[BORN 1763. DIED 1814.]
ALISON.
EW persons in that elevated rank have undergone such varieties of fortune as Josephine [first wife of Napoleon], and fewer still have borne so well the ordeal both of prosperity and adversity. Born in the middle class of society, she was the wife of a respectable but obscure officer. The Revolution afterwards threw her into a dungeon, where she was saved from a scaffold only by the fall of Robespierre. The hand of Napoleon made her successively the partner of every rank, from the general's staff to the emperor's throne; and the same connection consigned her, at the very highest point of her elevation, to degradation and seclusion—the loss of her consequence, separation from her husband, the sacrifice of her affections. Stripped of her influence, cast down from her rank, wounded in her feelings, the divorced empress found the calamity, felt in any rank, of being childless, the envenomed dart which pierced her to the heart.
It was no common character which could pass through such marvellous changes of fortune unmarked by any decided stain, unsullied by any tears of suffering. If, during the confusion of all moral ideas, consequent on the first triumphs of the Revolution, her reputation did not escape the breath of scandal; and if the favourite of Barras occasioned, even when the wife of Napoleon, some frightful fits of jealousy in her husband; she maintained an exemplary decorum when seated on the consular and imperial throne, and communicated a degree of elegance to the court of the Tuileries which could hardly have been expected after the confusion of ranks and ruin of the old nobility which had preceded her elevation.
Passionately fond of dress, and often blameably extravagant in that particular, she occasioned no small embarrassment to the treasury by her expenditure; but this weakness was forgiven in the recollection of its necessity to compensate the inequality of their years, in the amiable use which she made of her possessions, the grace of her manner, and the alacrity with which she was ever ready to exert her influence with her husband to plead the cause of suffering, or avert the punishment of innocence. Though little inclined to yield in general to female persuasion, Napoleon both loved and felt the sway of this amiable character, and often in his sternest fits he was weaned from violent measures by her influence. Her influence over him was evinced in the most conclusive manner by the ascendant which she maintained after their separation from each other. The divorce, and marriage of Marie Louise, produced no estrangement between them; in her retirement at Malmaison she was frequently visited and consulted by the emperor; they corresponded to the last moment of her life; and the fidelity by which she adhered to him in his misfortunes won the esteem of his conquerors, as it must command the respect of all succeeding ages of the world.
ANNE RADCLIFFE.
[BORN 1764. DIED 1823.]
EDINBURGH REVIEW.
