In the mean time, Muræna in considera- unexampled confusion. Never did an army tion of the recent exploits of Sextius, and more enriched by rapine, or more corrupted in addition to the special reward conferred, by foreign dissipation and laxity of discipline, according to public proclamation, had ap- return to Italy. The striking of tents-the pointed him to a tribune's commission, vacant loading of elephants, horses, mules and by the death of a senior officer. With the asses,-in other quarters, the drunken and publicity of these intentions on the part of noisy revelry of soldiers and officers of all the general, the absence of Sextius appeared ranks, and above all, the tumultuous and strangely inconsistent. On such an occasion licentious indulgence of camp servants, in the as the allotment of spoil, it was a matter of momentary anarchy-presented a most decicourse that every survivor of the action was sive contrast to the anxious and thoughtful present, and Sextius had been seen by all to silence of the friends of Sextius. Marcellus enter the temple, alive and unhurt. At the sat in the door of his tent, indulging a morrequest then of Marcellus, his property and bid contempt for the extravagance of that commission were permitted to remain other- exultation, in which he could not feel himself wise unappropriated, until the fourth day after a participator, as well as a sort of pride in the arrival of the troops in Italy, within which martyrizing himself for the sake of his friend, time he undertook either to produce him whom he loved warmly, and, despairing of alive, or to report the certainty of his death; his re-appearance, regretted sincerely. A and for this purpose, Marcellus and an foot-fall within the tent immediately behind eagle's guard of his own legion were permit- him attracted his notice; he turned, and ted to remain in Cappadocia after the depar- saw a stranger of venerable presence, in Asiature of the rest; which movement was im-atic costume; a brow high, calm, and un mediately forwarded, in compliance with the letter of Sylla, which we have seen reach its destination. The legions were also informed that Sylla had resigned his province of the Pontic War, which would probably be assigned to Lucullus; and that the civil war having now broken out in the city, which was in possession of the aristocratic party since the death of Marius, all his real and suspected adherents were suffering the persecution customary in such cases.

This intelligence had the immediate effect of a schism among the troops: on one point, however, all were unanimous; to march without delay to Tarsus, where transports were waiting, and embark for Italy.

It was now night, the outposts were stationed as usual, but the customary quietness of a Roman camp was superseded by almost

clouded, as if shaped of chiselled marble, surmounted by a lofty turban,-and a long full black beard lent an air of dignity not to be imparted by any European costume of any age, to a proud stateliness of figure bestowed by nature and improved by habit. A suspicion of treachery and surprize shot through the mind of Marcellus, when his strange visitor raised his hand in deprecation of any outcry or noisy astonishment, and said without preface, "you seek Sextius: of him I am come to tell you. You will meet him to-morrow an hour after dawn, seven miles hence, on the western bank of the Sarus. Fail not, at the time and place, and be ready to rescue him from a hundred of the king's cavalry. "Aye, from a thousand," replied Marcellus, and before these words were spoken, the stranger had left the tent.

The tribune, also at a loss to account for this must go a long way from this," and so this patimely information, proceeded to make in-triotic guard-du-vin passed on, indulging in quiries outside. On clearing the door, the nearest individual that presented himself was a slave, bearing two amphora of wine, and beguiling the violence of that exertion by resting occasionally, and lightening his load; if, by pouring it from one vessel into another, to wit, from the amphoræ into his stomach, he could be supposed to diminish its specific gravity. As he was just now resuming his load and his journey, Marcellus concluding that he must have been there for the last few minutes, asked "if he had seen an Asiatic pass by him." "Asiatic !" repeated the slave, with an acute accent, and looking with the most dignified contempt upon his interrogator, "an Asiatic in the Roman camp! my good friend, if you want any Asiatic, you

a soliloquy to the effect, "that he was considerably surprized how any officer in that respectable army, and an elderly man too, could drink to such a degree as to forget where he was, and to come out looking for the enemy in the middle of his own camp." Marcellus pursued his inquiry, but no such man had been seen by any, coming or going; "then," said he, "'tis all imagination, the heat of the brain-thinking too long-or one of those huxters of futurity, who sometimes tell truth. At all events, I shall lose no chance." Accordingly, he gave orders that his two centuries should be ready to march with him an hour before dawn, and lay down to sleep.

CHAPTER VI.

"The shriek of terror and the mingling yell,
For swords began to clash, and shouts to swell."

At dawn of the next morning, the silence | which reigned over the broken walls, and smoking ruins of Comana, for the Romans had now abandoned it, was broken by the clattering of the king's cavalry along the streets. The next moment they drew up at the porch of the temple, and Sextius was led forth by the mysterious being in whose company he had passed the preceding night, and in whose hands his future fate seemed to be uncontrolably placed. After his hands had been secured behind his back, and he had been informed by their commander that he should ride without reins, and ride swiftly,' he was placed upon a led horse; and forming a square, with their prisoner in the centre, the whole party cleared the town, and, sweeping along the banks of the Sarus, proceeded southward at their speed. With every bound of his steed the Roman felt himself more and more excluded from hope and the probability of delivery: from the clemency of Mithridates he had nothing to expect but protracted torture, or, like Aquilius, a draught of molten gold. He envied, with a melancholy aspiration, every wild bird that rose startled from before the horses' feet, and cursed his folly and credulity in not overpowering his tempter during the night, and breaking his way to his departing companions. Why should he have been satisfied, that all his specious mystery and lofty language, that all his affectation of moral pre

Corsair.

eminence and superhuman power, was not keen imposture and impenetrable hypocrisy ?

