day without finding one soul in the towns, or in the country one cultivated field. The poor died of hunger, and they who had formerly possessed something, now begged their bread from door to door. Never were more griefs and woes poured upon any land;-nay, the Pagans in their invasions caused fewer than the men of whom I now speak. They spared neither the church-yards nor the churches; they took all that could be taken, and then set fire to the church. To till the ground had been as vain as to till the sand on the sea-shore.*

What scenes of wretchedness do such proud and malig nant demons produce even in the present world! Can such spirits be supposed qualified for joining the general assembly and church of the first born, and for taking a part in the beneficent operations of heaven? If they exist at all in a fu ture world, they must exist in misery; and so long as such diabolical passions continue to rage, they must produce “la. mentation and woe" among all the associates with which they are surrounded.-Even within the confines of mortality, the man who is under the despotic sway of pride, ambition, and similar malevolent passions, embitters every enjoyment he might otherwise possess, produces pain in the minds of others, and experiences in his own soul pangs similar in kind t those which are felt in the place of punishment. I shal illustrate this position by the spirit and temper displayed by two illustrious individuals who have lately departed to the invisible state; the one renowned in the political, and the other in the literary world.

The first character to which I allude is that of Napoleon Buonaparte. This extraordinary man, who, for nearly twenty years, dazzled the whole eastern hemisphere, like a blazing neteor, appears to have been actuated by the most extrava. gant and restless ambition. Though he exercised many cruelties in the midst of his career, as at Jaffa and other places, yet delight in deeds of atrocity formed no part of his ruling passion, and were only occasionally resorted to in order to accomplish his ambitious projects. The agitated state of mind into which he was thrown by his love of conquest, and the daring enterprises in which he embarked, is strikingly depicted by M. Segur, in his "History of Napoleon's Expedition to Russia." When at Vitepsk, on his way to Moscow, M. Segur says "He at first hardly appeared bold enough to confess to himself a project of such great

*Thierry's "History of the Norman Conquest," 3 vols. 1825.

temerity-[the marching against Moscow]. But, by degrees he assumed courage to look it in the face. He then began to deliberate, and the state of great irresolution which tormented his mind, affected his whole frame. He was observ. ed to wander about his apartments, as if pursued by some dangerous temptation: nothing could rivet his attention; he every moment began, quitted, and resumed his labour; he walked about without any object; inquired the hour, and looked at his watch;-completely absorbed, he stopped, hummed a tune with an absent air, and again began walking about. In the midst of his perplexity, he occasionally ad dressed the persons whom he met with such half sentences as, 'Well!-What shall we do!-Shall we stay where we are, or advance ?-How is it possible to stop short in the midst of so glorious a career!' He did not wait for their reply, but still kept wandering about, as if he was looking for something, or somebody, to terminate his indecision.-At length, quite overwhelmed with the weight of such an important consideration, and oppressed with so great an uncertainty, he would throw himself on one of the beds which he had caused to be laid on the floor of his apartments. His frame, exhausted by the heat and the struggles of his mind, could only bear a covering of the slightest texture. It was in that state that he passed a portion of his day at Vitepsk."

The same restless agitations seemed to have accompanied him at every step in this daring expedition. "At Borodino, says the same writer, "his anxiety was so great as to prevent him from sleeping. He kept calling incessantly to know the hour, inquiring if any noise was heard, and sending persons to ascertain if the enemy was still before him. Tranquillized for a few moments, anxiety of an opposite description again seized him. He became frightened at the destitute state of the soldiers, &c. He sent for Bessieres, that one of his marshals in whom he had the greatest confidence:-he called him back several times and repeated his pressing ques tions, &c. Dreading that his orders had not been obeyed, he got up once more, and questioned the grenadiers on guard at the entrance of his tent, if they had received their provisions. Satisfied with the answer, he went in, and soon fell into a dose. Shortly after he called once more. His aide-de-camp found him now supporting his head with both his hands, he seemed, by what was overheard to be meditating on the vanities of glory." What is war? A trade of barbarians, the whole art of which consists in being the strongest on a

given point.' He then complained of the fickleness of fortune which he now began to experience. He again tried to take some rest. But the marches he had just made with the army, the fatigues of the preceding days and nights, so many cares, and his intense and anxious expectations had worn him out. An irritating fever, a dry cough, and excessive thirst consumed him. During the remainder of the night he made vain attempts to quench the burning thirst that consumed him.

What man that ever enjoyed the pleasures of tranquillity, would envy such a state of mind as that which has now been described, although the individual were surrounded with every earthly glory? Such mad ambition as that which raged in the breast of this singular personage, must be a perpetual torment to its possessor, in whatever region of the universe he exists, and must produce baleful effects on every one within the sphere of its influence.-The coolness with which such characters calculated on the destruction of human life, and the miseries which their lawless passions produce on their fellow creatures, appears in the following extract.

"He asked Rapp, if he thought we should gain the victory? No doubt,' was the reply, but it will be sanguin. ary.' 'I know it,' resumed Napoleon, but I have 80,000 men; I shall lose 20,000; I shall enter Moscow with 60,000; the stragglers will then rejoin us, and afterwards the battalions on the march; and we shall be stronger than we were before the battle."

