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contrive to produce works of the highest value in a compendious , elegant , and cheap form . The matter of these books is , especially at present , highly instructive . "We subjoin the following account of the

BOYHOOD OP NAPOLEON . " His boyhood showed symptoms of a vehement and passionate temperament , and he was at perpetual variance with his eldest brother Joseph . In these childish quarrels , Joseph had always the worst of it , and was rudely handled ; and when he ran to complain , Napoleon was declared to be in the right . Joseph became at last quite submissive to his younger brother , and the family began very early to look upon Napoleon as taking the lead among his brothers and sisters . The Archdeacon Lucien said to Joseph on his death-bed , ' You are the oldest of the family , but there stands . its head ; you must not forget that . *

"We are willing enough to believe that the boy Napoleon showed a quite indomitable passion for everything military , and that this born soldier liked nothing so well as to run by the side of the soldiery of Ajaccio . The soldiers had a pleasure in seeing the boy go through the exercise beside them ; and many a grey-haired veteran lifted him in his arms , ' and caressed him for imitating the drill so valiantly . He teased his father till he purchased him a cannon ; and the toy

was long shown in the house of the Bonapartes , with which he used to make his mimic battle-thunder , and play the cloud-compelling Jove , He soon began to exercise empire over the youth of Ajaccio ; and , like Cyrus with the shepherd-boys of the Medes , and Peter the Great with his playfellows , he formed the children of Ajaccio into a regiment of soldiers , who bravely took the field against the youngsters of the Borgo of Ajaccio , and fought sanguinary engagements with stones and wooden sabres .

" The young Napoleon visited the battle-field of the Golo m the year 1790 . He was then twenty-one years old ; but he had probably seen it before when a boy . There is something fearfully suggestive in this : Napoleon on the first battle-field that his eyes ever lighted on—a stripling without career , and without stain of guilt ; he who was yet to crimson a hemisphere—from the ocean to the Volga , and from the Alps to the wastes of Lybia—with the blood of his battles .

"It was night when the young Napoleon roamed here on the field of Golo . He sat down by the river , which on that day of battle , as the people tell , rolled down corpses and ran red for four-and-twenty miles to the sea . The feverous mist made his head heavy , and filled it with dreams . A spirit stood behind him—a red sword in its hand . The spirit touched him , and sped away ; and the soul of the young Napoleon followed the spirit through the air . They hovered over a field ; a bloody battle is being fought there ; a young general

is seen galloping over the corpses of the slam . ' Montenotte 1 cried the demon ; c and it is thou that tightest this battle ! ' They flew on . They hover over a field ; a bloody battle is fighting there ; a young general rushes through clouds of smoke , a flag in his hand , over a bridge . ' Lodi ! ' cried the demon ; ' and it is thou that tightest this battle ! ' On , and on , from battle-field to battle-field . They halt above a stream ; ships are burning on it ; its waves roll blood and corpses . ' The Pyramids 1 ' cries the demon ; ' this battle , too , thou shalt fight / And so they

continue their flight from one battle-field to another ; and one after the other , the spirit utters the dread names— ' Marengo ! ' c Austerlitz ! ' l Eylau ! ' Friedland !' ' Wagram ! ' ' Smolensk ! ' ' Borodino ! ' ' Beresina ! ' ' Leipzig !! ' till he is hovering over the last battle-field , and cries , with a voice of thunder , Waterloo ! Emperor , thy last battle ! and here thou shalt fall !' " The young Napoleon sprang to his feet , there , on the banks of the Golo ; and

he shuddered . He had dreamt a mad and a fearful dream . " In the days of his prosperity , Bonaparte forgot his little fatherland , thankless and weak , like all parvenus , who are unwilling to be reminded of the obscure spot that gave them birth . Hedid nothing for the poor island ; and the Corsicans have not been able to forget this . They still remember that the Emperor , when a Gorsican once presented himself to him , drily asked him , Well , how is it in Corsica ? Are the Corsicanu always murdering each other yet ?'"