city, he did his best to cause Napoleon to be withstood, but the garrison failed him, and he had to ride for his life to rejoin the Comte d'Artois, whom he had induced to leave earlier. A short distance from the town the marshal and his few companions met a drunken party of a corporal and four hussars of Napoleon's little army. They sought to arrest the marshal, but with a blow of his fist he knocked the corporal off his horse, while General Viscount Digeon and several others imitated his example with the hussars. Accompanying the king to Lille, it was there decided that the king should cross the frontiers into Belgium, but there was much vacillation as to how or when he should start.

The Prince de Condé had arrived during the day. We were all surprised, and with difficulty suppressed our laughter, out of respect for his age and the presence of the king, when we heard him ask whether, as the next day was Maundy Thursday, his Majesty would perform the ceremony of the washing of feet. The moment was well chosen. Even the king could scarcely control his laughter.'

The king himself, however, seemed equally unable to realise the position, for he lamented to the marshal that the one portmanteau that there had been time to pack had been stolen on the road. He said,They have taken my shirts; I had not too many of them;' and then he added in a melancholy voice, But I regret my slippers even more. You will 'realise some day, my dear marshal, the value of a pair of slippers that have taken the shape of your feet.'

The marshal escorted the king to the frontier and then returned. On the road he met Marshal Ney, who said to him

"You are going to Paris. You will be well received. The Emperor will welcome you."

I will spare him that trouble. I shall not see him, nor shall I join his party," was the reply."

True to his determination, he refused to accept employment under the Emperor, although repeated overtures were made to him.

At the earnest request of the king he consented, after the re-entry of the allies into Paris, to take the command of the army of the Loire. He only accepted this post on the conditions (1) that he should have a free hand, and (2) that he should not be used as an instrument in any steps that might be taken against individuals. On arrival he advised the officers who were on the proscription lists to take measures for their safety with all expedition. Within a few hours

there arrived, at nightfall, some bodyguards in disguise, with orders for the gendarmerie to arrest certain officers. The marshal, feigning fear for their safety, induced them to wait till morning before taking any steps, meantime providing them with supper and bed. He locked the door of their room, and then caused warnings to be sent to those against whom orders for arrest were out. The result was that when the officers of the bodyguard were released, they found their birds flown. Owing to his well-known sympathy for them, the confidence in his honesty, and the exercise of considerable tact, the disbandment and reorganisation were carried out without much disturbance.

During the time occupied in bringing about this result, the marshal had many conversations with the officers and men of the Guard who had accompanied the Emperor to Elba, and their statements are worth putting on record.

They all assured me that, believing themselves exiled eternally, they sighed for a chance of returning to France. . . . As the Emperor was warmly received everywhere, and as they met with no obstacle, they were happy to tread once more the soil of their country. "But," I asked, "if you had met with resistance, if you had been repulsed, would you have embarked again if possible?" "Oh no," they replied. "The opportunity of quitting that island was too good to be missed." "But if you had met with opposition would you have attackedfired?" "No, no. We would have committed no acts of hostility; that would have ruined our cause. We would have laid down our arms and asked leave to retire to our families." "And have abandoned the Emperor?" "We had given him sufficient proof of our devotion. Everyone for himself. Besides, he caused his own misfortunes and ours, and we were not called upon to continue his victims."

It is pleasant to learn that these were not the feelings of the majority of the officers of the Guard, who would have been quite prepared to accompany him to St. Helena.

The military career of Marshal Macdonald virtually closed in 1816, though he was appointed one of the four majorgenerals of the Royal Guard. This is, therefore, a fitting point at which to bring our review of this interesting, but badly translated, book to an end. That the reader of this article will rise from its perusal with the idea that in our introductory words we depreciated his fame too much we do not believe. The more his career is examined the more apparent does it become that he was not a commander of even the second rank. Among Napoleon's marshals were several who surpassed him in military ability; but there was none who has a better record as a corps commander, or who

VOL. CLXXVI. NO. CCCLXI.

