the greatest detestation,about my ears. Yet, surely, the remembrance of your cruelty to Trenk might restrain you from reproaching me with the punishment of a refractory Printer. FREDERICK. He intrigued with my sister, which would not have given me the least offence had he not boasted of it, and allowed the affair to become public. NAPOLEON. He was too young when it commenced to be discreet in so splendid a bonne fortune, but I peculiarly feel for him, for it was of such spirits as his, I formed my Legion of Honor. FREDERICK. Yes, he was capable of knocking his head against a bastion with perfect sang froid, and indeed had qualities of a higher order for war than mere courage; but I may be allowed to disregard such talents in him, when I never valued those of the same nature possessed by myself. NAPOLEON. How was it not to those that you owed your cognomen of "The Great." FREDERICK. Those who bestowed it must answer you that question, for certainly I am unable, and I assure you I pride myself infinitely more in what I have done in my Cabinet with the pen, and in the Orchestra with my flute, than on all I ever accomplished in the field with my sword. The glory of the latter was shared with my generals, and in some degree with the meanest private in my army. That of the former was my sole property-ah! had you but heard me in a quartetto with the two Grauns, and Francis Benda. NAPOLEON. I fear I should not have had judgment sufficient to estimate your merits, for if nature had gifted me with an ear for music (of which I have many doubts) it was early spoiled by the roar of the artillery. FREDERICK. I pity you, and rejoice that so was not mine.-Yes-I repeat, the happiest moments of my life were spent among my musicians, and the only applause which was ever sweet to my ears, or which I truly valued, was that which was brought down by a well executed adagio in the concert-room. NAPOLEON. That was from your Courtiers-could it be depended on as sincere? FREDERICK. I think it might, when I consider the unbiassed opinion of an Englishman who chanced to hear my performance, to whom I had never even spoken, and which was given to the public in a foreign country. You have read Doctor Burney's "State of Music in Germany." NAPOLEON. No, truly. The little reading I had time or indeed inclination to indulge in, was of a very different class. FREDERICK. Excuse me. I had forgotten.-These are his words "His embouchure was clear and even, his finger brilliant, and his taste pure and simple. I was much pleased, and even surprised, with the neatness of his execution in the allegros, as well as by his expression and feeling in the adagios; in short, his performance surpassed in many particulars anything I had ever heard among diletanti, or even professors." NAPOLEON. These commendations bear the stamp of candour, and I think you may trust them more than those of your friend Voltaire.-Pray does he still retain the estimation in which you formerly held him? FREDERICK. No! I have long since changed my opinion of him as an Author, and I fully agree with Madam de Genlis, in considering him the most accomplished charlatan that literature has produced. NAPOLEON. And yet you once wrote to him, that he was a Philosopher, and that you were one yourself. if FREDERICK. The philosophy of a King must be taken "Cum grano salis,” and you do that, I think I was a tolerable one. I passed the evening before the battle of Zorndorf in correcting some odes of Rousseau which required alteration, and when France, Austria, and Russia were leagued against me, and it seemed past the power of even fortune to extricate me from my difficulties, I had fully determined to imitate Cato and fall upon my sword; but I was too much hurried at the moment, to execute my design in a dignified manner, and I put it off to a more convenient opportunity. NAPOLEON. The considerations which influenced you were worthy of a wise man—but the circumstance of your work the "Ante Micheavel" being scarcely dry from the Press at the moment when you were plundering the Bishop of Liege, agreeably to the most astute principles of that barefaced Italian, was a most unfortunate countretemps for one who defended the principles of truth and justice against those of policy and convenience. PREDERICK. Nevertheless, my reputation has survived it. The fact was, I wanted money to finish the Opera House at Berlin, and was also at that moment in treaty with the most celebrated contralto in Europe, without whom my company of vocalists would have been incomplete; and who, I was afraid,would have been taken from me by the offers of the French Court-but I outbid them. NAPOLEON. For which purposes you levied contribution on the unfortunate Churchman. FREDERICK. Yes, the affair cried haste, and I thought that quarter the most speedy for obtaining a prompt supply. I took but one hundred thousand crowns from him, for which I was very grateful, and never failed afterwards to remember the Bishop in my prayers. NAPOLEON. I doubt if his christianity extended to returning the compliment. After the candid confession you have made, and considering that you were like myself, a wholesale dealer in destruction FREDERICK, Yes!