mark this day!

"Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. 'Excellent
well.' Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged and resigned in the
height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes--the finest
instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did
well too--Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a
dervise--Charles the Fifth but so so--but Napoleon, worst of all. What!
wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to
give up what is already gone!! 'What whining monk art thou--what holy
cheat?' 'Sdeath!--Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The 'Isle
of Elba' to retire to!--Well--if it had been Caprea, I should have
marvelled less. 'I see men's minds are but a parcel of their fortunes.'
I am utterly bewildered and confounded.

"I don't know--but I think _I_, even _I_ (an insect compared with this
creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's.
But, after all, a crown may be not worth dying for. Yet, to outlive
_Lodi_ for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead!
'Expende--quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in
the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more
_carats_. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now
hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil:--the pen of the historian
won't rate it worth a ducat.

"Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now;
though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'

"April 10.

"I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of,
that I never am long in the society even of _her_ I love, (God knows too
well, and the devil probably too,) without a yearning for the company of
my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.[5] Even in the
day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it. _Per
esempio_,--I have not stirred out of these rooms for these four days
past: but I have sparred for exercise (windows open) with Jackson an
hour daily, to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me. The more
violent the fatigue, the better my spirits for the rest of the day; and
then, my evenings have that calm nothingness of languor, which I most
delight in. To-day I have boxed one hour--written an ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte--copied it--eaten six biscuits--drunk four bottles of soda
water--redde away the rest of my time--besides