The Anderson Intelligencer

Four Great Men.

It is remarkable, that the career of the most renowned characters that ever lived, closed with some violent or mournful death.

Alexander, after having climbed the dizzy heights of his ambition, and with temples bound with chaplets, dipped in the blood of countless nations, looked down on a conquered world and wept that there was not another for him to conquer, set a city on fire and died in a scene of debauch.

Hannibal, after having to the astonishment and consternation of Rome, passed the Alps; after having put to flight the armies of the mistress of the world, and stripped three bushels of gold rings from the fingers of her slaughtered knights, and made her very foundations quake--fled from his country, being hated by those who once exultingly united his name to that of their God, and called him Hannibal--died at last of poison, administered by his own hands, unlamented and unwept in a foreign land.

Cæsar after having conquered eight hundred cities, and dying his hands in the blood of one million of his foes; after having pursued to death the only rival he had on earth, was miserably assassinated by those he considered his nearest friends, and in that very place the attainment of which had been his greatest ambition.

Bonaparte, whose mandate kings and emperors obeyed, after having filled the earth with the terror of his name, deluged it with tears and blood, and clothed the world with sack cloth, closed his days in lonely banishment, almost literally exiled from the world, yet sometime where he could see his country's banner waiving over the deep, but which could not, or would not, bring him aid.

Thus four men, who, from the peculiar situation of their portraits, seemed to stand as the representatives of all those whom the world called great these four who, each in turn made the earth tremble to its very centre by their simple tread, severally died--one by intoxication, or, as some suppose, by poison mingled in his wine--one a suicide--one murdered by his friends--and one in lonely exile.