remain. His powers have been, on the one hand, unduly praised, and, on the other, unduly depreciated. His unexampled success led to the first extreme, and his unexampled downfall to the latter. While some have talked of him as greater than Cæsar, others think him a clever impostor, a vulgar conjurer, with one trick, which was at last discovered. Our notion lies between. He must, indeed, stand at some distance from Cæsar--the all-accomplished, the author, the orator-whose practical wisdom was equal to his genius--who wore over all his faculties, and around his very errors and crimes, a mantle of dignity--and whose one immortal bulletin, "Veni, vidi, vici," stamps an image of the energy of his charac ter, the power of his talents, and the laconic severity of his taste --Nor can he be equalled to Hannibal, in rugged daring of purpose, in originality of conception, in personal courage or in indomitable perseverance-Hannibal, who sprang like a bulldog at the throat of the Roman power, and who held his grasp till it was loosened in death. But neither does he sink to the level of the Tamerlanes or Bajazets. His genius soared above the sphere of such skilful marshals and martinets as Turenne and Marlborough. They were the slaves of their system of strategy; he was the king of his. They fought a battle as coolly as they played a game of chess; he was full of impulses and sudden thoughts, which became the seeds of victory, and could set his soldiers on fire, even when he remained calm himself. In our age, the name of Wellington alone can balance with his. But, admitting the Duke's great qualities, his iron firmness, his profound knowledge of his art, and the almost superhuman tide of success which followed him, he never displayed such dazzling genius, and, without enthusiasm himself, seldom kindled it in others. He was a clear steady star; Napoleon, a blood-red meteor, whose very downfall is more interesting than the other rising. Passing from comparisons, Napoleon possessed a prodigal assortment of faculties. He had an intellect clear, rapid, and trenchant as a scimitar; an imagination fertile in resources, if incorrect in taste; a swift logic; a decisive will; a prompt and lively eloquence; and passions, in general, concentred and quiet as a charcoal furnace. Let us not forget his wondrous faculty of silence. He could talk, but he seldom babbled, and seldom used a word too much. His conversation was the reflex of his military tactics. As in the field he concentrated his forces on a certain strong point, which when gained, all was gained; so, in conversation, he sprung into the centre of every subject, and, tearing out its heart, left the minor members to shift for themselves. Profound in no science, save that of war, what he knew, he knew thoroughly, and could immediately turn to account. He called England a "nation of shopkeepers;" but he was as practical as a shopkeeper himself--the emperor of a shopkeeping age. Theorisers he regarded with considerable contempt. Theories he looked at, shook roughly, and asked the inexorable question, "Will they stand?" Glimpses of truth came often on him like inspiration. "Who made all that, gentlemen?" was his question at the atheistic savans, as they sailed beneath the starry heavens, and denied the Maker. The misty brilliance, too often disguising little, of such a writer as Madame de Stael was naught in his eyes. How, had he been alive, would he have laughed over the elegant sentimentalism of Lamartine, and with a strong contemptuous breath blown away, like rolled shavings, his finest periods !-Yet he had a little corner of literary romance in his heart. He loved Ossian's Poems. For this his taste has been questioned; but to literary taste Napoleon did not pretend. He could only criticise the arrangements of a battle, was the author of a new and elegant art of bloodshed, and liked a terribly terse style of warfare. But, in Ossian, he found fire amid fustian; and partly for the fustain, and partly for the fire, he loved him. In fact, Ossian is just a Frenchified version of Homer; and no wonder that it pleased at once Napoleon's martial spirit and his national taste. The ancient bard himself had been too simple. M'Pherson served him up with flummery, and he went sweetly down the throat of our melodramatic Hero. Napoleon's real writings were his battles. Lodi let us call a wild and passionate ode; Austerlitz an epic; and Waterloo a tragedy. Yet, amid the bombast and falsetto of his bulletins and speeches, there occur coals of genuine fire, and gleams of lofty genius. Every one remembers the sentence, "Frenchmen, remember that from the top of these pyramids forty centuries look down upon your actions;" a sentence enough to make a man immortal. In keeping with the genius discovered in this, were his allusions to the "sun of Austerlitz," which, as if to the command of another Joshua, seemed to stand still at his bidding-his belief in destiny, and the other superstitions which, like bats in a mid-day market-place, flitted strangely to and fro through the clear and stern atmosphere of his soul, and prophesied in silence of change, ruin and death. Like all men of his order, Napoleon was subject to moods and fits, and presents thus, in mind, as well as in character, a capricious and inconsistent aspect. Enjoying the keenest and coldest of intellects, and the most iron of wills, he had at times the fretfulness of a child, and at other times, the fury of a demon. He was strong, but surrounded by contemptible weaknesses. Possessing the French empire, he seemed himself at times "possessed"-now of a miserable imp, and now of a master-fiend. Now almost a demigod, he is anon an idiot. Now organising and executing with equal wisdom