GENTLE reader, did you ever happen to visit Doctors' Commons, impelled either by love, interest, or curiosity -to take out a marriage licence, to hunt for a legacy, or to gaze on the army of folios which stand in neverending files on countless shelves? These ponderous, sombre-looking tomes have such a theological aspect, that a country visitor once asked if they were all Bibles. "No, sir," replied a facetious clerk in waiting; "they are testaments." And what testaments! To think even of their details is bewildering. If any one could find either time or patience to examine but a small section of the mass, or if a divining-rod were attainable to point towards the most curious, not merely an essay, but a whole "library of entertaining knowledge," might be extracted and compiled.

The lines we have prefixed as our motto include one of Pope's most pungent illustrations, in his remarks on "the Ruling Passion." The words of Euclio were actually uttered by Sir William Bateman, when in articulo mortis. The feeling is similar with that recorded in an anecdote of nearly equal antiquity. Adying miser sent for his solicitor, and, being propped up in bed, said, "Now begin, and I will dictate particulars." "I give and I bequeath," commenced the man of law, repeating, as he wrote down the formula. "No, no," interrupted the testator; "I do nothing of the kind; I will never give or bequeath anything; I cannot do it." "Well, then," suggested the attorney, after some consideration as to how the usual style could be modified, 'suppose you say, 'I lend, until the last day?' "Yes, yes, that will do," eagerly rejoined his employer; and so they got on with the business in hand.

The life-renter of wealth, great or small, is often as much puzzled to

know how to dispose of it when the inevitable hour of parting arrives, as he is unwilling to submit to the necessity he cannot evade. Anger, pique, or prejudice, undue influence, or enfeebled intellect, caprice, or mistake-how frequently have all or any of these causes, and others more trifling and indirect, led to unjust wills, and turned the current of property from its natural channel! In more than one sense the pauper has advantages which balance those of the millionaire. When David Garrick, whose cornucopia was filled to overflowing, ostentatiously displayed to Samuel Johnson, whose horn was nearly empty, his pictures, statues, costly china, rare books, and rich furniture at Hampton, the sage checked his vanity by exclaiming,

Ah, David, David! These are the things that make a death-bed terrible!" And he administered to his old chum and pupil a still sharper rebuke in the paper of the "Rembler" entitled "Asper's complaint of the insolence of Prospero."

In addition to the dislike of giving away what all would fain keep if they could, there are people who have a superstitious horror of making a last will and testament, under the idea that they are thereby signing their own death-warrant; as there are others who look upo' insurance as a guarantee for patriarchal longevity, thinking they can never die while the policy is kept alive. These hallucinations are more common than rational. They are also harmless and intelligible, when compared with the wild phantasms of hypochondria, the inmates of whose gloomy cavern are thus enumerated by the poet :

"Unnumber'd throngs on ev'ry side are

seen,

Of bodies changed to various forms by spleen.

The writer of this article knew a gentleman who fancied he was made of glass, and disliked sitting down, lest he should break to pieces; and another, who always aired his shoebuckles and sword when he went to court, for fear he should catch or communicate cold. Dr. Pell, a physician to Charles the Second, persuaded himself that he was en famille, and made all the necessary preparations. It is impossible to fathom or enumerate the vagaries of human eccentricity.

Testamentary bequests are of very ancient date. They commenced with the Egyptians and early Hebrews. Some profound scholars fancy they can find a direct will in the family arrangements made by Jacob or Israel, as related in the forty-eighth chapter of Genesis, where he prefers Ephraim to Manasseh, in the order of succession. This seems to us rather a strained, if not altogether an inadmissible interpretation. It amounts certainly to another instance of setting aside the ordinary law of primogeniture, so frequently commanded or permitted in scriptural records. Solon introduced wills at Athens, 578 B.C. The Romans adopted the practice from the Greeks. There are many regulations respecting wills in the Koran. Cortez found them in use with the native Mexicans, who could not have derived the custom from any European source. Trebatius Testa, an eminent jurisconsult of his day, was the first who introduced codicils to wills at Rome, 31 B.C. He wrote books on religious ceremonies, as well as treatises on civil law, as we learn from Cicero; and Horace names him as a poet of more than average pretensions.

