The Press.
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uneasy camel is not forgotten; but even
deserts conic to an end, and Meccah is at
length reached. The first thing to visit is the
" Kaabah," the mosque of Mohammed, with
which the most fanatical superstitions of the
East. are interwoven. It is regarded lite-
rally as the " House of Allah," is believed
to have been built and rebuilt ten times by
order of the Almighty, and contains the
Black Stone supposed to have been placed
there by Abraham himself. At the first. streak
of early dawn our " Pilgrim " proceeds with
his boy Mohammed to the Sanctuary :

There at last it lay, the bourn of my long and weary
pilgrimage, realising the plans and hopes of many and
many a year. The mirage medium of Fancy invested the
huge catafalque and its gloomy pall with peculiar charms.
There were no giant fragments of hoar antiquity as in
Egypt, no remains of graceful and harmonious beauty as
in Greece and Italy, no barbaric gorgeousness as in the
buildings of India; yet the view was strange, unique, and
how few have looked upon the celebrated shrine ! 1 may
say truly that, of all the worshippers who clung weeping to
the curtain, or who pressed their beating hearts to the
stone, none felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did
the Hadji from the far north. It was as if the poetical
legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving
wings of angels, not the sweet breeze of morning, were
agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine.
But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling
of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecatacy of gratified
pride.

After the necessary prostrations, prayers,
and circumambulations, the sacred stone
with some difficulty was reached, kissed, nar-
rowly observed, and is declared to be " a big
aiirolite." In the evening the pilgrim again
repairs to the Sanctuary :

The oval pavement around the Kaabah was crowded
with men, women, and children, mostly divided into parties,
which followed a Mutawwif ; some walking staidly, and
others running, whilst many stood in groups to prayer.
What a scene of contrast ! Here stalked the Bedouin
woman, in her long black robe like a nun's serge, and
poppy-coloured face-veil, pierced to show two fiercely
flashing orbs. There an Indian woman, with her semi-
Tartar features, nakedly hideous, and her thin parenthe-
tical legs, encased in wrinkled tights, hurried round the
fane. Every now and then a corpse, borne upon its wooden
shell, circuited the shrine by means of four bearers, whom
other ➢foslems, as is the custom, occasionally relieved. A
few faipskinned Turks lounged about, looking cold and
repulsive, as their wont is. In one place a fast C-ilcutta
" Khitmugar " stood, with turban awry and arms akimbo,
contemplating the view jauntily, as those gentlemen's
gentlemen will do. In another, some poor wretch, with
arms thrown on high, so that every part of his person
might touch the Kaabah, was clinging to the curtain and
sobbing as though his heart would break.
Yet, during such sacred duties Meccah
women, we learn, are not more immaculate
than the rest of their sex. During a solemn
sermon at Arafat our pilgrim's red shawl
attracted the attention of a fair young
Mcccan

Close to us sat a party of fair Meccans, apparently
belonging to the higher classes, and one of these I had
already several times remarked. She was a tall girl, about
eighteen years old, with regular features, a skin somewhat
citrine.coloured, but soft and clear, symmetrical eyebrows,
the most beautiful eyes, and a figure all grace. There was
no head thrown back, no straightened neck, no flat shoul-
ders, nor toes turned out—in fact, no elegant barbarisms;
but the shape was what the Arabs love—soft, bending, and
relaxed, as a woman's figure ought to be. Unhappily she
wore, instead of the usual veil, a " Yashmak " of trans-
parent muslin, bound round the face ; and the chaperone,
mother, or duenna, by whose side she stood, was apparently
a very unsuspicious or compliant old person. Flirtilla
fixed a glance of admiration upon my cashmere.
directed a reply with interest at her eyes. She then, by
the usual coquettish gesture, threw back an inch or two of
head•veil, disclosing broad bands of jetty hair, crowning a
lovely oval. My palpable admiration of the new charm
was rewarded by a partial removal of the Yashmak; when
a dimpled mouth and a rounded chin stood cut from the
envious muslin. Seeing that my companions were safely
employed, I ventured upon the dangerous ground of
raising hand to forehead. She smiled almost impercep-
tibly, and turned away. The pilgrim was in ecatacy.

