"SIDNEY SMITH TO BUONAPARTE."
"Fortune's wheel makes strange revolutions, it must be confessed; but for the term revolution to be applicable, the term should be a complete one, for a half turn is not a revolution; (see the Dictionary of the Academy;) you are at present as high as you can mount. Well! I don't envy you your fortunate situation, for I am better off than you; I am as low in the career of ambition as a man can descend; so that let fortune turn her wheel ever so little, and as she is capricious, turn it she will, I must necessarily mount, and you as necessarily must descend. I do not make this remark to you to cause you any chagrin; on the contrary, with the intent to bring you the same consolation I have at present when you shall arrive at the same point where I am; yes! the same point; you will inhabit this prison, why not as well as I? I did not think of such a thing any more than you do at present, before I found myself brought hither. In party wars 'tis a crime in the eyes of opponents for a man to do his duty well; you do yours now, and consequently you by so much irritate your enemies; you will answer me.
"'I fear not their combined hatred, the voice of the people is declared for me, I serve them well:' that is all very good talking; sleep in quiet, you'll very soon learn what one gains by serving such a master, whose inconstancy will perhaps punish you for all the good you do him. 'Whoever,' (says an ancient author, Pausanias Atticus,) 'puts his entire confidence in public favour, never passes his life without pain and trouble, and seldom comes to a good end.'
"Finis coronat opus."
"In fact, I need not prove to you that you will come here and read these lines, because here you must be to read them. You will certainly have this chamber, because it is the best, and the keeper, who is a very civil good sort of man, will, of course, treat you as well as he does me."
N. B.—These lines having appeared in the Parisian papers in 1799, and having been put into Buonaparte's hands at Cairo, on his return from his unsuccessful Syrian expedition, where he was foiled and worsted by the writer of them, he exclaimed, 'It is very extraordinary;' and on his return to Paris, fearing the accomplishment of the remainder of the prediction, after having procured through Regnauld de St. Jean d'Angely the sight of a copy in the hands of Baruel Beauvert, he forthwith ordered the building to be levelled to the ground.
After this display of his country's gratitude to Sir Sidney Smith, which became so much the more enhanced, as it may be said to have taken place almost in the presence of so many Sovereigns, Sir Sidney had little else to do but to enjoy his richly-merited rewards, the universal admiration, and the approbation of his own mind, ever active in doing good, not only for his country, but for the whole human race.
He prosecuted with ardour his plans for the abolition of white slavery, even after the destruction of the pirates' nest in Algiers.
