“To-morrow comes; ’tis noon, ’tis night; This day like all the former flies: Yet on he runs, to seek delight To-morrow, till to-night he dies.” The gaming allusion of the first stanza reminds us of the picture of a certain devotee at the _roulette_ table at Hombourg, who kept his seat—tranquil, immovable, vigilant,—the Napoleon of _roulette_; in whose victorious progress Marengos and Austerlitzes succeeded each other, as if Moscow and the Beresina were phantoms—as if to-morrow would never come. To-morrow; ay, that dread to-morrow that comes to all: the fateful _Demain_ of Victor: “Demain est la sapin du trône, Aujourd’hui c’en est le velours.” Yes, to-morrow is the coarse deal, with its ten sacks, that forms the framework of the throne, as to-day is its velvet and gilding. “Demain c’est le coursier qui s’abat plein d’écume; Demain, O conquérant, c’est Moscou qui s’allume La nuit comme un flambeau: C’est not’ vieille garde qui jonche au lointain la plaine, Demain c’est Waterloo! Demain c’est Ste. Helène! Demain c’est le tombeau!” And yet to-morrow was, for good or bad, for better for worse, a favourite phrase with Napoleon. His last words to Murat at nightfall, in the hope of battle with the Russians on the Dwina next day, were, “To-morrow, at five, the sun of Austerlitz!” After the combat of Reichenbach, which lost him Duroc, he sat alone, in moody meditation, neither speaking nor to be spoken with; appealed to in vain for orders by Caulaincourt and Maret: “To-morrow—everything,” was the only answer their most urgent demands could wring from him, in his hour of dejection and theirs of need. In another mood was the emperor when, after Leipsic, he pressed the Austrian cabinet to side with him, and at once. If they were wise, he said, they would do so forthwith. They could do so, he told their representative, that evening. To-morrow it might perhaps be too late; for who could foretell the events of to-morrow? So thought Sunderland, in that “agony of terror,” almost over-wrought or over-coloured, perhaps, by Macaulay, which impelled him to resign office, in a sort of frenzied haste. He had asked some of his friends to come to his house that he might consult them; they came at the appointed time, but found that he had gone to Kensington, and had left word that he should soon be back. When he joined them, they observed that he had not the gold key which is the badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and asked where it was. “At Kensington,” answered Sunderland. They found that he had tendered his resignation, and that it had been, after a long struggle, accepted. They blamed his haste, and told him that since he had summoned them to advise him on that day, he might at least have waited till the morrow. “To-morrow,” he exclaimed “would have ruined me. To-night has saved me.”