[Footnote 1: Many in this neighbourhood, who read the Leveller's dream, will remember the original. Twenty years ago, I heard it related by the dreamer, with all the enthusiasm of a staunch admirer of Napoleon, and I have preserved his words and imagery as closely as I could recollect them.] "It is a singular dream," said one. "Sleeping or waking, James is the same man," said another, "aye out o' the common run. You and me wad hae sleepit a twelvemonth before we had dreamed the like o' that." But one circumstance arose which troubled James much, and which all his admiration, yea, all his worship of Napoleon could not wholly overcome. James, as we have hinted, was a rigid Presbyterian, and the idea of a man putting away his wife he could not forgive. When, therefore, Napoleon divorced the gentle Josephine, and took the daughter of Austria to his bed-- "He hath done wrong," said James; "he has erred grievously. He has been an instrument in humbling the pope, the instrument foretold in the Revelation; and he has been the glorious means o' levelling and destroying the Inquisition--but this sin o' putting away his wife, and pretending to marry another, casts a blot upon a' his glories; and I fear that humiliation, as a punishment, will follow the foul sin. Yet, after a', as a man, he was subject to temptation; and, as being no common man, we maunna judge his conduct by common rules." "Really, James," said the individual he addressed, "wi' a' my admiration o' the great man,[2] and my respect for you, I'm no just clear upon your last remark--when the Scriptures forbade a man to put away his wife, there was nae exception made for king or emperors." [Footnote 2: I have often remarked that the admirers of Napoleon were wont to speak of him as _the great man_.] "True," said James--"but----" James never finished his "but." His conscience told him that his idol had sinned; and when the disastrous campaign to Russia shortly after followed, he imagined that he beheld in its terrible calamities the punishment he had predicted. The sun of Napoleon had reached its meridian, the fires of Moscow raised a cloud before it, behind which it hastened to its setting. In the events of that memorable invasion and retreat, James Nicholson took an eager and mournful interest. Thoughts of it haunted him in his sleep; and he would dream of Russian deserts which presented to the eye an unbounded waste of snow; or start, exclaiming, "The Cossacks!--the Cossacks!" His temper, too, became irritable, and his family found it hard to bear with it.