-but I dealt nearly as largely in renovation during the peace which took place before my death; I restored the dilapidated cities of my kingdom, caused agriculture to flourish, and population to encrease, and it was in fact a more prosperous and powerful country at my death, than when I received it at my father's decease. The very reputation which my exertions had secured to it, preserved it in tranquillity, and the first hostile gun that was fired on the soil of Prussia for thirty years was yours, at the battle of Jena. NAPOLEON. History notwithstanding, has not yet done me justice, and however fully I may acknowledge the great differences of our respective careers FREDERICK. I will comprise them for you in a very few words.-You did great things with great means, and I accomplished them with small. NAPOLEON. Be it so. Farewell.-I go to seek Germanicus. FREDERICK. Let me recommend you rather the company of two worthies, one of whom is Charles the Twelfth. You and he should have some kindred feelings, for you both received the coup de grace-in Russia. Did he ever relate to you the particulars of the siege of his house at Bender by the Turks-for some timely suggestion in the defence of which he made Rosenberg, his cook, a Colonel in the field of battle? He was indeed a truly great man! Adieu ! NAPOLEON. FREDERICK. The other, Jenghiz Khan.-He destroyed as many men, made as much noise in his time, and had nearly as refined a taste for music as yourself. FIRST LOVE. From the Italian of Metastasso. Ah! gentle Zephyrus if e'er Say thou art swelled by many a tear, -M-. -N What is a woman? Ask the sensualist, and he will say, should he be well-humoured, she's an angel, or should he be a splenetic, she's a devil! What is a woman? Ask the amatory bridegroom, as he fondly leads from Hymen's hallowed shrine the lovely and blushing object of his first, fervid, and only love-his reply will identify her with perfection! What is a woman? Enquire of the parsimonious husband to whom gold is a deity, and a wife but a convenience: he will tell you she's a plague, infinitely less endurable, than any one of those by which Egypt was infested! But, after all, what is a woman? This a a question that deserves consideration. Woman, as a sex, may be fairly nominated as the fascinating and irresistible medium, by which the all-wise and all-benevolent Father of the Universe, has ordained that his terrestrial "image" shall be multiplied!—as a sex, therefore, woman is unquestionably to be revered, for-she serves her Maker. A sex, however, is divisible into very many grades:―it includes not only (in a human sense) superlatively good-comparatively good-and positively good; but, also, the opposite degrees of imperfection! Whoever, consequently, talking of a woman as an individual, either inveighs against, or praises woman as a species, does an act of irrationality and injustice. It is true, there are certain predominating graces, and equally predominating blemishes, common to the sex, in every rank, and almost under every circumstance; it is also true, that we owe to it our being, and every blessing which we realize on earth, or anticipate in Heaven-but! is it not likewise true that to women all our woe can be attributed? Alas! the fact is genuine. Nevertheless, we are not to blame EvE's posterity, for her fatally illicit confidence in a fiend, who had the temerity to tempt even THE DIVINE EMANCIPIST!-we are not compelled to visit the sin, or to employ a more fashionable phrase, the foible of our first mother, on the latest generation of her numerous daughters, certainly not! we will, therefore, simply confine ourselves to the delineation of those all-prevailing daughters as they are; hoping, that when we may appear to praise them, they may rest assured we do so with sincerity; and trusting that wherein we may be compelled to censure, our chastising rod may be, in fairness, deemed to be wielded by the hand of affection. To describe a woman, however, it is needless to represent her bosom as rivalling the snows of Greenland,―her lips as excelling the ruby, her breath as superior in fragrance to the blossoms of Damascus, her raven brows as arched like the "covenental bow,” or her eyes as more brilliant than the galaxy of stars that glitter in an arctic firmament; it is unnecessary to say that she is beautiful, attractive, and over man's heart, powerful!-That she is EACH, that she is ALL, the world can testify. But, to define her character, she should be viewed as a virgin— as a bride—and as a mother :-in each of which interesting relations, not only to society, but to her lover, her husband, and her offspring, she most conspicuously, either renders herself honorable, or degraded—a blessing, or a malediction. If, in her vestal state, a woman is ingenuous, in either approving or rejecting the addresses of the man who professes to love her honorably-if, when matrimonially united, she makes her husband's heart the casket of her confidence, the earthly heaven of her happiness, and the highest human object of her pride;—and, lastly, if, when blessed by God with the LIVING SEAL of a sacred union, she rears her plastic offspring in the path that leads to the rosy bowers of celestial eternity,-then is a woman more than admiring eloquence can eulogise:-almost a deity whom man might worship. But, if coquetry and designed licentiousness, pollute her maidenhood—if she degrades her bridal-couch with caresses, unhallowed by affection; and if, when a mother, she slothfully permits her |