Egyptian mysteries." This is as curious a coincidence
as any we ever recollect to have met; as the medals of Elba with the
emblem of the wheel are well known, we cannot but suppose that Bonaparte
was aware of the circumstance; yet he is represented as having in vain
made several anxious inquiries after the ancient arms of the island.

During the first months of his residence there his life was, in general,
one of characteristic activity and almost garrulous frankness. He gave
dinners, went to balls, rode all day about his island, planned
fortifications, aqueducts, lazarettos, harbours, and palaces; and the
very second day after he landed fitted out an expedition of a dozen
soldiers to take possession of a little uninhabited island called
Pianosa, which lies a few leagues from Elba; on this occasion he said
good-humouredly, "Toute l'Europe dira que j'ai deja fait une conqute"
(All Europe will say I have already made a conquest). The cause of the
island of Pianosa being left uninhabited was the marauding of the
Corsairs from the coast of Barbary, against whom Bonaparte considered
himself fully protected by the 4th Article of the Treaty of
Fontainebleau.

The greatest wealth of Elba consists in its iron mines, for which the
island was celebrated in the days of Virgil. Soon after his arrival
Napoleon visited the mines in company with Colonel Campbell, and being
informed that they produced annually about 500,000 francs he exclaimed
joyfully, "These, then, are my own!" One of his followers, however,
reminded him that he had long since disposed of that revenue, having
given it to his order of the Legion of Honour, to furnish pensions, etc.
"Where was my head when I made that grant?" said he, "but I have made
many foolish decrees of that sort!"

Sir Walter Scott, in telling a curious fact, makes a very curious
mistake. "To dignify his capital," he says, "having discovered that the
ancient name of Porto-Ferrajo was Comopoli (the city of Como), he
commanded it to be called Cosmopoli, or the city of all nations." Now
the old name of Porto-Ferrajo was in reality not Comopoli, but Cosmopoli,
and it obtained that name from the Florentine Cosmo de' Medici, to whose
ducal house Elba belonged, as an integral part of Tuscany. The name
equally signified the city of Cosmo, or the city of all nations, and the
vanity of the Medici had probably been flattered by the double meaning of
the appellation. But Bonaparte certainly revived the old