After performing the several ceremonies im-
posed upon hi►n by his disguise, our pilgrim
rested in Meccah for a short time. Upon the
risk of a visit to Meccah during the pilgrimage
season Lieutenant Burton writes :
A learned Orientalist and divine intimated his intention,
in a work published but a few years ago, of visiting Meccah
without disguise. He was assured that the Turkish
governor would now offer no obstacle to a European tra-
veller. I would strongly dissuade a friend from making
the attempt. It is true that the Frank is no longer, as in
Capt. Head's day, insulted when he ventures out of the
Meccan gate of Jeddah ; and that our vice•consuls and
travellers are allowed, on condition that their glance do not
pollute the shrine, to visit Taif and the regions lying east•
ward of the Holy City. Neither the Pacha nor the
Sherif would, in these days, dare to enforce, in the case of
an Englishman, the old law, a choice thrice offered between
circumcision and death. But the first Bedouin who

63

caught sight of the Frank's hat would not deem himself a
man if he did not drive a bullet through the wearer's head.
At the pilgrimage season disguise is easy, on account of
the vast and varied multitudes which visit Meccab,
exposing the traveller only to " stand the buffet with
knaves who smell of sweat." But woe to the unfortunate
who happens to be recognised in public as an infidel—
unless at least he could throw himself at once upon the
protection of the Government. Amidst, however, a crowd
of pilgrims, whose fanaticism is worked up to the highest
pitch, deteztiou would probably insure his dismissal at
once al :oaten) de' pie. Those who find danger the salt of
pleasure may visit Meccali ; but if asked whether the
results justify the risk, 1 should reply in the negative.
And the vice-consul at Jeddah would only do his duty in
peremptorily forbidding European travellers to attempt
Ifeccah without disguise, until the day comes when such
steps can be taken in the certainty of not causing a
mishap, which would not redound to our reputation, as we
could not iu justice revenge it.

Beyond the Kaabah there are not many
objects to interest the stranger in Mecca.
Mohammed's old house, and a few mosques,
with whitewashed walls, are all that are to be
seen. After a brief stay, Lieutenant Burton
set out for Jeddah, and from thence returned
to Suez and home. This volume, forming an
admirable conclusion to the series of travels
undertaken by Lieut. Burton, is embellished
with several coloured and plain engravings,
and with plans of the Kaabah, while an accurate
index affords au c...sy reference to every inci-
dent mentioned in the previous volumes of the
narrative.

The Confidential Correspondence of Napoleon
Bonaparte with his Brother Joseph. Two
Vols. London: Nluiray.
[Second Notice.]

WE have adverted to the deplorable position
held by Joseph as nominal king of a country
over which he had no real authority, and as
commander-in-chief of armies he was not per-
mitted to control. His complaints were
piteous. To Napoleon himself he wrote
(Feb. 19, 1809) :

Sire,—lt grieves me to infer from your letter of the 6th
February that with respect to the affairs of Madrid you
listen to persons who are interested in deceiving you. I
have not your entire confidence, and yet without it my
position is not tenable. I shall not repeat all that I have
frequently written on the state of the finances. I devote
to business all my faculties from seven in the morning till
eleven at night. I have not a farthing to give anybody. I
am in the fourth year of my reign, and my guards aria still
wearing the coats which I gave to them four years ago.
All complaints are addressed to me; all prejudices are
opposed to me. I have no real power beyond Madrid, and
even at Madrid I am every day counteracted by people who
grieve that things are not managed according to their own
system. They accuse me of being too mild ; they would
become infamous if I were more severe, and left them to the
judgment of the tribunals. You thought proper to sequester
the property of ten families ; more than twice that number
have been thus treated. Officers are in possession of every
habitable house; '2,000 servants belonging to the seques-
tered families have been turned into the streets. All beg ;
the boldest try to assassinate my officers. All those who
with me sacrificed their position in the kingdom of Naples
are billeted on the inhabitants. NVithout any capital, with-
out any money, without any revenue, what can 1 do ? This
picture, dark as it is, is not exaggerated.

