illustration of his meaning, which they never failed to make more clear and catching: they sketched a charac ter at a stroke, as when he pronounced his contemporary Alexander "a true Greek of the Lower Empire,"* and they found their way almost involuntarily into his proclamations, as when after the battle of Ratisbon he told his troops "they had gloriously marked the distinction which existed between the soldiers of Cæsar and the armies of Xerxes." He did no stop to ask himself if those allusions were intelligible to his veterans: he saw they had their effect in the enthusiasm which they awoke another triumphant proof of his marvellous knowledge of human nature, when once having adopted in public the costume of the National Institute, he shrewdly observed, "there was not a drummer in the army that would not hold him higher in esteem, for believing him to be something more than a mere soldier." And he must have believed them more than mere military machines, when with the view of exciting their ardour he told them in his Egyptian campaign, that "the first city they approached was built by Alexander," or when subsequently he wished to insure their politic respect for the system of the Prophet, he reminded them that "all religions were protected by the legions of Ancient Rome." Again, in his address to the troops at Toulon, previous to the contemplated descent upon England, he said, "Rome combatted Carthage by sea

* Napoleon used also to say of the Emperor Alexander:"He is kind; he is amiable; but, with a little friction, the Cossack appears." "On lui trouve de la bonté, de l'amabilité; mais, en frottant un peu, cela sent le Cosaque."

as well as by land, and England is the Carthage of France." After the first invasion of Italy he exclaimed,

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Hannibal forced the Alps; we have turned them." On the capitulation of Vienna, addressing these same rude soldiers, he said of their enemies, "that flying from that city their adieux to its inhabitants had been murder and conflagration like Medea, they had strangled their children with their own hands." And in haranguing the Guard in the Place Carrousel, at Paris, before they set out to fight Wellington in Spain, he said, "Soldiers! you have surpassed the renown of modern armies, but have you equalled the glory of the Romans, who in one and the same campaign were triumphant on the Rhine and the Euphrates, in Syria and on the Tagus." He told them on his return from Elba, in allusion to the ancient military mode of election, that he was raised on their shields to the Imperial

Purple."*

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He never for one moment feared that they could understand him, for after the battle of Valentina, when distributing the decorations of the Legion of Honour, he asked the Captains of the 7th Light Infantry "who was their best officer ?" "They are all good, Sire," was the reply. "That is no answer," said the Emperor, "come at least to the conclusion of Themistocles, I am the first, and my neighbour the second.'" But,

A French Review, speaking of the style of some of Napoleon's military orations, says "He found in speaking to his soldiers antique words: he harangued them as a Roman; as a contemporary of the Scipios."

perhaps, his happiest classical hit was when in one of the Austrian campaigns he comprehended with his magical glance the fatal stratagetical error of his foes, exclaiming with a foresight fulfilled to the letter in the surrender of a vast force. "The plan of Mack's campaign is settled the Caudine forks are at Ulm ;" alluding to the catastrophe which befel the Roman army under Calvinus and Posthumius near Caudi, where, as related by Livy, they were compelled by the Samnites to pass under the yoke, and hence called the “Caudina furculæ.”

It was so much a habit of his to think and speak in this manner, that when suddenly awoke on the night of the 17th to behold Moscow in flames, he exclaimed,

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these people are genuine Scythians-not even the fictions of burning Troy, though heightened by the powers of poetry, could equal this." When the Allies were advancing upon France, he rebuked the factious Deputies of Paris, and told them "not to imitate the example of the Lower Empire, which rendered itself the scoff of posterity, by engaging in abstract discussions at the moment when the battering-ram was at the gates of the city;" and with a classical reference equally apposite he thus vindicated his act in overthrowing the Government on the 18th Brumaire. "The authors and instruments of that memorable change instead of denials and justifications, have a right to answer their accusers proudly, like the Roman hero- We protest that we have saved our country; come with us and return thanks to the Gods."" His letter on board the

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Bellerophon to the Prince Regent, might be said to consist of but one sentence, when he urged his petition in a single passage of ancient Greek History. "Royal Highness," he wrote, "exposed to the factions which divide my country and the hostilities of the greatest powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career, and come, like Themistocles, to seat myself at the hearths of the British people."

The foregoing I have cited as examples of the force and felicity of what I may call his classical apophthegms. There was no affectation at least in his love of the sublime and the beautiful in poetry or prose, and his intellectual tastes were as fine as his ambition was unbounded. Bourrienne tells us that as 60 great a man as he was he feared little books;" and if so, it was probably because he could best appreciate the force and power of mind, and see far-off effects to which the mere soldier must be blind. He admitted this himself in other words, when during the passage of the Niemen (to use Napier's language), "twelve thousand Cuirassiers, whose burnished armour flashed in the sun, while their cries of salutation pealed in unison with the horses' feet, were passing like a foaming torrent towards the river, Napoleon then turned to the republican Gouvion St. Cyr, and said, 'No monarch ever had such an army.' 'No; Sire.' 'But that army, mighty as it is, could not resist the songs of Paris. We must then have no liberty of the press, St. Cyr.'" It was a maxim of his, that "in war the moral was to the physical force as three parts to one ;"

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and the calculation lost none of its value in his eyes, when employed to estimate the mental influences in other matters of the world. He was, in short, a student and a reader before he was a soldier and an actor. He tells us that when he was himself a Lieutenant and in garrison three years at Valence, he lodged with a bookseller, who obligingly left him free access to his library. "Living very retired," he said, "I read through all the books it contained more than once, and have forgotten little of their contents, whether relating to military or other affairs." He studied Geography with ardour; and it is somewhat remarkable that in an early compilation of his, he noticed St. Helena merely with these words-"A Small Island." Even his great work of Juridical legislation, and of which he was so justly proud that he said in an exultant moment, "I shall go down to posterity with the code in my hand," was not altogether the work of a great intuitive genius, since he tells us that when a sous-lieutenant and serving in the army of Switzerland, he was confined for a few days in an old chateau under suspicion of disaffection, when he accidentally discovered in a neglected cupboard, an old copy of the "Institutes of Justinian," which, possibly, was the secret of his legal science.*

* Nor were his productions confined to the practically useful alone. Certain books of imagination also issued from his pen. He wrote a little upon Women, Love, and Glory; composed the "Prophetic Mask," the "Corsican Romance," and an English novel, entitled the "Earl of Essex." Poetry itself was no stranger to him; and a Madrigal, of which the following is a translation, has, with some appearance of reason, been attributed