fortified by a battery of large cannon placed at the entrance, so that now no regular approaches or sudden surprise can be expected to succeed for the capture of the island. Excellent water for ships can be had in abundance, and provisions, fresh and suitable, may be procured at rather a high price. The climate is not unhealthy, and the air of the place is pleasant to Indian voyagers. The temperature is moderated by a continued sea breeze. A series of violent and perilous storms, which lasted for six weeks, thwarted our progress, and buffeted and tossed us as we passed over the latitudes, and within sight of the lofty mountains of Madagascar; we were, therefore, inclined to welcome any port, and embrace the most desolate shore with gladness: yet my heart recoiled from the aspect of St. Helena, as a most inhospitable and forbidding island. Viewed from the sea, along its whole circumference (twenty-eight miles) it exhibits only an immense wall of perpendicular rock, varying from six to twelve hundred feet in height. It stands alone in the ocean, twelve hundred miles from any land, and seems to have been cast up by some submarine convulsion as the furnace lava of a great volcanic combustion. Most bleak and dreary is its general appearance. It carried to my mind a stunning and appalling effect. It seemed not a habitable portion of the world's dominion, but the cineritious incrustation; the singed and barren surface of some spot on earth whose end had been to be burned, and which having borne briars and thorns, was rejected, and was nigh unto cursing. I could not restrain my thoughts from conjectures as to the influence its appearance would have on the mind of Buonaparte, when he first looked upon its rocky casement as the wall which should enclose his wanderings, and secure the world against his future ambition. I asked, Was nature commissioned to bring from her deepest recesses this basaltic creation, to be a prison-house for him who had made kings tremble, and then cast them down; who had played with crowns and sceptres, and then placed them on the heads and in the hands of his minions or flattering parasites ; who had divided empires or joined kingdoms together, as whim and caprice inspired him, and had shaken the institutions of antiquity, convulsed the orders of society, and set at defiance the opinions and the arms of the world? The contrast with all this was the position of the captive who trod the decks of the Bellerophon, and was now constrained to stretch out his hands that others might guard him and carry him whither he would not. There are only four small openings in the rock, which, as a natural bulwark, surrounds the island; and through these openings the scene is pleasingly changed and diversified. Verdant and beautiful patches of ground intermingle with the rocks; while on the summit, a plain, 1,500 acres in extent, spreads out the lap of fertility covered with vegetation, and capable of every species of culture. The loftiest eminence, called Diana's Peak, and rising to the height of 2,700 feet above the level of the sea, is situated in the centre of the island. One of the little straths, down which a silvery streamlet flows, is called James Town: on its beach is a place for ships lying-to, and whence passengers may land with safety. To this place we passed, after the interchange of successive signals between the ship and the shore, and while we were under a battery of cannon which could have sunk us in a few minutes. James Town is entered by an arched gateway, and by a handsome paradewhere the public offices are kept, and one of the governor's houses is situated. The principal street contains about thirty houses, well-built, and neatlooking. The English population, besides the soldiers, artillery and infantry, amounted to nearly three hundred. There were several respectable Jews. We staid at the house of one where we were most suitably entertained, but the charges were high. Mr. S had made a fortune of 80,000l., gone to England, where he lost it in speculations, and returned to his former employment of hotel-keeper. There had been slaves ; some of them introduced as convicts, even from islands in the Indian Ocean; and others as captives from the African continent. Some were of fair complexion. I conversed with a few of them, and found it was common to let them engage with their several employers, who would pay for their work; while the slave undertook to bring to his owner a certain sum monthly. If I well remember, their numbers were about fifteen or eighteen hundred slaves. It had been resolved by a meeting of the inhabitants, under the auspices of the governor, that all born in and after the year 1823, should be free, and the others should be encouraged to purchase their freedom. The importance of St. Helena arises from its position as a place of refreshment for vessels returning from the East, and from its connexion with the history of Napoleon Buonaparte, who was confined, died, and is buried here. He arrived on the 17th of October, 1815, and died on the 5th of May, 1821. He first resided in one of the houses which Mr. S kept for voyagers, and then removed to the farm-house, where he died. I walked to see the places consecrated to history by his sojourn, his death-bed scenes, and the repose of his dust. The ravines and broken interstices on the surface of the island, with the elevated hills and green patches which nature had produced, or art had prepared, rendered the walk not unpleasant, and gave variety to the scene. The room in which the downcast emperor lay a-dying was narrow, and must have been close and heated - a sad and touching contrast to the salons and suites of chambers at the Tuileries, or at Fontainbleau; I think it was scarcely more than twelve by fifteen feet. What a humbling lesson on the moral of martial or political greatness! The pride of this man would not stoop to accept other apartments, while his haughty and domineering conquerors would not suffer him to indulge certain frivolous partialities; and thus their splenetic strife wrestled for a victory on the threshold of the grave. The walk to his tomb is chequered with many melancholy associations. Even there, in the dust of the narrow house, we see the contention of ascendant power and irritated ambition. No name is recorded upon the stone which covers the emperor's bones. The English authorities would not designate him by titles with which they had contracted treaties and formed a short-lived peace. How sordid such paltry hostility! The tomb looks greater, nameless though it be, than if the most gorgeous mausoleum had been reared, and inscriptions of high encomium had been lavished upon the fallen monarch. The silent and footless scene is full of meaningthe brook, or rather spring, murmuring and refreshing, from which he was wont to drink, carries a memorial in its ceaseless flow of the low-laid soldier; will his name be as long remembered as its refreshing current shall continue to irrigate the little vale? The weeping willow, which droops over this grave-will its root still vegetate to provide a shadow for his dust and a shelter for the pilgrim, who, to many generations, will tread this mysterious spot, and inquire for the relics of the mighty dead? Are its drooping branches abiding emblem of French sorrows, Gallican sympathies, and republican disappointments? The book which records the names of visiters from every region of the earth-which contains the bitter |