The road by which they were advancing, overhanging the river, and being itself overlooked by the side of a rough declivity, was so sinuous and indirect, that every turn brought abruptly before them a fresh prospect of wild and beautiful scenery. At length one view, possessing for Sextius more charms than all the attractions of nature's grandeur and softness spread before the painter's eye, disclosed itself; two centuries of his own legion, with Marcellus at their head, stood like so many statues across the road, and opposed their progress with a glittering palisade of fixed lances. Treachery! to the river! cut down the prisoner!" exclaimed the commander; at the same time, plunging the spurs into his charger, he bounded upon Sextius, who, assisted by the rearing of his horse, flung himself to the ground, receiving as he fell, the blow intended for his head, upon the cords that confined his wrists. Sextius being thus set at liberty, sprang upon his feet, closed with his enemy, and grasping him by the sword-belt, brought him with him to the earth. The sword of the Asiatic being broken in his fall, both were now unarmed; the one of Herculean strength, and the other, light, active, and sinewy, rolled in a deadly struggle into the deep water, where, locked in the clasp of each other's iron and unbending limbs, they sank, and rose, and sank again.

evel the bearing of arms to a mechanical | great performance: but conjoined with them calling, and in vain will you recruit for mer- are qualities, in which as a military historian, cenaries, in vain will you strive to bribe the gallant colonel stands unrivalled. Ineven paupers into your service; give glory, deed we know of no other historian, whose -the bloody field will have its charms, and style is so thoroughly true, so admirably and death will lose its terrors. exquisitely adjusted to the subject. Thinking like a statesman and a general, he feels as a hero, and writes like nobody else. War is depicted in his brilliant pages with Homeric grandeur. He actually writes battles. He makes us forget that we are perusing a literary narrative. The appalling interest with which he invests his subject absorbs us altogether. He transports us beyond the seas; we are in the inidst of the strife; we are stunned with the clash of armies, we feel the shock of war-we reelwe stagger-we are borne onwards: shouts of victory ring in our ears, and we cast down the book, amazed at the magical illusion with which the author has filled our mind. Who with an unthrobbing pulse could read his description of the grand charge at Albuera, or the terrible storming of Badajoz? What cold-blooded creature would not feel emotion, at his description of the death and character of Sir John Moore? Who would not be excited by his vindication of the character of the British soldier, or roused by his merciless exposure of the flagrant misconduct of the Perceval administration? We know of no prose work in our language, which can rival this great history, in passages of a sublime and inspiring eloquence.

Admiration of the deeds of the military hero has been a sentiment common to all nations. Even modern civilization with its benumbing influence, its money grubbing, its devotion to the palpable and the familiar, -cannot extinguish this feeling. Charley Napier, in his striped shirt, with his flashing cutlass, dashing at the head of his boarders upon the Miguelites off St. Vincent, could warm a cold British public into hearty admiration. The presence of Soult at the coronation of Queen Victoria, awakened enthusiasm in thousands. The sight of a mighty warrior will always gladden the heart. The only public character, whom a London mob will cheer in the streets, is the Duke of Wellington. Joseph Hume should walk for a weary way, before "hurrah" would meet his ears. Peel was only once cheered in the streets, and that was when he displayed "pluck" during his administration in 1835, -when he fought a desperate battle against fearful odds. Even in a commercial country, where gain occupies the public mind, the military hero attracts most popular admiration. The best proof that mankind must always associate warfare with grandeur, is to be found in the glorious energy with which the poets of all ages, from Tyrtæus to Campbell, from Körner to Berenger, have sung the deeds of Mars.

One of the few books of this age which posterity will deem worthy of preservation, is the History of the Peninsular War, by Colonel Napier. It possesses in an eminent degree some of the very highest merits, which any work in literature can boast of. Truth-stern impartiality between friend and foe, admirable condensation, the exclusion of all that is immaterial, the retention of all that is apposite to the subject, rigid military criticism, carefully indicating the master strokes in the game of war made by the respective generals, liberally construing their operations, severely exposing their negligence or blunders; vivid portraiture of the characters of the heroes of both armies, unrivalled pictorial power in the narrative of mighty combats, which for the obstinate valour displayed on both sides have never been surpassed; lucid arrangement of his materials, clearness in the exposition of the various campaigns;-these form some of the many characteristics of Colonel Napier's

