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crossed upon her bosom, then slowly and gracefully rising, fixed upon her husband a look of gratitude and tenderness. Napoleon returned the glace. It was a silent but conscious interchange of the hopes, the promises, the memories and the pleasures of years!"
The ridicule which has attached to the manners of Napoleon's court has been greatly exaggerated, and from evident design, in writings published by renegade courtiers since the restoration. We have Josephine's own authority, whose judgment and taste is indisputable, that the emperor himself, from the first, observed with ease the habitudes of his rank. "Most certainly," such are her own words when conversing in the little circle of her own exiled court, “most truly do I regard the emperor as a man that has no equal. In camps, at the council board, they find him extraordinary, but in the interior of his palace be ever appeared to me still more remarkable. I confess that, notwithstanding my experience in the world and its usages, the commencement of the imperial form embarrassed me. The emperor on the contrary, made a sport, a pleasure of them; and in all the palace, he alone beyond contradiction, best understood their observances. It is undoubted, that their principal influence springs from the personal qualities of those invested with the supreme rule; but it is maintained that without equalling or superseding the e qualities, ceremonial institutions may supply their place with advantage. In supporting such a system, Napo- shews himself at least very disinterested; for who can stand less in need of appliances to impose upon men than one who seems born to govern? In proof of this argument, he adduces the example of of a crowd of princes who have reigned, so to speak, rather seated or lying than standing upright on their own feet, but whose couch, guarded by