Well might Wellington, accurately informed
of the real state of affairs in Spain, feel confi-
dent of ultimate success in his glorious mis-
sion. The " system " established by Napoleon
in his conquered countries was too monstrous
to last. The only question was, bow long the
vast armies and resources of France would be
able to prop it up. He was continually forced
to the necessity of new conquests to keep
those he had acquired : with each new exten-
sion of his power the hatred of oppressed
nations grew stronger, until at last he found
himself, with the resources of France ex-
hausted, opposed to the world in arms. The
pre-eminent sagacity of the Wellesleys—for
the Marquis was as clearsighted as his illus-
trious brother—foresaw this result. Presently
we shall notice its realisation. To all the re-
monstrances of Joseph, Napoleon deigned no
answer. Why, then, did he consent to remain
in a position which he felt to be so igno-
minious? The answer is to be found in the
weak character of Joseph. He was well fitted
for an amiable private gentleman, but he had
neither audacity to act upon his brother's sys-
tem and efficiently to aid him, nor courage
fairly to resign a situation he felt himself in-
competent to fill. Pathetically did he implore
that he might be permitted to occupy a
private station in France. It seems that he
dared not abandon his post without permis-
sion. Perhaps he feared the consequences of

such a step. There were prisons in France
whose secrets none dared to reveal. But he
must have been, on the whole, extremely well
pleased when British bayonets put an end to
the farce of the Spanish monarchy. When
Napoleon returned from Russia, says the
editor, " he found his armies driven across the
" frontiers of France, and Joseph quietly
" established as a country gentleman at
" M o rte fon tain c."
In some of Joseph's letters he appears iu a
ridiculous aspect. In August, 1806, he wrote
to congratulate Napoleon on his birthday ;
I hope that you may receive with some little pleasure
this expression of my affection. The glorious Emperor
will never replace to me the Nap3leone whom I so much
loved, and whom I hope to find again, as I knew him
twenty years ago, if we are to meet in the Elysian Fields.

Napoleon's reply to this sentimental effusion
was happy, and not untinged with humour :
My Brother,—l have received your letter of the 13th of
August. lam sorry that you think that you will find your
brother again only in the Elysian Fields. It is natural
that at forty he should not feel towards you as he did at
twelve ; but his feelings towards you have greater truth
and strength ; his frieudship has the features of his mind.

Probably Napoleon thought better of his
brothers than he wished them to know.
" Jerome," he says, in one place, "is doing well ;
" there is stuff in him to make a first-rate man.
"You may be sure, however, that he has no ilea
" that I think so, for in my letters I do nothing
" but find fault with him." Early in this cor-
respondence, he speaks highly also of Louis,
whom he describes as a man of his own
making ; hut it is observable that as his power
grew he became infinitely more exacting,
an' that all other feelings were swallowed up
by his ambition. The only touches which re-
mind us that he was human towards the
close of his career, are those in which he
alludes to his son. When Paris was threatened,
in 1814, he wrote to Joseph :

As for me, I would !rather they would kill my son than
see him brought up at Vienna as an Austrian prince, and
I think well enough of the Empress to believe that she is
of the same opinion as far as that is possible to a woman
and a mother. I have never seen Androrntique acted, with.
out pitying the fate of
.Astyanat in surviving the rest of
his house, nor without thinking that it would have been a
blessing for him if he had died before his father.
His fears were prophetic. His young Astyanax
was brought up as an Austrian prince, but had
better have died in childhood. One hardly
knows whether most to admire or to condemn
the next passage, written in 1814, when the
Emperor was engaged in his desperate conflict
with the allies for the possession of Paris, but
it shows that attention to minute details
which was a marked feature of his character :
I have received some engravings of the King of Rome.
I wish you to change the inscription, " May God watch
over my father and France," to this, " I pray to God for
my father and for France ;" it is simpler. I also wish some
copies to be struck otf representing the King in the uniform
of the National Guard.
Was his thought for his son in this instance
the thought of a father or of a politician ?
While on the one part it is pleasing to think
that Napoleon's thoughts turned from the field
of battle to contemplate his boy at Paris in an
attitude of prayer, it is revolting to imagine
that he was ready to pervert the innocence of
childhood to purposes of theatrical display.
In any case the artifice had no effect. The
Parisians were too thoroughly sick of Napo-
leonic rule to be encouraged by such devices
when the enemy was at their gates.

The attention to the smallest matters of
military detail revealed in these volumes im-
presses one with wonder to reflect how capa-
cious must have been the mind which could
at the same time entertain designs which
swept over the horizon of the whole world,
and attend to the most trifling particulars of
arrangement,. When Joseph was King of
Naples Napoleon gave him instructions to
insure his personal safety :
No one should enter your room during the night except
your aide•de-camp, who should sleep in the chamber that
recedes your bed-room. Your door should be fastened
inside, and you ought not to open it till you have recog-
nised his voice; he himself should not knock at your door
till he has locked that of the room which he is in, to make
sure of being alone, and of being followed by no one.