Roman wills were sealed by seals, applied after they had pierced the deeds, and had passed the linen envelope three times through the holes, a method established in the time of Nero, as a security against forgers, and adopted in Germany and Gaul, where it continued until the middle ages.

Outside the will were written the names of those who had affixed their seals. Upon the first page were enheirs; upon the second, or right-hand tered the names of the principal tablet, those of the legatees. To this Horace alludes. The Greek wills were signed and sealed in presence of the magistrate. By a Roman law, called Lex Voconia, enacted A.U.C. 524, no woman could inherit an estate; and no rich person could leave more than a fourth part of his personal property to a female. The principal object of this was to prevent the decay or extinction of illustrious families. Various arts were used in evasion. Sometimes a fortune was left in trust to a friend, who might give it to a daughter or other female relative; but this friend could not be legally forced to do so, unless he pleased, The law itself, like many others, fell into disuse on account of its severity, and was abrogated by Augustus. The wills of minors were valid in Rome; with us, the testator must be twentyone. Roman testaments were always written in Latin; a legacy, if expressed in Greek, was null and void. The original document, of which there were usually several copies, was deposited, either privately in the hands of a friend, or publicly, in a temple, under charge of the appointed guardian of the building. The will of Julius Cæsar, so familiar to us, as recited by Mark Antony, in Shakespeare's tragedy, was intrusted to the eldest of the Vestal Virgins.

Anglo-Saxon wills were written on three copies, each to match, like a tally, and, after being read in presence of various persons, were given to distinct custodians. This practice lasted until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for Lord Maurice Berkeley (temp. Henry the Eighth), before he went abroad, left three wills, in the care of as many friends, lest any one of the number should be misplaced or destroyed. Du Cange mentions wills as being written in the seventh century on wood or bark. Church chests were often made the depositories of wills in ancient times. Now, a banker's is the favourite resting-place. After the Norman Conquest, they were generally written in Latin in this country; but in the reign of Edward the Third, English began to be used. Wills to devise

lands were first established by law, under Henry the Eighth; and universally so, as to all real and movable property, at the Restoration. The first recorded will of an English sovereign is stated, erroneously, to be that of Richard the Second, A.D. 1399. Edward the Confessor made a will, A.D. 1066. It was asserted by William of Normandy and his partisans, that, in this document, Edward left the crown to him, which he had clearly no right to do, to the prejudice of Edgar Atheling, the lineal heir. But, in those days, this bequest was considered a better title than that of Harold, which simply consisted of taking possession with the apparent consent of the people.

The will of the first Napoleon is a curious document. Soon after his death at St. Helena, on the 5th of May, 1821, it was published in the form of a pamphlet, in French and English, by Ridgway. This will was registered in England in 1824. We extract a few of the most characteristic passages. He begins thus :

"Napoleon, &c.-This 15th of April,

1821, at Longwood, in the island of St. Helena. This is my testament, or act of my last will:-I die in the Apostolical Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since."

We can readily receive this exordium as so far sincere, that Napoleon, in the solitude and inaction of St. Helena, with ample time for reflection, with mind and body chastened by captivity and disease, persuaded himself that he believed in the doctrines of the church in which he had been brought up, and derived comfort therefrom. Throughout a life of almost unprecedented ambition and activity, he had thought little on the subject, as regarded his individual interest, and trimmed his political views as the wind veered. In Egypt, as general of the Republic, he proclaimed that there was but one God, and Mahomet was his prophet. On the Imperial throne, he re-established the old form, summoned the Pope to his coronation, but imprisoned and endeavoured to coerce him into a surrender of his temporal and spiritual rights. His acute reasoning powers, his clear knowledge of human nature, told him that no nation could

exist without an established religion; but worldly policy, rather than conscience, dictated the conclusion and its results. He often said, in conversation with his familiar intimates, "I am not a philosopher or a physician;" meaning, simply, that he was neither materialist nor atheist. At Elba, he happened to receive a visit from an English north-country squire, of large possessions, whose ancestors had always held to the church of Rome. "I presume," said Napoleon, "that you, of course, are a Roman Catholic.' "Yes, sire," answered his guest. "So am I," rejoined the exEmperor; "gentlemen never change their religion." We may set him down as a latitudinarian in practice, but we have no right to enrol him with the frantic blasphemers who bowed before a prostitute as the Goddess of Reason; the dreary advocates of annihilation, with Frederick of Prussia at their head; or the more mischief-dealing and insidious sappers and miners who affect to reverence what they thirst to overthrow-the neologists of the present day, led by their archimagus, the Bishop of

Natal.

