Napoleon fell: he fell, because with the men of the nineteenth century he attempted the work of an Attila and a Genghis Khan; because he gave the reins to an imagination directly contrary to the spirit of his age, with which nevertheless his reason was perfectly acquainted; because he would not pause on the day when he felt conscious of his inability to succeed. Nature has fixed a boundary, beyond which extravagant enterprises cannot be carried with prudence. This boundary the emperor reached in Spain, and he overleaped it in Russia. Had he then escaped destruction, his inflexible presumption would have caused him to find elsewhere a Baylen and a Moscow— History of the War in the Peninsula, from the French of General Foy.

ROBINSON CRUSOES

At one of the islands belonging to Juan de Ampues, the pilot ran away. Cifuentes and his crew, all equally ignorant of navigation, made sail for San Domingo, were dismasted in a gale of wind, and driven in the night upon the "Serrana" shoals; the crew, a flask of powder and steel, were saved, but nothing else. They found sea-calves and birds upon the island, and were obliged to eat them raw, and drink their blood, for there was no water. After some weeks, they made a raft with fragments of the wreck, lashed together with calf-skin thongs: three men went off upon it, and were lost. Two, and a boy, staid upon the island—one of whom, Moreno, died four days afterwards raving mad, having gnawed the flesh off his arms: the survivors, Master John and the boy, dug holes in the sand with tortoise-shells, and lined them with calf-skins to catch the rain. Where the vessel was wrecked, they found a stone which served them for a flint; this invaluable prize enabled them to make a fire. Two men had been living upon another island two leagues from them, in similar distress, for five years; these saw the fire, and upon a raft joined their fellow sufferers. They now built a boat with the fragments of the wreck, made sails of calf-skins, and caulked her with their fat, mixed with charcoal: one man and the boy went away in her: Master John, and one whose name has not been preserved, would not venture in her: they made themselves coracles with skins, and coasted round the shoals, which they estimated at twelve leagues long. At low water there were seventeen islands, but only five which were not sometimes overflowed. Fish, turtle, sea-calves, birds, and a root like purslane, was their food. The whites of turtle-eggs, when dried and buried for a fortnight, turned to water, which they found good drink: five months in the year these eggs were their chief food. They clothed themselves and covered their huts with calf-skins, and made an enclosure to catch fish, twenty-two fathoms long, with stones brought out of the sea—and raised two towers in the same laborious way, sixteen fathoms in circumference at the base, and four in height, at the north and south extremities of the island: upon these they made fires as signals. To avoid the crabs and snails which tormented them at night, they slept in the day time.

Three years after the other went way, John's sufferings began to affect his reason: in a fit of despair, he applied to the devil for that relief his prayers had failed to bring; and, rising in the dark, he fancied the devil was close to the hut. John awakened his companion, and taking a crucifix for protection, ran praying to the other end of the island. About a fortnight afterwards, John thought he heard his visiter again, but did not see him. And it now pleased God to relieve them: they saw a ship, and made a great smoke upon their tower, which was seen. John and his companion were carried to the Havannah, where their appearance and story attracted great attention. John was twice sick during the eight years, both times in August, and both times bled himself.—Southey's Chronological History of the West Indies.

FIRST APPEARANCES OF MISS STEPHENS AND MR. KEAN

During this memorable era of the British Stage, Mr. Hazlit was engaged as theatrical reporter to the Morning Chronicle, newspaper, then conducted by Mr. Perry, and printed on the exact site of the MIRROR office: in his Table Talk he gives the following portraiture of their theatrical successes:—

What squabbles we used to have about Kean and Miss Stephens, the only theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington had got some notion that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it was the torment of Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he could not get any two people to be of the same opinion on any one point. I shall not easily forget bringing him my account of her first appearance in the Beggar's Opera. I have reason to remember that article: it was almost the last I ever wrote with any pleasure to myself. I had been down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and, on my return, had stopped at an inn at Kingston-upon-Thames, where I had got the Beggar's Opera, and had read it overnight. The next day I walked cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in the end of autumn, and as I repeated the beautiful song, "Life knows no return of spring," I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do all the justice I could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little proud of it by anticipation. I had just then begun to stammer out my sentiments on paper, and was in a kind of honey-moon of authorship.

I deposited my account of the play at the Morning Chronicle office in the afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephens as Polly. Those were happy times, in which she first came out in this character, in Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, "If o'er the cruel tyrant Love," (so as it can never be sung again,) in Love in a Village, where the scene opened with her and Miss Matthews in a painted garden of roses and honeysuckles, and "Hope thou nurse of young Desire," thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! may my ears sometimes still drink the same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of youth, of health, and joy, but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream of fancy, and I shall hardly need to complain! When I got back, after the play, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice, "Well, how did she do?" and on my speaking in high terms, answered, that "he had been to dine with his friend the duke, that some conversation had passed on the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true sostenuto style; but as I had written the article" (holding my peroration on the Beggar's Opera carelessly in his hand) "it might pass!" I could perceive that the rogue licked his lips at it, and had already in imagination "bought golden opinions of all sorts of people" by this very criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to meet Miss Stephens coming out of the editor's room, who had been to thank him for his very flattering account of her.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827

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ROBINSON CRUSOES

FIRST APPEARANCES OF MISS STEPHENS AND MR. KEAN

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