Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

war and from glory; and he has covered with it the name of France. France, obliged to accept the odium of his tyranny and his crimes, should also accept his glory with a serfous gratitude. She cannot separate her name from his without lessening it; for it is equally incrusted with his greatness as with his faults. She wished for renown; and what she principally owes to him is the celebrity she has gained in the world. This celebrity, which will descend to posterity, and which is improperly called glory, constituted his means and his end. Let him, therefore, enjoy it. The noise he has made will resound through distant ages; but let it not pervert posterity, or falsify the judgment of mankind. He is admired as a soldier; he is measured as a sovereign; he is judged as a founder of nations; - great in action, little in idea, nothing in virtue. Such is the man!

LAMARTINE.

CLXXXIV.

NAPOLEON AS A STUDENT.

1. DILIGENCE and self-control are the crowning attributes of genius. Napoleon, however extraordinary his mental gifts, no more attained his greatness by fits and starts than he made his way over the Alps by a sudden flight. In both cases the road was opened by labor, toil, and endurance. The evidences of his arduous study and persevering industry in youth afford a useful lesson for the consideration of those who, feeling within them a certain excitement, regard it—and, it may be, justly—as the token of mental power, but forget that it is as surely an evidence of power needing the strengthening and discipline of order and systematic study.

2. Napoleon appears to have gone through a regular and systematic course of reading with a definite object: nothing was done for mere amusement. His selections of works, and his extracts from them, are alike remarkable. He occupied himself with natural history, natural philosophy, and medicine. He studied ancient geography and history; then turned to modern, and acquainted himself well with the history of Fre ace. His object seemed rather to gain a knowledge of historical facts than to form a system from them. A thirst for general knowledge, and an indefatigable industry in attaining it, are manifested throughout his scholastic career.

3. We will not enter into the moral questions connected with Napoleon's aims and objects, with the use or misuse of his energies, for we are now only dealing with the training by which he learned to concentrate them; and with the great lesson to be

[ocr errors]

ΕΙ

EI

drawn from the fact that it was by strenuous perseverance and unwearied effort, under difficulties and impediments, that his mental powers were we will not say created- but fostered and made effectual to the attainment of his aims and objects. Napoleon, as well as Michael Angelo, and Newton, and all possessed of true genius, had to submit to that law of human nature, which decrees that nothing great can be done without great effort. Of all the subjects of which he afterwards showed himself master, he was first the regular and diligent student.

4. His clear ideas on legislation, on finance', and social organization, were not fruits of spontaneous growth, but the harvest reaped on the throne from the labors of the poor lieutenant of artillery. He owed his mental development to that to which in every age every great and strong mind has owed it — industry, to solitary and patient vigil, to difficulty and misfortune. True it is that the revolution opened to him a vast field; but, had the revolution never occurred, Napoleon must have become distin guished; for characters such as his seize upon, but are never the slaves of, circumstances. When, after seven years spent in retirement, Napoleon made his first appearance on the world's stage, he had already within him the germs of his future greatness. Nothing was fortuitous with him.

5. His was a perpetual struggle, and not always a successful one. His being at Toulon was owing to his never losing an opportunity of coming forward. Never did a new minister come into power without receiving a memorial from the young officer on the affairs of his native country; and never was any change in the military department of Corsica proposed, that Napoleon did not, at any risk, immediately repair thither. When unsuccessful in his object, he returned to Valence to think and to study; and these seven years of the youthful life of Napoleon are to us the noblest and greatest in that life of prodigies, and are themselves sufficient to preclude his elevation being ascribed to fatality.

CLXXXV. THOUGHTS ON BOOKS.

[ocr errors]

1. OBLIGATIONS TO LITERATURE. I will here place on record my own obligations to literature: a debt so immense as not to be cancelled, like that of Nature, by death itself. I owe to it some thing more than my earthly welfare. Adrift, early in life, upon the great waters, as pilotless as Wordsworth's blind boy, afloat in the turtle-shell, if I did not come to shipwreck, it was that, in default of paternal or fraternal guidance, I was rescued, like

"each one a lovely Infirm health, and

the "ancient mariner," by guardian spiritslight"—who stood as beacons to my course. a natural love of reading, happily threw me, instead of worse society, into the company of poets, philosophers, and sages-to me good angels and ministers of grace. From these silent inwho often do more than fathers, and always more than god-fathers, for our temporal and spiritual interests—from these mild monitors, no importunate tutors, teasing mentors, EI moral task-masters, obtrusive advisers, harsh censors, or wearisome lecturers, but delightful associates,—I learned something of the divine, and more of the human, religion.

structors

They were my interpreters in the house beautiful of God, and my guide among the delectable mountains of Nature. They re formed my prejudices, chastened my passions, tempered my heart, purified my tastes, elevated my mind, and directed my aspira tions. I was lost in a chaos of undigested problems, false theories, crude fancies, obscure impulses, bewildering doubts, when these bright intelligences called my mental world out of darkness, like a new creation, and gave it "two great lights," Hope and Memory, - the past for a moon, and the future for a sun.

[ocr errors]

"Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I

Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyc as thoughts;
And thus, from day to day, my little boat
Rocks in its harbor, lodging peaceably.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The poets,
who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!
O, might my name be numbered among theirs,
How gladly would I end my mortal days !” *.

-

Thomas Hood.

2. THE WORTH OF BOOKS. -It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter, though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,- if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his

* Wordsworth.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »