Napoleon spent the last six years of life on the island St. Helena (Oct. 16, 1815--May 5, 1821). There are various stories told as to his bitter loneliness whilst in exile, his ceaseless repining at fate, his chafing chagrin under the cautious coldness of Sir Hudson Lowe. Nap is most frequently represented walking alone on the shore, his hands locked behind, his head lowered and his “broad brow oppressive with his mind” bent sullenly forward. Again as a caged eagle he stands for hours at a time on the rocky ledge looking out over the gray waste of waters with eyes straining towards France. And old ocean always inimical to Napoleon and coldly conscious of Aboukir and Trafalgar enjoys indifferently its final triumph. True to Britannia, Ruler of the Wave, the gray waters roll impenetrable to bribery or betrayal, impervious to sentiment or sympathy. Napoleon, victor of a hundred fields, king-maker, arbiter of Europe, is caught and caged; his eagle wings all torn and bleeding yet dash against the bars; he is eating his heart, O restless sea, and he gazes on thee: old ocean rolled responseless. Am I tonight participant in the woe that had its hours of agony one hundred years ago? It seems so. HERO WORSHIP. Balance is hard. And to see clearly all sides of a subject, however conducive to balance, is destructive of enthusiasm. Hero worship is, perhaps, a phase of hysteria, but without it there are no heroes. No name upon the historic page, from Homer’s Achilles down to Carlyle’s Cromwell, but shines with luster luminous from hero worship. Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon--the world will ever love them, not perhaps for what they were, but for the vision splendid with which they are attended, and which was formed and fitted to them by admiring love. RETROSPECT. As Nap paced sleeplessly his rock kingdom under the flaky stars, did memory ever conjure up a strange night scene in old Vincennes? The young Duc d’Enghien, last of the race of the great Conde, was asleep in bed. Suddenly, by order of the First Consul, the French soldiery aroused the sleeper, dragged him from his luxurious couch, hurried him across the French frontier, tried him by a military commission, and then, in a ditch of the castle grounds, that very night, by order of the First Consul, they shot to death the gay young man. And they tied a lantern to his breast that it might serve as target to his heart. Did Nap see that night scene from under the flaky stars of St. Helena? His _Memoires_ do not so record.