t or the axe would have been the gentlest
treatment to be expected by one who had risen so high, and fallen so
fatally. This his surrender to Captain Maitland--to say nothing of the
temper of the times--put out of the question. It remained to place him
in a situation wherein his personal comfort might as far as possible be
united with security to the peace of the world; and no one has as yet
pretended to point out a situation preferable in this point of view to
that remote and rocky island of the Atlantic, on which it was the
fortune of the great Napoleon to close his earthly career. The reader
cannot require to be reminded that the personage, whose relegation to
St. Helena has formed the topic of so many indignant appeals and
contemptuous commentaries, was, after all, the same man, who, by an act
of utterly wanton and unnecessary violence, seized Pius VII. and
detained him a prisoner for nearly four years, and who, having entrapped
Ferdinand VII. to Bayonne, and extorted his abdication by the threat of
murder, concluded by locking him up during five years at Valencay.

The hints and threats of suicide having failed in producing the desired
effect--and a most ridiculous attempt on the part of some crazy persons
in England to get possession of Napoleon's person, by citing him to
appear as a witness on a case of libel, having been baffled, more
formally than was necessary, by the swift sailing of the _Bellerophon_
for the Start--the fallen Emperor at length received in quiet the
intimation, that Admiral Sir George Cockburn was ready to receive him on
board the _Northumberland_, and convey him to St. Helena. Savary and
L'Allemand were among the few persons omitted by name in King Louis's
amnesty on his second restoration, and they were extremely alarmed when
they found that the retreat of St. Helena was barred on them by the
English government. They even threatened violence--but consulting Sir
Samuel Romilly, and thus ascertaining that the government had no
thoughts of surrendering them to Louis XVIII., submitted at length with
a good grace to the inevitable separation. Napoleon's suite, as finally
arranged, consisted of Count Bertrand (grand master of the palace),
Count Montholon (one of his council of state), Count Las Cazes, General
Gourgaud (his aide-de-camp), and Dr. O'Meara, an Irish naval surgeon,
whom he had found in the _Bellerophon_, and who was now by his desire
transferred to the _Northumberland_. Bertrand and M