While I was surveying this man of universal talent, my fancy was not idle. First, I beheld him, flushed with ardour, directing the assault of the _téte-de-pont_ at _Lodi_; next dictating a proclamation to the Beys at _Cairo_, and styling himself the friend of the faithful; then combating the ebullition of his rage on being foiled in the storming of _Acre_ I afterwards imagined I saw him like another CROMWELL, expelling the Council of Five Hundred at _St. Cloud_, and seizing on the reins of government: when established in power, I viewed him, like HANNIBAL, crossing the _Alps_, and forcing victory to yield to him the hard-contested palm at _Marengo_; lastly, he appeared to my imagination in the act of giving the fraternal embrace to Caprara, the Pope's legate, and at the same time holding out to the see of Rome the re-establishment of catholicism in France. Voltaire says that "no man ever was a hero in the eyes of his _valet-de-chambre_." I am curious to know whether the valet of the First Consul be an exception to this maxim. As to BONAPARTE'S public character, numerous, indeed, are the constructions put on it by the voice of rumour: some ascribe to him one great man of antiquity as a model; some, another; but many compare him, in certain respects, to JULIUS CÆSAR, as imitators generally succeed better in copying the failings than the good qualities of their archetypes, let us hope, supposing this comparison to be a just one, that the Chief Consul will, in one particular, never lose sight of the generous clemency of that illustrious Roman--who, if any spoke bitterly against him, deemed it sufficient to complain of the circumstance publicly, in order to prevent them from persevering in the use of such language. "_Acerbè loquentibus satis habuit pro concione denunciare, ne perseverarent._" "The character of a great man," says a French political writer, who denies the justness of this comparison, "like the celebrated picture of Zeuxis, can be formed only of a multitude of imitations, and it is as little possible for the observer to find for him a single model in history, as it was for the painter of Heraclea to discover in nature that of the ideal beauty he was desirous of representing[1]."--"The French revolution," observes the same author, a little farther on, "has, perhaps, produced more than one CÆSAR, or one CROMWELL; but they have disappeared before they have had it in their power to give full scope to their ambition[2]." Time will decide on the truth and impartiality of these observations of M. HAUTERIVE. As at the last monthly parade, BONAPARTE was habited in the consular dress, that is, a coat of scarlet velvet, embroidered with gold: he wore jockey boots, carelessly drawn over white cotton pantaloons, and held in his hand a cocked hat, with the national cockade only. I say only, because all the generals wear hats trimmed with a splendid lace, and decorated with a large, branching, tricoloured feather.