trade-wind, conducts to the group of buildings, on a bleak spot, over-looking the sea, and exposed to the full force of the wind. Our wheels rolled over a thick, green turf, the freshness of which showed how unfrequent must be the visits of strangers.
On reaching the gate a small and very dirty boy, with a milk-and-molasses complexion, brought out to us a notice pasted on a board, intimating that those who wished to see the residence of the Emperor Napoleon must pay two shillings a-piece, in advance; children half-price. A neat little Englishwoman, of that uncertain age which made me hesitate to ask her whether she had ever seen the Emperor, was in attendance, to receive the fees and act as cicerone. We alighted at a small green verandah, facing a wooden wing which projects from the eastern front of the building. The first room we entered was whitewashed, and covered all over with the names of visitors, in charcoal, pencil, and red chalk. The greater part of them were French. "This," said the little woman, "was the Emperor's billiard-room, built after he came to live at Longwood. The walls have three or four times been covered with names, and whitewashed over." A door at the further end admitted us into the drawing-room, in which Napoleon died. The ceiling was broken away, and dust and cobwebs covered the bare rafters. The floor was half-decayed, almost invisible through the dirt which covered it, and the plastering, falling off, disclosed in many places the rough stone walls. A winnowing-mill and two or three other farming utensils stood in the corners. The window looked into a barn-yard filled with mud and dung. Stretched on a sofa, with his head beside this window, the great conqueror, the "modern Sesostris," breathed his last, amid the delirium of fancied battle and the howlings of a storm which shook the island. The corner-stone of the jamb, nearest which his head lay, has been quarried out of the wall, and taken to France.
Beyond this was the dining-room, now a dark, dirty barn-floor, filled to the rafters with straw and refuse timbers. We passed out into a cattle-yard, and entered the Emperor's bed-room. A horse and three cows were comfortably stalled therein, and the floor of mud and loose stones was covered with dung and litter. "Here," said the guide, pointing to an unusually filthy stall in one corner, "was the
