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180
Recollections of
[Ch. XVI.

ing with General Bertrand, his eyes bent sadly on the 74, which was yet but a speck in the line of the horizon. The magnificent ship soon grew upon our sight, as, beating up to windward, silently yet proudly she pursued her brave career. "Sailing amid the loneliness, like a thing endowed with heart and mind," she seemed the very impersonation of majesty! Byron thought the ocean, with a single vessel moving over it, the most poetical object in nature; perhaps its utter loneliness is the cause. The thought has since occurred to me, that Napoleon might then have gazed upon that ship as typical of his own fortunes, so lordly, yet mastered, and impelled by some unseen resistless power towards that wild shore destined to be the tomb of all his daring hopes and mad ambition. Such spirits are undoubtedly sent into the world by an omniscient Providence for a beneficent and merciful purpose; their fiery course is run; they would still urge on, but

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