"It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well."

This earnest desire is again repeated in a codicil. After a lapse of nineteen years it was fulfilled by the arrival of the Napoleonic remains at Cherbourg, in the Belle Poule, commanded by the Prince de Joinville, on the 30th of November, 1840. From thence they were removed with great pomp and solemnity to the Hôtel des Invalides, under the dome of which magnificent edifice they lie, forming for the present and for all future ages the most attractive monument of the finest monumental city in the world. When Louis Philippe conceived or adopted the idea of amusing his unsteady lieges with a sentimental pageant-an ovation to past glory-he instructed his ambassador at the Court of St. James's, M. Guizot, to request the surrender of these relics; and at the same time impressed on him the necessity of using great delicacy and finesse. Opposition was expected, and it is by no means clear that a casus belli might not have

sprung out of a refusal. But the demand was acceded to at once, and Lord Palmerston even smiled, as M. Guizot tells us, when the communication was so formally and guardedly made to him. Why did our sagacious statesman smile? We cannot take upon ourselves to say, not having the honour of being in his confidence; but we may surmise that he thought the proposal a strange one, coming as it did from the king of the barricades, and felt a little astonished that either the English Government or people should be supposed to attach much importance to it. The custody of the living Napoleon was a very different matter from the guardianship of his bones. We had suffered too much to allow a repetition of the escape from Elba, but when that became impossible, a reaction in public feeling speedily manifested itself. It was Zanga looking on his unconscious

foe

"Thou art dead, Alonzo! So is my enmity."

Thus the Parisians obtained one of those theatrical spectacles which are the essence of their lives-dearer to them than their daily bread, England received credit for a graceful act at no sacrifice, and the St. Helenans were the only losers. Their solitary lion was taken from them, leaving nothing behind but the crumbling walls of Longwood, and the willow drooping over the untenanted grave.

"I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Marie Louise. I retain for her to my last moment the most tender sentiments."

It was not likely that Marie Louise, compelled in her nineteenth year to marry a man more than double her own age, and the humiliator of her family,-who had twice occupied her father's capital as a conqueror, and despoiled him of a large share of his dominions, should have entertained any preliminary disposition in favour of the husband imposed on her by circumstances. But he treated her with uniform affection and confidence, which she appeared to reciprocate. He was also the father of her child, and had placed her on the most brilliant throne in the world. In 1814 she refused to accompany Napoleon to Elba, on the plea of ill-health. The impartial biographer cannot deny that,

with some abilities, she was a cold, selfish, commonplace character, far inferior to poor Josephine, who, with all her faults, was so ungratefully repudiated to make room for her. It would have been better in taste if Marie Louise had not entered a state ball-room at Vienna, during the Congress of Sovereigns, in 1822, leaning on the Duke of Wellington's arm; and far more exalted in feeling had she not stooped to a second marriage with her chamberlain, Count Neipperg. As widow of Napoleon, she would have retained the sympathy and respect she forfeited by sinking voluntarily into a modern Widow of Ephesus.

"I die prematurely, assassinated by the The English oligarchy English nation will not be slow in avenging invasions of France, when she had still

me.

The two unfortunate results of the

so many resources, are to be attributed

to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Tal

leyrand, and La Fayette. I forgive them; may the posterity of France forgive them

like me. I disown the 'Manuscript from St. Helena,' and other works under the title of 'Maxims, Sayings,' &c., which persons have been pleased to These are publish for the last six years. not the rules which have guided my life. I caused the Duke d'Enghien to be arrested and tried because that step was essential to

the safety, interest, and honour of the French people, when the Count d'Artois was maintaining, by his confession, sixty assassins at Paris. Under similar circumstances, I would act in the same way."

