A COUNSELLOR DISGRACED IN PRESENCE OF THE WHOLE COUNCIL. A RELIGIOUS party was at one time fomenting civil discord in the state, by secretly circulating bulls and letters from the pope. These were shown to a counsellor of state, appointed to superintend religious worship, and who, if he did not himself circulate them, at least neither prevented nor denounced their circulation. This was discovered, and the emperor suddenly challenged him with the fact in open council. "What could have been your motive, sir?" said he, "were you influenced by your religious principles? If so, why are you here? I use no control over the conscience of any man. Did I force you to become my counsellor of state? On the contrary, you solicited the post as a high favour. You are the youngest member of the council, and perhaps the only one who has not some personal claim to that honour; you had nothing to recommend you but the inheritance of your father's services. You took a personal oath to me; how could your religious feelings permit you openly to violate that oath, as you have just now done? Speak, however; you are here in confidence; your colleagues shall be your judges. Your crime is a great one, sir. A conspiracy for the commission of a violent act is stopped as soon as we seize the arm that holds the poniard. But a conspiracy to influence the public mind has no end; it is like a train of gunpowder. Perhaps, at this very moment, whole towns are thrown into commotion through your fault!" The counsellor, quite con 66 fused, said nothing in reply; the first appeal was sufficient to establish the fact. The members of the council, to the majority of whom this event was quite unexpected, were struck with astonishment, and observed profound silence." Why," continued the emperor, "did you not, according to the obligation imposed by your oath, discover to me the criminal and his plots? Am I not at all times accessible to every one of you?"—" Sire," said the counsellor, at length venturing to reply, "he was my cousin.""Your crime is then the greater, sir," replied the emperor sharply; your kinsman could only have been placed in office at your solicitation; from that moment all the responsibility devolved on you. When I look upon a man as entirely devoted to me, as your situation ought to have rendered you, all who are connected with him, and all for whom he becomes responsible, from that time, require no watching. These are my maxims." The accused member still remained silent, and the emperor continued: "The duties which a counsellor of state owes to me are immense. You, sir, have violated those duties, and you hold the office no longer. Begone; let me never see you here again!" The disgraced counsellor, as he was withdrawing, passed very near the emperor; the latter looked at him and said, "I am sincerely grieved at this, sir, for the services of your father are still fresh in my memory." The poor fellow could contain himself no longer, but gave vent to a flood of tears. When he was gone, the emperor, addressing himself to the rest of the council, added: "I hope such a scene as this may never be renewed; it has done me too much harm. -I am not distrustful, but may become so! I have allowed myself to be surrounded by every party; I have placed near my person even emigrants and soldiers of the army of Condé; and though it was wished to induce them to assassinate me, yet, to do them justice, they have continued faithful. Since I have held the reins of government, this is the first individual employed about me, by whom I have been betrayed." And then turning towards M. Locré, who took notes of the debates of the council of state, he said, "Write down betrayed-do you hear?"-Las Cases' Journal. PROPHECY OF LUCIEN BUONAPARTE. 66 WHEN Buonaparte, then first consul for life, wished to take the title of emperor, his brother Lucien opposed himself to the project with all his power; and finding his effort unavailing, "Your ambition knows no bounds," exclaimed he; you are master of France, you wish to be master of all Europe, do you know what the result will be? you will be smashed to pieces like this watch;" flinging his watch violently on the floor. MILITARY EXECUTION OF THE TURKS AT JAFFA. MUCH has been said, pro and con, upon this subject. It is presumed that the following explanation of Napoleon's reason for this execution, in his own words, will be satisfactory to the reader, and at the same time set the much agitated question for ever at rest : "I ordered about a thousand or twelve hundred to be shot, which was done. The reason was, that amongst the garrison of Jaffa, a number of Turkish troops were discovered, whom I had taken a short time before at El-Arish, and sent to Bagdad upon their parole not to serve again, or to be found in arms against me for a year. I had caused them to be escorted twelve leagues on their way to Bagdad, by a division of my army. But those Turks, instead of proceeding to Bagdad, threw themselves into Jaffa, defended it to the last, and cost me a number of brave men to take it, whose lives would have been spared, if the others had not reinforced the garrison of Jaffa. Moreover, before I attacked the town, I sent them a flag of truce. Immediately afterwards we saw the head of the bearer elevated on a pole over the wall. Now, if I had spared them again, and sent them away upon their parole, they would directly have gone to St. Jean d'Acre, where they would have played over again the same scene that they had done at Jaffa. In justice to the lives of my soldiers, as every general ought to consider himself as their father, and them as his children, I could not allow this. To leave as a guard a portion of my army, already small and reduced in number, in consequence of the breach of faith of those wretches, was impossible. Indeed, to have acted otherwise than as I did, would probably have caused the destruction of my whole army. I therefore, availing myself of the rights of war, which authorize the putting to death prisoners taken under such circumstances, independent of the right given to me by having taken the city by assault, and that of retaliation on the Turks, ordered that the prisoners taken at El-Arish, who, in defiance of their capitulation, had been found bearing arms against me, should be selected out and shot. The rest, amounting to a considerable number, were spared. I would," continued the emperor, "do the same thing again tomorrow, and so would Wellington, or any general commanding an army under similar circumstances." BUONAPARTE'S INFLUENCE ON THE STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE. FROM the influence which Buonaparte assumed over music in France, his object was to establish that style of annunciation and expression which Rousseau, many years before, had so strongly recommended and illustrated, in the recitatives of his own "Devin du Village," a style which Mr. Moore, who has so many claims to reputation, has introduced into English composition, by the example of his own original and exquisite melodies, and which is gradually giving its tone and character to the music of the present day. Buonaparte was in music a true Italian, and his despotic interference with the composers, whom he brought from Italy and liberally recompensed, was consonant at once to his taste for the art and his love of dictation. He had himself learned to play on the piano-forte; and knew enough of the theory and terms of the science, to be enabled to dictate even to the genius of Paesiello, without betraying more ignorance of the mechanism of the subject, than might be permitted in an emperor. His anxiety about the operas of Paesiello, and his arguments with that delightful composer, have been re |