Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.. Various
the whole civilized world with war, to compel the French people to renounce republicanism and establish a monarchy. And in the bloody hour when the Bay of Aboukir was covered with the thousands of the mutilated dead, whom her strong arm had destroyed, she, with unquestioned sincerity, offered to God the tribute of thanksgiving and praise. And from the churches and the firesides of England, tens of thousands of pious hearts breathed the fervent prayer of gratitude to God for the great victory of Aboukir.
Such was the famous Battle of the Nile, as it has since been called. It was a signal conquest. It was a magnificent triumph of British arms. But a victory apparently more fatal to the great interests of humanity was perhaps never gained. It was the death-blow to reviving Egypt. It extinguished in midnight gloom the light of civilization and science, which had just been enkindled on those dreary shores. Merciless oppression again tightened its iron grasp upon Asia and Africa, and already, as the consequence, has another half century of crime, cruelty and outrage, blighted that doomed land.
Napoleon at once saw that all his hopes were blasted. The blow was utterly irreparable. He was cut off from Europe. He could receive no supplies. He could not return. Egypt was his prison. Yet he received the news of this terrible disaster, with the most imperturbable equanimity. Not a word or a gesture escaped him, which indicated the slightest discouragement. With unabated zeal he pursued his plans, and soon succeeded in causing the soldiers to forget the disaster. He wrote to Kleber, “We must die in this country or get out of it as great as the ancients. This will oblige us to do greater things than we intended. We must hold ourselves in readiness. We will at least bequeath to Egypt an heritage of greatness.” “Yes!” Kleber replied, “we must do great things. I am preparing my faculties.”
The exultation among the crowned heads in Europe in view of this great monarchical victory was unbounded. England immediately created Nelson Baron of the Nile, and conferred a pension of ten thousand dollars a year, to be continued to his two immediate successors. The Grand Signior, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Sardinia, the King of Naples, and the East India Company made him magnificent presents. Despotism upon the Continent, which had received such heavy blows from Napoleon, began to rejoice and to revive. The newly emancipated people, struggling into the life of liberty, were disheartened. Exultant England formed new combinations of banded kings, to replace the Bourbons on their throne, and to crush the spirit of popular liberty and equality, which had obtained such a foothold in France. All monarchical Europe rejoiced. All republican Europe mourned.
The day of Aboukir was indeed a disastrous day to France. Napoleon with his intimate friends did not conceal his conviction of the magnitude of the calamity. He appeared occasionally, for a moment, lost in painful reverie, and was heard two or three times to exclaim, in indescribable tones of emotion, “Unfortunate Brueys, what have you done.” But hardly an hour elapsed after he had received the dreadful tidings, ere he entirely recovered his accustomed fortitude, and presence of mind, and he soon succeeded in allaying the despair of the soldiers. He saw, at a glance, all the consequences of this irreparable loss. And it speaks well for his heart that in the midst of a disappointment so terrible, he could have forgotten his own grief in writing a letter of condolence to the widow of his friend. A heartless man could never have penned so touching an epistle as the following addressed to Madame Brueys, the widow of the man who had been unintentionally the cause of apparently the greatest calamity which could have befallen him.
“Your husband has been killed by a cannon ball, while combating on his quarter deck. He died without suffering – the death the most easy and the most envied by the brave. I feel warmly for your grief. The moment which separates us from the object which we love is terrible; we feel isolated on the earth; we almost experience the convulsions of the last agony; the faculties of the soul are annihilated; its connection with the earth is preserved only through the medium of a painful dream, which disturbs every thing. We feel, in such a situation, that there is nothing which yet binds us to life; that it were far better to die. But when, after such just and unavoidable throes, we press our children to our hearts, tears and more tender sentiments arise, and life becomes bearable for their sakes. Yes, Madame! they will open the fountains of your heart. You will watch their childhood, educate their youth. You will speak to them of their father, of your present grief, and of the loss which they and the Republic have sustained in his death. After having resumed the interests in life by the chord of maternal love, you will perhaps feel some consolation from the friendship and warm interest which I shall ever take in the widow of my friend.”
The French soldiers with the versatility of disposition which has ever characterized the light-hearted nation, finding all possibility of a return to France cut off, soon regained their accustomed gayety, and with zeal engaged in all the plans of Napoleon, for the improvement of the country, which it now appeared that, for many years, must be their home.
THE GERMAN EMIGRANTS – A SKETCH OF LIFE
A few years ago, while wandering a stranger along the quay at Albany, my attention was attracted to a crowd composed for the most part of persons about to depart by a canal-packet for Buffalo. The scene was to me one of some interest, as a number of Germans of the better class were among the passengers. One was a beautiful girl apparently of about the age of eighteen, arrayed in the simple, unaffected garb of her country, but whose intellectual features, black and lustrous hair, tall and elegant figure, and somewhat melancholy cast of countenance, rendered her an object of interest, perhaps, I may say of admiration, to the bystanders. I noticed the sweet, sad smile which occasionally enlivened her countenance as fondly holding the hand of her companion in her own, she spoke to him in a tone and with a frankness of manner, that betrayed a deep and abiding interest in his welfare. I was informed that this young man was her only brother, who had been for some months employed in a manufacturing establishment in Albany; that his sister, however, had but recently arrived in the country, and, accompanied by her uncle, was now about to depart on a pilgrimage to the distant West.
Feeling an interest – why I know not – in this brother and sister, and perceiving they were of a better class than ordinarily emigrate to America, I was not surprised to learn that they had been educated with all the care and tenderness wealthy parents could bestow; that their father, who for many years had been engaged in extensive commercial pursuits in Bremen, died from grief and despair at the sudden prostration of his credit and loss of fortune, his widow soon after following him to the grave.
A few months previous to the time alluded to, the sister was the affianced bride of an amiable, enterprising young man, the partner of her father in business. At that period her ideal world was doubtless one of beauty and of innocence, the acme, perhaps, of earthly peace and happiness; for within it was a fountain of pure and mutual love, ever full and ever flowing. No worldly care disturbed her tranquil bosom – her every wish was gratified; no cloud obscured the brightness of her sky – it was pure, serene, and beautiful. How uncertain are earthly hopes! How vain are human expectations! In a moment, as it were, all with her had changed. Grief had taken possession of her heart, bitter tears had succeeded to innocent smiles, and her hopes of domestic bliss were blasted, perhaps never again to bud or bloom. She was miserably unhappy, the innocent victim of a disappointment, heart-rending indeed and by her never to be forgotten.
On the decline of her father’s fortune and that also of Edward Nordheimer (for that was the name of her lover), the latter suddenly became intemperate. Thinking, as many wiser and older than himself had thought, to drown the recollection of bankruptcy and the disappointment of worldly hope in the giddy bowl, he seized the intoxicating draught with an infatuated zeal. He heeded not the timid admonitions of love, or the kind entreaties of friends; but reckless alike of the consequences of his dreadful habit to himself and others, was hurrying to inevitable ruin, making no effort to stem the wild, the eddying stream that controlled him, and within the vortex of which he was soon, alas! to be forever lost.
Like many others, he had been taught by the example of his elders, perhaps, by the daily habits of his parents, the unwise and dangerous idea that discourtesy consisteth not in partaking but in refusing the proffered glass; hence, what was in youth a fashionable indulgence – a mere pastime – had become in his manhood a settled, desperate vice. Every principle, every ambition, of which apparently the exercise had gained him the respect, confidence, best wishes of his fellow-men, no longer controlled him. Once