect. Change is a changeless law of nature,-itself only immutable! But he seemed to take this power out of her hands;-for, as he willed it, there came plenty or ruin-cultivation or barrenness. In detailing some evil that resulted from the rigid enforcement of his decrees, we, by no means, pretend, here, to ques |