The peace of the world was insured. Napoleon was dead. But though he was dead, the echo of his deeds was so loud in the ears of France and England that they tried every device to turn it into discord or to drown it by another and a newer sound. The ignoble attempt was never entirely successful, and the day will come when personal and partisan considerations will cease to influence judgments on this mighty man. For he was a mighty man. One may be convinced that the fundamental principles of his life were despotic; that he used the noble ideas of personal liberty, of equality, and of fraternity, as a tyrant; that the whole tendency of his civil and military system was to concentrate a power in a single pair of hands, never to distribute it where it belonged, among the people; one may feel that he frequently sacrificed personal dignity to a theatrical desire to impose on the crowd as a hero of classic proportions, a god from Olympus; one may groan over the blood he spilt. But he cannot refuse to acknowledge that no man ever comprehended more clearly the splendid science of war; he cannot fail to bow to the genius which conceived and executed the Italian campaign, which fought the classic battles of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram. These deeds are great epics. They move in noble, measured lines, and stir us by their might and perfection. It is only a genius of the most magnificent order which could handle men and materials as Napoleon did. He is even more imposing as a statesman. When one confronts the France of 1799, corrupt, crushed, hopeless, false to the great ideals she had wasted herself for, and watches Napoleon firmly and steadily bring order into this chaos, give the country work and bread, build up her broken walls and homes, put money into her pocket and restore her credit, bind up her wounds and call back her scattered children, set her again to painting pictures and reading books, to smiling and singing, he has a Napoleon greater than the general. Nor were these civil deeds transient. France to-day is largely what Napoleon made her, and the most liberal institutions of continental Europe bear his impress. It is only a mind of noble proportions which can grasp the needs of a people, and a hand of mighty force which can supply them. [Illustration: WAX CAST OF THE FACE OF NAPOLEON, MADE AT ST. HELENA IN 1821, BY DR. ARNOTT.]