[Note 9], Page 167.
The Eagle's Nest.
The incident here versified is founded on fact, although I have taken the liberty slightly to alter the details,—to change the scene, as it were, of the heroine's birth-place,—and to give her a name of my own choosing. The case is thus narrated by Dr Rush of Philadelphia, in his "Lectures on the Utility of a Knowledge of the Mind to a Physician," lect. xi.:—
"During the time I passed at a country school, at Cecil county, in Maryland," says that eminent medical philosopher, "I often went, on a holiday, with my schoolmates, to see an eagle's nest, upon the summit of a dead tree in the neighbourhood of the school, during the time of the incubation of that bird. The daughter of the farmer in whose field the tree stood, and with whom I became acquainted, married, and settled in this place about forty years ago. In our occasional interviews, we now and then spoke of the innocent pursuits and rural pleasures of our youth, and, among other things, of the eagle's nest in her father's field. A few years ago I was called to visit this woman, when she was in the lowest stage of a typhus fever. Upon entering her room, I caught her eye, and, with a cheerful tone of voice, said only—'The eagle's nest!' She seized my hand, without being able to speak, and discovered strong emotions of pleasure in her countenance, probably from a sudden association of all her early domestic connexions and enjoyments with the words I had uttered. From that time she began to recover. She is now living, and seldom fails, when we meet, to salute me with the echo of—'The eagle's nest!'"
[Note 10], Page 193.
"Our history records, 'with sorrow and with shame.'"
Marshal Ney was shot in violation of a solemn capitulation—the Convention of Paris;—by the twelfth article of which an amnesty was granted to all persons in the capital, whatever might be their opinions, their offices, or their conduct. Marshal Davoust, who had concluded the Convention, explained it in favour of Ney,—and so will impartial history. The Duke of Wellington, however, on being appealed to by the unfortunate Ney, during the trial returned the cold and lawyer-like answer,—"That the Convention was merely a military convention, and did not, and could not, promise pardon for political offences, on the part of the French government." And so Ney, the most heroic of all the marshals of the French Revolution, was most foully murdered in the garden of the Luxembourg, to satisfy a point of mere military etiquette! Like the Dacian captive of old,—
"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
That the Duke of Wellington did not at once strongly remonstrate against the illegality of the act was unfortunate for his own fame. It required but the saving of Ney's life to have made him the greatest man of his time. That the act was illegal is acknowledged by the ablest jurisconsults of Europe. Well might Ney himself exclaim, when he found that his death was resolved upon:—"I am accused against the faith of treaties, and they will not let me justify myself. I appeal to Europe and to posterity!"
[Note 11], Page 241.