And now, when I'm trying your pity to move,
Why seem you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps you are bound to dissemble your love,
But oh!—must you kick me down stairs?
That excellent association, the Society of Women Journalists, has just issued its first annual report. From this interesting document, the world learns that the members have derived many benefits from a body that could justly adopt the motto of "Defence, not Defiance." The institution very properly claims for the authoress the right to receive no wrong.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
I have just finished Napoléon et les femmes, by Fredéric Masson. On the cover is "dix-huitième édition," which shows what a success the book has obtained. The author is an apologist for Napoleon. The Emperor can do no wrong. What in the private individual is rank blasphemy, is, to this author, in the Emperor only a pardonable weakness. Whatever Napoleon may have been as the "Man of Destiny" and as the greatest military genius of his time, he was, if most of these stories be true, as a man, a satyr, a cad (there is no other English word for it), and a snob. Satyr he was apparently always; satyr and cad in certain instances, especially as regards the "Walewska affair," in which so many personages took part; everyone of them outraging morality, and all disregarding the sacredness of marriage; though to Madame Walewska herself must be apportioned the least share of the guilt in which all were steeped up to the hilt. Madame Walewska yielded herself as a victim to a most cruel combination of circumstances; and of this Napoleon availed himself to the utmost. It was in his power to have behaved as a gentleman for once, but he allowed the opportunity to slip. That he appears, on one occasion, to have permitted a poor terrified, artless victim to escape is put forward triumphantly by his apologist as a proof of his magnanimity; but even a satiated animal will refuse food, though if the food be in his possession he will play the dog in the manger. He had a tigerish admiration for the deepest tragedy, and abhorred farce and comedy. He could play like a child with the one child of whom he hoped great things. Cad he was always, in his dealings with men and women. As an imperial cad he was toadied by his grovelling courtiers; but when there is much to be gained by toadying a cad, and everything to lose by not toadying him, all will be toadies from the highest to the lowest. The exceptions are rare. A thorough snob did "the Corsican upstart" show himself in his eager anxiety for recognition by the royal and aristocratic families of Europe, and by his servility to the Austrian Emperor, in order to obtain the hand of the high-born Marie-Louise. If ever tyrant deserved defeat and disgrace Napoleon did so. Like Cardinal Wolsey, what "best became him in his life was the leaving of it." Those interested, and who is not, in "the Napoleon Legend," should not fail to read this book, says