FOOTNOTES:
[9] The autopsy exhibited the same appearance generally discovered in those subjects whose death has been caused by the fever of the country: the brain was watery, the veins of the head were gorged, and the liver was soft. No signs of poison were discovered; the death of the Emperor was in the course of nature.
[10] The French authorities would have removed the trophies of Napoleon's victories, and the commemoration of the Russian share in the disastrous days of Jena and Austerlitz. The Emperor Alexander magnanimously replied, "No, let them remain: it is sufficient that I have passed over the bridge with my army!" A noble and generous reply. Few princes have effaced public wrongs so completely, or used their opportunity of making reprisals so mercifully. (See Chateaubriand's Autobiography.)
FALLEN GENIUS.
BY MISS ALICE CAREY.
No tears for him!—he saw by faith sublime
Through the wan shimmer of life's wasted flame,
Across the green hills of the future time,
The golden breaking of the morn of fame.
Faded by the diviner life, and worn,
The dust has fallen away, and ye but see
The ruins of the house wherein were borne
The birth-pangs of an immortality.
His great life from the wondrous life to be,
Clasped the bright splendors that no sorrow mars,
As some pale, shifting column of the sea,
Mirrors the awful beauty of the stars.
What was Love's lily pressure, what the light
Of its pleased smile, that a chance breath may chill?
His soul was mated with the winds of night,
And wandered through the universe at will.
Oft in his heart its stormy passion woke,
Yet from its bent his soul no more was stirred,
Than is the broad green bosom of the oak
By the light flutter of the summer bird.
His loves were of forbidden realms, unwrought
In poet's rhyme, the music of his themes,
Hovering about the watch-fires of his thought,
On the dim borders of the land of dreams.
For while his hand with daring energy
Fed the slow fire that, burning, must consume,
The ravishing joys of unheard harmony
Beat like a living pulse within the tomb.
Pillars of fire that wander through life's night,
Children of genius! ye are doomed to be,
In the embrace of your far-reaching light,
Locking the radiance of eternity.