he surrenders himself prisoner!  Thoroughly national, to be sure!  It may be all very true; but I would only ask, if a story had been fabricated for the express purpose of amusing the English nation, could it have been contrived more ingeniously?  It would do admirably for an epic poem; and indeed bears a considerable resemblance to the Iliad and the AEneid; in which Achilles and the Greeks, AEneas and the Trojans, (the ancestors of the Romans) are so studiously held up to admiration.  Buonaparte’s exploits seem magnified in order to enhance the glory of his conquerors; just as Hector is allowed to triumph during the absence of Achilles, merely to give additional splendour to his overthrow by the arm of that invincible hero.  Would not this circumstance alone render a history rather suspicious in the eyes of an acute critic, even if it were not filled with such gross improbabilities; and induce him to suspend his judgment, till very satisfactory evidence (far stronger than can be found in this case) should be produced?

Is it then too much to demand of the wary academic[20] a suspension of judgment as to the “life and adventures of Napoleon Buonaparte?” I do not pretend to decide positively that there is not, nor ever was, any such person; but merely to propose it as a doubtful point, and one the more deserving of careful investigation, from the very circumstance of its having hitherto been admitted without inquiry.  Far less would I undertake to decide what is or has been the real state of affairs.  He who points out the improbability of the current story, is not bound to suggest an hypothesis of his own;[21] though it may safely be affirmed, that it would be hard to invent any one more improbable than the received one.  One may surely be allowed to hesitate in admitting the stories which the ancient poets tell, of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions being caused by imprisoned giants, without being called upon satisfactorily to account for those phenomena.

Amidst the defect of valid evidence under which, as I have already shown, we labour in the present instance, it is hardly possible to offer more than here and there a probable conjecture; or to pronounce how much may be true, and how much fictitious, in the accounts presented to us.  For, it is to be observed that this case is much more open to sceptical doubts even than some miraculous histories; since some of them are of such a nature that you cannot consistently admit a part and reject the rest; but are bound, if you are satisfied as to the reality of any one miracle, to embrace the whole system; so that it is necessary for the sceptic to impeach the evidence of all of them, separately, and collectively:  whereas, here, each single point requires to be established separately, since no one of them authenticates the rest.  Supposing there be a state-prisoner at St. Helena, (which, by the way, it is acknowledged many