The same superstition is frequently betrayed in these volumes; and we have as many dreams and portents as ever disturbed the sleeping and waking hours of the wife of the first Napoleon, Caliphurnia. The pages of these memoirs afford us the harshest and most repulsive views of Napoleon's character that we have yet seen. His affectionate consort was undoubtedly discerning, and used her keenness of perception with proper diligence to discover all her husband's faults. We have never shared in the excessive and extraordinary admiration with which the character of this man-hater and earth-spoiler is regarded in this land of liberty; but it seems to us that the portraiture before us would be deemed unjust coming from his foes, and is at least singular when traced by the hand of the affectionate and gentle Josephine. The praise awarded him is cold, formal and stinted; but the censure is interjected among her details with a freedom that we could not have anticipated. That she should have resented his heartless repudiation of the companion of all his struggles and fortunes, is natural, and perhaps just; but that she should have revenged the wrong, if indeed that be the motive, by depreciating him seems out of character with the Josephine of our imaginations. She describes him as vain, cruel, often weak, and at times abjectly cowardly. She dwells with great fullness upon his crimes, and passes rapidly and coldly over the many great and good things he achieved for France. In some instances positive misrepresentations are resorted to, calculated to blacken his character. Thus, in relation to the disaster at the bridge on the Elster, she says: "I likewise learned that my husband has passed the only bridge by which he could make good his retreat; but in order to prevent pursuit by the foreign army, he had ordered it to be blown up at the very moment it was covered with thousands of Frenchmen, who were endeavoring to fly. By means of this _murderous manoeuvre_ he abandoned a part of his army on the bank of the stream."