It will be observed that Napoleon says here, arrested and tried, but omits the word executed. Is this an evasion of his complicity in the catastrophe! Does he mean to imply that he would have reprieved his victim? It seems so; but we cannot credit him. He said, during his exile-"I was sorry for the Duke; he was a brave young man; it was Talleyrand's fault." Talleyrand denied the charge, and shifted the blame on Savary, who, he said, acted precipitately, and without orders. Savary denied this in a pamphlet, and showed proof to the contrary. It was the callous Fouché, not Talleyrand, who uttered the memorable dictum, which has passed into a proverb-"This is worse than a crime—it is a blunder." Talleyrand said many smart things, but in common with all professed jokers, he had many fathered on him that he did not

say. No subordinate would have incurred the risk and odium of the death of the Duke d'Enghien, without express authority. Savary was through life a devoted implement in the service of his master, but he dared not hazard such a grand coup on his own suggestion. He might have thought and felt with Menas; but Napoleon was not exactly a counterpart of Sextus Pompey. "Wilt thou be lord of the whole world?" whispers the Roman captain aside to his admiral, when Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, his guests, are feasting, and two at least getting drunk in his galley off Misenum. "What say'st thou?" asks Pompey, in utter surprise. "Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That's twice!" repeats Menas emphatically. "Show me which way?" retorts Pompey, who now begins to think there is something in it. Menas replies

"These three world-sharers, these competitors,

Are in thy vessel;-let me cut the cable
And when we are put off, fall to their

throats:

All then is thine."

his hands from the smell of that innocent blood. He lost a great opportunity when he allowed the sentence to be carried out. So did Louis the Eighteenth when he shot Ney. On the latter event, M. Guizot, in the first volume of his "Personal Memoirs," has a sound political reflection, applicable in a more extended sense than the individual case which suggests it: "Marshal Ney, pardoned and banished after condemnation, by royal letters deliberately promulgated, would have given to kingly power the aspect of a rampart raising itself above all, whether friends or enemies, to stay the tide of blood."

In a long list of legacies to friends and servants, Napoleon appears to have remembered all who had either direct or remote claims on him. These are some of the most remarkable items:

"I bequeath to my son the boxes, orders, and other articles, such as my plate, books, linen, field-bed, saddles, spurs, chapel-plate, &c., which I have been accustomed to wear and use, according to the list annexed. I hope this slight bequest may be dear to

I should have found it afterwards well done; But must condemn it now."

Turn to Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," Act ii., Scene vii., and there will be found the lesson and its moral, for wide application, as set down by the most acute of all dissectors of the human heart and the faithfullest of historical chroniclers. Savary may perhaps have read and remembered the anecdote, but he knew it would have been unsafe to apply it. No; the death of the Duke d'Enghien lies at Napoleon's door, and forms the darkest page in his history. All the special pleading in the world cannot clear his memory of the guilt, nor can all the perfumes of Arabia sweeten

whom he will hear the universe discourse. I bequeath to Lady Holland the antique cameo which Pope Pius the Sixth gave me at Tolentino. bequeath to Count Montholon 2,000,000 francs, as a proof of my satisfaction with the filial attentions he has nity for the losses which his residence at St. paid me during six years, and as an indemHelena has occasioned. I bequeath to Count Bertrand 500,000 franes. To Marchand, my first valet-de-chambre, 400,000 francs. The services he has rendered me are those of a friend. It is my wish that

he should marry the widow, sister, or daughter of an officer of my Old Guard. To St. Denis, to Novarraz, to Pieron, each 100,000 francs. To Archambaud, 50,000 francs. To Cursor and to Chandelier, 25,000 francs each. To the Abbé Vignali, to Count Las Cases, to Count Lavalette, to General Brayer, to General Le Fevre Desnouettes, to General Drouet, to General Mouton Duverunet, to the children of the Cambronne, to the children of General brave Labedoyère, each 100,000 francs. To

*

the children of General Girard, killed at Ligny, 100,000 francs. To the children of General Marchand, 100,000 francs. Το General Lallemand the elder, to Count