touch of interest, marked the outline of this ex: aordi nary character-the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life, in the midst of a revolution that quickered every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in the list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interesthe acknowledged no criterion but success-he worshipped no god but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate: in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars! Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama, Even apparent defeat assumed the appear

ance of victory-his flight from Egypt confirmed hig destiny-ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind—if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmount-space no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Skepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplaces in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chessboard!—Amid all these changes he stood immutable as adamant.

2. It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawing room-with the mob or the levee-wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown--banishing a Bra

ganza, or espousing a Hapsburg-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsig-he was still the same military despot!

3. In this wonderful combination, his affectations of literature must not be omitted. The jailor of the press he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning! the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist-a republican and an emperor a Mohammedan-a Catholic and a patron of the synagogue-a subaltern and a sovereign -a traitor and a tyrant-a Christian and an infidelhe was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow.

REPLY TO LORD YNDHURST.-Sheil.

There is, however, one man, of great abilities, not a member of this house, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party-who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and

national antipathies of the people of this country. -abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political associates affect to cover although they cannot hide, their motives-distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people that they are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and pronounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion--to be aliens-to be aliens in race-to be aliens in country-to be aliens in religion.*

2. Aliens! good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, "Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty"? The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply-I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles. sieges, fortunes that he has passed," ought to have come back upon him.

3. He ought to have remembered that, from the

Lord Lyndhurst was sitting under the gallery during Mr. Sheil's speech. Mr. Sheil looked and shook his head indignantly at him at this part of his speech. The effect produced was remarkable. The whole house turned towards Lord Lyndhurst, And the shouts of the ministerialists, encountered by he vehement outcries of the Conservati es, continued for minutes.

earliest achievement in which he displayed that mili tary genius which has placed him foremost in the an nals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpass ing combat which has made his name imperishablefrom Assaye to Waterloo-the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory-Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Al buera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest— Tell me, for you were there-I appeal to the gallant soldier before me (Sir Henry Hardinge), from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;-tell me, for you must needs remember-on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance-while death fell in showers- when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science— when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset-tell me if, for an instant, when, to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when at length the moment for the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked, was at last let loose when, with words familiar, but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault-tell me, if