The Press.
London, England, 1853-07-02 00:00:00

was raising the annual expenditure from
8,0001. to 12,0001. The governor was ner-
vously anxious to promote the culinary com-
forts. All the tales of privation are dispelled
in this work by pages of larder-and-cellar de-
tails. It is a mean and melancholy fact that the
petty court, from the ex-Emperor downwards,
lived and died squabbling about rations. From
first to last, the belly was their god, and their
only one. M. le Page, the chief cook, was, in
truth, the first person and the most serious
consideration of these epicureans, who ex-
pected as choice cheer on this hungry rock as
at sensual Paris : privately, however, each ad-
mitted that the climate was mild, and their
usage and treatment excellent; far better, in-
deed, than they would have shown had they
been the masters. The real rub and sting, the
offence unpardonable, was the ici etre, the exile
—the being at St. Helena lasola Maladetta—
and they acknowledged had an angel come down
from heaven as governor ho would have been
deemed a devil, and;his fair reputation lied away.
The exiles lived together on the worst terms, the
women as tigresses, the men challenging each
other; meantime their master, acting on his
old principle of divide et impera, kept them
at loggerheads, quizzed and " becoglioned "
them all. The sensitive organisation of
this incarnation of selfishness is now shown
to have been better suited for the sybarite
than the stoic. His vaunted "soul of marble "
proved wax in the crucible of adversity,
the school of princes. The " prisoned eagle,"
with no self-resources, beat his breast against
the bars of his sea-girt cell. His hatred
for his gaoler, Sir Hudson, one at first sight,
grew to such absolute antipathy that in the
six years only five personal interviews took
place. Then his genius stood rebuked in the
presence of an honest man, whom ho never
looked in the face : while venting his Corsican
vendetta he stabbed with smileless words un-
worthy either of an officer or a gentleman. To
abuse Sir Hudson behind his back was found by
every tool and toady to be the surest road to the
graces of the prisoner, and this the Count
goodlertrand carried so far that no English officer
would visit him. The mischief he did was
infinite ; he kept up every irritation and delu-
sion ; nay, the very ornamental railings of the
new house were represented to his listener
and believed to be meant as an " iron cage."
The patience and forbearance exhibited by Sir
Hudson to the rudeness and insolence of
this jackall echo of Napoleon is indeed mar-
vellous. _ _

Tho details of the private life of Napoleon
arc very curious : kind and playful when in
good humour, his auger assumed forms the
most undignified. At one time we have Ciesar
playing at hide and seek to prevent the orderly
officer catching eight of him ; at another
quarrelling about rats and the inspection of
linen buck-baskets. The god of his followers'
idolatry in lip service, all were ready to desert
him in their hearts; thus even his vain,
ignorant, egotist physician, Antommarchi, ac-
tually applied for leave to depart, at a moment
when his master, on his death-bed, needed
most his assistance.
Mr. Forsyth has executed his work with
much talent and impartiality. It deserves a
place in every historical library, and is one,
we suspect, that, posterity will not willingly
let die.

The Administration of the East India Company :
a History of Indian Progress. By John Wil-
liam Kayc. London : Bentley.
(Second Noticed

MR. KATE'S ingenious defence of the Company
is least successful where he deals with the
judicial administration—that branch of Indian
government which even Mr. Macaulay, in his
late speech in the House of Commons, ex-
cepted for censure. He reviews the whole
system historically, from the days of Clive and
Hastings to our own, passing lightly, but not
approvingly, over the iniquities committed
by the " Mayors' Courts," whose rude muni
cipal jurisdiction had originated in days when
as yet no territorial powers attached to the
possession of trading factories and forts. Of
these courts the power was originally limited
an practice, if not in theory, to servants of the
company and their immediate dependents,

_