of the misfortunes I have suffered.”  On the 23d of January, 1814, the pope was removed from Fontainbleau, as were each of the seventeen cardinals, in custody of a gend’arme, and their destination was kept secret.  But on the 5th of April following, the provisional government of France gave orders, that all obstacles to the return of the pope to his states might be removed; and, after five years of confinement and outrage, Pius VII. returned to his capital, to receive the reward of that firmness and moderation, which, blended so happily in his character, will long render it an object of admiration.

I next considered the character of the tyrant, who so long and so successfully triumphed over prostrate Europe, England alone preserving unimpaired that liberty, which she was destined to be the means of diffusing to rival nations.  It would be absurd to deny Buonaparte the praise due to the matchless activity, and consummate skill, with which he conducted the enterprizes suggested by his boundless ambition; and which made him the most formidable enemy with whom England ever had to contend; but his cruelty, his suspicion, and his pride, (which made him equally disregard those laws of honour, and those precepts of morality, respected by the general feelings of mankind), as they excited the indignation of thinking men, prevented any pity at his fall.  Such a man was destined only to excite astonishment, not admiration; and that astonishment could not fail of being greatly diminished, by his want of extraordinary resources, when placed in a situation, upon the possibility of which he had disdained to calculate.

His continued aggressions raised Europe against him from without, and he was overthrown, because he had completely disgusted the fickle people, whom he had made the instruments of his ambition.

It would surely require the pen of a Tacitus to delineate with accuracy the character of such a man, who, to use the words of the lamented Moreau, “had covered the French name with such shame and disgrace, that it would be almost a disgrace to bear it; and who had brought upon that unhappy country the curses and hatred of the universe.”

His ambitious wars are supposed to have occasioned the destruction of nearly four millions of men, whom he considered merely as instruments to accomplish his extravagant views; and he is reported to have said repeatedly, that “it signified little whether or not he reigned over the French, provided he reigned over France.”

He delighted in carnage, and speaks in one of his bulletins of “800 pieces of cannon dispersing death on all sides,” as presenting “a most admirable spectacle.”