and energy complicated and stupendous schemes, he falls frequently into blunders which a child might have avoided. You are reminded of a person of majestic stature and presence, who is suddenly seized with St. Vitus's Dance. How strange the inconsistencies and follies of genius! But not a Burns, seeing two moons from the top of a whisky-barrel-nor a Coleridge, dogged by an unemployed operative, to keep him out of a druggist's shop-nor a Johnson, standing in the rain to do penance for disobedience to his father-uor a Hall, charging a lady to instruct her children in the belief of ghosts-nor a Byron, shaving his brow to make it seem higher than it was, or contemplating his hands, and saying, "These hands are white"-is a more striking specimen of the follies of the wise, of the alloys mingled with the "most fine gold," than a Napoleon, now playing for a world, and now cheating one of his own officers at whist. We sometimes envy those who were privileged to be contemporaries of the battles of Napoleon, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, while each splendid series was yet in progress. The first Italian campaign might have made the blood of Burke (opposed though he was) dance on his very death-bed, for there he was lying at the time. And how grand, for a poetic ear, to have heard the news of Jena, and Austerlitz, and Wagram, and Borodino, succeeding each other like the boom of distant cannon, like the successive peals of a thunderstorm! Especially when that dark cloud of invasion had gathered around our own shores, and was expected to burst in a tempest of fire, how deep must have been the suspense, how silent the hush of the expectation, and how needless, methinks, sermons, however eloquent, or poems, however spirit-stirring, to concentrate, or increase, or express, the land's one vast emotion! Looking back, even now, upon the achievements of Napoleon, they seem still calculated to awaken wonder and fearwonder at their multitude, their variety, their dreamlike pomp and speed, their power and terrible beauty, and that they did not produce a still deeper impression upon the world's mind, and a still stronger reverberation from the world's poetry and eloquence; and fear, at the power sometimes lent to man, at its abuse, and at the possibilities of the future.Another Napoleon may rise, abler, wickeder, wiser, and may throw heavier barricades of cannon across the path of the nations, crush them with a rougher rod, may live to consolidate a thicker crust of despotism over the world, may fight another Austerlitz without a Waterloo, and occupy another St. Cloud without another St. Helena; for what did all those far-heard cannon proclaim, but "How much is possible to him that dareth enough, that feareth none, that getteth a giant's power, and useth it tyrannously like a giant-that can by individual might, reckless of rights, human or divine, rise and ride on the topmost billow of his age In looking more closely and calmly at those battles of Napoleon, we have a little, though not very much, of misty exaggeration and false glory to brush away. Latterly, they lose greatly that air of romance and miracle which surrounded the first campaigns of Italy. The boy, who had been a prodigy, matures into the full grown and thoroughly furnished man. The style, which had been somewhat florid but very fresh and powerful, becomes calmer and rather less rapid. Napoleon, This paragraph, written early in 1851, has since received two emphatic comments-need we name Louis Napoleon and Nicholas? who had fought at first with an energy that seemed desperation, with a fire that seemed superhuman, against great odds of experience and numbers, fights now with many advantages on his side. He is backed by vast, trained, and veteran armies. He is surrounded by generals only inferior to himself, and whom he has himself reared. And, above all, he is preceded by the Gorgon-headed Medusa of his fame, carrying dismay into the opposing ranks, nerving his own men into iron, and stiffening his enemies into stone. And, although longer and sterner ever became the resistance, the result of victory was equally sure. And now he has reached a climax; and yet, not satisfied therewith, he resolves on a project, the greatest and most daring ever taken or even entertained by him. It is to disturb the Russian bear in his forests. For this pur pose, he has collected an army, reminding you of those of Jenghiz Khan or Tamerlane, unparalleled in numbers, magnificent in equipment, unbounded in confidence and attachment to their chief, led by officers of tried valor and skill, and wielded and propelled by the genius of Napoleon, like one body by one living soul. But the "Lord in the heavens did laugh;" the Lord held him and his force "in derision." For now his time was fully come. And now must the decree of the Watchers and the Holy Ones, long registered against him, begin to obtain fulfillment. And how did God fulfill it? He led him into no ambuscade. He overwhelmed him with no superior force. He raised up against him no superior genius. But he took his punishment into his own hand. He sent winter before its time, to destroy him and his " many men so beautiful." He loosened snow, like a flood of waters, and frost, like a flood of fire, upon his host; and Napoleon, like Satan, yielded to God alone, and might have exclaimed, with that lost archangel- "Into what pit thou seest, From what height fallen, so much the stronger proved The force of those dire arms?" Thus had man and his Maker come into collision, and the potsherd was broken in the unequal strife. All that followed resembled only the convulsive struggles of one down, taken, and bound. Even when cast back like a burning ember, from |