The other personage to whom I alluded is Lord Byron. The following sketches of his character are taken from "Recollections of the life of Lord Byron, from the year 1808, to the year 1818. Taken from authentic documents, &c." by R. C. Dallas, Esq.

"He reduced his palate," says Mr. Dallas, "to a diet the most simple and abstemious-but the passions of his heart were too mighty; nor did it ever enter his mind to overcome them. Resentment, anger, and hatred, held full sway over him; and his greatest gratification at that time, was in overcharging his pen with gall, which flowed in every direction, against individuals, his country, the world, the universe, creation, and the Creator.-Misanthropy, disgust of life, leading to scepticism and impiety, prevailed in his heart and imbittered his existence. Unaccustomed to female society, he at once dreaded and abhorred it. As for domestic happiness he had no idea of it. 'A large family,' he said, 'ap

peared like opposite ingredients, mixed per force in the same salad, and I never relished the composition.' He was so completely disgusted with his relations, especially the fe male part of them, that he completely avoided them. 'I consider,' said he, 'collateral ties as the work of prejudice, and not the bond of the heart, which must choose for itself unshackled.'--In correspondence with such dispositions and sentiments," he talked of his relation the Earl of Carlisle, with indgnation." Having received from him a frigid let ter, "he determined to lash his relation with all the gall he could throw into satire."-He declaimed against the ties of consanguinity, and abjured even the society of his sister, from which he entirely withdrew himself, until after the pub. lication of Childe Harold,' when at length he yielded to my persuasions, and made advances to a friendly correspondence."

Here we have a picture of an individual, in whom "resentment, anger, and hatred," reigned without control; who could vent his rage even against the Creator, and the universe he had formed, who hated his fellow creatures, and even his own existence; who spurned at the ties of relationship, and "abjured even the society of his sister." What horrible mischiefs and miseries would a character of this description produce, were such malevolent passions to rage with unbounded violence, without being checked by those restraints, which human laws impose in the present state!

I shall state only another example of this description, taken from Captain Cochrane's "Travels in Russia.”—On arriv. ing at the Prussian frontiers, says the captain, "My pass port demanded, myself interrogated by a set of whiskered ruffians, obliged to move from one guard to another, the object of sarcasm and official tyranny, I wanted no induce. ment, fatigued as I was, to proceed on my journey, but even this was not permitted me. A large public room full of military rubbish, and two long benches serving as chairs, to an equally long table, were the place and furniture allotted me. I asked the landlord for supper; he laughed at me; and to my demand of a bed, grinningly pointed to the floor, and refused me even a portion of the straw which had been brought in for the soldiers. Of all the demons that ever existed, or have been imagined in human shape, I thought the land. lord of the inn the blackest. The figure of Gil Peres occur. red to me, but it sunk in the comparison with the wretch then before me for ill nature, malignity, and personal hideousness. His face half covered with a black beard, and

large bristly whiskers, his stature below the common, nis head sunk between his shoulders to make room for the pro. tuberance of his back; his eyes buried in the ragged locks of his lank grisly hair;-added to this a club foot, and a voice which, on every attempt to speak, was like the shrieking of a screech owl,—and you have some faint idea of this mockery of a man."-Here, we have presented to view a human being, who, in the malignity of his mind, and in the conformation of his body, bears a certain resemblance to those wretched beings in whose breasts benevolence never glows, and in whose dwellings nothing is seen but the most haggard and deformed objects, and nothing heard but horrid imprecations, and the sounds of woe.

Let us now suppose, for a moment, a vast assemblage of beings of the dsecription to which I have adverted, collected in a dark and dreary region. Let us suppose many thousands of millions of such characters as Nero, who set fire to Rome, that he might amuse himself with the wailings and lamentations which this calamity inspired, and insulted Hea. ven by offering thanksgivings to the gods, after murdering his wife and his mother,-Tiberius who delighted in tortur. ing his subjects, and massacring them in the most tormenting and cruel manner,-Caligula, celebrated in the annals of folly, cruelty, and impiety, who murdered many of his subjects with his own hand, and caused thousands who were guilty of no crimes to be cruelly butchered,—Antiochus Epiphanes who butchered forty thousand of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in cold blood, and rushed forward, like an infernal demon, with the intention of destroying every inhabi tant of Judea,-Hamilcar who threw all the prisoners that came into his hand, to be devoured by wild beasts,Asdrubal who put out the eyes of all the Roman captives he had taken during two years, cut off their noses, fingers, legs, and arms, tore their skin to pieces with iron rakes and harrows, and threw them headlong from the top of his bat tlements,-Jenghiz Khan who caused seventy chiefs to be thrown into as many caldrons of boiling water, and took plea. sure in beholding his army beheading a hundred thousand prisoners at once,-Tamerlane who displayed his sportive cruelty in pounding three or four thousand people in large mortars, or building them among bricks and mortar into a wall,-Mustapha who treacherously murdered the Venetian officers, after having entered into a treaty with them, and who beheld with delight the noble minded Bragadino, whom