It was a beautiful afternoon of early spring, when a class returned from the Lyceum with news almost too great for utterance. One had in his hand a coarse, dingy piece of paper, which he waved above his head, and the others followed him with looks portending tidings of no ordinary character. That paper was the address of Napoleon to the army, on landing from Elba. It was rudely done, the materials were of the most common description, the print was scarcely legible,--but it was headed with the imperial eagle, and it contained words which none of his old soldiers could withstand. How it reached Paris, simultaneously with the intelligence of his landing, is beyond my comprehension; but copies of it were rapidly circulated, and all the inhabitants of Paris knew its contents before they slept that night. I know of no writer who has so thoroughly understood the wonderful eloquence of Napoleon as Lord Brougham. He has pronounced the address to the Old Guard, at Fontainebleau, "a masterpiece of dignified and pathetic composition"; and the speech at the Champ de Mars, he says, "is to be placed amongst the most perfect pieces of simple and majestic eloquence." Napoleon certainly knew well the people with whom he had to deal, and his concise, nervous, comprehensive sentences told upon French feeling like shocks of a galvanic battery. What would have been absurd, if addressed to the soldiers of any other nation, was exactly the thing to fire his own with irresistible energy. At the battle of the Pyramids he said to them, "Forty centuries look upon your deeds," and they understood him. He pointed to "the sun of Austerlitz," at the dawn of many a decisive day, and they felt that it rose to look on their eagles victorious. If the criterion of eloquence be its power over the passions, that of Napoleon Bonaparte has been rarely equalled. It was always the right thing at the right time, and produced precisely the effect it aimed at. It was never more apparent than in the address in question. There were passages which thrilled the martial spirit of the land, and quickened into life the old associations connected with days of glory. Marshal Ney said, at his trial, that there was one sentence[A] in it which no French soldier could resist, and which drew the whole of his army over to the Emperor. [Footnote A: "La victoire marchera au pas de charge."] Such was the paper, which was read amidst the mad demonstrations of my schoolfellows. Their extravagance knew no limits; studies were neglected; and the recitations, next morning, demonstrated to our discomforted teachers that the minds of their pupils had passed the night on the march from Cannes to Paris.