I give the examples.—The French expedition to Egypt was formed with the express object of breaking down the influence of England in the East, and ultimately subverting her Indian empire—that expedition was the first which tarnished the military renown of the Republic, cost her a fleet, and lost her an army. Of the army which Napoleon led to Egypt, not a battalion returned to Europe but as the prisoners of England!
The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the invasion of England—the Spanish war broke down the military renown of the Empire, and was pronounced by Napoleon to be the origin of his ruin!
The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of the north—that invasion was punished, by the ruin of the whole veteran army of France!
Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with an arrogant assumption of victory—"Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais." Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict destroyed him; his laurels, his diadem, and his dynasty, were blasted together!
It is not less memorable, that during the entire Revolutionary war, France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one exception—the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But this, too, had its punishment—and one of the most especial and characteristic retribution—Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By a fate unheard of even among fallen princes, the man who had treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a prisoner, was delivered into English hands, was consigned to captivity in an English island, and died the prisoner of England!
I speak of events like these, not in the spirit of superstition, nor in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways of Providence. I record them, in a full consciousness of the immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of the supreme Disposer. But they convey, at least to my own feelings, a confidence, a solemn security, a calm yet ardent conviction, that chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great tide of things, in its rise and fall, has laws, which, if unapproached by the feebleness of human faculties, are not the less true, vast, and imperishable; that if, like the air, the agency of that ruling and boundless authority is invisible, we may yet feel its existence in its effects, rejoice in the acknowledgment of a power which nothing can exhaust, and take to our bosoms the high consolation, that the good of man is the supreme principle of the system.
Men actively employed in public life, are strangely apt to think that there is no progress outside their circle. But, on my return to Mortimer Castle, I found this conception amply confuted. The world had moved as rapidly in those shades, as in the centre of cabinets and courts. Time had done its work, in changing the condition of almost every human being whom I had known in my early days. The brothers and sisters, whom I had left children, were now in the full beauty of their prime; my brothers showy and stirring youths; my sisters fair and gentle girls, just reaching that period of life when the countenance and mind are in their bloom together, and the highborn woman of England is the loveliest perhaps in the world. The extravagance of my elder brother had dilapidated the provision intended for the younger branches of his house. My habits, learned in a sterner school, enabled me to retrieve their fortunes, and I thus secured a new tie to their regards. Justice is essential to all gratitude, and I found them ready to pay the tribute, to the full.
Among my first visits was one to my old friend and tutor, Vincent. I found him still resident on his living; and with spirits, on which time had wrought no change. Years had passed lightly over his head. His eye was as vivid, and his mind as active as ever. He perhaps stooped a little more, and his frame had lost something of that elasticity of step which had so often tried my young nerves in our ramblings over the hills. But he was the same cordial, animated, and high-toned being, in all his feelings, that I had seen him from the first hour. I found him in his garden, arranging, selecting, and enjoying his flower-beds with all the spirit of a horticulturist. But he apologised for what he termed, "its disorder." "For," said he, "I have lost all my gardeners." On my looking doubtful, "All my girls," said he, "are gone; all married; all wedded to one neighbour or another. Such is the way in which I have been left alone." I made my condolences on his solitude, in due form. "Yet I am not quite solitary," added the gay old man, "after all; or my solitude depends upon myself. My girls are all married to our squires, honest fellows, and some of them well enough off in the world. But I made a stipulation, that none of them should marry out of sight from the gazebo on the top of yonder hill; and when I want their company, I have only to hoist a flag. You see that I have not altogether forgotten my days of the sabre and the signal-post; my telegraph works well, and I have them all trooping over here with the regularity of a squadron."
The approach of winter made the castle a scene of increased liveliness. I had always looked with strong distaste on the habit of flying to watering-places at the season when the presence of the leading families of a county is most important to the comforts of the tenantry, and to the intelligent and social intercourse of the higher ranks. I sent a request to Lafontaine and his wife, that they should perform their "covenant," and venture to see "how English life contrived to get through the dulness of its Decembers." My request was countersigned by Clotilde, and this was irresistible. They came, and were received with a joyous welcome. They too had undergone a change. Lafontaine was graver, and was much the better for his gravity. He was now the sincere and kind-hearted being for which nature had intended him. The coxcombry of French early life had disappeared, and left behind it only that general grace and spirit which makes the maturity of a foreign life its most interesting portion. Mariamne was still more advantageously changed. Her wild vivacity was less subdued than transformed into elegance of manner; her features were still handsome, travel had given her knowledge, and her natural talents had been cultivated by the solitary hours, in which but for that cultivation she might have sunk into the grave. She had brought with her, too, another remembrance, and one of that order which produces the most powerful effect upon the whole character of woman. She had brought her first-born, a lovely infant, in which her whole soul seemed to be absorbed, and in which she already discovered more beauties and good qualities than fate or fortune had ever given to human nature. But the centre of our circle, and the admiration and love of all, sat my wife, my generous, noble, pure-spirited Clotilde. Time, too, had wrought its change on her; but it was only to give her deeper claims on the feelings of a heart which could not imagine happiness without her. The heroine had wholly disappeared, and given place to the woman; the character of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune, which adversity had made essential perhaps to her being, had passed away with her day of suffering. She was now soft, mild, tender, and confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which, when exposed to the storm, contract and diminish their form and foliage; but, when sheltered, resume their original luxuriance and loveliness. Clotilde, in the sufferings of the emigration, in the terrors of the Revolution, and in the march through the Vendée, might have perished, but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of the trial. But now, surrounded with all the security of rank, and with opulence for her enjoyment, and with love to cherish her, she displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her affections. Thus surrounded, thus cheered, thus looked up to by beings whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty, all the feeling of patriotism, and all the consciousness, that age will neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved, nor shut up theirs to me. I believe in the possibility of friendship untainted by selfishness, and I am firm in the faith, of love that knows no decline. I look round me, and am serenely happy. I look above me, and am sacredly thankful.