L

passed through so many changes of government with so much honour and uprightness. The clan Macdonald may indeed be proud of the reputation of this representative of one of their septs. As to the light thrown on Napoleon and his marshals, it is in the highest degree instructive to the student of military history. With regard to the attachment of the army to their great chief, we have always suspected that it was too dramatic to be quite sincere; and the Memoirs of Marshal Macdonald, and other similar souvenirs, show that it was spasmodic, and, in later days, often got up to order. That in going into action the soldiers should cheer the great commander who at first almost invariably led them to victory was not surprising. This enthusiasm, however, was not inconsistent with weariness in the dark days of constant sacrifices for the most selfish and unprincipled of men. He lacked that element of true greatness-sympathy with others; and this fact became at length apparent to his troops. One word in conclusion. The English sometimes sneer at the French for exclaiming whenever matters are going badly with them in war, Nous sommes trahis;' but is it astonishing that instinctively such a cry should spring to the lips of men who have read and heard of the scandalous treasons of so many of the most brilliant leaders of the Napoleonic armies?

ART. VI.-1. The Discovery of America. With some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. By JOHN FISKE. In 2 vols. London: 1892.

2. Narrative and Critical History of America. JUSTIN WINSOR. In 8 vols. London: 1885-89.

Edited by

3. Christopher Columbus, and how he received and imparted the Spirit of Discovery. By JUSTIN WINSOR. London: 1890.

4. Christophe Colomb, son Origine, sa Vie, ses Voyages, sa Famille, et ses Découvertes. Etudes d'Histoire Critique. Par HENRY HARRISSE. Deux tomes. Paris: 1884.

5. The North Americans of Antiquity. By JOHN T. SHORT. Second edition. New York: 1880.

6. Prehistoric America. By the Marquis DE NADAILLAC. Translated by N. D'ANVERS. London: 1885.

A

LTHOUGH America was no more discovered than Rome was built in a day, yet October 12, 1492, may fitly serve as the representative date of what has been well described as a process rather than an event. On that day Columbus first set foot on transatlantic land, and his doing so proved decisive for the spread westward of European civilisation. Events, indeed, might easily have been directed otherwise. The incident might under slightly altered circumstances have remained isolated, and devoid of momentous consequences, like so many others in the history of geographical exploration; and it seemed at first to mark no more than the opening of a long series of tentative gropings after facts confirmatory of a false theory. Nevertheless, as things turned out, that solemn disembarkation of a little band of white men on the palm-fringed shore of Guanahani really typified the effective discovery of the new continent.

Its effective, not its formal, discovery. Columbus, like most other innovators in the realms of knowledge and thought, had been anticipated. Wineland the Good' was no creation of Norse fancy, no shimmering region between sea and sky, where

'The Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze,'

but a concrete strip of coast-land, of approximately assignable latitude and longitude, washed perhaps by the same waters in which, one night of December in the year 1773, an

obnoxious cargo of tea was memorably engulfed. And the recent erection at Boston of a monument to Leif Eriksen has lent a kind of official sanction to the claim of that dashing sea-rover to take rank as the pioneer of the Aryan race on American soil.

His exploit, although a considerable one, fell in quite naturally with the sequence of preceding events. The overthrow of the Jarls of Norway by Harold Haarfagr drove those restless spirits among them who could not brook the fixed order of a consolidated kingdom, to seek their fortunes outside its bounds; and an exodus ensued more disastrous than plague or famine to many helpless populations. One of the few tranquil episodes in its eventful history was the settlement of Iceland in 874. Thence, by stress of weather, land further west was certain, sooner or later, to be reached; and it actually fell out within two years that one Gunnbjörn found himself icebound for the winter in one of the fiords near Cape Farewell. A century and more passed, however, before the unalluring possibility of adventure in this direction was followed up. It was the outlawry for homicide of Erik the Red in 983 that led to his exploring and colonising expedition to the frigid peninsula visited by Gunnbjörn. He made his headquarters by the upper Igaliko fiord, near the site of the modern Julianshaab, and there upon a smooth grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked up 'with clay and gravel,' the dwellings, nine hundred years ago, of the first European settlers in the Western hemisphere. The spot was one of the few in that dismal region where nature wore now and then even the semblance of a smile; and Erik called it Greenland,' somewhat, it may be admitted, on the same advertising principle of nomenclature followed by General Choke and Mr. Scadder in the designation of the Eden Settlement.' And the name, extended from one of its choicest corners to the whole frost-bound country, survives as if in mockery of the grim reality.

From Greenland, the continent of America was attained in precisely the same casual way that Greenland itself had been attained from Iceland. Thus Bjarni Herjulfsen, drifting under cover of a fog, in 986, outside the limits of the known world, sighted the densely wooded shore of Maine or Nova Scotia, but had not the curiosity to land, and made little of his adventure. Its significance was not, however, lost upon Leif, son of the homicidal Erik, a thoughtful and a strenuous man, not devoid of grasp upon the present and