He was never weary of impressing on Joseph
the necessity of attending to the smallest
matters of details connected with military ad-
ministration. " The returns of my armies,"
he said " form the most agreeable portions of

THE PRESS.

"my library. They are the volumes which I
" read with the greatest pleasure in my mo-
" ments of relaxation." He wrote to Joseph :

St. Cloud, Juue Zit, 1800. My Brother,— I see from your
letter of the 17th that, you have received some biscuit, and
that 12,000 pairs of shoes have reached you from France.
Take care to inform me of the arrival of each consignment
of biscuit and shoes, that I may make sure of not being
cheated in my accounts. Count the biscuits one by one ;
their quality should be good. The shoes ought to be made
of stout leather, not pasteboard ; they cost me five and a
half francs a pair.
It was the same with details of another kind.
Joseph wanted to make Naples gay with
French actresses and dancers, and had com-
missioned an agent to tempt some from Paris.
Napoleon heard of this, and wrote :

Already one or two actresses of the Opera have signified
to me their wish to go to Naples; you must feel the absurd
effect of such conduct. If you want opera dancers be sure
that I will send you as many as you like. Itussia behaved
in this way, and I was so disgusted that I ordered the
Emperor of Russia to be told that I would send him, if
he wanted them, all the actresses of the Opera, with the
exception of Madame Garde'.

He instructs Joseph how to frame decrees,
what each regiment ought to cost him, where
every man of his army ought to be stationed.
His letters should be the text-book of men
who wish to become organisers, and to under-
stand how the most complex affairs of a mighty
machine may be administered. Yet he had
bad agents to deal with. His famous generals
and Ministers plundered him by wholesale.
His letters are full of complaints of the dis-
honesty and perfidy of the men whom, on
account of their sharp talents, he had raised
from the dust to stations of command. One
cause of his fall was the total want of moral
principle in his creatures. A few honourable,
high-minded men would have been of incalcu-
lable service to him. When commencing his
Spanish campaign, he wrote to Dejean, Minis-
ter of War :

Yon will find annexed a report of the commissary. You
will see how shamefully I am treated ; I have only 1,400
coats, 7,000 great-coats instead of 50,000 ; 15,000 pairs of
shoes instead of 129,000. lam in want of everything.
Nothing can be worse than the clothing. My army will
begin the campaign naked. It has nothing. The con-
scripts are not clothed. Your reports are waste paper.
Among all the plunderers, Massena was the
most shameless. Napoleon wrote (Paris,
March 12, 1806) :
Let Massena be advised to return the 6,000,000 f. To do
so quickly is his only salvation. To suffer the soldiers to
starve and to be unpaid, and to pretend that the sums
destined for their use were a present to himself from the
province, is too impudent. Such conduct would make it
impossible to carry on a war. Let 8— be watched.
The details of their plunderings are incredible. I learn
them from the Austrians, who themselves are ashamed of
them. They allowed corn to go to Venice. The evil is
intolerable. The remedy I will apply. I order Ardent to
be arrested. He must be in Paris or in Milan. He is an
agent of S—. If he should be in Naples have him
arrested, and sent under a good escort to Paris. You have
seen that Flachat has been condemned to a year's impri-
sonment in irons, and that his transactions have been
declared void.

It is a question why ho continued to employ
and favour such scamps. The truth seems to
be thAtt he had need of unscrupulous agents,
and ruat he objected, not to their plundering
the countries they invaded, but to their keeping
the plunder for themselves. He was himself a
robber on a grand scale. He wrote to Joseph,
when ordering him to make his entry into
Madrid :

Denon is anxious for some pictures. I wish you to
seize all that you can find in the confiscated houses and
suppressed convents, and to make me a present of fifty
chefs-d'univre, which I want for the museum in Paris.
His generals might well have trusted their
fortunes to his care, considering the magnifi-
cence of his rewards. It was his aim to es-
tablish an aristocracy round every throne he
created. He shadowed out his whole scheme
to Joseph. After dictating to him the creation
of eight duchies in Naples, to be supported
from confiscated property, he continued :

Tell me what titles you would give to the duchies in
your kingdom. The titles are not so important as the
property attached to them; Fisch should have 200,000 f. a
year. I have required also that the owners of the titles
should have a residence in Paris, for the centre of the
whole system is there. I intend to have in Paris one
hundred fortunes, all of them having grown up with the
throne, and alone preserved by entails, while all other
fortunes will be split into fragments by onr law of in-
heritance. Establish our civil code iu Naples; by that
means all the fortunes which you do not preserve bill
disapear in a few years. This is the great advantage of
our civil code.

