manhood taken to heart the lessons of adversity, would he have ventured at the same time to fight Wellington in Spain and the Russian climate in the heart of the steppes?  Would he have spurned the offers of an advantageous peace made to him from Prague in 1813?  Would he have let slip the chance of keeping the “natural frontiers” of France after Leipzig, and her old boundaries, when brought to bay in Champagne?  Would he have dared the uttermost at all points at Waterloo?  In truth, after his fortieth year was past, the fervid energies of youth hardened in the mould of triumph; and thence came that fatal obstinacy which was his bane at all those crises of his career.  For in the meantime the cause of European independence had found worthy champions—­smaller men than Napoleon, it is true, but men who knew that his determination to hold out everywhere and yield nothing must work his ruin.  Finally, the same clinging to unreal hopes and the same love of fight characterized his life in St. Helena; so that what might have been a time of calm and dignified repose was marred by fictitious clamours and petty intrigues altogether unworthy of his greatness.

For, in spite of his prodigious failure, he was superlatively great in all that pertains to government, the quickening of human energies, and the art of war.  His greatness lies, not only in the abiding importance of his best undertakings, but still more in the Titanic force that he threw into the inception and accomplishment of all of them—­a force which invests the storm-blasted monoliths strewn along the latter portion of his career with a majesty unapproachable by a tamer race of toilers.  After all, the verdict of mankind awards the highest distinction, not to prudent mediocrity that shuns the chance of failure and leaves no lasting mark behind, but to the eager soul that grandly dares, mightily achieves, and holds the hearts of millions even amidst his ruin and theirs.  Such a wonder-worker was Napoleon.  The man who bridled the Revolution and remoulded the life of France, who laid broad and deep the foundations of a new life in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, who rolled the West in on the East in the greatest movement known since the Crusades and finally drew the yearning thoughts of myriads to that solitary rock in the South Atlantic, must ever stand in the very forefront of the immortals of human story.

APPENDIX I

LIST OF THE CHIEF APPOINTMENTS AND DIGNITIES BESTOWED BY NAPOLEON

[An asterisk is affixed to the names of his Marshals.]

   Arrighi.  Duc de Padua.
  Augereau.  Duc de Castiglione.
  Bernadotte.  Prince de Ponte Corvo.
  Berthier.  Chief of the Staff.  Prince de Neufchatel.  Prince
      de Wagram.
  Bessieres.  Duc d’Istria.  Commander of the Old Guard. 
   Bonaparte, Joseph. (King of Naples.) King of Spain.
      " Louis.