The feelings with which we contemplated him were a strange mixture of interest, pity, and contempt. The reader will remember the reflections of the Countess of Blessington when she met the mother of the fallen Napoleon leaning on the arm of the ex-king of Westphalia, as they wandered pensively amid the ruins of Rome.
This case added another illustration of the poet's thought:
“He who has worn a crown,
When less than king is less than other men;
A fallen star extinguished, leaving blank
Its place in heaven.”
But in the instance before us there seemed a lower depth of degradation than crowned head had ever reached before; a profound of folly and guilt that forbade human sympathy, as was very truly set forth in the speech of the United States Minister at the great meeting in London four months before.
As we entered, the Emperor looked up at us for a moment with a flash in his eye that was easily understood. We belonged to the white-faced race, and were of the religion that he detested; and the man must have keenly felt, as we stood in his presence and looked at him, how fallen he then was. He, before whom and his predecessors multitudes had bowed down in such lowly prostration and homage, had then to realize that there was
“None so poor to do him reverence.”
It was not possible, after all, to look at him without a measure of sympathy: “a star” that had shone for eight hundred years in this political “heaven” had fallen to the earth and was lying at our feet, its light extinguished forever.
I asked the soldiers why the old gentleman was so closely guarded in that inclosed place? They replied, “Sir, it is not for fear of his getting away, but to protect him from harm till he is tried.” On expressing my surprise at this explanation, the man added, “Well, you see, sir, people are coming here every day to look at him—wives, whose husbands were killed by his Sepoys, and husbands whose wives were worse than killed. You see, sir,