Had its author never been a soldier, or a writer of military history, he could hardly have failed in being famous as an orator. It is not in words, but in ideas, that he is eloquent. His original thoughts gush from his mind, with the freshness and vivacity of a mountain torrent; they dash over the petty objections of cavillers and snarlers; and rolling down the most rugged precipices, bear the reader along on a tide of swelling eloquence. But it would be a grievous mistake to suppose that Napier is merely an exciting writer. He is a master of various styles. He can discuss the most abstract proposition, with that clearness which only belongs to the man of science; his considerations on complex questions of government and general politics, display the grasping comprehensiveness of a philosophical thinker. His mind has been well educated in history; the greatest authors of many nations are familiar to him; but he is not encumbered with his massive scholarship. His powerful intellect hews out its own opinions; he neither blindly worships the past, after the manner of the Coleridgians, nor despises it,

after the contemptible fashion of the Benthamites. Precious and searching thoughts are scattered like pearls through the deep sea of his history; some profound questions in political ethics are investigated with a searching scrutiny, that would rejoice old David Hume; while the abstractions of liberal politics and of progressive philosophy, are clothed in graceful drapery, with such picturesque power, that even Burke, were he alive, might hail the alliance between Democracy and Taste. Hazlitt, in a masterly critique on Burke's philosophical politics, touchingly laments that Radicalism had never found a writer to attire it in the fanciful costume, and to deck it with those winning graces, by which Burke rendered Toryism so captivating to imaginative minds, which shrink from naked truths, and turn with disgust from the vulgar forms of Political Economy. Now Napier is a genius worthy of championing Democracy, against even so redoubtable an antagonist as Burke. Had Napier answered "The Reflections on the French Revolution," the "Rights of Man" would have found few readers, and the "Vindicia Gallica" would have been forgotten.

of Napier's caustic power in exposing blun ders or incompetency :

"Wellington felt their loss keenly, Sir John Murray spoke of them lightly. "They were of small value, old iron! he attached little importance to the sacrifice of artillery; it was his principle, he had approved of colonel Adam losing his guns at Biar; and he had also desired colonel Prevòt, if pressed, to abandon his battering train before the Fort of Balaguer.' "Such doctrine might appear strange to a British army, but it was the rule with the continental armies, and the French owed much of their successes to the adoption of it."

"Strange indeed! Great commanders have risked their own lives, and sacrificed their bravest men, charging desperately in person, to retrieve even a single piece of cannon in a battle. They knew the value of moral force in war, and that of all the various springs and levers on which it depends military honour is the most powerful. No! it was not to the adoption of such a doctrine, that the French owed their great successes. It was to the care with which Napoleon fostered and cherished a contrary feeling. Sir John Murray's argument would have been more pungent, more complete, if he had lost his colours, and pleaded that they were only wooden staves, bearing old pieces of silk!

Wellington having determined to possess himself of St. Sebastian, Sir Thomas Graham, on the night of the 24th July, 1813, gave orders for the assault on that strong fortress:

"In the night of the 24th two thousand men of the fifth division filed into the trenches on the isthmus. This force was composed of the third battalion of the royals under major Frazer, destined to storm the great breach; the thirty-eighth regiment under colonel Greville, designed to assail the lesser and more distant breach; the ninth regiment under colonel Cameron, appointed to support the light companies of all those battalions, was placed royals; finally a detachment, selected from the in the centre of the royals under the command of lieutenant Campbell of the ninth regiment. This chosen detachment, accompanied by the engineer the high curtain after the breach should be won. Machel with a ladder party, was intended to sweep

Many of our readers must by this time be familiar with the "crack" passages, in the earlier volumes of this remarkable history. But we know not to what it is to be attributed, that the concluding volume has hardly been noticed in the Reviews. The whole work indeed has been noticed; but sufficient attention has not been paid to the last volume, which is in no wise inferior to its predecessors, and from which hardly any extracts have been made for the general class of readers. There are no such stirring passages in the last volume, as are to be found "The distance from the trenches to the points of in the first, third, and fourth; because the attack, was more than three hundred yards along nature of the war described in it did not ad- the contracted space lying between the retaining mit of them; but the peculiar characteristics wall of the horn-work and the river; the ground of the author's mind are shewn as clearly weeds; the tide had left large and deep pools of was strewed with rocks covered by slippery seain the conclusion of his work. It commen-water; the parapet of the horn-work was entire as ces with a description of the state of military affairs in Spain, after the battle of Vittoria, which was spiritedly described in the fifth volume. The fate of Spain was then (June, 1813) virtually decided; but the general balance of affairs in Europe, was restored by Napoleon at the battles of Lutzen and Baut

zen.

On the eastern coast of Spain, the British were not successful. Sir John Murray had failed at Saragossa, and had lost the honoured battering train, composed of "guns which had shook the bloody ramparts of Badajoz." The defence which Sir John Murray made, affords room for the display

well as the retaining wall; the parapets of the other works and the two towers, which closely flanked the breach, although injured were far from ed with musqueteers. The difficulties of the attack being ruined, and every place was thickly garnishwere obvious, and a detachment of Portuguese placed in a trench opened beyond the parallel on the isthmus, within sixty yards of the ramparts, was ordered to quell if possible the fire of the horn

work.

"While it was still dark the storming columns moved out of the trenches, and the globe of compression in the drain was exploded with great effect against the counterscarp and glacis of the hornwork. The garrison astonished by the unlookedtroops rushed onwards, the stormers for the main for event abandoned the flanking parapet, and the