Napoleon, who of all men of mighty deeds after Julius Cæsar had the greatest intellect, was a tireless reader, and since he needed only four or five hours’ sleep in twenty-four he found time to read in the midst of his prodigious activities. Nowadays those of us who are preparing to conquer the world are taught to strengthen ourselves for the task by getting plenty of sleep. Napoleon’s devouring eyes read far into the night; when he was in the field his secretaries forwarded a stream of books to his headquarters; and if he was left without a new volume to begin, some underling had to bear his imperial displeasure. No wonder that his brain contained so many ideas that, as the sharp-tongued poet, Heine, said, one of his lesser thoughts would keep all the scholars and professors in Germany busy all their lives making commentaries on it. In Franklin’s “Autobiography” we have an unusually clear statement of the debt of a man of affairs to literature: “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.... My father’s little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolved that I should not be a clergyman. ‘Plutarch’s Lives’ there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe’s, called an ‘Essay on Projects,’ and another of Dr. Mather’s, called ‘Essays to do Good,’ which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life.”