them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given— to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present-without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision; and when the court was dismissed went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they call it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.-The Essays of Elia. LAMB. THE CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. [WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, an American clergyman and author, was born in Rhode Island on the 7th of April, 1780, and died in Vermont on the 2nd of October, 1842. He was eminent for the fervour of his preaching, the purity of his character, his lively interest in all matters relating to human progress, and his refined and cultivated taste. He took an active part in the American Slavery Abolition Controversy, and Longfellow says of his work in this connection :— "Well done! thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me Like Luther's, in the days of old, His intellect was distinguished by rapidity of thought. He understood by a glance what most men, and superior men, could learn only by study. He darted to a conclusion rather by intuition than by reasoning. In war, which was the only subject of which he was master, he seized in an instant on the great points of his own and his enemy's positions; and combined at once the movements by which an overpowering force might be thrown with unexpected fury on a vulnerable part of the hostile line; and the fate of an army be decided in a day. He understood war as a science; but his mind was too bold, rapid, and irrepressible, to be enslaved by the technics of his profession. He found the old armies fighting by rule, and he discovered the true characteristic of genius, which, without despising rules, knows when and how to break them. He understood thoroughly the immense moral power which is gained by originality and rapidity of operation. He astonished and paralysed his enemies by his unforeseen and impetuous assaults, by the suddenness with which the storm of battle burst upon them; and whilst giving to his soldiers the advantages of modern discipline, breathed into them by his quick and decisive movements, the enthusiasm of ruder ages. The power of disheartening the foe, and of spreading through his own ranks a confidence and exhilarating courage, which made war a pastime, and seemed to make victory sure, distinguished Napoleon in an age of uncommon military talent, and was one main instrument of his future power. The wonderful effects of that rapidity of thought by which Bonaparte was marked, the signal success of his new mode of warfare, and the almost incredible speed with which his fame was spread through nations, had no small agency in fixing his character, and determining for a period the fate of empires. These stirring influences infused a new consciousness of his own might. They gave intensity and audacity to his ambition; gave form and substance to his indefinite visions of glory, and raised his fiery hopes to empire. The burst of admiration which his early career called forth, must in particular have had an influence in imparting to his ambition that modification by which it was characterised, and which contributed alike to its success and to its fall. He began with astonishing the world, with producing a sudden and universal sensation, such as modern times had not witnessed. To astonish as well as to sway by his energies, became the great end of his life. Henceforth to rule was not enough for Bonaparte. He wanted to amaze, to dazzle, to overpower men's souls, by striking, bold, magnificent, and unanticipated results. To govern ever so absolutely would not have satisfied him, if he must have governed silently. He wanted to reign through wonder and awe, by the grandeur and terror of his name, by displays of power which would rivet on him every eye, and make him the theme of every tongue. Power was his supreme object; but a power which should be gazed at as well as felt, which should strike men as a prodigy, which should shake old thrones as an earthquake, and by the suddenness of its new creations, should awaken something of the submissive wonder which miraculous agency inspires. His history shows a spirit of self-exaggeration, unrivalled in enlightened ages, and which reminds us of an oriental king to whom incense had been burned from his birth as to a deity. This was the chief source of his crimes. He wanted the sentiment of a common nature with his fellow-beings. He had no sympathies with his race. That feeling of brotherhood, which is developed in truly great souls with peculiar energy, and through which they give up themselves willing victims, joyful sacrifices, to the interests of mankind, was wholly unknown to him. His heart, amidst all its wild beatings, never had one throb of disinterested love; the ties which bind man to man he broke asunder. The proper happiness of a man, which consists in the victory of moral energy and social affection over the selfish passions, he cast away for the lonely joy of a despot. With powers which might have made him a glorious representative and minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder, and, for this selfish, solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable renown. The spirit of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated him into projects which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, were fraught with ruin. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the barriers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules did not apply to him. His imagination, disordered by his egotism, and by unbounded flattery, leaped over appalling obstacles to the prize which inflamed his ambition. CHANNING. EXECUTION OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. [DAVID HUME, a celebrated Scotch historian and philosopher, was born 26th April, 1711. In 1739, he published his "Treatise on Human Nature;" in 1741, his celebrated "Essays, Moral and Political;" and his "History of England," from which our extract is taken, in 1754-62. He died 25th August, 1776.] QUEEN MARY determined to bring Cranmer, whom she had long detained in prison, to punishment; and in order more fully to satiate her vengeance, she resolved to punish him for heresy, rather than for treason. He was cited by the Pope to stand his trial at Rome; and though he was known to be kept in close custody at Oxford, he was, upon his not appearing, condemned as contumacious. Bonner, bishop of London, and Thirleby, bishop of Ely, were sent to degrade him; and the former executed the melancholy ceremony with all the joy and exultation which suited his savage nature. The implacable spirit of the queen, not satisfied with the future misery of Cranmer, which she believed inevitable, and with the execution of that dreadful sentence to which he was condemned, prompted her also to seek the ruin of his honour, and the infamy of his name. Persons were employed to attack him, not in the way of disputation, against which he was sufficiently armed; but by flattery, insinuation, and address; by representing the dignities to which his character still entitled him, if he would merit them by a recantation; by giving him hopes of long enjoying those powerful friends, whom his beneficent disposition had attached to him, during the course of his prosperity. Overcome by the fond love of life; terrified by the prospect of those tortures which awaited him; he allowed, in an unguarded hour, the sentiments of nature to prevail over his resolution, and agreed to subscribe the doctrines of the papal supremacy, and of the real presence. The court, equally perfidious |