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the fever from my forehead; and then I shall be unhappy no longer.' I turned, as if to open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene was an oriental one; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city-an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of Jerusalem....

Then suddenly would come a dream of far different character—a tumultuous dream-commencing with a music such as now I often heard in sleep-music of preparation and of awakening suspense. The undulations of fastgathering tumults were like the opening of the Coronation Anthem; and, like that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where somehow, but I knew not how-by some beings, but I knew not by whom-a battle, a strife, an agony, was travelling through all its stages-was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. 'Deeper

than ever plummet sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives; I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed-and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated-everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells!

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more l'-Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

LVII.

SIR WILLIAM NAPIER,

1785-1860.

SIR WILLIAM NAPIER, one of the distinguished family of that name, was born in 1785 at Celbridge, in Ireland, where his father was then quartered. He was descended on his father's side from John Napier, the inventor of logarithms. His mother was Lady Sarah Lennox, known in the early history of George III for the homage yielded by him to her beauty. His school education was limited to that given in the grammar school of Celbridge, but he was more fortunate in the intercourse which his home provided for him with persons of powerful character and sound culture.

At fourteen he received his first commission. His earliest foreign service was in the expedition against Copenhagen in 1807. In 1808 he went to Spain with Sir John Moore, and, except when severely wounded and invalided home, served in the Peninsula to the end of the war, during which he reached the rank of LieutenantColonel. In 1848 he was created a K.C.B., and became General shortly before his death, which took place in 1860.

Sir William Napier shares the renown of his brothers and cousin for courage and humanity of the heroic type, combined with a vehemence of nature which sometimes marred their best purposes. His chivalrous generosity, his daring courage—at times betrayed into fierce controversy-his unblemished purity of life, make him a pattern of an English soldier. 'He was the handsomest man I ever saw,' was the testimony of one who, without knowing who he was, saved his life in Spain by a draught of cooling beverage.

His chief literary production is the history of the great war in which he was an actor. The vivid reality of the record and the dignity and force of his descriptions, inspired chiefly by knowledge and pure love of the army with which he served, have given to Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula the incontestable supremacy which it now possesses. His style is equally remarkable for its perspicuity and the vigour of its English, rising at times into passages of the finest historical eloquence.

1. The Close of the Battle of Albuera.

SUCH a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's heavy masses, which were increasing and pressing onwards as to an assured victory: they wavered, hesitated, and then vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks. Myers was killed, Cole, the three colonels, Ellis, Blackeney, and Hawkshawe, fell wounded, and the fusileer battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships. But suddenly and sternly recovering they closed on their terrible enemies; and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans break from the crowded columns and sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonishing in

fantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order, their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as slowly and with a horrid carnage it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve mixed with the struggling multitude and endeavoured to sustain the fight, but the effort only increased the irremediable confusion, the mighty mass gave way and like a loosened cliff. went headlong down the steep the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill!-History of the War in the Peninsula.

2. The British Infantry.

THAT the British infantry soldier is more robust than the soldier of any other nation can scarcely be doubted by those who, in 1815, observed his powerful frame distinguished amidst the united armies of Europe; and notwithstanding his habitual excess in drinking, he sustains fatigue and wet, and the extremes of cold and heat, with incredible vigour. When completely disciplined, and three years are required to accomplish this, his port is lofty and his movements free, the whole world cannot produce a nobler specimen of military bearing, nor is the mind unworthy of the outward man. He does not indeed possess that presumptuous vivacity which would lead him to dictate to his commanders, or even to censure real errors although he may

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