SATURDAY,

A great advantage in the interest of despotism
no doubt, but fatal to the establishment of
constitutional freedom, which requires for its
support a succession of ranks all connected
with, and blending into, each other.
We obtain such an insight into Napoleon's
policy here as must convince every reader that
no secure peace could ever have been made
with him. When Joseph was on the throne of
Naples, he wrote to him :

I hope that, by setting to work earnestly to form a goad
army and fleet, you will assist me to become master of the
Mediterranean, which is the chief and perpetual aim of
my policy. _ _

He never regarded any treaty of peace as
more than a truce ; and it was a fortunate cir-
cumstance fur the repose of Europe that his
presumption in 1814 prevented that negotia•
tion with him before his final defeat which
the allies seemed willing to commence while
the issue of the great struggle was yet un-
certain.

His confidence in his star was justified by
past events. All things considered, no general
ever gained such victories before. He wrote
to Joseph (Oct. 27, 1805) :

Before a fortnight I shall have opposed to me 100.000
Russians and 80,0 W Austrians, sent from Italy, and from
the other reserves of that kingdom. I shall conquer them,
but not without loss.

A few weeks later he recorded the victory of
Austerlitz :

I had yesterday a decisive battle. I put to flight the
allied army, commanded by the two Emperors of Germany
and Russia in person. It consisted of 80,000 Russians
and 30,000 Austrians. I have taken about 40,000 pnsoners,
among whom are twenty Russian generals, forty colours,
one hundred pieces of cannon, and all the standards of the
Russian Imperial Guards. The whole army has covered
itself with glory. The enemy has left at least from 12,000
to 15,00() men on the field. I do not yet know my own
loss. 1 estimate it at 800 or 930 killed, and twice as many
wounded.

The next year he was equally successful
against Prussia. He wrote from Berlin :

lam master of all the strong places. I have taken in
the campaign l40,0)0 prisoners, of whom 20po11 are
cavalry. I have captured more than 800 pieces of cannon,
and 27)0 standards and colours. The Prussian acme and
monarchy have ceased to exist.

It is a proof of the quickness with which nations
recover from military disasters, and of the
rapidity with which armies are recruited, that
eight or nine years later Napoleon found in the
Prussian army his most inveterate antagonist,
and that at last it completed the overthrow of
his empire on the field of Waterloo. The year
107 was as glorious to him as its two prede-
cessors :

The battle of Friedland, which was fought on the anni-
versary of that of Marengo, has decided the contest. The
Russian army has been destroyed This battle has
been as decisive as those of Marengo, of Austerlitz, and of
Jena.

It is noticeable that some of his greatest cam-
paigns were gone through in the winter.
Austerlitz was won in December. He gives a
vivid picture of the fatigues of his army in the
Polish campaign. In answer to Joseph, who
had stated the discontent of the Neapolitan
army at not being with him to share his
triumphs he wrote, Osterode, March 1, 1807,
three weeks after the battle of Eylan :

Neither the staff, nor the colonels, nor the other zegi-
mental officers, have taken their clothes off for the last
two months. some not for four months (I myself have
been a fortnight without taking off my boots ),
in the
middle of snow and mud, without bread, wine, or brandy,
living on potatoes and meat, making long marches and
counter-marches, without any sort of comfort, fighting with
our bayonets frequently under grapeshot ; the wounded
obliged to be removed in sledges, in the open air, to a
distance of fifty leagues.

Napoleon introduced a new system of warfare.
His victories were achieved by the decision
and rapidity of his movements. To crush his
foe, he braved the seasons, performed incredi-
ble marches, reduced his commissariat to the
simplest and barest resources, and calculated
on the sacrifice of a certain number of his
troops. The allies learnt to beat him with his
own weapons. Now we seem to have gone
back to the ante-Napoleon period, when winter
quarters succeeded naturally to a summer
campaign ; when the motions of armies and
fleets were ruled by precedent and routine;
and when the fortune of events depended on
the gout of the Minister who presided over
the War Department.
Maxims of the highest value seemed to flow
naturally from this great master of warfare

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