In contemplating the manifold deprivations to which Napoleon ultimately fell a victim, we cannot help remarking upon one peculiar trait of the human mind,--that of being more moved by fiction than reality; for a tale of imaginary woe will excite more exquisite feeling, more real sympathy, than the severest reverses of fortune which may have occurred in our time, or which may be even present to our view! If Napoleon, for instance, had been an ideal personage, and the history of his life had been made the subject of romance or poetry, what mind so dull but would have moralized upon the vicissitude of human affairs?--what heart so cold but would have felt some commiseration for the captive? But when all that a poet's fancy could have formed and blended of surprising extremes, to raise the interest of the reader in the hero of the tragedy, had actually occurred and been signally manifested in this extraordinary man,--when he, who at one time was raised to an elevation and possessed a power never enjoyed by any other individual, was hurled headlong from his height to the abyss of humiliation, was imprisoned, exiled, captive, and forlorn,--how happened it that the feelings of our nature were not to take their accustomed course, that the sources of sympathy were to be dried up, and compassion, which had hitherto been considered amongst the most amiable of virtues, was all at once to lose its very essence and property, and not only not to be numbered amongst our weaknesses, but catalogued amongst our crimes? For the prevalence of this disposition,--which, alas! was too observable even among those classes in whom education and the intercourse of enlightened society would have naturally led to an expectation of better feelings and sounder conclusions on the subject,--it is difficult to account; unless it be true in morals, as in mechanics, that the motion may be continued when the impulse has ceased, and that to this we must refer the state of national feeling at the time Napoleon was suffering an accumulation of indignities at St. Helena. Since his death, however, the injustice and inhumanity of his treatment have been freely acknowledged and severely commented on; and there is every reason to believe that his great name will be finally rescued from that misrepresentation which interested writers have endeavoured to surround all his actions.