peace,
often as he has made a show of desiring it. Frederic knew how to stop
his victorious career in time, for History had taught him that it is as
difficult to retain as to acquire glory. Napoleon imagined that his fame
was susceptible of increase alone, and lost it all in the fields of
Leipzig. The hardly-earned laurels of France faded along with it. With
what feelings must he direct his views beyond the Rhine, where the eyes
of so many thousands are now opened? He too has lived to witness days
which are far from agreeable to him. He, who represented it to the
countries which he forced into his alliance as a supreme felicity to
have their sons led forth to fight foreign battles, and to have many
thousands of them sacrificed every year upon the altar of his ambition,
now sees them all abandon him, and become his bitterest enemies. The
_Great Empire_ is now an idle dream. Already is he nearly confined
within that ancient France, which has lost through him the flower of her
population. Long has discontent lurked there in every bosom; long have
her people beheld with indignation their youth driven across the Rhine,
into foreign lands, where they were swept away by cold, famine, and the
sword, so that few of them revisited their paternal homes. Will the
nation again be ready to bathe foreign plains with the blood of half a
million of fresh victims? Scarcely can it be so infatuated. The French
too are now roused from their torpor: like the Germans, they will
confine their exertions to the defence of their own frontiers against
those mighty armies of Europe, which, crowned with laurels, wield the
sword in one hand, and bear the olive of peace in the other.

SUPPLEMENT.

The following letter, which cannot but be considered as most honourable
to the writer, contains so many minute, but, at the same time, highly
characteristic traits, that it cannot fail to prove extremely
interesting to every reader. No other apology is necessary for its
introduction here by way of Supplement.

_Leipzig, Nov. 3, 1813._

DEAREST FRIEND,

You here see how ready I am to gratify your desire of knowing every
thing that passed in my neighbourhood and that befell myself in the
eventful days of October. I proceed to the point without farther
preamble.

Ever since the arrival of marshal Marmont I have constantly resided at
the beautiful country-house of my employer at R***, where I imagined
that I might be of some service during the